Lucky Strike (A Mats Hummels Story)

Chapter Three

         “I think half of Europe can hear your stomach grumbling.”

         Mats and I were sitting side by side – his massive right hand resting casually on my knee – on the posh tasting room of Sweet Cake Bakery waiting for the damn thing to start.

         I hoped it’d be soon; I was beginning to worry Mats would die of inanition.

         He opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted by a sound that came out of his middle, seriously reminding me of that dinosaur thing on Jurassic Park 2.

         I raised an eyebrow, smirking “You were saying?”

         “Nothing babe, as always, you’re correct.” He muttered bitterly, and I gave him the tongue.

         Babe.

         Eurgh.

         Usually, Mats was the ray of sunshine and I was the gray cloud of doom in our relationship, yet when he was hungry he easily took that role from me, becoming the grumpiest person in Europe – if not the world – and acquiring the patience, attention spam and palate of a five year old child.

         Knowing him, he’d find everything delicious (oh Nina, we should just get a little bit of each, why pick four or five different types of sweets if we can have the whole lot?!), would want to eat all of the little deserts (instead of only taking a bite like I’d instructed him after reading the tip on a magazine) and I could already picture him writhing over in bed with stomach pains at all the sugar he’d ingest.

         I knew my future husband.

         He was prone to burning things in the kitchen, get cramping fingers from playing videogames and tummy aches from eating too much.

(Meh. I still loved him.)

(A bit.)

         “Mats, it honestly looks like you’re about to pass out.” I said worriedly, grabbing his strangely cold hand and squeezing it “I have a granola bar in my bag, you sure you don’t want it?”

         “I’ve survived this far, I can take it.” He replied, a determined look on his face – the same he had before a big match -, and he couldn’t hold a tiny little smirk once he looked at my lap, and I covered the wedding binder with my free hand protectively, cheeks getting a bit red (and ever redder when Mats brushed his lips on them) “I like it.”

         “It’s cheesy.” I mumbled, casting my eyes down at the big, hardcover thing on my lap, my latest attempt on being artsy.

         To think I once almost went to Design school seemed a lifetime ago, yet once I got home from my boring yet high-paying job to find an undecorated, white canvas-esque binder on top of my desk (a gift from Mats, who had also bought tons of stickers and colorful pens, a little post it written “have fun” glued on them), I couldn’t help but to feel like a teen again, scribbling on my journal and making silly collages with pictures I’d cut out from magazines.

         Sure it sounded silly, but to have an actual wedding binder, with a cliché cover made all by myself, little notes on what we had already decided (not much) and what we had yet to decide (a shit ton of stuff) just made it all so…

         Real.

         “This photo is my favorite.” Mats pointed at a Polaroid of us laughing “And man, remember when Kaiser looked like a dog and not a mini-horse?” He snickered, analyzing the cover again with that mesmerized grin, little personal snippets of us all over it “Gah, looking at this photo of me in Croatia last Summer makes me a bit less hungry.” Mats made his best girlish voice “Look how skinny I looked!”