Strawberry Fields Forever

“No, we can’t go to Germany, please Matt!” Her tone was desperate, almost begging as she robotically repeated the phrase she'd been saying for the twelfth time now. Matt didn’t know what to do other than holding the sobbing mess that was his girlfriend tight. Soothingly, he ran his fingers through her hair and placed a kiss on her forehead.

He cursed himself for not having prepared the perfect solution for a situation like this. It was clear right from the beginning that her parents were eventually going to step into the picture, and Matt was under no illusions that they would like him. But then again, was there even a perfect solution for what they had? This... nothingness?

Of course there is, Matt's relentlessly hopeful inner voice whispered, she has to move in with you, start college in the states and you can be happy together. Get married, maybe have another kid. That's what you want, Matt, don't you? He sighed. I do.

But as it was, they were no more than hopeless romantics between whom soon there would be an enormous physical distance. He’d been looking for someone to have the kids while he toured, and chances were good she would be even further away from them than him most of the time. Amelie definitely was not what he was looking for, but what he found.

“What’s so bad about going to meet them?” he asked, although he could think of a thousand reasons. He said it mainly to rip her out of her trance. “They’d keep me,” she sobbed. “They’d keep you?” He asked, unsure if he understood correctly.

“Yeah,” she mumbled, “if we go to Germany now there’s a good chance I won’t be coming back again with you. It’s June, Matt, I’ve been traveling around for a year now.” Matt knew she was right. Even more, her parents, and possibly grandparents or neighbors would talk her out of their relationship.

He was braced for all that coming. There was no rational argument that would change his feelings. But was she? Everything would come crashing down on her, a thousand reasons to let go. Would one reason to stay be enough? Suddenly, he grew anxious. He couldn’t stand the thought of having to let her go, not after just finding love again after such a painful time.

I am being way too selfish here, he thought, she should do what’s best for her. And that’s going back where she belongs and get that education she wants to get. He sighed as his head grew heavy and bumped against hers. It was way past five in the morning already.

“Do you wanna head to bed?” he asked softly, not wanting to upset her more. They would not solve this problem in that night, and Matt dreaded that the next night wouldn’t bring all those answers either. And neither would the one after it.

She nodded as she left his lap. Matt suddenly shivered. His t-shirt was wet from where her face had rested, and the sudden withdrawal of her body heat left him feeling cold. Goose bumps covered his chest. In silence, they headed to her bedroom.

He pulled off his shirt and got under the blankets, motioning for her to come. Amelie crawled closer, and she held on to him as if her life depended on it. They stared at the walls, and she eventually fell asleep, for the first time since she lived there without sleeping with each other first. Well, technically, if you didn't count the car. Matt didn’t fall asleep for hours. There were too many thoughts in his mind for him to handle.

The merciless sound of her phone ripped both of them out of their sleep at eleven. Matt yawned, feeling the tiredness in all of his joints. He believed he had slept for mere minutes. “Time to get up,” she whispered, as if it was something she dreaded. “Good morning sweetheart,” he said and forced a smile before softly kissing her lips.

“I’ll make breakfast,” he offered, “then you can shower and change.” She nodded, and with that jumped out of bed and disappeared through the white door. Matt tried to order his thoughts.

Breakfast, just breakfast. The first step. In the kitchen, he fumbled with the knobs of the faucet until finally, the water came pouring out in a freezing temperature. He splashed his face before preparing their pancake dough and switching on the stove.

He cursed as he noticed that they ran out of coffee. Rummaging through the shelves, he found some vanilla tea and decided they’d just drink some of that. He poured the liquid into the pan and waited.

A few minutes later, Amelie joined him. He felt like he broke a little inside when he noticed how sick she looked. “You alright?” he asked, sounding more concerned than he wanted to. “Yeah,” she mumbled, “just… so much going on, I had to throw up.”

“Well, let’s fill up that empty stomach with some pancakes Matty style, huh?” he said with a smile. Five minutes later, they were sitting at the table. The pancakes were dry and way too sweet, definitely not Matt's best work so far, but no-one complained. Amelie said she didn’t like tea, so she poured herself some tomato juice. Matt chuckled at the uncommon combination.

“What do we do?” she asked, immediately shifting their conversation topic back to the endless pit of problems. “Frankly, I don’t know,” he replied. She cradled her head in her hands. “I think it would be the best to just go there. Amelie, they’re your parents. You can’t just ignore their pleas,” he began, thinking that he sounded like a retard.

"And they'd immediately think I'm a douche if I keep you here and don't even let them get to know me in person, you know that, Amelie," Matt finally added when he saw he got her thinking.

“I know,” she mumbled much to his surprise. “Do you think you have marshmallows?” She asked. Matt wasn't sure if she wanted to change the subject or if she really felt like eating marshmallows, but if he had to, he would put his money on the second possibility.

“Uh, I don’t know…”
Luckily, there were some left in his storage room. “Do you just want to eat them… not even heated up?” he asked as he handed her the bag. “Yeahhhh,” she moaned and started eating them. She is weird today, Matt thought, but at least better than yesterday.

“So, uh… I’ll look for flights?” he asked. When she didn’t respond, he added, “Or do you wanna phone them again first?”
“You know,” she munched, “I would have loved to see your cabin…” Matt grew frustrated. As much as he wanted to run away from all that, he knew he couldn’t. She was so mature, why couldn’t she realize that?

“Amelie, we’re going. How do you want to handle this?”
“I DON’T KNOW!” She screamed, and then started crying again. Oh no, here we go again, he thought, she’s even worse than Val when she was pregnant. And that's really gotta mean something... He rolled his eyes in his mind and hugged her from behind.

“Shh,” he tried to comfort her. Much to his surprise, it worked immediately. “I’ll call them,” she said as she got up.

He paced the kitchen like a lion in a cage. When she didn’t return after a couple of minutes, Matt decided to call Brian. He picked up right after the first ring. “Sup Shads,” he greeted him casually, but Matt didn’t even say hello. “Shit man we fucked up. We’re all over the news, and the reporters are mobbing her family in Germany. They didn’t even know about us, but… Ah fuck.”

“Yeah, I read about you guys, too,” Brian responded. He sounded neither pleased nor displeased about that fact, something Matt was glad about. He couldn't deal with a disfavoring Haner now even if he wanted to. But his brother-in-law seemed to have adapted to them dating.

“The worst part,” Matt whispered, “is they called her on FaceTime last night and I didn’t know, so I walked in in my boxers.” He heard Brian laugh at the end of the line. You fucker, Matt thought grimly. If there was one bad thing about Brian, then it was that he couldn't stay serious. “Apparently, they’re super strict and conservative and there’s no fucking way to get out of this… Man they want us to come…”

Brian didn’t say anything for ten full seconds. “Man, you’re in deep,” he then said. Yeah thank you Brian, as if I didn’t know that already. “Didn’t think you’d have to put up with strict parents at 34 anymore, huh?” he laughed, a small particular undertone noticeable but then he finally became serious.

“Listen, I know you never dated around in high school and the DiBenedettos loved you right from the beginning, but you remember me, I dated a lot of girls. And I was pretty good at coping with their overprotective parents.” Matt didn’t even need to see Brian’s face to know exactly what a smug grin he was making.

“So?”
“So the trick is to make them believe you thought this through, your future together. Tell them you could pay for college in America. But… it’s even harder for you two ‘cause they have to… practically let her go for a longer time. It’s not like my high school girlfriends who went home to their parents at the end of the day,” Brian thought aloud.

“But it’s the most thing to make them think you really care about her. In the end, parents want to see their kids happy, right?”
Matt did not say anything. “Are you alright man?” His brother-in-law’s voice sounded through the phone. “Yeah,” he replied, “thanks. I’ll text you once I know.” With that, he hung up.

Amelie was lying on the bed, talking rapidly in German. Matt tried hard to understand something, but he couldn’t make out a single word. He sat down next to her and ran his fingers up and down her back as she talked. This time, he knew she wasn’t on FaceTime, just a regular voice call.

After a few more minutes, she hung up. “I said we’re coming,” she said with a sigh, and Matt nodded. “Well,” she jumped to her feet, “I better go pick up the kids.” Matt nodded in agreement and booted up his computer to look for flights. Then it struck him.

“What now?” Brian’s voice sounded through the speaker. “Brian, what do I do with the kids?” Matt asked. “Sure,” he responded, “I mean, you can’t really hide them, can you? Besides she told them already, so… Yeah take them.”

Matt hung up without saying goodbye for the second time this morning. A few minutes later, he’d booked them a flight for the very next day. Nonstop. They spent the rest of the day packing and then packing some stuff for the little ones, too. Matt felt uncertain about meeting Amelie’s parents in person. They’d certainly be of a different kind than the DiBenedettos, who’d loved him right from the beginning.

Matt grinned as he thought about their encounter, him being a 12-year-old, pimpled boy with an attitude like he owned the world, and them being friendly and open. Mr. DiBenedetto just smiled at him and offered him some orange juice as Matt waited for Val to come downstairs so he could take her out for a scoop of ice cream. He was not nice to him because he liked him, but because he knew it was not going to last. They were twelve, after all.

Little did her dad know that, fourteen years later, the pimpled good-for-nothing would be a millionaire walking down the aisle with his precious daughter, and a year later, his best friend and bandmate would do the same to her twin.

So how could he win over Amelie’s parents, after all? For Mr. D, it had been watching him grow to be the best he could, watching him turn the drinking, antagonistic punk into a hard-working musician, and of course, the money. It would be a lie to say Val's parents didn't care about it, too. But Amelie’s parents knew all that. Still, they seemed to disapprove for reasons Matt could understand completely.

He let out a sigh as he zipped up the boys’ suitcase, hoping he didn’t forget anything. It was evening already, and since Amelie was pretty shaken up, he decided to just order pizza instead of asking her to cook. After all, she was not his house maid anymore, but his girlfriend. Or so he hoped. They didn’t talk about that yet, but it was pretty clear to everyone that that was exactly what it was.

At dinner, he was surprised at how little she ate. But he decided not to press on it. She was just anxious at what would happen, and to a point, he was, too. They fell into bed in silence, not getting closer than cuddling for the second time since she lived under his roof. Matt thought about talking to her, about her fears and how it all would turn out okay, but he just couldn’t. He couldn’t lie.

The next day, they got up early and ate some muesli instead of pancakes. They would have taken too long to make. Amelie took awkwardly long in the bathroom and Matt understood that she wanted to hide, but he couldn’t let her.

“Amelie, please,” he said as he stood in front of the door, “you can’t stay in there forever… I can’t let us miss this flight. You said we’re coming. Now come on, it’ll turn out alright,” he said, but she did not respond.

Instead, he heard a gut-wrenching noise from inside. How nervous did she have to be to throw up? Matt knew a lot of singers who did it before going on stage, just from the excitement. But with her, it was probably more fear.

He sighed and let her finish. Eventually, they arrived at LAX airport, which Matt knew by heart from the countless tours they’d commenced from there. With his frequent flyer status at the star alliance airlines, it took only a few minutes to check in and drop off the luggage.

Amelie was carrying Cash in her hands, since he was so tired. River, on the other hand, was so awake and excited that Matt had to shush him so he wouldn’t wake his brother up.

While Amelie sat down with Cash at the gate, Matt and River ran around through the entire area B. He hoped to tire him out enough for the flight so he wouldn’t squeal all the time. In general, his boys were really good at remaining quiet during a flight. They drew and looked at picture books and played some games on the iPad, and then they slept. But it was essential to get out all that energy.

Half an hour later, they were finally sitting in the machine. Boarding was complete. Amelie held her hand against her stomach, obviously still in pain. Matt looked at her with an uncertain feeling as the plane took off.

He hoped her parents would let them be. He had a plan. They just needed to agree.

Notes

What do you guys think? I'm super happy you liked my update yesterday :)