Joel Hokka / Blind Channel - ENEMIES WITH BENEFITS (English)

8 - if I just try hard enough

I was browsing through Aleksi's laptop while once again hearing the guys yell through the walls in the other room. They were recording parts of a new song and apparently seemed to be pretty content with the recordings from what I could hear them say or more likely scream loudly from time to time.

I decided to withdraw myself from the group for a while. Being in a tiny recording room together with Aleksi and Joel especially was something I just couldn't get myself to do right now. Not while I fried my mind with all those confusing thoughts regarding the two of them.

I wanted to take some time for myself to sort and collect my thoughts but ended up sinking into a state of melancholy when I opened a folder on Aleksi's Mac Book that read "Amsterdam with Naomi."

All the pictures that were saved in this folder immediately took me back to the time when life was easy, when I still had nothing to worry about. With a double click I opened the first image and 19 year old Aleksi and 18 year old Naomi popped up on the screen, eating french fries somewhere in the beautiful streets of Amsterdam. We were looking so happy and careless in this picture. At that time I had still no clue how Aleksi was truly feeling about me. I caught myself slightly brushing the screen softly with my fingertips when all those distant memories came back to life in my mind.

How much we laughed during these two years, how many nights we sat awake on the balcony of our apartment talking for hours until the sun was rising, how we were just always together helping each other out when one of us felt like he wanted to just throw everything away and cave in. In this moment I remembered just how much Aleksi really meant to be.

"So you found that folder." I hadn't even noticed that Aleksi had been sitting down next to me on the couch. He was leaning back, watching me look closely at each and everyone of those images that portrayed us in the most different kinds of situations.

"Remember this one? Our first time eating hash brownies from that coffee shop down the street. We were totally wasted, I remeber I almost had to throw up because we were laughing so hard." Aleksi chuckled and pointed at our grinning faces that additionally to the red eyes we had in that picture made us look extremely ridiculous.

"Or this one? My first gig ever. You were standing in front row filming the whole show and the next day your arm almost fell off." I started to laugh at the distant memory of me crying infront of Aleksi the next morning after his first gig because my arm really hurted so bad that I literally couldn't move it.

"Look at you, how cute you look in that picture with your dimples and your short blonde hair." I zoomed in on Aleksi's face. "Yes back then I was a little bit younger and skinnier." He was looking so cute I let out a squeaking noise when I took a closer look at his face in this picture. I only realized now that his appearance really had changed a lot since then.

"And look at you now. All manly and grown up with your tattoos and that long black hair of yours." I turned my head and looked at Aleksi in admiration.

His hair was just the right kind of messy, a few little strands of hair were falling in his face. He was looking at me with his piercing blue eyes eagerly. "You like my new hair?" Aleksi shook his head and his fluffy hair was flying in all possible directions. "I love it. You look great." I couldn't find any more proper words that expressed my thoughts, or maybe I didn't want to admit to myself what came to mind when I looked at Aleksi in this moment. I couldn't resist to run my fingers through his black fluffy hair.

Before I allowed to lose myself in his deep blue eyes, I turned away again, continuing to look at more images that Aleksi and I had taken two years ago. Yet my fingers were still playing with his hair, twitching strands of it between my fingertips.