Chapter 17

Overall, Grandma did not come home all day. But her portion was not wasted, because Monika ate it, and then left our apartment saying goodbye to us. Mateusz went out with her to see her off, and I stayed on to wash the dishes. What surprised me was Alex helped me with the dishes. We felt that we were now drawn closer to each other through this little secret. We finally had something in common, apart from my weekly cleaning of his apartment.

I returned with the German upstairs, where I began to sweep all the rooms, while he hid in his bedroom again. She must be asleep, I thought. He works at night and sleeps during the day. I have to admit that it didn't take much time to sweep the whole apartment, so I started the next point of the contract - windows. I was supposed to wash them all, but as it turned out, there were only four of them in the apartment. Two in the living room, one in the bedroom and one in the kitchen. Surprisingly, there was no window in the bathroom, but it was normally bright during the day. It didn't take me long to clean the windows either. There were already three washed and I had it left in the bedroom, but I had a little dilemma. Walk in there or  wait for Alex to get up? Eventually I found the courage to knock on the closed door. No answer whatsoever, so I tried again and nothing. I gently opened the door and noticed that the German was sleeping peacefully. I carefully walked in, along with a bucket that was mixed with water and liquid, and a cloth. I stood in front of the window for a moment, wondering if I should open it. I didn't want to open it, because then Alex would be cold and catch a cold. I left my equipment by the window and went to the sleeping German.

"Alex. '' I whispered, gently poking his shoulder. "Hey, Alex  wake u-..." Suddenly he gripped my wrist with an iron squeeze that made me squeal in pain. He opened his eyes quickly and gave me a surprised look and let go of my wrist.

"I'm so sorry. Did I hurt you?" He rose to a sitting position and I took a step back . "I'm so sorry, Maria." He said my name for the first time, which surprised me more than this sudden catch.

"I'm fine ." I struggled to smile, rubbing my sore wrist behind my back . " Can I open the window please? I 'm going to clean it."

"Yes, yes, sure." He got up quickly and went out of the room, but soon came back and watched me from the entrance.

I set the bucket with the liquid on the windowsill, then sat down on the windowsill myself and started scrubbing. All this time I felt closely watched by a pair of blue curious eyes that belonged to the only inhabitant of this apartment. While I was sitting on the windowsill, someone threw a snowball at the window, and I almost fell off my seat. I swayed dangerously, and Alex had already managed to find himself beside me and possibly grab a hold. Irritated, I looked out the window and saw somebody standing on the street with another snowball ...