Sari's Story. Carina Zinkeisen

      "How did you like Sari?"

      Beautiful, just beautiful, she looked like Audrey Hepburn thought Caroline and was glad that her father couldn't see how red she turned and how pensive she smiled in the dark of the night.

      Quite pensive and quite in love.

      In love?

      Definitely in love.

      "Yes, very much," she said calmly and climbed ahead of her father into the tuk-tuk that had just stopped.

      Her father gave the driver his address and negotiated the price of the ride in fluent Khmer. Caroline was quite surprised, how fluent he was in this so difficult to speak foreign language, which reminded her to know language she knew.

      Then he turned to his daughter.

      "That pleases me. You need some friends. And Sari has many friends. Also very nice Europeans, Expats, who live here. I'm sure there's one guy for you. I never liked Tobi," Dieter said laughing and nudged Caroline into the side. "Let's go to the men's front.“

      Caroline did not laugh.

      Chapter 3

      Slowly Caroline undressed herself.

      It was still quite hot and she was dead tired with one blow.

      Exhausted, she sat down on her bed and dropped the dress next to her.

      A ringing tore her out of her thoughts. Who was still calling her at this late hour? Definitely Nadja, because in Germany it was a few hours earlier.

      Caroline reached for her cell phone, it was an unknown number, not Nadja's stored number.

      She accepted the call.

      "Sari," she said quietly as the girl on the other end of the phone said her name and remembered writing her cell phone number on a napkin with a shaky hand.

      "I", she heard Sari a little unclearly and held the cell phone closer to her ear. "I would like to meet you tomorrow, after your work. Have a coffee with you. At FCC Angkor, it's across the river near the Royal Palace, where the King lives, when he is in Siem Reap. Every tuk tuk driver knows it."

      Caroline's heart cheered and she smiled.

      "Gladly, gladly, around 5:00," she said calmly.

      This time Caroline had taken precautions and already at work she wore her beloved jeans jumpsuit, which accentuated her narrow waist and suited her perfectly.

      "Very chic, Caro, you look great, for whom did you get all dressed up", her father said with a grin and Caroline had to smile too because of his still Bavarian dialect. He really said „aufgebrezelt“ for dressed up.

      "Hardly for your old dad, but that doesn't matter, I'm used to grief, fun aside, I can't use you tonight anyway, I'm meeting my guys for snooker, but you really have to see this live. I'm the king of the snooker table at Tempel Bar," her father joked and patted her shoulder. "Are you meeting Sari," he asked.

      Caroline nodded. "At FCC Angkor, I'm going to get a tuk-tuk right away."

      "Will Jay be there too? Oh no, he's back in Phnom Penh."

      "Jay," asked Caroline and remembered with a thud that Sari's fiancé was called Jay.

      She bit her lips.

      "He went to Phnom Penh right after the engagement ceremony to liquidate his apartment and for business. I forgot all about that, but maybe you'll finally get to know Chris. He's a nice guy, I tell you. Just your type. Good-looking too, go get him. He'd make a great son-in-law."

      "Yeah, Dad, there's one Chris Sari was telling me about last night. He's going to have coffee with us today," said Caroline and was annoyed by her lie. But her dad apparently didn't understand that she wasn't interested in men anymore, not at all, and that made her irritable. It was just her life and not her father's. She was 27 and no longer 15.

      When her Tuk Tuk stopped at the roadside in front of the FCC Angkor, which turned out to be a magnificent, bright white colonial building with a beautiful, well-kept small garden, two hearts beat in Caroline's somehow hurting chest.

      One heart looked forward irrepressibly to seeing Sari again, to meeting her, to falling in love with her, the other heart was ashamed of lying to her father.

      He only meant well with her. Probably he couldn't get out of his skin. His skin, in which he wanted a man for Caroline and not a woman.

      "I am so happy to see you, Caro, let's go upstairs to the second floor. You have a nice view of the garden and the coffee is excellent. They also have great fruit shakes and even smoothies. Everything totally delicious and very fresh made, great quality. And if you like ice cream, afterwards we could go to Blue Pumpkin, the best ice cream parlor Siem Reaps, no of all Cambodia. You'll love it," said Sari, who had joined her and looked simply stunning in her simple, elegant dark blue linen dress.

      Her arm touched Caroline's elbow and Caroline's stomach cramped up.

      They were butterflies.

      Butterflies.

      Her heart was beating for a woman.

      For the way back Caroline did not use the Tuk Tuk, but walked. So she could sort her thoughts better. She felt just great and that unsettled her. She could think of nothing else but Sari. She still imagined every look of Sari in the most beautiful colors, every gesture, every word. Drinking her coffee and mango shake in her mind, she still had the feeling of tasting the sweet mango in her mouth.

      She licked her lips with relish.

      She couldn't suddenly be a lesbian? Could she?

      She had had Tobi after all.

      For almost three years, even if it was not perfect, it was three years. Three complete years, which now seemed to be complete meaningless to her. Like they never existed.

      And yet, if she was honest with herself, and she was now, in the dark of the night on the terrace of the Hard Rock Cafe, where she drank another vodka. All the crushes at the university, which had all remained unfulfilled, had been women. Caroline closed her eyes and once again she thought of Myriam, the beautiful South African woman whom she had almost kissed back then at university. Whose wedding plans had really stabbed her in the heart. More than Tobi's cheating and almost as much as the sight of Sari in that villa yesterday. And she also had more than just raved about many teachers at school and university.

      The butterflies that had moved her to kiss Myriam at that party after several glasses of wine.

      Exactly the same butterflies, only much more intense right now for Sari.

      She had apparently always been a lesbian.

      Always had been.

      And had successfully repressed it.

      Caroline sighed and took a small sip of vodka.

      "Hey, how was it?" she was ripped by her father's voice from her thoughts.

      "What are you doing here," she asked perplexed, almost startled.

      "I also want to order a nightcap after the