Johan stood in front of his wardrobe, struggling to choose. Would he choose something to impress Marieke? His finest suit? Or would he choose something in which he felt at home? After a brief, silent yet screaming battle in his mind, he chose the latter. He wanted to be who he was. And even though he had lost that quite a bit, he still remembered what clothes he really felt at home in: jeans and a cozy sweater.

He was looking forward to tonight, longing to see Marieke again. He wondered if he was chasing a dream from his college years, or if there really could be such a thing as soulmates. If the latter was the case, and he was somehow convinced of that, could it be that she really was his soulmate? Then surely she would have to experience that too…

In front of the mirror he shook his shoulders, as if to shake off this burden of questions. He decided that tonight he just wanted to enjoy the reunion with his former classmates, the young women with whom he had spent so much time back then, walking, discussing, laughing and even crying.

On the way, he drove past a flower store. For a moment he had the urge to buy red roses, but then he would immediately put his heart's desire from the past on the table. That didn't seem to be a good idea. And he wondered whether red roses would suit Marieke.

His eye fell on a mixed bouquet with cheerful, bright colors. It was a special bouquet, and the price was just as special, especially high. But he didn't care, the bouquet clicked with his own enthusiasm about seeing both women from his college days again, especially Marieke. He placed the bouquet on the counter and waited for the saleswoman to put foil around it.

When she wanted to start with the ribbons, he asked her if she wanted to take ribbons of the same colors as the flowers, so it would be one piece. The saleswoman looked at him with a puzzled expression, since this was standard practice for her and her colleagues. Without answering him, she did as he requested. She took the various ribbons together in her hand and formed what at first looked like a four-leaf clover. Then she seemed to falter for a moment, as if she didn't know how to proceed, and instead of stapling the clover to the foil, she did something unexpected. From a drawer she took a pencil with a round eraser on the end and attached the ribbons to it. Johan looked on frowning, wondering what she had made. Suddenly he saw it...

"A butterfly! You made a butterfly!" exclaimed Johan in surprise.

The saleswoman nodded and replied kindly, "Yeah, I was just making some circles out of it, and then suddenly I saw a butterfly in it. I remembered that we still had these pencils in the drawer. That eraser is like a butterfly head, don't you think? By the way, do you like it?"

"Oh yes, it turned out great fun, and it fits exactly the woman I wanted to give the bouquet to. Really a cool surprise!"

At the saleswoman's face the sun suddenly broke through. Smiling happily, she said, "That lady is lucky! The stems of the flowers have already been cut off, so she can immediately put the bouquet in the vase. Shall I stick the butterfly on the foil or shall I put it on top of the flowers?"

John's face relaxed completely into a happy smile, "A butterfly would rather be on flowers than on foil, don't you think? Just lay it loose on top. You see, that little animal is totally in his place there!" he said when she had laid the butterfly on the flowers.

She laughed and hit the amount on the cash register. Johan paid the bill and went back out with a happy greeting. He placed the bouquet on the passenger seat and put the butterfly next to it for the time being.

Fifteen minutes later he was approaching Marieke's house and his heartbeat was approaching a peak. He parked the car, took a deep breath. He picked up the flowers and put the butterfly back on top. He locked the car and walked to the front door.

At his bells, Ellen soon opened it. "Ha Johan! You didn't have to do that, such a beautiful bouquet!" She teasingly held out her hands to take it from him. He caught on to her immediately and held the flowers back slightly. "Perhaps another time, young lady, these are for our hostess!"

Ellen laughed, "She's lucky, it really is a beautiful bouquet. May I hold it for you though, so you can hang up your coat?"

"Well, alright then!" Smiling, Johan handed her the bouquet.

Ellen uttered a little cry. "How cool, that butterfly! Where did you get that?"

Johan hung up his coat and took the bouquet from her again, "From the saleswoman at the flower store. At first, she was just fooling around with the ribbons and then suddenly saw a butterfly in them. She added the pencil to give it a body. Funny isn't it?"

"Yes, it certainly is, and it's also just the thing for Marieke, who is just like a butterfly herself!"

Johan chuckled, "That was exactly what I thought when I discovered what that saleswoman had made. Where is our beautiful butterfly?"

"In the kitchen putting the finishing touches on our meal."

"Just finished!" Marieke came into the room. "How cool to see you again Johan, I didn't know I had missed the friendship of our trio so much!"

That she fooled herself a little bit with this comment, she wisely left out.

Johan agreed: "I also realized that when Ellen called about Lisa's lawsuit. She mentioned your name, and I saw myself walking with both my women again. Do you remember, I called you so? Oh wait, these are for you, and they're already cut according to the saleswoman, so you can put them in water like that." Johan held the flowers out to her.

"Ooooh, how beautiful, what wonderful colors! And that butterfly, boy..." Johan saw that tears were welling up in her eyes. "A butterfly, I've always felt like a butterfly, and now I get such a cute one from you! Thank you!"

She gave Johan a kiss on the cheek and with a "Let's put this in a vase!" she went back to the kitchen. There she first took the time to let her heart settle again.

Johan, who gave her a butterfly. Was that a coincidence? Or had he sensed her like that? She picked up a large glass vase and filled it half full of water. She sprinkled half of the flower food into the water and stirred it for a moment. Then she placed the bouquet in it.

In the living room, she put the vase on the coffee table and placed the butterfly at an angle to it. She looked at it for a moment: "Perfect spot, good in sight and good in light... tomorrow, when the sun wants to shine a bit again! Where did you get that idea of the butterfly?" she asked Johan.

"It was the saleswoman who came up with the idea. And when I saw what she had made, I knew it suited you perfectly. I've always enjoyed your butterfly-like way of life."

Marieke blushed. It touched her that he described her behavior like that, that he had experienced her like that, and that he had even enjoyed it.

"I am like a butterfly," Marieke responded, "I have always gone through life butterfly light, and that is how I want to continue to live. Free like a butterfly, fluttering like a butterfly, colorful like a butterfly. For that reason I always make sure I have lots of flowers in my garden, also a few butterfly bushes, which always grow into huge plants. Together they ensure that I always have many butterflies in my garden. They just belong to me.

And oh, when I sit there quietly on my swing set, sometimes they come very close. I often try to get them to step on my finger. That takes real patience, and I have that at such a time. Usually they dare to cross over. Then I calmly bring my hand closer, to get a good look at the butterfly. And sometimes I think, that we really look at each other, as if we can look into each other's soul..."

Dreamy Marieke stared ahead, while Johan smiled at her. This was the woman to whom he had once lost his heart, and for whom he was now experiencing such intense longing again.

Marieke abruptly pulled herself out of her dream: "Do butterflies actually have a soul? If they do, it must be little ones! In any case, they are my favorites!" she added, laughing.

She looked at Johan, who blinked his eyes confusedly for a moment as if he had to wake up from a dream himself. He felt relieved that he heard the cooking timer in the kitchen, so that he didn't have to react at a moment when his heart was completely racing.

Ellen followed Marieke into the kitchen and a moment later they came into the room with two oven dishes. Ellen had already set the table before Johan's arrival, so that they could sit down at the table immediately. Johan saw two kinds of lasagna in the oven dishes.

"Hmm yummy, lasagna!" Johan sniffed the delicious smell.

"This is a standard lasagna, following some kind of basic recipe," Marieke pointed out. "And this one is more spicy. I like both, and now that there are three of us, that was a great reason to make them both. Do you scoop your own?"

"And tomorrow you'll be eating lasagna again," thought Ellen, "because this is a mighty lot, I'm sure we can't eat that much."

"We'll see, I don't mind reheating the leftovers tomorrow, but I also like it when it's eaten completely. So just feast on as much as you want!"

"I'll start with a little of both kinds," Johan said, putting a small scoop of both on his plate, "to taste which one I like best."

"Good plan, worthy of all imitation!" came Ellen after it with a quasi-serious face.

"I already know, I love them both. I'll start with the standard version, I like the other one to end with."

"Spiced lasagna for dessert, I can imagine," Johan muttered, then took a bite.

"Well no," Marieke replied, "I still have a tray of ice cream in the freezer, just in case we have an appetite after this. But we can also save that for later in the evening."

"What kind of ice cream do you have?" asked Ellen eagerly.

"Vanilla ice cream with chocolate rasp, kind of like stracciatella, but with coarsely grated pieces of chocolate. Homemade, because real stracciatella is delicious, but the pieces tend to make my teeth hurt."

"Sounds good, and I suspect it's best to have those later in the evening, because both those lasagnas are just too good!" said Johan sincerely.

"Fine! By the way, there's a little sauce next to the corner of your mouth," Marieke pointed out. Before Johan could change that, Marieke bent over the table with a napkin and wiped the sauce from his face.

"What are you doing?" exclaimed Johan played indignantly. "That sauce is a perfect lipstick!" And to show what he meant, he pressed his lips into a bite of lasagna, covering them with a layer of tomato sauce.

Ellen nearly choked on her food. Like Marieke, she hung double over her plate from laughing.

"This..." laughed Ellen flat out, "I've missed this so much. That super stupid, silly behavior of you guys! Wonderful craziness!"

Johan smilingly licked his lips and went over it again with the napkin. He grinned at Ellen and Marieke: "That felt great indeed, going crazy like that again. Yes, I missed it too, when I'm alone I don't do something like that, and certainly not at work."

"Especially at work you should do such crazy things in between. There is already so much tension in a courtroom, a little laughter relaxes!" Marieke tried to become serious again, although she still hiccupped a bit from laughing.

"I mean it Johan, you were always like that, serious and crazy all at the same time. What a pity you lost that! You haven't become such a stuffy judge, you're not like those boring colleagues of yours, are you?"

Johan began to defend his colleagues, "My colleagues are fine people, you know, I have nothing... No, you're right," he interrupted himself. "They seem like fine people, but they're boring dudes. They have standard humor, which is no humor at all. It doesn't bubble up from within, they've taken their jokes from others and put them on the table at such time as they consider appropriate. Darn, I've just become like that! No, I mean it, I'm sick of it!"

Johan lowered his shoulders, and looked at his lasagna with his lips tightly clamped together, as if that were his enemy and he wanted to attack it.

"Johan, it's not true what you say. You did not become like them. You did behave that way, in their presence. But inside you are still the same weirdo you were in our college days. The idiot I was in love with... Oops, what am I saying, I'm blurting out... Too bad, I've already said it."

Marieke had turned bright red and while Johan looked at her in surprise, she quickly bent over her plate to extensively cut off another bite and, with trembling hands, clumsily put it in her mouth. While chewing, she kept looking at her plate. She was ashamed that she had just blurted it out!

Ellen put her hand on Marieke's arm: "Hey, that's not a shame, is it? I can imagine it vividly, honestly."

"Yeah, you make it a little worse," Marieke grumbled indignantly, "you have easy talk! Safely married to the best one you could bump into. You know, now that we're being open and honest," she looked at both her guests, "since that time I've been looking around regularly among the menfolk, but I've never experienced what I experienced with you at the time. Something magnetic, I don't know what it was, maybe dumb adolescent love. Hmm, a little late adolescent love, after all, we were already adults. But it was there, I couldn't get around it. And after we lost sight of each other, I missed that, I missed you."

She said the latter specifically to Johan. "Well, so it was. Eat well, I'd say," she finished with a grin.

Johan had been looking at her all this time with his mouth slightly open, his head tilted, bewildered, as if he had received a baseball bat against his head. He felt the pain of years of missing her and, right through it all, a deep longing for the woman opposite him. As he was at a loss for words, he took some more lasagna, so that he at least had something to do.

Ellen saw his reaction, felt how deeply it had affected him. She decided on the spot, however pleasant it would be tonight, that she would leave a little earlier with an excuse, so that the two of them could find out together if they dared to give the spark that was obviously still there between them the chance to explode into a fire.

To chapter 198. Rediscovered

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