Grimbergen doesn’t call out.
It waits under heavy skies.
Like she did.
I met her near the abbey ruins —
stone walls breathing out the cold, moss curling over forgotten carvings.
She stood by the gate, gloved hands, no umbrella, hair pinned back carelessly.
She wasn’t looking for anyone.
She was simply there,
like something you only find when you stop searching.
She never said she was an escort in Belgium.
She said, "I don’t offer escape. I offer the kind of silence that doesn’t need fixing."
Her apartment sat above a pub that closed too early for anyone to notice.
The hallway smelled of beer and rain.
Inside — soft chairs, a kettle rattling quietly, the air thick with a warmth that didn’t ask questions.
She didn’t rush to touch me.
She sat first.
Let me remember what it felt like to be still.
The massage wasn’t practiced.
It was patient.
Her hands moved like someone learning a new language by feel alone —
finding the breaks, the old bruises,
the places where I had held my breath too long.
Her striptease wasn’t seduction.
It was removal.
Of fabric. Of noise.
Of the distance between two people who finally had no reason to pretend anymore.
Beautiful girls in Grimbergen don’t lure you closer.
They stay exactly where they are —
and trust you’ll know when it’s safe to stop running.
And the expensive girls here?
They don’t cost your money.
They cost the stories you’ll have to set down before you can be touched for real.
Want to meet a girl in Grimbergen?
Then come when the streets are empty.
When your chest aches more from silence than from shouting.
She’ll know.
And if she stays —
you’ll never mistake noise for connection again.