Archive of Our Own

They go to the same school, which means that they meet for the first time when they’re about six years old.

That’s so young, she thinks, when she looks back later, nineteen and unable to even recall most of what happened at that age. Unable to recall what he looked like, except for when she looks at their class photographs. The ones she still keeps in a drawer in her desk.

Of course she doesn’t start being interested until she’s around fourteen.

Most of the boys are rude, still, annoying in the way her mother tells her they’ll grow out of, when she asks her if they’ll always be like that; if they’re always so mean.

Even though: Even is one of the only three guys in class who are both decently kind and decently handsome enough to catch her attention, and when it comes down to it, it could have been any of them, she thinks, and it almost kind of is. She kisses one of them at a party anyway, her first kiss but it’s not particularly good, so when he doesn’t make a move on her the following week, she quietly moves on.

She’s young. It doesn’t really matter anyway.

Or that’s what she thinks, until she’s suddenly fifteen and finds herself sitting on the school’s football court at another stupid. Now across from Even, who’s running his palms over the fake grass instead of looking at her.

“Do you want to smoke?” she asks, because that seems to be what boys and girls do when they do this kind of stuff, smoke and touch each other and kiss, but he shakes his head, and it surprises her a little, the extend to her relief. “No?”

“No,” he says. And: “Sonja.”

He breaks himself off, but he’s looking at her, and until then she’s been a little confused at why the world seems to think she should do all of these intimate things with boys when she doesn’t do anything else with them, but she understands it then. Because he’s smiling, and there’s something about that smile that makes her feel so endeared by him; makes her feel like she wants to hold his hand and kiss him too, but softly.

“I kind of like you,” he says, glancing back at the grass now, like he’s almost embarrassed by it, and that makes her feel all of those same things, but amplified.

“I kind of like you,” she says, hoping he’ll smile, and the rush she gets when he does is probably equal parts affection and pride. “Do you want to kiss?”

She thinks it’s a bit of a funny question, and that he might laugh about it, but he doesn’t. Maybe he’s nervous, because he keeps looking away, cheeks looking a little pink like he’s blushing, but then he nods. A tiny, little, shy thing, before he glances up to meet her eye, and nods again.

“I haven’t done it before,” he says, and she’d figured but hadn’t known. In a way it makes her feel accomplished, that she can shrug like it doesn’t really matter and that even though almost all of the girls in their class likes him, she will be the one who gets to take him through this.

“It’s okay,” she says. “I have.”

He smiles, and that looks nervous too, so she crawls over to him, fake grass prickling a little uncomfortably into her knees through her jeans, steadies herself by holding onto his shoulders, and:

Kisses him.

*

He’s just so unbelievably sweet.

She thinks that all of the time. Thinks it when they do their homework at Even’s parents’ dining room table, or when he goes with her to the mall, or when he comes with her to her grandmothers birthday party where she turns 80 and charms her because he’s like that; a charming boy.

She thinks it when she kisses him too, at school during breaks or in her bed after school, and she thinks that when she holds him, those afternoons when all they do is lie together in each other’s arms.

It takes them until the summer before they start high school, both of them sixteen years old, before they take it beyond kissing and start trying to have sex.

She’s the one who initiates, them in her bed making out, and she’s been thinking a lot about whether or not she actually wants to or if it’s that damned peer pressure that all the adults are always warning her about, but no, she definitely, definitely wants to, so she rolls them over, hovers over him and says, “how would you feel if I took my top off?”

In the end there’s some trials and tribulations before, about a month later, they’re lying together in her bed, both of them topless and making out.

“Even,” she says, and she loves the way he touches her, and she loves the way his cheeks are pink and his eyes are a little glazed over, when he glances up to look at her.

“Even,” she says. “Now?”

“Now?” he repeats, and she nods. “You sure?”

“Yeah,” she says, and nods again.

They’ve done other stuff now, but still not this, and she wants to, a lot. Actually, she doesn’t think she’s ever been as unbelievably tender for him as she is then, carding her fingers through his hair and having him lean into it as he puts the condom on, no air in the tip of it like they were taught in sex ed, and then runs those familiar soothing patterns up and down her spine as he pulls her into his lap.

“Even,” she says. “I love you.”

And him:

“You’re saying it like you’re gonna face Godzilla or something.”

The way she lifts her brows at that makes him laugh, delighted, like he does sometimes, and it’s so sweet. He’s just so sweet. And then:

”I love you, too."

*

That same summer they pick out a star and call it theirs; they dance together at parties, sweaty and grinning, before they dance together in his kitchen, close and to a tune that's not actually there, lit only by the refrigerator light and then, once they close it, by the light of the moon; they stay up all night talking, and she sleeps in a shirt that she's borrowed from him while he spoons her, breathing sleepy sighs into her hair, before he wakes her up by kissing the top of it.

He holds down a job at a nearby bakery, too, and a week before they start high school, when he comes over, it’s with a gift. It’s a bracelet, thin and made of real silver, because you’re allergic to the fake stuff, and when she lets him put it on, she almost wants to cry, because he’s so sincere about it and so gentle.

“It’s symbolic, you know,” he says. “Like in High School Musical.”

She laughs about that, because it’s an argument they have, where she insists that it’s good and he pretends to disagree, even though none of them really care, and then she kisses him.

“No,” he says, when she pulls back. “I just mean that we’re going to different schools this fall and, you know.” He fingers the bracelet on her wrist, a little bit. “That I want you to know that I’m in this.”

That time, instead of kissing him, she pulls him into a hug.

For the next three years, she keeps the bracelet on.

*

Even picks his new friends up almost immediately.

She gets some new ones too, and gets caught up in the whirlwind of it, all of the new people and new parties and new subjects, and there’s a few months there where they don’t see each other quite as often as they used to, which doesn’t say a whole lot when used to was almost every day.

Still: Even through that distance he texts her every day, and even through all of that new stuff he’s always so excited to see her and talk to her and kiss her, too.

He likes these new friends of his a lot, though, she can tell. He rambles on about them, Mikael this and Mutta that, always having something new to say about something funny they said. He downloads an app that reminds them that it’s prayer time, all times of the day, and he changes, with it, but not in a bad way. Rather, in a way that looks like he’s settling into himself.

Actually, that’s exactly what it looks like. His body changes, firmer and bigger and a little taller, too, although he was tall already. His jaw-line gets more defined, and his hair gets product in it, and he starts wearing a denim jacket and reconnects with the sketching he’d sort of stopped.

She likes it. Likes his body and the weight of it on top of her, and likes that he’s not always waiting for her to initiate it anymore. She likes how happy he looks, how passionate he’s becoming, although it feels a little weird to see him dive into all of these interests that she doesn’t really share.

It’s fine, though. It’s not like they have to be the same person, or do everything together, so she thinks it’s probably okay that their lives are becoming more parallel than they are intertwined.

The summer before high school they spent almost entirely together, but the summer between first year and second, they spend a lot more apart.

He’s making movies with his new friends, he says, some weird, artsy things, and he does ask her to come along, but she always feels a little out of place when they talk movies, even though Even does put in an effort to try and include her, so she thanks him no instead.

They’re still together often, though. One time he brings her to a party, someone’s house from someone’s class, and then he takes her to the patio outside and touches her bracelet while she sits on his knee before he smiles at her, still the same, lovely boy that he was two years ago when they first kissed, so she kisses him then, too.

After, he takes her home to his parents house, and they have giggly, breathless, intimate sex in his creaky loft-bed, like they’re newly in love, and afterwards she touches his hair, carding her fingers through it and giving his scalp a gentle massage, and the way he smiles into it with closed eyes makes her feel as tender for him as she’s ever felt.

“I love you,” she says, and so does he, I love you, S, and when they fall asleep he’s on her chest and her fingers are still in his hair.

It’s another night that summer when he picks her up from the grocery store where she works, says, “do you want to try something?” and presents her with a freshly rolled joint, finished up nicely like he wanted it to look good just for her.

She says yes that night, for the first and last time because it makes her too paranoid, but Even keeps going, says that he likes that it calms him down and quietens his thoughts, and maybe she doesn’t quite understand it then, but not long after she will.

“Can’t you stop it?” she asks, one evening when he’s showed up high for dinner at her parents’ house and she’s annoyed about it, because she thinks it’s more obvious, smell and actions, than he thinks it is. “Can’t you stop it, for me?”

“That’s not fair,” he says, instead of replying, and maybe that’s true but she’s also a little annoyed he doesn’t just say yes. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

“It does when you bring it to dinner with my family.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, runs a hand through his product-filled hair from where he’s sitting on her bed, and she doesn't like it when he gets frustrated like this. “I get it, that was rude, I won’t do it around your parents anymore.”

“Or me,” she says, and he sighs.

“Or you,” he says, still. “Fine.” And then: “The other boys hide it from their girlfriends, you know, but I want to be honest with you. We’re friends, right?”

And just like that he’s back. Sweet him, the version that she really likes, so she comes over, lets him touch her hips and crawls into his lap, and she doesn’t know if it’s normal to feel like it takes a lot of work to be on the same page, but she’s glad that at least it’s work that he’s still trying to do.

“I love you,” she says, later that summer, sitting besides him on a beach, drinking beer and leaning into him while his hand is in her hair, and when she does he twists around to find her forehead and kiss it.

“I love you,” he says, and: “Hey.” Finds her eyes, kisses her forehead, kisses her cheek. “I love you.”

It’s the second time they end a summer like that: close to each other, emotionally. And maybe she should mind a little that it feels like a rekindling more than their natural state, but she doesn’t care at all, because they’re here. They’re here, him holding her, and she doesn’t want to be anywhere else.

*

Then, during second year, he starts being more erratic.

It’s unnoticeable at first, so she doesn’t really notice, or at least doesn’t really pay attention, but eventually she has to admit that he’s either going very fast or going very slow.

At first they all think it’s just his passion for film that’s doing it, because every time he stays up all night to finish something, it seems to be that. Then they think that maybe it’s school that’s stressing him out, making him have to finish something too quickly so he has to work through nights, after which he crashes in a natural state of exhaustion.

Eventually, however, they settle on ADHD. They put him on some meds, but they make him hyper, so they take him off them again, and then suddenly it feels like there’s a lot of lows.

The distance that began a little in first year continues into second even stronger, and it’s horrible, in a way, but it seems like he doesn’t really need her anymore except when he’s sad, so she kind of starts liking it when he is.

Not liking it, of course, because she’s not actually that cruel, couldn’t actually dream of putting her needs to feel wanted above his need to feel stable, but:

But whenever he is sad, and is letting her hold him in his bed, there’s a little part of her that’s thinking, well: at least there’s that.

The summer before third year she’s in Italy with her family for a good six weeks, almost the whole holiday, so they don’t spend a lot of it together.

They text, though, often, and Skype, too, and whenever he’s there on her screen, sun-kissed and shirtless and smiling, she remembers why she likes him so much. Bright-eyed, enthusiastic him, who laughs when she tells him the guys here are hot and who’s confident, now, when he settles into the flirty moment, instead of shy; who has sadness in him, maybe, but all of this joy, too, and who’s so much more settled that, were she to re-fall in love with him, now, it would probably be for different reasons than it were back in the beginning, but would still also be because he’s so kind.

*

Third year, however, he becomes too sad.

Maybe it’s not sadness at that point, actually. Maybe it’s anger about the whole thing, or maybe it’s just much deeper and complex than she’s able to understand, but in any case he starts turning his back to her when he has a bad day and she tries crawling into his bed.

Perhaps they would have moved further apart without that. Perhaps, actually, it was already sort of happening, but in her confusion and pain over seeing him slip through her fingers like sand, it ends up being the illness she blames.

And then there’s Mikael.

At first she thinks that she’s imagining it, because Even’s never been anything but nice to her, never been anything but into her, and it’s obvious, she thinks, that he isn’t gay. But then again:

But then again she did have to kiss him first, and touch him first, and she used to be so fond of their first kiss and their first time, but now she’s seething with jealousy just thinking about it, and the longer he doesn’t touch her the angrier she gets until, one afternoon, when she comes out of the shower in just a towel and he grins at her and pulls her in, she pushes him away.

“What about Mikael?” she says, and the way his face falls only confirms to her that, at least in some way, she was right. She’s never liked it less.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and at least he sounds apologetic about it, actually apologetic, like this is paining him to say. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s going on, I just– I haven’t done anything.” He says that part like it matters. “I wouldn’t do anything.”

“Are you gay?” she asks, instead of replying to that, because he could kiss and fuck the whole town for all she cares, if it meant that the only one he was in love with was her. “Are you?”

“No.” He shakes his head, and he looks so sad, sitting there with his hands in his lap, palms up and passive so they look emptier than ever, and the way he’s pleading at her with a look makes her feel a familiar pang of sadness for him that she didn’t know she could still feel while he’s making her feel this way. “No.”

“But you like him.”

“And I like you,” he says.

“Can’t you pick one?”

When he shakes his head again, it looks like he’s going to cry.

“No,” he says, and she feels like maybe she’s going to cry, too. “I can’t.”

“You can't?" she says. "What does that mean? You can’t pick one gender?" And now she does cry: "Or can’t pick one person?”

“Sonja,” he says, and it’s a broken sound, unlike anything she’s ever heard from him, but a second later he’s up and hugging her, holding her close exactly like he’s done it a thousand times before. “I am picking a person. I’m picking you.”

It helps a little, but it doesn’t help a lot.

Maybe in a way it’s nice, she thinks later, that faced with the choice it was her he ended up with, but she doesn’t like that he even had to make one. Doesn’t like that being hers, now, means that he’s forced himself to not go after something that he wanted. That she’s taking something from him and, simultaneously, that she wasn’t enough.

It simmers and grows and grows ugly between them, and she thinks, for a while, that maybe it’s what going to finally end them. But it’s not.

At first when he starts being excited again she doesn’t bother to comment on it, because she’s so relived to see him smiling again, to feel him grabbing onto her hand and pulling her with him, again, like he wants her there, and to feel his mouth on her with the same kind of enthusiasm that it used to have; the kind that she’s missed.

Then he starts talking of the Quran. And then, suddenly, it’s clear that there’s something very, very wrong.

When she gets the call that Even is in the hospital, her world stops. And then it breaks.

She pieces the story together from what Even’s mum can tell him and what the rumours say, and then she shows up at the basket court where Even’s friends always play, angrier than she’s ever been in her whole life, so angry she feels like she could punch something and delight in drawing blood. Punch him.

“Hey,” she says, when she reaches them, stalking up to Mikael without paying notice to the way the rest of them move around her all confused, and then she shoves him. “You little shit.”

“Yo–”

“What the fuck did you do, huh?” Another shove. “What the fuck did you think it was okay to do?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Mikael says, but he’s letting her shove him like he’s feeling guilty, so she doesn’t believe him, and she tells him that:

“I don’t think you're telling me the truth.”

“He kissed me,” Mikael says.

“And what did you do?”

“Nothing," he says. "I just said no.” He looks angry as he says it but then his face crumbles and it looks like he’s going to cry, too, and he’s useless to her, then, he’s useless, especially as his voice breaks on what he says next: “I didn’t know it would lead to this.”

“Fuck off,” she says, because she’d break down if she didn’t. “Was it you, huh? Who taught him to read those passages? Was it?”

“No.”

“It was me,” Yousef says, behind her, and she turns around to shove him, too.

“I’ll kill you,” she says, because she wants to, actually, she really wants to. “If he doesn’t survive this, I’ll fucking kill you.”

*

He survives.

The moment he wakes up his parents are on him, crying and hugging him close, and before any of them can notice she slips out, quietly, and goes to the bathroom where she locks the door, sinks to the tiles, face in her palms, and cries.

She cries and she cries and she cries and she cries, sobbing in a way that’s both loud and heaving; cries for him and for her and for all of the pain that’s been there between them; for all of the ways she hasn’t caught this and for the bright, happy boy Even used to be, and for his future, and for hers.

Most of all she cries for the fact that this boy that she loves, or used to love, is carrying around a pain that’s so deep and so heavy that he can’t even stand to be alive.

They used to be so fresh, she thinks, and so innocent, but they’ve toughened up now, both of them angry at the world in a poisonous sort of way, but there’s nothing she can do about it other than wash her face in the sink and wait until her eyes have turned a little less puffy, before she unlocks the door and goes back in.

Once she’s in there she crawls into his bed and then she pulls him in, his head against her chest and her lips in his hair, as he holds onto her, a little weakly, too.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and she said she wouldn’t cry in here, in front of him, but she can’t quite stop the tears from leaking anyway, because he’s so sad, and she’s so sad, and everything about this is breaking her heart. “I’m so sorry.”

“Shh,” she says, because she can’t stand hearing it, before she hides her face in his hair to stop herself from shaking. “It’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out.”

She means it, too. Means that she’ll stay, because he might have kissed someone else, and he might have been in love with him, but this is what Sonja does. It’s who she is; the girl who takes care of him and holds him in her arms and touches his hair until it’s all better. It’s what she’s always done, and it’s what she’ll keep on doing, now, she’s decided. It’s how she’ll soldier on. So:

“Let’s just rest now,” she says. “And it’ll all be okay.”

*

She’s with him, for the whole thing, even though he still pulls away from her sometimes. She’s with him for the new diagnosis, bipolar this time, and for the joy that it brings him, just you wait, i’ll fix it now. She’s there for the subsequent pain it brings him, too, when recovery turns out to be a long, hard road instead, and he realises that he’ll have to redo his third year of high school.

He’s angry, still, but mostly he seems to be tired. To wear big hoodies and not do his hair as he sleeps instead of doing anything. Sleeps and sleeps and sleeps and sleeps.

She finds it within her to be tender for him again, in those months, when he makes her a drawing or plays her a tune or sits with her on the couch, watching a movie with a sort of blankness over his eyes as she holds him close and, like always, runs her hand through his hair.

It’s just that she’s so very tired, too. It’s just that it’s so much, this sadness of his; that the creature of it that’s living inside of him goes so deep, and that it’s sucking everything out of her, too.

It’s just them now, no friends, even though she sees their names pop up on his phone sometimes and sees him turn the phone around, screen down, and she used to like when it was just them, but it’s just–

It’s just so much to bear.

She doesn’t know how to deal with it other than by controlling him. She knows that it’s not fair, and probably not healthy, either, but every time she finds weed in his pockets she throws it away, and every time she goes more than a few hours without knowing where he is, she gets mad at him.

Even’s mother pulls her aside one day and tells her to calm it down a little, I know why, you have to know I do, but he can’t live like this either, and she would stop it if she could, but she can’t.

It’s unbearable, that’s why. It’s just so unbearably hard, and if she had to watch him lie almost dead in another hospital bed she thinks it’s her who would die; she thinks the weight on her shoulders would grow so strong she’d just evaporate into nothingness and abandon him here, all alone.

In times like these she thinks it’s stupid, almost, to be as much as thinking about having sex, but even then she notices when they make it all the way until August, his first day of school, before he as much as kisses her with something that’s akin to passion again. It’s not until later that she understands why.

He doesn’t look like Mikael at all, but Even looks exactly the same when he looks at him, that day of the pre-party at Even’s parents’ house; looks so soft and happy and light for him that it would almost make Sonja happy, if it didn’t make her so fucking angry she thinks she could throw up.

It’s also exactly the same pattern as it was last time.

Even is happier, again. Is more passionate and has more energy. He talks about Isak all of the time, just like he talked about Mikael all of the time, and it’s like he can’t even see that he’s gearing up to drunk-drive down the exact same dead-end street he almost got killed on the last time around.

One day she visits him at his house, and when he opens the door the first thing she says is, you didn’t answer my texts last night, and Even is just short of rolling his eyes.

”No,” he says, “I turned my phone off," and when she asks him why he sighs. "Because," he says. “You’re not my prison-guard, Sonja, and it drives me crazy that you need a clock-in every hour like you are.”

It’s the first time he’s said something about it that’s more than just a roll of his eyes or his jaw being squared, and she can’t help but think that it marks some sort of passing for them. When he asks her to go for a walk, then, after he’s been ignoring her calls all weekend, she’s not stupid enough to not know what’s coming.

“It’s not real,” she says, after he's told her he kissed someone else again. “It’s exactly like last time, can’t you see?” And: “If you keep on letting mania seduce you, you’ll end up dead. Is that what you want?”

She believes it all, too. She does, really, believes it more than anything, but she’d be less harsh about it if she wasn’t also pleading for her right to stay.

“It is real,” he says, and at this point she's crying, and he is, too. “It is.”

“Even.” She reaches out for him, wanting to pull him into her like she has so many times before, but this time he shakes his head and takes a step away. “Even.”

“No,” he says. “I'm miserable. And you’re miserable, and we’re both so miserable, and you're suffocating me. Aren’t you tired?”

Tired, she wants to repeat, and scoff. You've got some fucking nerve to talk about tired.

She doesn’t. Instead she takes a step away, and she’s angry at him, so fucking angry at him, so:

“You’ve cheated on me twice, now,” she says. And when he doesn't say anything, she walks away.

*

The last parts, she thinks later, are just the last tendrils trying not to let go.

It’s not really about her anymore. She’s used to this and to them and to taking care of him, so when he appears at her door, a few days later, looking downtrodden and exhausted, she steps aside and lets him in. There's a party that Friday and she goes with him to it, and kisses him, too, but she knows, still, that they're on borrowed time; that the both of them are already halfway out of the door.

It lasts for a little over a week or so before Even asks her on another walk and tells her that he saw Isak in school that day, first time since whatever happened between them happened, and that it’s not fair. That’s what he says, it is real, Sonja, it is, which means that I can’t stay. That it wouldn’t be fair to you to stay, or to me. That it wouldn’t be fair to either of us.

He’s right, of course, but she hates that he says it like that, like it’s in any way something he’s doing out of consideration for her, when what he’s really doing is falling in love with somebody else yet again, and leaving her behind. When actually he's already been unfair to her for months.

In the end it's Isak she can't get over, though. It’s Isak, because Even told her what he said, and Isak is worse than Mikael, then, nothing but a naïve little boy who knows nothing of caring for someone who really needs it. Who doesn’t understand that he can’t just humour Even when he’s beginning to do his mating dance with the edge, and who doesn’t know that, sometimes, with Even, this stuff is life or fucking death.

When they break up the second time, she tells Even, again, that he needs to tell someone; that he needs to stop being an idiot and recognize the pattern and that he needs to tell Isak, especially, if it’s him he’s going to be with, now, but Even just rolls his eyes, and when she tries calling Isak herself it’s fruitless. So she worries. It might not be her job anymore, but she saw him last time and she carried him through it and she doesn’t know how she’d survive seeing him back there again. She doesn’t know how she'd survive it.

When Even does peak, then, and Isak calls her, begging for help, she's just as ready to punch him as she was to punch Mikael.

They find him, though, so she doesn’t. But she yells at him instead, yells until he cries because he doesn’t even know and he didn’t even listen, and then she gets back into the cab and cries, too, the whole way to the police station. Just cries.

The next morning, in his bed, Even cries as well.

It’s silent tears, streaming down his cheeks to his ears as he squares his jaw and stares at the ceiling, not looking at her, and she slept on the couch because he isn’t hers anymore, but he still was once, so for the last time ever she crawls into his bed.

“It’s real,” he says, when she’s there, and he’s still not looking at her. “What I feel for him is real.”

“Okay,” she says, because that’s all she really can say. “I believe you.”

Even cries again, at that, and she doesn’t say anything to it, doesn’t even reach out to pull him in like she would have before. She just stays, lying next to him, until the tears start subsiding and he starts breathing again. And then a little after that.

After he's calmed down he reached out to touch the bracelet that’s still sitting around her wrist.

“Oh,” she says, and when she looks at him he looks tired, still, but not as achingly sad as he did, and when she smiles a little, testing it out like it's new and not something she's done countless times before, he does, too. So: "Here."

Pulling her hand away from his she fumbles a bit with the bracelet to get it off and, then, lets it pool together in the palm of her hand, silver and heavy with things that aren't weight, before she hands it over, but then there's him: shaking his head.

"No," he says. "It's yours." And then: "Although it's not like you'll need anything to remember me by."

She chuckles.

She shouldn't, because he says it with guilt in his expression, and in the downturn of the corner of his mouth, and because it's not funny, but at the same time it also kind of is. So she does. But she does it with tears in her throat.

"No," she says, voice thick with it. "I suppose not."

When one of the tears leak out of her eyes, then, crossing over the bridge of her nose on its way to the pillow, he reaches out, thumb first, and wipes it off. It only makes more of them fall, and he wipes those off, too, something gentle on his face that she hasn't seen directed at her for so long, and for a moment, then, she's overcome both with the relief of the letting go and with that old, residue affection for him.

It's funny, she thinks, how endings remind you of why you began, and it's funny, too, that this feels like the most intimate thing they've done in years. It's funny that they were doing badly long before they ended it, but that she misses him, now. Misses him even though he's right there. So:

"Although it wasn't all bad," she says. "Some of it was actually quite wonderful."

He doesn't say anything to that, but he meets her eye and smiles, just a little, and then he nods.

When she leaves not long after she kisses his cheek goodbye, then hugs his parents, too, and then she goes into one of the busy shop-filled streets where people are getting ready for Christmas and sits there, on a bench, watching the flood of people move all by herself as she lets herself be overcome with the relief of it and the grief of it, too. Of really, truly, being on her own.

That Friday Even’s parents text to ask if she knows where Even is, and when she sends the screenshot of it to him he texts her back almost immediately, which he hasn’t for what feels like years, and tells her that he’s at Isak’s place and that he will text his parents back himself.

That Saturday Isak texts her, too, telling him where Even is, and Sonja smiles a little at it and thinks that maybe he's more responsible than she thought and that maybe, actually, it's good for Even to be with him. At least he makes Even look like he feels at ease, and at least he's made Even laugh, again, and at least he's picking up the phone when she calls, and asking her what to do.

“You just need to be there for him,” she says, and it feels like a sort of closure. It feels like handing the baton over and hoping that Isak will do a better job of it than she did. Because Even does deserve someone to be on his side.

It’s just not going to be her anymore.

*

About a year later she sees them in a grocery store.

They’re shopping, it seems, and doing it together, Even pushing the cart ahead of him while he leans in over it a little, folding his stomach around the handle, while Isak’s hand rests on his neck, right at the bottom where it meets his spine. As they walk along they talk to each other, quietly.

“Do we have rice?” she hears Isak ask, and when Even glances at him, dazed expression that means he didn’t hear it, he repeats: “Rice? Did you use it all?”

“Oh,” Even says. “Uh…”

“You don’t know?” Isak asks, raising his brows at Even, but when Even shakes his head, no, sorry, Isak just smiles and reaches out, hand no longer on his neck but on his forehead, to brush Even’s hair out of his face. “Hm,” he says. “Well. If it’s between the choice of too much rice or no rice…”

“You’d pick too much?” Even asks, smiling like this alone delights him, and when Isak nods he stretches out, full length, with his flirting mode on. “You’re so clever.”

“Shut up,” Isak says, but then they laugh, together, and Sonja is struck by that, the togetherness of it. How effortless it seems to be for them, to be in love and to create their own little world together, right there in the middle of the store. “You think your sweet talk is going to work on me?”

“Mm,” Even says, a low, flirty thing as he’s moving in close, and: “It always works on you. You think I’m irresistible.”

“Alright,” Isak says, like he’s indulging him and like he’s amused, but he’s gone soft in a way Sonja’s never seen before, all melted and heavy-lidded and tender, and Sonja, then, thinks they might actually be really good for each other.

In the end, she doesn’t say anything to them. She waits, instead, and keeps out of their sight until they’re out of the store, before she pays for her things, and then:

Goes back to her own, separate, life.