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He's Chris' first friend, and so he's always going to be special to her.
They meet when they're barely four years old, and Chris only has a vague memory of it. She doesn't actually even know if it's a real memory or if she's simply heard the story so many times that now it feels like she remembers it.
It goes like this: Chris' family are new to the area and it's her first day of kindergarten. She's a little nervous and clinging to her mother's hand, but also curious so she's looking around with wide eyes as they make their way through the garden where kids are already playing. She's not watching where she's going and so she trips over something, letting go of her mother's hand who can't catch her in time, and skins her knees. Badly.
Chris cries, her mother swoops down to inspect the damage immediately and this boy comes running over to them.
“Is she okay? Does she need band aids? We have them in the kitchen, I can show you where. They have ladybugs on them, I picked them,” he says and then turns to Chris herself to add. “They'll match your dress, it'll be really cool.”
Chris has on a red dress with white dots, like Minnie Mouse, and she frowns at him.
“Ladybugs have black dots,” she says.
The boy shrugs.
“We should at least go wash your knees, Chris, honey. Then we'll see about the band aids, okay?” her mother says gently, smoothing hair back from her forehead and giving her a kiss on the crown of her head.
The boy stares at her with wide eyes.
“Your name is Chris? My name is Chris!”
Chris bursts into tears again, because she doesn't want to have a boys name, but her mum carries her into the bathroom and manages to calm her down. When they get the band aids, Chris is nowhere around and the kindergarten teacher tells them he's feeling a little sad because Chris started crying when he said they have the same name.
Her mum suggests she go find him to apologise, and Chris is feeling all better, knees covered with band aids and her mum promising to come pick her up for lunch, so she does.
“I'm sorry,” she says when she finds him playing with some of the toy trucks by himself. “We can have the same name.”
Chris looks up at her with a scowl for another moment, but then he grins.
“Okay! It's going to be super cool.”
It is super cool.
Even when he goes to primary school two years before her, they stay friends, and when she eventually starts at the same school, he sometimes helps her with her homework when she stays over at his place after school on Thursdays, because that's when both mum and dad can't take her home right after school
She makes friends of her own, in her own class, of course, and he has his friends from his class too, but Chris stays her best friend, the one she goes to when she feels sad or angry or like going on an adventure. And, no, Emma, it's actually not weird that her best friend is a boy.
She starts gaining weight towards the end of primary school. At first she doesn't really notice, but then she catches two girls giggling at her when she walks past in the school hall, and suddenly it's everything she can see.
Her own friends try to be kind about it, but their reassurances that it “doesn't matter” that she “has a great personality” aren't really helping. The only one who staunchly insists that Chris is beautiful and that she should wear and eat and be whoever she wants is Vilde. It's just hard to believe when Chris sees how little Vilde eats, how longingly she looks at the girls the boys in their year have deemed the “pretty” ones. Chris knows she doesn't mean anything by it, not towards Chris at least, but it's hard to believe that Vilde thinks she's pretty when she doesn't seem to think she herself is pretty – and she's, like, half of Chris' size.
In lower secondary it gets worse, not just because Chris keeps gaining weight without realising until she notices that her clothes don't fit her anymore – again – but because the girls in their year start whispering and giggling every time she and Chris pass each other in the hallway and exchange short greetings and high fives. He's never said that she's fat, and she doesn't think he would, but watching all the girls around her, she suddenly realises they think he's cute.
She kinda gets it, she supposes. He does all the things the boys in tv shows and adverts and such do. He wears the clothes and smiles the smiles and has the haircut. He's just also her oldest friend. She's seen him eat countless boogers, and an actual bug, once. She's shared a bathtub with him. He's not a boy, not in that way that kind of starts to make her giggly too, and pull at her clothes and wish she were a little more like Vilde (but then also sad for Vilde --- it's complicated). He's just Chris.
When Chris gives her a hug and says “good morning, gorgeous” when they run into each other in the school yard, it's just because they're friends, no matter the glares it earns her. It doesn't mean there's anything going on, or that there ever will be. It also doesn't make it hurt any less when Emilie and Marte corner her in the bathroom and hiss at her about how she shouldn't think that Chris' affection for her means anything, because no boy would ever touch an ugly, fat girl like her.
In upper secondary she proves them all wrong. Isak might not want her back, but that very literally turns out to be an “it's not her it's him” type situation. She dates Casper for a while, and then after that she hooks up with a couple guys. She knows herself better now, knows that she might be fat, but she's not ugly. That fat isn't a bad word, or at least doesn't have to be. She doesn't have to talk around it by calling herself “a bit chubby” or “plus size”. She's fat. It's fact. She's probably always going to be fat.
But she's also fun, and clever, and loyal, and when she wants to, also really fucking sexy, if she does say so herself.
She doesn't talk to Chris that much while they're at Nissen, and he doesn't talk too much to her. For the first time in a while it feels like they live in completely different world. He hooks up with almost every girl willing – including Eva, and she can't help but be a bit mad at him when she finds out he's had a girlfriend the entire time he was flirting with her. Not that Eva didn't have a boyfriend either, but what the fuck, Chris? And then he graduates, and goes on to travel for a bit and doesn't send her more than the occasional photo.
She doesn't see him for half a year, and it's the longest they've ever gone without seeing each other, but when he comes back they meet up and it's like she's seen him just yesterday.
It's then that she knows this friendship is probably something she's never going to lose. Even if she wanted to, she probably couldn't. Chris is so entwined with her beginnings, her roots, that she wouldn't know where to start prying him loose.
And then she graduates, and gets to university, and somehow, even though he's a year ahead of her in that, they reconnect. Hang out again more. Talk more. Talk more real stuff. About his parents' divorce and her shit time in lower secondary. About how terrified he is of what's going to happen once he graduates university, how worried that his journalism degree isn't going to get him anywhere, that he should have done what his dad wanted him to do and just go into business. Or at least law.
“At least law”, what the ever-loving fuck. Chris cannot relate and she's glad for it, but she's so incredibly proud of him for going with what he wanted to do as well, even when almost everyone seemed to meet the decision with at least surprise if not outright derision. Pretty, rich boy wants to have an opinion? Right.
It brings her right back into that bathroom, to the snarling assertion about how she's never going to be anything but her body and that her body is unworthy, unpleasant. And, sure, having the opposite problem isn't exactly the same. No one's going to turn their nose up at Chris because he's too pretty. But maybe she kinda gets that it's left him with a few chinks in his armour too.
The real problem is that she suddenly gets it.
She gets why all the girls giggled about him at school, why they all followed him into whatever empty bedroom at the crook of his finger, why the curve of his smile made them blush.
He's still her oldest friend, and she knows him in ways she's never going to know another person, simply because no one else will have the chance to grow up with her the way he did, but now he's also… this.
A really handsome twenty two year old guy who stays up late writing essays and articles. Who rants at her about things he cares about. Who still calls her gorgeous and has never once sounded like he doesn't mean it.
But apart from the fledgling butterflies, Chris loves him. And she's not about to be the thing that ruins their friendship after all, so she ignores the way her cheeks run hot when he winks at her, the way she turns every hug, every touch to her shoulder or hand over and over in her mind.
Until one day when Vilde sits her down and says, “So, you're in love with Chris.”
Chris tries to stumble through a reply, anything to get out of this conversation but Vilde cuts it all off.
“Don't try to lie to me, Chris. I may not have known you as long as he has, but long enough to know I'm not wrong.”
She's not. The butterflies have matured into full on… fireflies or something.
“Okay, fine,” Chris says and huffs a sigh. “So? What's your point?”
“Are you going to tell him?” Vilde asks, seemingly genuinely curious.
Chris snorts a laugh. “Of course I'm not going to tell him.”
“Well, why not?”
“Because it wouldn't do any good. Things would just get awkward between us,” Chris says, waving a hand about. “I'll get over it in time. It'll be fine.”
Vilde hums. “Well, probably. But I what if he likes you back?”
“Right,” Chris says and rolls her eyes. “That's cute and all, but I know him pretty well. Trust me, I'm not his type.”
“Christina,” Vilde scolds, frowning at her. She does it like a mum would, using her full name and that I'm-not-mad-just-disappointed tone of voice. “Don't be mean to yourself.”
Chris says nothing.
“And also, have you considered that his 'type'” - she does air quotes and everything - “doesn't end up in lasting relationships for him?”
Chris shrugs. “He just hasn't found the right girl.”
“Well, duh,” Vilde says and gestures at her.
Chris rolls here eyes again, and Vilde reaches across the space between them to grab one of her hands.
“No, listen, Chris. I'm not saying this to be cute or just because I'm your friend or anything, okay?” she says. “I really think you guys could be good together.”
She looks so earnest that Chris has to take her seriously. “Really?”
“Really,” Vilde says and nods emphatically. “I mean, obviously he's handsome, which any boyfriend of my best friend has to be, but he's also really changed since Nissen, right? He's a great guy. And he's always cared a lot about you. Just… maybe you should give you guys a chance.”
Chris can't really imagine what that would be like. She always cuts her thoughts off, directs it elsewhere aggressively before she can delve into any kind of fantasy of actually being with Chris.
Sex, sure, she's thought about it once or twice. Even before all this. But the soft shit? Holding his hand or kissing him good morning or cuddling up together to watch a movie? Man, that's the stuff she can't bear to think of. There was a time, she thinks, when they could have slept together just for fun. With enough alcohol in their systems, a couple years back they might have fallen into bed together if they hadn't been busy with other people. But the dating stuff? The feelings? Nah.
“Promise me you'll think about it,” Vilde insists, and Chris shrugs but then nods.
“Okay, fine,” she says, and Vilde mercifully changes the topic.
It's almost as if Vilde's words were a sledgehammer to the dam Chris had built in her head to keep the thoughts of Chris at bay, and now they're leaking everywhere and soon, if she's not careful, they're going to break the whole dam and she's going to drown.
She didn't think Chris would be the one to bring the dynamite.
“Hey, Chris?” he says one day as they're strolling back to his place after class to hang out for a while, maybe order some pizza.
“Hm?” she says, not looking up from the text she's sending to the girls' groupchat. They're discussing getting together on the weekend and it's important.
“Have you ever considered what it'd be like if we, you know. Went out?”
“Out where?” she asks, looking up briefly. It's when she sees his expression that she freezes in her tracks – literally just stops walking and stands dumbfounded right there on the sidewalk – and stares at him. “Wait. You mean on a date?”
Chris laughs nervously and runs a hand through his hair. “No, forget it, it's a stupid idea.”
“You want to go on a date with me?” she asks, phone completely forgotten in her hands.
“I-- kinda,” he says. He looks around like there's any way for him to escape this conversation, but Chris doesn't really compute anything of what's happening except for what he just said. Chris wants to go on a date with her.
“Look, I like you, and I've been wondering if that would be a good idea, but you're right, it's stupid, we'd never work, and--”
“Oh my god, what the fuck,” she says, watching him babble. Because of her. Because of how he feels about her. Vilde's going to be so smug.
“Sorry,” he says. “I swear I won't bring it up again, we'll just be friends, I'll be fine--”
She steps into his space and throws her arms around him, kissing him to shut him up. It also has the distinct advantage of, you know, kissing him.
He makes a noise, surprised and sudden, but then he leans into it. One of his hands lands on her waist, and she only flinches a little, but he puts the second one on her face, holds her still to kiss her more gently, more deeply. More purposely than her clumsy smashing together of their lips.
“Wait,” he then suddenly pulls back to say. “Wait, so you--?”
“I like you too,” she rushes to say. “I like you so much and this isn't stupid, it's a great idea.”
“Yeah?” he asks, and the fragile hope in his voice just about undoes her.
“Yeah,” she says, leaning in to kiss him again, sweet and slow and just a little dirty. “An idea I think we should talk about some more at your place. At length. And in great detail.”
She watches his throat bob as he swallows and how he runs a hand through his hair again.
“Yeah. Yeah, that's, uh, a good plan. Let's do that.”
They do have pizza eventually, but. Well. It takes a while. There are things to talk about first.
The End