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The first time Noora sees him, it’s her first week at Nissen and she’s pretending to look busy.
She hadn’t realised how hard starting a new school would be. She is practical so she had prepared for the worst, made sure to charge her phone to give her a crutch when she is alone, worn her best clothes and the lipstick she puts on to talk to her parents as battle armour, but it all seems fruitless anyway. No one cares, which is half of the problem. They are too preoccupied with themselves, how they are going to make friends, which of the third years are the cutest. (Noora doesn’t think any of them. They all look like tools. Especially the William boy, with the hair.)
She sits at the edge of the courtyard. There’s a groove in her palm from her phone, a rigidness in her shoulders from quiet defiance. She wears her lipstick because she does not care if people see her alone.
Then across the way she sees a girl, with long auburn hair, in tights and a beanie. She is smiling, but not with her eyes. Noora has always been good with reading people but watching her she doesn’t think she’d have to be, to see her loneliness. She is with two other people, a dark-haired boy, who holds her hand, but talks to his friend. Shrimpy. Blonde. Faceless. Noora barely spares the friend half a glance.
She knows better than to waste time on boys, especially of the faceless variety. She looks at the girl again. She is close with them but there’s a distance, too. She looks like she could use a friend.
Noora sits next to her, the next day, in class. The delight in the girl's eyes tells her that she has made the right choice.
The blond friend is but dust in her mind.
*
The girl is called Eva, and she is Noora's best friend. Noora doesn’t have lots of best friends, she is not generous with friendship, but she feels a connection with Eva like she never has with anyone else. Then Eva shyly, hesitantly introduces her to Vilde, to Chris. They are not her friends, either, but Noora can see that she maybe wants them to be. Noora is unsure on Vilde – bright, bubbly, as much tact as a two-tonne truck – but she likes Chris, so she allows it. Then with Chris comes Sana, who is everything Vilde is not. Noora likes Sana.
She finds herself roped into a bus meeting. Sana tells Eva to break up with Jonas, the dark-haired boy she had seen all those weeks ago on the courtyard. Noora is still unsure on Jonas. He seems nice enough but he and Eva move at different paces. Their names are near enough on the register; when she glances behind her when she’s lining up for class, she can see his dark curly hair above the T and U names. Over the top of his friend. The blond one. Isak, her mind supplies. He is between the two of them.
One day, Eva confesses that she thinks Jonas is cheating on her. Noora can’t help seek him out in the register line that day. Her eyes snag on Isak, staring to the side, chewing his lip. She thinks nothing of it.
Later, she thinks she recognises the look on his face. She saw it for a very long time every time she looked in the mirror.
Loneliness.
*
Eva and Jonas break up, and Isak is to blame.
Eva shakes with anger. Noora holds her.
*
Noora’s phone dies at the bonfire, so Isak lends her his. She thanks him uncomfortably, and he smiles back just as uncomfortably; more a grimace than a smile, hands in his pockets. She unlocks it. She thinks she was trying to call Vilde.
That’s not what greets her.
She glances at Isak. He’s now across the bonfire, standing near Jonas. They’re laughing at something. She looks down the phone again, and then locks it.
This is not her business.
(Noora tells Eva. After, she regrets it. But Eva feels like part of her. She knows she will keep this quiet.
For Isak’s sake, she hopes she does, anyway.)
*
Isak sits like a pit in the back of Noora’s mind. She doesn’t give it much thought, because then suddenly he has a girlfriend, Pepsi-Max Sara, and she thinks it weird, a little sad, only humorous in the way Chris sulks around her yoghurt, but distantly, because now she has other problems, namely third-year William with the hair. Noora’s love for Vilde flairs up hot and sharp. She hadn’t realised how much she cared about her until she sees the way Vilde smiles whenever she gets a text from him, the way William makes sure he’s staring right at Noora the moment she does.
He is arrogant and selfish and cold and Noora has no room for boys like him.
Chris takes Noora and the girls to her cabin over the winter break and together they break out a Ouija board. Noora doesn’t believe in things like ghosts or spirits, not really, she’s too sensible for that, but she humours them, because Vilde is so endearingly anxious about it, and privately Noora’s a little intrigued. Vilde asks about William, and Noora’s phone, which hasn’t stopped buzzing, feels like a thousand degrees in her pocket.
Chris asks about Isak. The board spells out H-O-M-O.
“Gay!” Chris parrots incredulously. Noora and Eva exchange a look.
Later that night, she whispers to Eva, “Did you do it?”
Eva turns. They are nose-to-nose. She still has remnants of mascara around her eyes, where she didn’t quite scrub off all her makeup earlier that evening. When she exhales, softly, Noora can smell her, toothpaste and perfume. Eva whispers back, “Do what?”
“The board. For Isak.”
Chris snores on. Eva says, “No.” A pause. “Did you?”
“No.”
A beat. Then they both start to giggle, and they muffle them into their pillows.
“Maybe the ghosts are psychic,” Eva says.
“Ghosts aren’t real,” Noora says.
And yet.
*
Noora has no time for boys like William.
Until she does.
Eva claps her hands over her mouth when she finds out.
*
Through the windshield of William’s expensive car, Noora sees Isak climb into Penetrator Chris’s car.
It’s been a shit day.
*
Noora tells Eva, because she tells Eva everything. Eva is appropriately wide-eyed as she recounts it, and when she’s finished she says, “Isak and Penetrator Chris – together!”
It’s a strange thought. Noora hasn’t given Isak much thought, not since William came into her life like a nuclear bomb. She knows him as an abstraction, in pieces: the best friend of Eva’s ex, blond, gap-toothed. Possibly gay. With a phone crammed full with gay porn, anyway. She doesn’t know enough to make a judge of character, but from what she’s gathered on Penetrator Chris – also in pieces, but all similar enough to paint a decent picture – she didn’t think they were each other’s types.
Noora supposes they’re both handsome. They would be decently hot together.
Eskild comes into her room, like he is prone to do, spontaneously. Eskild never seemed to learn the concept of knocking, but Noora thinks she likes that about him. He’s been good for her, since she moved in. She never got enough love from her parents. Eskild seems intent on making it up to her. As she listens to Eva tell him about Isak – “we have a friend who we think is gay!” – she watches the shadows Eva's eyelashes cast across her face, the punch of her cheeks as she smiles. Noora thinks she heard from Vilde that she was hooking up with Penetrator Chris at parties.
Something inside her hopes Isak and Penetrator Chris are together. She tells herself that it’ll make Isak probably less of an asshole.
*
Turns out, Isak and Penetrator Chris aren’t together.
William tells her to stay on the bus, but she emerges just in time to see him smash a bottle over someone’s head.
*
She lies in bed. Everything is grey.
*
Someone’s been eating her food.
Noora supposes it’s not a big issue. She’s moving out in two weeks – in with William, to London. London has never been a dream destination for her, but she feels like there is little she wouldn’t do for William, who turned the car around on his way to the airport for her. Still, Noora hasn’t moved out yet. She thought Eskild and Linn had learned to keep out of her shelf. Amusedly, she wonders what they’re going to eat when they haven’t got her around anymore buying vegetables.
When other things start going missing – socks, spare sheets, cups and plates – Noora realises that they have a scavenger. When the neighbours complain, she realises it’s one of Eskild’s strays.
She confronts him when she finds a heap of duvet and odd clothing pieces on her floor. Some of the pieces she recognises as Eskild’s. Some of them are unfamiliar. She flicks at a green belt. “You can’t have someone living in the basement,” she says.
Eskild plays dumb. “What?”
Noora sighs, but she leaves it. Eskild picking up strays is how she got here, after all.
*
She and William throw a leaving party. Halfway through, they escape to her room.
Noora lost her virginity when she was thirteen. But right now, with William’s hands on her body, the sound of laughter outside, she feels like it is her first time all over again.
When they emerge, Eva gives her a knowing look, towing Noora into her by the loop of her pants. Noora goes willingly. It is easy to fall into Eva’s orbit. She says into her ear, delightedly, “You little slut!” Noora doesn’t like that word but she knows Eva means it affectionately, and she is still on a high so the two of them giggle together.
“How was it?” Eva says.
“Amazing,” Noora says, truthfully.
Next to her, she is distantly aware of Jonas and Isak talking. Noora is still unsure of the relationship between Jonas and Eva, but at least they are cordial now. The girl besides them compliments Jonas’s belt, and Isak says, “All of Jonas’s coolest clothes are mine.”
With Eva’s mouth against her ear, her hand holding hers, Noora finds it hard to focus on much. But her eyes obediently drop down to Jonas’s belt.
It’s green.
*
London is a lot bigger and a lot lonelier than Noora expected it to be.
She thought that when she had William she wouldn’t need anyone else. But she misses Oslo, she misses Nissen, she misses her friends. Eva calls her every night but eventually Noora stops answering because hearing her voice feels too painful.
It doesn’t help that William is never home.
When Eskild FaceTimes her one day and introduces her to their new flatmate, her successor, she can’t say she’s surprised that it is Isak.
*
Noora tells no one that she’s leaving London. She knows she is built for great things but London is not where she fits. It is too empty, too vast, too endless. She has wandered enough streets to know that this is not where she belongs.
She arrives back in Oslo just past midnight. On Chris’s Instagram she saw there was a pre-party at the kollektiv, but they should have all left for the proper revue party by now. The flat should be empty.
It’s not.
*
Noora and Isak are not friends, not really. Their lives cross in pieces; Eva and Jonas. Vilde likes one of his friends. It should be strange, to be virtual strangers at school, but to know parts of each other so intimately. Noora sleeps outside of his room for a few weeks, as they all try and juggle sleeping arrangements. She doesn’t know his favourite colour or his mother’s name but she does know that he is grumpy and bleary-eyed in the morning, never cleans out the sink when he brushes his teeth, always leaves the seat up on the toilet. His designated shelf consists of Doritos and packets of ramen. One night she hears him sniffle to Romeo + Juliet. The next she hears the muffled whimpers as he jacks off.
It is odd, to have these pieces of him, so disproportionate to their relationship. Noora doesn’t doubt he views her similarly.
She meets Even for the first time in the bathroom one morning. It’s the morning after the Halloween party, and normally she is a responsible drinker but Eva and Chris had egged her on, and she’s woken up with the mother of all hangovers. She is sleeping in Eskild’s room so when he wakes up she does as well. Eskild doesn’t know quiet if it hit him over the head.
“Come on, Noory,” he says. “I’ll make you breakfast!”
Noora know better than to trust Eskild with making food but she has a killer headache and she knows she won’t be able to make anything trickier than cereal at the moment, so she gets up. She heads into the bathroom to brush her teeth, get the fuzz of the alcohol from the night before off her teeth and breath, but there’s someone already there.
“Hello,” Eskild says, behind her, in that way of his.
Noora has seen this boy before. First, in the apartment the night she arrived back in Oslo, and in traces around school. He is a third-year, so tall his head brushes the top of the doorframe, blond, wearing damp clothes that smell of chlorine. Blue-eyed, and staring like a deer caught in headlights. When she looks down, he is wearing the sneakers she saw outside of Isak’s door last night.
“Uh,” he says. “Hi.”
Eskild drapes himself over her, holds out his hand. “You are very handsome,” he purrs. “What is your name?”
“Even.”
Even. Noora knows that name. Matching the mystery of the name to the face makes sense. He is the third-year who transferred from Elvebakken. For a moment, she wonders why he is in their bathroom. Then she looks down at his sneakers and remembers the high spots of blush on Isak’s face when she first walked back into the apartment, the tabs on his phone from all those months ago at the bonfire, and she thinks, oh.
Even is apparently just leaving. He clearly wasn’t planning on being caught by them. But he is perfectly nice, smiling, when the panic fades from his eyes, compliments Eskild awkwardly on the flat. Noora likes him. Eskild offers him breakfast, but Even declines. He nods at both of them, and then leaves. The room smells like a swimming pool.
“Huh,” Eskild says, when the door closes behind him, “what a nice boy!”
Hours later, Isak finally emerges from his room, when Noora is cleaning the wall. Eskild mentions Even and something almost like panic enters his expression, like a cornered animal. He must be aware that they both know where he was keeping Even all this time, in his room. Through his door, Noora can see two dents on the pillows.
But she doesn’t say anything, because Isak is still skittish. He closes the door on them. She hears him exhale behind it.
*
One night Noora is missing William dearly, feeling it like a hole in her chest, so she calls Eva, the only one who can make her feel better. Noora is trying not to read into that, too much. She doesn’t know if she and William are broken up but whatever it is they are not together.
She and Eva talk for a long time. Noora feels like she can tell Eva anything. She doesn’t think she could ever be bored with her. Then she hears the door creak open and when she looks up it’s Isak, frowning tiredly. The bags under his eyes are getting worse. Noora wonders how much he sleeps. Suddenly she feels bad for talking so loudly.
“Sorry,” she whispers.
Isak is grouchy when he’s tired. He snaps at her, immediately retreats a little in reticence. She has lived with him long enough to be used to this.
“Sorry,” she says again. “I can talk to Eva tomorrow.”
Isak nods a little. He picks at his thumbnail. He doesn’t look like he’s had a good night’s sleep in a long time. “Okay,” he says. “Tell her hi.”
She will.
He moves to close his door, but before he can, he steps back out. “William is an idiot if he gives up on you,” he says. He doesn’t look at her in the eyes.
Noora smiles. “Good night, Isak.”
In a way, he is beginning to grow on her. She’s not sure if two of them will ever be best friends. He is grouchy and grubby and makes a mess everywhere; similarly, she is uptight, finical, and possessive over her food where everyone else is lenient. But they both ended up here. She doesn’t know his story, and he doesn’t know hers, but she knows that has to count for something.
She brings the phone back to her ear.
“Everything okay?” Eva says.
“Everything’s good,” Noora says. “Isak says hi.”
*
She comes home one night and Isak’s snapback is on the floor in the hallway. She picks it up, spots two pairs of shoes outside his room. She suppresses a smile, and leaves it on the counter.
*
Even is in the kitchen the next morning, making eggs. He is wearing one of Isak’s shirts that Noora thinks was originally Eskild’s. He tells her good morning, offers her some eggs.
“Dad’s recipe,” he says. “Sour cream.”
Noora has never had sour cream in her eggs before. “Sure,” she says.
Eskild emerges a few minutes later, in a robe, and is visibly overjoyed to see Even. Noora understands the feeling – she likes Even. He is personable, easy to talk to, always polite. He compliments Eskild on the robe, Noora on her hair. She smile. Eskild preens. “It’s couture,” he says. Even clearly does not know what that means but he nods, anyway.
Twenty minutes, Isak stumbles into the kitchen, scrubbing at his eyes. When he sees Even at the stove, he stops in his tracks, does a double take, like he hadn’t expected him to be there. Even looks up when he comes in, heads over, and kisses Isak straight on the mouth.
Noora doesn’t think Isak was ready. As Even pulls away, she sees Isak’s eyes flicker over his shoulder to where she and Eskild are stood. He hasn’t come out to her yet, hasn’t even mentioned Even’s name, clams up like a locked door whenever he’s mentioned. Such a declaration, a kiss in the kitchen in front of a girl he goes to school with, someone who is not his friend, is a big step, and she doesn’t think Isak is there yet. But then she watches the way Even strokes his cheek as he steps away to the eggs, so unself-conscious, so self-assured, and the way Isak softens, the way he can’t take his eyes off him.
She thinks Even will be good for him.
She realises quickly that they are not meant to be here right now. She provides a paper-thin excuse, drag Eskild away. Eskild says, “We don’t do yoga,” and she says, “Yes, we do” before Eskild gets it, and allows himself to move, leaving Isak and Even in the kitchen by themselves. As they leave, Eskild says, “I like him.”
“Me, too,” Noora says.
“I think he will be good for Isak,” Eskild says. “He’s not such a baby gay anymore.”
It’s the first time he’s called Isak that in front of her. She smiles.
*
“Have you heard the rumour?” Vilde says at lunch. “Apparently Isak has a thing with Even from third-year.”
Noora meets Eva’s gaze across the table. She hasn’t said anything about Even to her, but they both know about the tabs on Isak’s phone. Next to her, Sana also looks unsurprised. Noora wonders why.
Chris is the only one to whom this is news. “Isak is gay?” she says. She seems dismayed. “No! I was still holding out for him.”
Vilde turns to Noora. “You live with him, Noora. Is it true?”
Isak is not Noora’s friend, but she has an immeasurable affection for him now. She remembers the bags under Isak’s eyes, the look in his eyes when Even smiled him over the eggs. “We shouldn’t gossip, Vilde,” she says.
Eva’s eyes flicker. She knows. She can read Noora better than anyone else.
“I’m not gossiping,” Vilde says, “I’m just relaying information. Like a journalist.”
Noora rolls her eyes.
“Besides,” Vilde adds, leaning in, “I heard that Even has, like, psychological issues.”
Noora shouldn’t press, but this is the first she has heard of this. “What?”
“Apparently he went crazy last year at Bakken, posted a bunch of crazy things on his Facebook wall. That’s why he transferred here.” Vilde primly picks up her sandwich, and then puts it down again. “Shall I text Isak? I feel like I should warn him.”
*
They go to school on the tram, Noora and Isak. She used to get up early so she wouldn’t have to catch the same one as him, didn’t want to face the twenty minutes of stilted silence she knows they would stand in. But one morning she oversleeps so they ride in together, and it’s not as bad as she had feared. They both sit next to each other, tiredly watch the city sweep by. She had gotten a bad night’s sleep last night, and it’s a struggle to stay awake. Isak simply offers an earphone, and she accepts. It’s not her type of music at all – a lot of rap, hip-hop, not her speed – but she finds it oddly soothing. It keeps her awake the entire way there.
It becomes something of a habit. Noora still doesn’t like rap or hip hop, but she begins to recognise a few songs, now, the ones that crop up the most frequently. They don’t have enough in common to hold a conversation but she finds herself almost looking forward to their trips in together. There’s something comforting about existing next to each other, still waking up, rubbing crust out of their eyes.
Neither of them are morning people. That is probably the only thing they have in common. But Noora likes it, and she thinks Isak does too.
Today, though, Isak surprises her when he says, “How’s William?”
Noora looks at him. He can’t meet her eyes. He’s not good with that sort of thing, not with her, not yet. She is suddenly hit with just how much affection she holds for him. They have become something of reluctant siblings, in this strange little environment they share together.
She says, “We haven’t really spoken.”
Isak nods. A minute passes. Noora realises that he wasn’t really asking her about William.
Carefully, she says, “How’s Even?”
His face goes pink. He tilts his face down, his long nose almost touching the pole. From her vantage point, she can see a bruise under the hinge of his jaw: mouth-shaped, like a rose petal. “He’s good,” he says. The way he speaks is familiar; tinged with breathlessness, the same way hers was when she first fell in love with William, like it was a ride she was holding onto for dear life, something she didn’t want to let go. “We’re good.” A beat, and then, “I might be a bit late home.”
She can’t help it. “Hot date?”
He laughs, softly. “Something like that.”
*
That night, Eskild comes home with Isak in tow. Eskild is uncharacteristically grave. Noora has never seen him so serious. She is in the middle of a movie with Linn, but she ignores it; she hooks her elbow over the edge of the sofa, watches them as they pass through the hall. Her gaze falls to Isak.
He is pale. He is crying.
She’s never seen Isak cry before.
*
The hot date didn’t turn out so hot, after all.
*
Even isn’t at school for a week. Noora has started seeking him out, when she found out about him and Isak. Sometimes she would catch his gaze, and they would smile at each other, in acknowledgment. It’s almost discomfiting how close of a window she has into his life now that they have shared a space, watched him kiss her roommate, heard how he walked naked out of a hotel room. She feels as though she has obtruded on something that isn’t hers.
She doesn’t see him around, after that night. She doesn’t ask around, because she and Even aren’t really friends outside of the kollektiv, and Isak already walks like the world is against him, he doesn’t need any more ammunition against him. Instead, she just keeps her eyes out, watches Isak from across the class.
She knows Sana is his biology partner. She pulls her aside, tells her, “Can you... keep an eye on him?”
“An eye? On Isak?” Sana is wise, firm, so when she tells her no, Noora listens. “He’s not a baby.”
Sana knows something. They both have pieces of Isak and Even. But it’s not their stories to tell.
“I know,” Noora says. “Just...”
She trails off, because she doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to explain what she feels towards Isak. But Sana is perceptive, too.
“Okay,” she says, finally. “Don’t worry.”
*
The next day, Even is back in Isak’s room.
They don’t leave it for a very, very long time.
*
Even is bipolar, Isak tells them all the next morning. And he’s depressed right now, come down from a manic episode, the one that prompted him to walk out on Isak with no clothes. He sounds like he’s reciting from a Wikipedia article. He asks all of them to check in on him periodically while they’re both at school.
“Of course,” Eskild says. “We’ll keep captain logs, like they do on ships.”
“I can help,” Linn offers, “I have experience with being depressed.” It’s the first thing she’s said all morning. It isn’t unusual for Linn but Noora slides her one of her orange slices nonetheless.
Isak’s smile is full of relief. “Thanks,” he says.
*
Noora’s on Even watch while Isak is staying behind for a study group. She hasn’t been in Isak’s room, her old room, since she moved out all those months ago. The bed has been turned around, the sheets are blue instead of white, and there are clothes on the floor. It’s hard to see, because the lights are turned down, the curtains drawn. She can only see a tuft of blond hair where Even is lying on the bed.
“Hey,” she says, softly, “I made some tea.”
She doesn’t expect him to answer, so when he shifts, turns to squint at her, she’s pleasantly surprised. She smiles at him, and his lips twitch, half-hearted.
“Thanks,” he says. His voice is rough from misuse. Noora doesn’t think he’s spoken in days.
She puts the tea on the set of drawers, watches him for a few moments. She thinks if she were anyone else, if she were different, more inclined for affection, she would sit at the edge of the bed, stroke his hair, maybe read him something. Make him watch a movie. But she’s not good at that, she’s not made for physical comfort, not with a boy almost three years older than her, whose hair brushes the doorframe when he stands, who makes kickass scrambled eggs and smells of chlorine.
Noora is not soft or comforting. She is fastidious and neat and anal about who touches her food. So she stoops, pick up the clothes from the floor, fold them into piles. There is a lot. She doubts much of it is Even’s – Isak is notoriously sloppy – but she knows it’ll make things easier for both of them. She cracks open a window, leave without a word.
In the kitchen, she pauses, and slides her unopened box of breakfast bars onto Isak’s shelf. Lord knows he needs it.
*
A week later, and Even joins them in the kitchen for breakfast.
He looks freshly showered, hair damp, falling over his forehead in a way that makes him look much younger, even younger than Isak, who has been aged by this. They all have. Noora smiles at him as he sits at the table, next to Isak. When she stands up to get tea, she sees that their knees are touching.
“How are you feeling, Even?” Eskild says.
“Okay,” Even says. His voice is still a little croaky, so he clears his throat, pulls an uncomfortable face. Noora is in the middle of making tea for herself, hasjust heard the kettle pop; looking at Even, she makes a split-second decision and pulls out a chamomile tea bag instead of a green. She doesn’t like chamomile, she thinks it tastes too medicinal, but she pours hot water over it and slides the mug in front of Even without a word. Isak is too busy rolling his eyes at Eskild, who has launched into a story of his latest Grindr hook-up, so he doesn’t notice, but Even looks up at her.
“Thank you,” he says.
Even has always had an element of almost intangibility about him. Noora thinks it stems from the rumours, the myth of the third-year who transferred at the beginning of the year, who might be gay, might be crazy, with a Facebook wiped clean, who wears sunglasses indoors and a pansexuality pin on every jacket, smokes weed in the bathrooms, apparently broke into a pool. Rumours that turned him from just another boy to something almost untouchable. But she has seen the other side to Even, vulnerable, quiet, destructive. Something that smudges him a little around the edges, but also paints him in startling clarity. He is just like her.
“You’re welcome,” she says, and puts the kettle on again for her cup.
*
Vilde throws a Christmas-themed revue party at the kollektiv right before winter break. Noora thinks back to last year, watching Jonas and Isak across a bonfire, seeing Eva laugh as the flames cast amber shadows across her face, and she is reminded of just how happy she is.
Eskild puts up mistletoe over every doorway in the flat, including the front one, insists on kissing every single person who passes through. The girls all gladly accept as he pecks them on the cheek, compliments their clothing. Chris kisses him right back. He catches Noora as she passes through the kitchen, and kisses her cheek as well; he also pulls her into a hug, and for some reason she feels her eyes fill with tears. She hugs him back. She doesn’t think she can ever tell Eskild how much he has helped her this past year, how much he means to her. Judging by the tears in his own eyes as he pulls back, she thinks he may already know.
She is helping Sana hang ornaments on the tree when she catches Eva and Isak talking by the table, and she pauses, feeling her face soften a little as she watches them. Two people, who inexplicably mean so much to her. She is glad they are rekindling. Eva told her that she and Isak used to be close, before what happened with Jonas. They both deserve every happiness.
After a few minutes, Isak stands, meets Even by the tree, starts talking to Eskild. Noora spares him one last glance, smiles at the casual way Even has an arm around his waist, at the way no one is staring, and then she moves, and sit by Eva.
“Hey,” she says.
Eva smiles at her. “Hi!” She shows her what she has made. It’s a sparkly gold penis. “Like it?”
“Very beautiful,” Noora says. Eva laughs, and puts it on the table. “Merry Christmas.” Noora doesn’t think she’s said that yet.
“Merry Christmas.” Eva hands her one of the gingerbread men. “Here’s your present.”
“You shouldn’t have,” Noora jokes, and they both laugh. Noora split it in half, down the middle, where Even’s arm cuts Isak’s body, and she gives Eva the biggest half, the upper half, with the head. Noora nibbles at one of the legs.
“What a year, huh,” Eva says.
“Yeah.”
She glances at her. “How are you?”
Noora doesn’t need to think. “I’m good.”
“Even with everything with...?”
“William?” Noora say. It doesn’t hurt to say his name anymore. “Yeah.”
Eva smiles. “That’s good.”
“Yeah.”
Over the top of her head, Noora sees Even press a kiss to Isak’s mouth, under the mistletoe by the doorway. She glances back at Eva.
Eva knows exactly what she is thinking.
Noora take her hand, laces their fingers together. It never felt this way with William.
It’s been a very, very good year.