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Four months, two weeks and four days after Vilde Lien Hellerud’s twenty third birthday, she meets Sonja. Like, really meets her, at a different setting than a too-cramped apartment party filled with neon paint and enough cases of cheap beer to make Vilde wonder if they should have just spent the money on higher quality wine instead. They meet at a different Kaffebrenneriet than the one down the street from Nissen, with a mocha and cream filled coffee in Vilde’s hand instead of a green tea that tastes vaguely of unfiltered tap water and contains the fewest possible calories out of the entire menu. Vilde meets Sonja, and Sonja meets her, and then Vilde meets herself again.
In fact, her entire sense of sanity has just about been uprooted, all due to a vaguely familiar wonder of a woman with a dirty blonde pixie cut and an increasingly frequent habit of showing up at Vilde’s place unannounced. With a bottle of pink wine and enough devoted physical affection to make Vilde’s mind go fuzzy at the edges, Sonja is a force to be reckoned with. And Vilde surprises herself every day by realizing with a sharp, unwavering certain that god, does she want to reckon with her.
Vilde didn’t expect any woman to be able to make her feel this way— and sure, maybe that’s a little oblivious of her considering she spent her high school years having crushes on not one, but two of her closest female friends, both of which are now dating each other. She realizes now with hindsight and a heaping load of humor, that she’s now her gay best friend’s gay best friend. Isak thinks it’s just as funny, too.
Vilde and Sonja aren’t exactly dating, but they aren’t casual, either. Sonja’s been buying Vilde lingerie every month— expensive lingerie, at that, the kind that Vilde used to bookmark on her computer and think about buying whenever her latest paycheck had cashed, but everything she wanted, frilly and the color of yellow daisies, never made it past her virtual shopping cart. Now, Sonja will ask her what she wants, if she can be the one to take it off her— yes, yes, always yes— and she’ll hit “purchase” with her lips already on Vilde’s throat.
Thirteen days into the month and the deep crimson corset Sonja had offered in bundles of tissue paper and black ribbons is already torn up, frayed through exuberant use. It happens. This especially happened last Friday, with Sonja kissing the pale meat of Vilde’s thigh, turning white into pink into purple and then grinning at the final product like Vilde’s a canvas she’s desperate to cover with all of herself. Knowing that Vilde will let her, that she’ll just wear turtlenecks every day, forever if it means Sonja can mark her like this, keep wanting her like this. If it means she can keep wanting her right back.
Emotions aside, Sonja fucked her so good she ripped the corset in at least six places. Honestly, Vilde thinks that’s poetic in and of itself.
There’s something nice in not quite knowing what they are yet— Vilde’s not Sonja’s girlfriend but she’s certainly something to her, something that’s going to stick with her even if they stop seeing each other every few days. But still, when the two month anniversary of the day that they met again rolls around, Vilde decides to splurge.
On her lunch break, she rushes away from her coworker who’s trying to talk to her about Valentine’s Day, of all things— it’s seven months away but hey, Vilde can start planning for that too. She’s certainly got a few ideas after she locks herself into a bathroom stall, pulls out her phone, and clicks on the first lingerie site that pops up on her web browser. She orders a brand new teddy, one that screams Sonja’s taste, and resists scrolling up in her chat to see the half naked picture Sonja had sent last week: her arms slung around Vilde’s hips, lips on her cheek, her own bare chest barely shrouded by the curve of Vilde’s shoulder. The memory alone is enough to make Vilde want to buy just about every single piece of clothing available on the site.
It’s a hasty purchase and Vilde usually takes more consideration when it comes to her clothes, but the offer for free shipping ends in twenty minutes and she only has ten before the new intern’s going to be asking where she is. She knows she probably should have just made the pitstop at the mall on her way home, check in to see what Victoria’s Secret has on sale— or fuck it, maybe even on regular price, because Sonja deserves it and so does she— but this is quicker. Easier. Requires less thought, and that’s what this whole thing has been about lately.
Feeling. Wanting. Letting herself want. Just doing.
Teasing, Vilde sends Sonja a screenshot of her order when she’s on her way home, price and order number blocked out like Sonja isn’t already begging to reimburse her.
“You don’t have to splurge like this for me,” Sonja tells her, sending a voice audio instead of a text just because she knows that Vilde likes that better, and also because she knows that Vilde’s on her way home and can’t click on it until she’s alone. Vilde knows from experience that it’d be far too explicit to play in public. Sonja’s good at teasing, too.
“You know I like you best in nothing at all,” Sonja says over hushed static, her tone breathy and smooth, making Vilde wish she could drown in it.
And she says it again the next day, breathy in a different way, buckled over in laughter, face a bright red as Vilde’s package sits open before them. Swathed in a cardboard box covered with the aquamarine Amazon logo, the contents are sizable for a Barbie doll, not even big enough to fit Vilde’s four month old kitten.
“How much did this even cost you?!” Sonja asks in between fits of giggles, steeling herself against the bedpost.
Vilde presses her lips together, shakes her head, giggles. “You don’t want to know.”
Sonja’s giving her a look— has been giving her a look for a long time, one that’s making Vilde feel even more lightheaded and giddy than she usually does. Vilde tries her damndest to return it, to not falter under the heat of Sonja’s intensity: her humor, her joy, her brazenness, her spark; her.
Sonja sees it, catches it, and tips the box to the floor with a light clunk.
“We don’t need it anyway,” she says, voice hushed, more serious. And then, just as she’d said before, but somehow with an entirely different meaning, one that makes Vilde feel like maybe Sonja’s making a promise to her: “I like you no matter what you’re wearing.”
Vilde grins, beams, laughs again. “I like you, too,” she says back, and she thinks Sonja gets what she means.