Chapter Text
As Emilia hit send on her third design of the day, relief washed over her. Christmas was now only four emails away.
According to the strings of lights and pine garlands surrounding her, Christmas had already arrived to the coffeeshop she was sitting in somewhere in late October. The local climate agreed - Vaasa had been covered in a thick blanket of snow for the past few weeks. Sappy Christmas songs echoed through every supermarket. The world made it loud and clear that her winter break should have started by now.
The world of graphic design had not gotten the memo yet. New last minute assignments kept snowing down, creating a mountain of work that had to be finished before the new year.
So Emilia had to lock in.
She fled to the Espresso House near the Novia campus, where she had spent countless lunch breaks back when she was in university. She had been sitting in the same corner for hours, hidden behind her laptop like a soldier in a trench, sipping latte macchiatos that slowly sucked the life out of her bank account. It didn’t matter – at least she was focused.
The woman at the table next to her was video calling her husband in very angry Finnish. A group of teenagers was cackling about an Instagram reel. But Emilia didn’t bat an eye. She had grown used to worse conditions, back when she worked at Pro-Mink. Her time there had prepared her for any possible disturbance in the book. She was used to sudden medical emergencies, to fire alarms, to screaming matches in the break room. She was used to Mikael pushing Tomppi's Memes in her face. She was used to Jona Antell. She was used to ignoring all of that.
The mountain of last minute assignments slowly shrank. Before she knew it, she had finished another one. Three emails until Christmas - and her celebratory vape break. Just how God intended.
While she pondered if Joseph and Mary would have liked a vape session when they reached Bethlehem, she started working on a new logo for a nail salon. Should be easy.
That’s when she saw him.
She briefly thought she hallucinated. Her bloodstream was ninety percent caffeine at this point; this could influence how sound her mind was. But no. He was very real. Standing in the queue at the counter was a figure from her past. His smile as radiant as ever as he ordered. Presumably something disgustingly sweet with a frightening amount of caffeine. This was Jona Antell after all.
And he had shattered her focus. Shit. Better get back to work before he noticed her and-
Too late. They already locked eyes.
He waved.
Well. Shit.
She waved back. It would be too rude not to. Part of her wanted to disappear into her hoodie and pretend she was part of the couch. Another part didn’t want to look away. In case he was a hallucination after all. But he didn’t vanish.
He shot her a smile, with the same warmth she had grown used to. Whenever Jona smiled, it felt like the whole sun was turned towards you. No hallucination, desert mirage or shard of a memory could replicate that.
He waited for his order, humming along to the Bublé song that was blasting through the speakers. He hadn’t changed a bit – no, he had. Old Jona would have gone straight up to her table to give her a sweaty high-five or something similarly embarrassing in public. This Jona hid his hands in his coat and kept himself occupied by studying the floor, the ceiling, the floor again.
He still had better eyebrows than her.
Her friends had pointed that out from the pictures she showed them back in the day. They were rooting for them back then. They liked his chivalry, his pastel wardrobe, his smile that could melt the glacier that currently covered Österbotten. Nowadays, he had devolved into an inside joke. A name and a punchline. The guy who tried to kidnap Emilia to the summer palace in Marbella.
She always laughed it off.
From the corner of her eye she saw the barista handing Jona a tray with two coffees and two pastries. Then he turned and walked towards her, his smile as sweet the sugar glaze on the cinnamon buns he put down on her table. She could never believe that someone was this delighted to see her. But he kept his voice as chill as possible.
‘Hi, Emilia.’
‘Hi.’ She glanced at his order. Two of each. ‘Are those -‘
‘I saw you sitting here, all alone.’ He took off his coat and scarf, and fixed the pink collar under his grey cable-knit sweater. ‘I figured you’d like some company.’
Only Jona could spot a person working on their laptop in a café and assume they were lonely. But he had remembered her order, almond milk and all.
So she thanked him for the overpriced cinnamon bun and removed her coat so he could sit down.
‘It’s so good to see you! It’s been, what, a year?’
‘A little longer, yeah.’
He glanced at her laptop screen. ‘What are you working on? Looks neat.’
‘Oh, a last minute assignment.’
‘On December 23rd?’
‘Well, it’s not December 25th.’ She shrugged. ‘The agency I work with is short staffed. We only have three people left to cover all the workload.’
‘Still, I would never make someone work on Christmas Eve Eve,’ he replied, biting into his cinnamon bun.
Her curiosity changed the subject. ‘Shouldn’t you be with your family in Spain?’
‘Oh, no. My parents are on holiday. Thailand.’
‘That’s far.’
‘It’s beautiful. Rich in nature, culture and spirituality. Did you know Pad Thai is from there?’
‘Never would have guessed.’
‘Glad to enlighten you.’ The corner of his mouth lifted.
‘So how’s life at Pro-Mink?’ she asked. She had not stayed in touch with her old colleagues, partly because her phone had decided to jump into the toilet and now she had a new number and a sparsely populated contacts list. She sometimes ran into Tommy whenever she was in the area, but he only ever talked about his mom – he had given up on his house search for some reason. She never saw Gun again, which was the same back when she worked there. As far as Emilia knew, Gun only existed at Pro-Mink, with a tool in her hand and a cigarette between her teeth. The archangel of cage manufacturing, as Jona once called her. That archangel had killed her own dog. She wondered if Jona knew that little fact.
‘Oh, well. We’re in what we in the business call ‘a development phase.’’
‘What are you developing?’
He could barely contain his smile. Then it cracked open like an egg, excitement flowing out. ‘I officially took over. For real this time.’
‘That’s great, Jona. Congratulations.’
‘Thank you, thank you.’ His smile turned timid as he glanced at the floor. ‘It was supposed to happen sooner.’
Emilia remembered it all too well. Walking into the office the day after the auction. Gone was the makeshift desk in the shower corner that had faced hers for weeks. The room was completely Emilia's again. No more energy cans piling up in the trash bin, no more loudly hummed Glee covers that not even her noise cancelling headphones could protect her from. Why was she feeling melancholic about it?
That feeling soon subsided. She stepped into Jona’s new office and walked out with a knot in her stomach. ‘Where do you see yourself in five years, Emilia?’ As he kept on going, she could feel the implications bubbling to the surface. Are you open to an exciting new career move to my father’s swimming pool? Would you be professionally interested in being my trophy wife?
Some say power drives men mad. Some say it just reveals their true intentions. Emilia had been too pissed off to figure out where exactly Jona fell on the scale.
‘Maybe it’s better this way,’ she said, which he did not understand. She did not want to get into it, so she fired a compliment his way. ‘You worked hard for it.’
He pressed his hands together. ‘Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.’
‘Confucius said that, didn’t he?’
Stars twinkled in his eyes.
Before she could ask how Mikael had taken the news of Jona’s takeover, he leaned forward. ‘What about you? Designed anything you love lately?’
‘I guess I made a business card.’
‘Really?’
She took it from her wallet. ‘Here.’
He studied it as if he was looking at a renaissance painting. Head slightly tilted and eyes glimmering as compliments piled up. ‘This is amazing, wow! Love the quality of the paper. The font suits you well. Very Emilia.’
She didn’t ask him what was so 'Emilia' about Avenir Next LT Light, but she accepted his praise regardless. Very few people got as excited over cards as him. Love the quality of the paper. A sentence she would probably never hear from anyone again.
‘Thank you. You can keep it if you like it so much.’
‘Really?’
She couldn’t say no now now, so she shrugged. ‘Sure. I have plenty.’
He held it carefully between his fingers, as if he was gently caressing a baby bird. ‘Early Christmas present.’
‘I hope you get some better ones.’
‘I doubt it. You’ve placed the bar extremely high.’
She smiled.
This was nice. She had missed this. These little moments where he let his guard down and wasn’t spouting platitudes from management literature or the Vedas.
But they never lasted.
Jona leaned forward. ‘You know, we could really use you on the team for the rebrand. The logo you designed for Pro-Solar was very good.' He added: 'The one with the sunflower.’
He did not have to remind her.
‘We can get you a new laptop, flexible hours, ergonomic chair, vape fridge, anything. We at Pro-Mink would love to have you back with us.’
His voice almost sounded as if he was pleading. His eyes did everything in their power to reel her back in.
He said ‘we’, but he meant himself. He was Pro-Mink now, or Pro-Solar, or whatever rebrand he was developing these days. Jona would love to have her back.
(She barely even registered that he also had said ‘vape fridge’.)
‘You don’t have to answer right away,’ he tried. ‘Think it over during Christmas, and then? New year, old you? Sounds great, right?’
It felt good to be missed, to be wanted. To have the full force of the sun on her face. For a second, she considered. ‘What would I be doing, exactly?’
‘Whatever you want. We can develop a creative vision together. Team work makes the dream work.’
His smile had reached full intensity now, like the sun at noon. It took her back to last year, how he pleaded her to come to Marbella with him. Trying so damn hard to win her over. To be another prize among his ping pong trophies.
No. She shouldn’t do this.
She couldn’t let herself be pulled back into his orbit. She would only be setting herself up for disappointment. He couldn’t help it. He was simply the way he was.
Not her responsibility. Not her project to fix. Certainly not the guy to fall for.
‘I’m sorry, Jona.’ She sighed and came up with a practical response. ‘I really like my job. I’m just not really in the mood for big changes, that’s all.’
‘I understand.’
His smile was soft. He hid his disappointment very well. Still, she felt really bad for him. All she could do was hope that he would figure himself out some day. To become the guy she so often saw glimpses of. But that would take a Christmas miracle, and she was not going to be the catalyst for change. Not her job. Too many emails left to work through any way. Let the Christmas Carol ghosts handle him.
Jona lingered a little longer after that, mostly talking about his rebranding ideas and his recent padel obsession (‘it’s like ping pong, except have you ever wondered what it’s like to actually become the bat?’). He didn’t pressure her to change her mind, which was nice. Talking to him was nice. He was nice. It did not change her mind.
After he finished his latte, he put his scarf back on again. ‘I have a train to catch. It was good catching up with you. Sorry for interrupting your email marathon.’
‘It’s fine. Cinnamon buns are very effective apologies.’
‘I’ll have to remember that.’ He smiled before turning around. ‘Merry Christmas, Emilia.’
For a split second, she felt a tinge of regret.
‘Goodbye, Jona.’
Emilia finished her emails, celebrated Christmas, went ice skating with a friend, moved on with her life. She didn’t tell her friends about her chance encounter with Jona – they would probably just make fun of him. In general, she did not think about him a lot after that. She made the right choice. She had her own life. She was not going to drift into his. Yes, this was sensible.
New Year’s Eve came. Emilia was smearing glitter on her eyelids for a party when she suddenly got a call from an unknown number. She frowned. Clients usually left her alone this deep into Christmas break. Just ignore it. But her thumb slipped the other way.
‘Who’s this?’ she asked, a little annoyed.
A shaky voice replied. ‘Hi, I’m so sorry for this, but I found your new number from your card and -’
She frowned. ‘Jona? Is everything okay?’
‘Yes, but, no, actually. I don’t know. I didn’t really know who else to call.’
She had never heard him this way before. Sure, she had seen him sad. She had seen him panic over workplace accidents. But the broken voice worried her. ‘What happened?’
For a moment, he went silent. Then his voice sounded calmer, closer to the professional tone he usually spoke with. ‘I was wondering if your graphic design agency is hiring. You mentioned they were short staffed.’
Her frown deepened, wondering why on earth he would ask her this on New Year’s Eve. ‘Uhm, yeah, they are. Why?’
‘Do you think you could get me an interview?’
‘Jona, what the hell happened?’
That’s when she learned that Pro-Mink was up for auction. Whatever was left of it. The Tax Administration would eat up most of it anyway.
She could hear him holding back tears as he told her his dad was going to jail for tax fraud. The Antells were going to lose everything. The summer palace was collapsing in on them. And as Jona was being crushed by the rubble, he reached out for Emilia.
‘Of course I’ll help,’ she told him. ‘I mean, I’ll try.’
A sigh of relief on the other side. ‘This means the world to me, Emilia.’
Not her responsibility. Not her project to fix. But she shouldn't let him fall, right?