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It’s probably not something he’ll ever admit out loud, at least not to her, but Isak has sort of come to enjoy Vilde’s company. She’s not always the easiest to be around, and she’s just so different they may as operating on different planes of existence, but she’s got a certain charm and an infectious positve attitude about her that’s nice to be around. It’s hard not to like her, once you actually get to know her.
He doesn’t exactly know when he sort of unofficially agreed to let her use his place to make baked goods for their kosegruppa meetings (which he’s also grown reluctantly fond of, and he’ll take that to the grave). Sometimes their friends join them – Magnus will come along with some vain hope Vilde will suddenly realize she wants to get back together, or Noora will pop in, or Even will emerge from Isak’s room after a night he’s stayed over to help, or Sana or Eva or Chris will be there. Sometimes it’s just him and Vilde, baking, and it’s surprisingly not unpleasant.
But today, he notices, she’s not really her usual bubbly self. She’s almost always talking, and usually he’s content just to listen and throw in the occasional input here and there to keep a mostly one-sided conversation going, but today she’s been uncharacteristically quiet. It’s just the two of them this time, and without the buffer of anyone else between them, it’s kind of hard not to notice. Still, he helps prepares dough for some new kind of bread Vilde wanted to try, silently accepting the ingredients she slides his way, and doesn’t push.
“Can I ask you something?” she says out of the blue halfway through their baking expedition, passing Isak the flour. Isak resists the urge to pat himself on the back for correctly assuming her thoughts have been pre-occupied.
“Okay,” he says, albeit little reluctantly, because while he’s grown to like Vilde and she’s clearly got something on her mind, she doesn’t always think before she speaks, and something about the way she says it makes him certain it’s going to be personal.
“I was just thinking. When did you know?” she asks, giving him a curious look. “I mean, how did you know?”
“Know what?” he says, even though he’s got little doubt over what she means.
“You know…” she says slowly, shrugging her shoulders a little, somehow looking simultaneously uncomfortable and shameless about asking. “That you were gay.”
“How did you know you were straight?” Isak tosses back, raising an eyebrow at her, because she’s certainly not the first person to ask and honestly he’s sort of tired of people quizzing him about his sexuality just because it doesn’t match up with theirs.
…Except Vilde doesn’t get defensive or look appropriately guilty like people usually do when they start digging around in his personal business. Instead, she ducks her head a little, refusing to meet his gaze, and focuses her attention on mixing the ingredients in the bowl in front of her with just a little too much force. She purses her lips, a little crease appearing between her eyebrows, and wrinkles her nose in thought. And Isak is suddenly struck with the possibility that he maybe, quite possibly, read this all wrong.
He clears his throat, and puts down the mixing spoon he’d been using. “Right. I, uh, I guess I sort of stopped being able to just ignore it when I started noticing other guys, and…not feeling that for girls,” he says slowly, because if now he is reading her right he doesn’t want to push, and if she’s not just asking out of some twisted curiousity or some backwards idea that information about his personal life is open to anyone, he figures he should give an actual answer. “And, I mean, I hooked up with girls for a while because I didn’t want to acknowledge it, and I guess I thought I could just…make it go away, but that never felt right. So I guess I knew it before I really acknowledged it. I mean, I only really accepted it after everything that happened last year.”
Vilde hums, still stirring even though everything is well past properly mixed, before she finally stops and takes a deep breath, like she’s steeling herself for something.
“I don’t think I like being with guys,” she says on an exhale, her frown deepening. “I don’t – Magnus is nice, and I thought when I was with him it’d be different from William but – it wasn’t. And I keep thinking there’s something wrong with me, you know, because I can’t get into it, but it just feels wrong. And I’ve only really ever felt, you know, turned on, with girls at parties and just…thinking about them.”
“Oh. um,” Isak says, and immediately kicks himself. Real nice, Isak, he thinks. Real eloquent. “That’s – uh – you know you don’t have to right?”
“I…guess I don’t, really. I’ve always thought that was how things were supposed to be. How I was supposed to be.”
“I mean, fuck that, though,” Isak says, thinking back to the shitstorm of a time when he’d been convinced of something similar. “You know what you feel. And if that’s not guys for you, that’s okay. There’s not something wrong with you because you don’t.”
“I guess,” she says again, but this time there’s a little more conviction to it. He doesn’t want to push too much, so instead he waits to see if she wants to say anything else. She doesn’t.
“So,” he says after a moment of somewhat-tense yet somehow-comfortable silence passes between them. He takes in the tentative little smile curling Vilde’s lips, still a little nervous but ultimately relieved. Isak can’t help but smile a little wider too, and nudges her with his elbow, his hands still covered with bits of dough. “Any girl in particular catch your eye?”
The smile falters, and Vilde worries her bottom lip betwen her teeth. “I think I like Eva,” she finallly says, and then makes a face. “I guess – no, I know I like Eva.”
Isak feels a sudden rush of affection and understanding for her because, wow, he’s been there. He and Vilde are as different as two people can be, and yet he’s never related to her more. He laughs a little, coughing into his hand when Vilde shoots him an unimpressed look. “Sorry. It’s just…you know, I had a crush on Jonas once. It’s not uncommon, to fall for your best friend.”
“Really?” Vilde asks, tilting her head in interest, something unreadable in her expression. “What did he think about it?”
“I, uh, never told him actually. But I did end up ruining his and Eva’s relationship, or at least I certainly didn’t help it, because I was just…internalizing a lot of shit and working through things and it made be do things I’m not proud of. But I got over it, eventually. And we’re cool now. Still best friends. It all works out in the end, you know?”
“You ruined…? She never told me that,” Vilde muses thoughtfully, crossing her arms.
“Yeah, well,” Isak shrugs. “Eva’s cool.”
“She’s perfect,” Vilde says as if on auto-pilot, her mouth twisting into a self-depsricating grimace almost as soon as the words leave her mouth. Isak hesitates for a moment before patting her back consolingly. She hides her face in her hands, but before Isak can say anything she’s talking again. It’s so quiet and muffled Isak almost misses it. “We’ve kissed, more than once,” she mumbles, keeping her face hidden. “And I just can’t forget about it, you know? But then we never talked about it afterward, and she hooks up with Chris at parties now – not our Chris, don’t give me that look – and I don’t know how to tell her that I can’t stop thinking about it. About her. I don’t want to ruin our friendship.”
“Maybe you should just talk to her about? Like, you’ll never know unless you have that conversation,” Isak suggests, and Vilde peeks out from behind her hands to narrow her eyes at him.
“You just told me you never told Jonas, though.”
“Yeah, and I also told you that bottling all that up turned me into a jealous asshole. Also, like, I never kissed Jonas? So that seems like something that could mean something. And that you should probably address at some point, if it’s something that matters to you.”
Vilde lets her hands drop back down to her sides, giving him a searching look. There’s something like hope sparking in her eyes, and he just hopes that no matter what happens she’ll be happy. “Maybe…” she finally says, giving him a small smile.
“And if not, there’s always plenty of other cute girls out there, you know,” he says, nudging her again, because while he’s obviously not an expert, and he’s certainly not Eskild levels of Guru (nor does he want to be), he thinks maybe the most important thing is for her to know that that’s okay to want.
“Really? What would you know about cute girls?” Vilde deadpans, and it throws him for a loop for a moment before he catches the slight twitch of her lips and realizes she’s teasing.
“Very funny,” he says, rolling his eyes at her, and she gives up trying to hide her grin. He dips his fingers into the bag of flour to flick in her face, and can’t help but crack a smile at her offended little squeak.
She huffs and brushes off the almost non-existent speck of flour from her cheek as dramatically as possible, before pushing him out of the way to trade places. “You can’t be trusted with this stuff anymore,” she says, and they settle back into their comfortable rhythm, preparing the final touches on their bread.
He has a feeling that the one-armed hug she pulls him into (with a freshly baked basket of bread tucked under the other) before heading out of his apartment, and the shaky smile she gives after pulling away, are more than just a thank you for using letting her use his oven.