Three New Messages from Christoffer Schistad:

William

C’mon

 We’re dating best friends, this is the dream

William Magnusson:

You and Eva are dating now?

One New Message from Christoffer Schistad:

We will be when you talk your girl into a double date

The last time Eva went on a double date, she spent the night sitting across from Ingrid and Jonas while a guy she barely knew—and liked even less—groped her knee beneath a fast food restaurant table. She can’t remember his name.

(Unsurprising. She didn’t care who she dated back then, as long as she had someone to distract her from just how in love she was with her best friend’s boyfriend.)

Eva wishes she knew Chris back then, sometimes—a guy who might have been able to distract her out of ever dating Jonas at all. But then she remembers everything she learned about herself by breaking up with Jonas, just how much of a fuckboy Chris was when they first met, and just how unevenly matched they would have been at the time.

Sitting cross-legged on her bed as Noora applies a fresh coat of red lipstick, Eva fingers her recently curled hair. “It’s weird, isn’t it?” she says, filling the easy quiet that had settled between them.

Capping her lipstick, Noora turns away from her reflection. “Hm?”

The mirror catches Eva’s wrinkled brow and Noora’s straight blonde locks. “Could you have ever imagined going on this double date at the beginning of first year? You with William, me with Penetrator Chris?” 

It’s hard to say Penetrator Chris without laughing. She should maybe just start calling him Chris, if he’s really going to be her boyfriend. Which is seeming more and more likely by the day. The more days he doesn’t give up, the more she wonders if he might actually mean it when he calls her his girlfriend.

“No.” Noora flops down beside her on the bed, crossing her legs against its edge. “Never.”

It’s strange to remember who they were back then, to think about how much they’ve both changed. Noora had seemed untouchably independent to her when they first became friends. Eva used to feel the exact opposite.

“You said you’d never even touch William,” Eva remembers, teases. “How did that go for you?”

An innocent shrug. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

From the way her bright lips curve, though, Eva can see that Noora is completely aware of the reputation she and William have earned for ridiculously constant public displays of affection. They’re always touching or kissing or staring at each other so intensely that they might as well be. They may not hook up against walls at parties, but they're always sneaking away to free bedrooms or closets or, occasionally, William’s car. 

(Eva winces just thinking about that last one—the last time she attempted car sex, she bumped into the horn at least three times, banged her head against the ceiling at least three more, and almost flashed a couple who happened to be strolling nearby. Chris spent the rest of the night teasing her for it.)

“Of course not.” Legs still crossed, Eva falls back against her bed, glances at her phone’s clock, and segues: “There’s no way they’re getting here on time.” They still have five minutes, but she’s guessing it will be at least another five after that, between William’s hair and Chris’s vanity.

Noora tilts her head. “I can’t remember the last time William had to pick me up for date. He’s always just there, lately.”

That would be because Noora and William are essentially living together, alternating between each other’s flats, although neither of them will admit it. She and Chris have a bet going on how long it will take for them to cave and officially move into Noora’s together. 

She placed considerably less faith in William’s willpower than Chris did, mostly because Eskild recently informed her that he’s practicing the Power of Positive Thinking about this and setting an Intention that they’ll all be living together within a month. Eva doesn’t know what exactly differentiates a lowercase intention from an uppercase one, but she trusts Eskild’s power of determination.

Eva doesn’t say any of this, only raises both eyebrows. “I wonder why.”

Noora swats her shoulder with the closest pillow.

Five minutes later, the doorbell still hasn’t rung, but they do hear a knock on Eva's bedroom window.

She and Noora look at each other before rising to the their feet. Chris’s face grins from the other side of the glass; William’s keeps a bit more distance.

“Some people,” Eva says, once she pulls it open, “knock on the front door.”

Chris shrugs, widens his grin, and says, “When have I ever used your front door?”

She and Noora eye the way he’s leaning into her room, half waiting for him to come tumbling down to their feet. “You’re using it tonight. Noora and I aren’t climbing out a window in dresses.”

(Noora isn’t actually wearing a dress, but Eva figures she won’t mind if she uses her name for solidarity purposes.)

“Fine,” Chris concedes with a long sigh. Drama queen. “But first…” he pulls a bouquet of irises out from behind his back. “Your favorite flowers.”

They’re beautiful; they’ll look beautiful next to all the other bouquets Chris has bought for her over the past week, ever since declaring that he’ll bring one every day until he guesses her favorite. He gives her an expectant look now as Eva strokes the purple petals. “Very pretty,” she says, “but still not my favorites.”

Chris’s grin doesn’t falter. “Tomorrow then.”

“I could give you a hint, you know.”

“And ruin the fun?”

A moment later, Chris shuffles slightly to the side so William can reveal a bouquet of red roses.

“So cliché,” Noora says, even as she accepts and inhales them with a slow smile.

“But you love them anyway,” William says. His lips curve to match hers.

Eva and Chris match eye rolls.

“Front door, bro,” Chris interrupts their best friends’ soulful gazing, clapping a hand on his back. “We’ve got places to go, movies to catch.”     

“William,” Chris says, once they’ve started down the front porch steps. “was just telling me about the last time he rang Eva’s doorbell.”

William curls his fingers through Noora’s, and shoots his friend a warning glance.

It goes unheeded. “And sweet Anne Marit thought he was her boyfriend, when he was actually there to…”

William’s head slumps back. Chris stops talking.

The girls catch each other’s eyes, each other’s humor. “You mean when William came to Eva’s to pick up Vilde almost two years ago?” Noora prompts, slanting a smile or a challenge up at her boyfriend.

Chris wraps an arm around Eva’s waist like it belongs there—she has to remind herself that she still hasn’t decided whether she agrees. “No,” he drags the word out, possibly for suspense’s sake, probably so he can find other words to follow it. “When he saw you for the first time, standing on this very lawn, and went, Wow, damn.”

Eva isn’t entirely sure how much that helps, but still relaxes against Chris enough to whisper, “Nice save,” in his ear.

He shrugs against her shoulder, which she takes to mean, I try.

Eva doubts she and Noora are supposed to see him mouth sorry bro over her head, or that he particularly means it, judging from his smirk.

William just shakes his head. “You forgot the part where you interrogated me about Eva afterwards.”

“Interrogated?” Eva pulls far enough away to raise an eyebrow at Chris.

He remains unfazed. “I wanted to inspire you with my superior stalking skills,” he says. “You were a horrible stalker. Never showing up at my house in the middle of the night.”

Noora’s eyebrows don’t arch, but her voice does when she asks, “What did you tell him?” 

“Nothing. Invasion of privacy.”

As if flashing back to fall of 2015, Chris dons a look of mild, retroactive offense. “I’m your best friend!”

They haven’t even started the drive to the movie theater yet, but Eva already kind of feels like they should have popcorn.       

They’re early enough for the movie—some artsy, foreign film that Noora and William were already planning to see tonight—that the conversation from the car continues into their back row seats.

Said conversation seems to be a game of ‘who can tell the most embarrassing story about the other,’ waged between Chris and William.

“Give it up,” Chris says through a laugh, slinging an arm around Eva’s shoulders approximately ten seconds after they sit down. “I’m an open book. Ashamed of nothing.”

Sitting between William and Eva, Noora squints and tags in for her boyfriend. “Really? Not even the time you asked me for a foursome?”

She’s already told Eva this story, but they still share an amused smile over the slight slip of Chris’s grin as he reaches for his soda. One long sip of coke, and he recovers his smugness, “Obviously a joke. Like I’d ever touch William’s girl.”

“He wouldn’t,” William puts in. “Too good a friend.”

For once, Chris's bravado looks a bit forced. Eva wonders if he and William think she minds the reminder that random threesomes were once a regular weekend night for him.

Noora has already turned back to William. “I wasn’t your girl yet.”

“No,” he agrees into her temple. “But I liked you.”

Then they’re kissing, and Eva is looking at Chris, licking her lips, searching for the right words. “You know I’m the last person who’s going to judge you for sleeping around over a year ago, right?“

Chris’s tongue darts against his own lips, before he darts his mouth against hers. He lingers there, then eases back, just a bit, to murmur, “That’s my girl.”

She eases back a bit more to raise an eyebrow at him. “Not your girl yet.”

It takes her a second to realize why Chris looks so damn pleased. “Yet,” he repeats.

The theater’s dimming lights and opening trailers save her from having to reply with anything but an eye roll.

“That movie was shit,” Chris declares after a large bite of his hamburger.

Sitting on the opposite side of their restaurant booth, William says nothing, just plays with the ends of Noora’s hair as she protests, “It was not shit. What about the cinematography?”

Another bite of hamburger, another swallow, and then: “Didn’t make up for the fact that the movie was complete shit.“

“In your opinion,” Noora says, gathering a forkful of pasta and vegetables.

Eva could point out here that Noora and William had disappeared half way through the film to ‘get popcorn,’ only to return empty-handed many scenes later. But, given that she and Chris spent those many scenes with his hands up her shirt and her tongue in his mouth, she’s not sure she has much room to mock.

Chris has no such compunctions.

Noora averts her eyes and her blush for a handful of seconds, but William just reaches for a fry. “The popcorn machine malfunctioned.”

Chris guffaws. Eva laughs, the echo of soda bubbly and sweet in her mouth. “William,” she says a few moments later, “tell another story about Chris.”

His lips twitch in consideration.

Chris whispers traitor against her earlobe, but looks at his friend in grinning anticipation. “Pick a good one.”

 Noora and William branch off together at the end of the night to head back towards her flat, leaving Eva and Chris alone by her front door.

“They’re definitely moving in together within the next month,” Eva says over her shoulder as she turns her key.

“Nah.” Chris is just behind her, close enough that her chin almost brushes his shoulder when she turns. “Two months. I’m winning this bet.” (His eyes dance. They didn’t bet money.)

Even once she steps inside a few seconds later, Chris lingers on her front porch, smirking. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

Eva snorts. “Since when do you need an invitation?”

He’s still smirking, still standing there. “Maybe I want one.”

Rolling her eyes, Eva reaches a hand out, and says, “Come in, Chris.”

She tugs him inside, so he can tug her face against his.

 “Admit it,” Chris says later, naked and sprawled out beside her in bed. “That was a good date.”

Eva nestles her cheek into her pillow. “Maybe.”

“Such a damn good date,” Chris continues, drawling his fingers along the dip of her waist, the flare of her hips, “that you want us to go on another. Only us.”

Eva pretends consideration. “Maybe,” she taunts again, pressing her lips to his. She blinks when he pulls away.

He holds himself a few inches from her, eyebrows raised and lips curled wide. “Maybe?”

Eva reaches for him again, feels him moving back another inch, and finally says, “It was a damn good date.”

He lets her kiss him then, dragging her in for another, before prodding, “And?”

Her lips are touching his when she murmurs, “And I want to go on another. With you.”

Then his mouth is on hers, his fingers are combing through her hair, and her arms are curling around his neck.

(It’s actually the best date she’s gone on in recent memory, but he doesn’t need to hear that yet.)

“One week.” William wraps an arm around Noora’s waist, pulling her against him.

“No,” she says, her muscles loose and her hair splayed across William’s toned chest. “Eva will make him wait at least two before she admits they’re together.”

She wasn’t supposed to eye the cool floor with this much reluctance as she contemplated her early morning, pre-breakfast escape either. Beside her, William’s quiet breathing had the easy cadence of deep sleep, and all the wisdom she’d accumulated over the last sixteen years seethed for her to leave before he woke. Before he opened his eyes and looked at her with them. Before he opened his mouth and spoke to her with it.

She was lucky to have woken up before him at all.

Swallowing her sigh, Noora eased her way out of bed, smoothing the wrinkles from her rumpled shirt and the tangles from her hair. Then she looked back. The barrier of pillows that she’d arranged between their bodies had turned flat and misshapen through the night, but had nevertheless, thankfully, survived. She’d woken up with her back molded against it, too aware of William’s shoulder pressing into its other side. Too aware that, if she hadn’t bothered with the pillows, sleep would probably have tricked her into spooning with him.

(Noora’s eyes shifted to said shoulder now. Said boy. She knew it was cliché to claim that people looked soft in sleep, but there was he was, his mouth blank, his eyes closed, his face smoothed free of arrogance and armor. His sheets curled against his chest, his head curled into his pillow.) (Unfairly soft.) (Everything about William was a cliché.)

She shook her head. If she wasn’t supposed to find William Magnusson’s bed appealing, she certainly wasn’t supposed to find the sight of him sleeping in it adorable.

So Noora sighed, started to turn, and—

“I like that you’re standing there, looking at me.”

She nearly stumbled at the sound of William’s half awake mumble, but somehow steadied herself before he opened his eyes to smile at her. Noora cursed herself for not running away the minute, the second, she’d stirred awake. Lingering here, looking at him… She bit her lip. So incredibly dumb.

“I’m not looking at you,” she lied, backing away from the bed as William propped himself to his elbows. His eyes had been closed. He couldn’t know where she had been staring, what she had been thinking.

William rubbed the leftover sleep from his eyes. “Why else would you be standing there?”

“I…” Noora pushed her hair out of her eyes and wet her lips before answering, “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“So you were just going to leave.” The sheet slipped from his chest, revealing its bare, toned, pale span. The triangle tattoo, the angles of his hips—

Noora forced her gaze up to the ceiling. “Don’t you want to sleep in?”

And then he was climbing out of bed, abandoning the sheet altogether, unabashedly half-naked as he reached for a pair of jeans to tug past his hips. “I want to make you breakfast.”

He walked around the bed to face her. (Still half-naked.) (She knew he owned plenty of shirts.) “Willhelm…” she said, gulped, suddenly lost in his proximity. Unsure of how to navigate it after the cocoa and guitar playing and text messages. He’d seen too much of her last night, for all that she’d stayed fully clothed. She’d seen too much of him. Her usual strategies for dealing with him felt outdated. “You don’t need to cook me breakfast.” She needed more time to adjust them.

“No. But I want to.” He strode past her and out into the hallway, eyebrows raised and lips crooked. “Unless you’d rather make breakfast.”

“No one needs to make breakfast.”

“Someone does. It’s the most important meal of the day.”

“Not now.” Hurrying to catch up with him, she rolled her eyes. “I have food at home. You can go back to sleep.”

The corners of his mouth didn’t dip, only stretched. “You’d call your flatmates before seven on a Saturday morning to let you in? That’s not very considerate.”

Noora itched to ask how he could possibly be so awake and so irritatingly stubborn before seven o’clock on a Satuday morning, less than five minutes after opening his eyes, but held her tongue. “You care about consideration,” she stated skeptically.

He nodded. “Fried or scrambled eggs?”

She narrowed her eyes. All traces of sleep had fallen from his face; back was the amusement, the cockiness, the attention, the interest, the perception.

No one had ever looked at her like William did. William didn’t even use to look at her the way he was now—not last semester, not even last month. Not until sitting beside her on that bench during their date. Not until sitting across from her last night as she strummed his guitar.

Noora shuffled her feet back and forth. It had been easier to dismiss him when he’d so clearly considered her a pretty challenge, and nothing more. When he didn’t stare at her like he knew her; when she didn’t want to believe his stare. She opened her mouth, closed it, and finally settled on crossing her arms in reply.

His brown eyes—so brown; so deeply, inconveniently brown—latched with hers, not blinking. “Noora. It’s breakfast. Relax. You don’t…” he ran a hand through his hair, pulling his gaze from hers to scan her face. “You don’t owe me anything for it.”

Her crossed arms loosened. Slightly.

William squinted at her. “You let me make you cocoa. How is this any different?”

A deep breath ran from her chest to her lips. Because that was last night. A fluke. Nothing had counted last night, because she’d had to stay. (At first.) Choosing to sleep in William’s bed, choosing to eat breakfast with him…

“It’s just breakfast,” he repeated, brushing his dark, sleepy hair from his eyes. “I’ll drive you home after.” (He needed a brush and a mirror.)

Noora flexed her fingers to keep from fixing the ends of his hair for him. Maybe that victory in willpower made it easier to release her chin into a nod and her lips into a small smile. “Scrambled.” Then, a second later: “You’re not driving me home.”

Everything is sunlight and stillness, even the silence that passes between them as they stroll down the sidewalk. It’s an easy quiet. Easier than Noora knew quiet could be, growing up. In her childhood, in that small town and that small house, quiet meant disinterest. In Madrid, in that large city and that looming flat, it meant loneliness.

“William,” she says a few moments later. Silence with William is content; easy to share, easy to break, easy to fill.

Still holding her hand, he tucks her against his side. “Mhm?”

She’s pretty sure that they look like one of Vilde’s chick lit romance novel covers right now, or maybe an online dating ad. Noora relaxes against him anyway, and squints up at the bright sky. The lighting is good enough for either.

“Do you miss London?”

Noora does not. Noora doubts she ever will. London is so rarely warm in her memories, so often drizzling and cool and the wrong kind of quiet.

William doesn't pause, doesn't even blink before answering, “No.”

“No?”

His fingers tighten around hers. “London doesn’t have anything I need.”

Noora kisses him again, longer this time, her smile spreading against his. It’s a good kiss, good enough that she doesn’t want to break away to hem and haw and finally ask, “Not your father?” The question puts a few inches of distance between their faces.

When William shrugs, she feels the hike of his shoulder against her own muscles. “If he wanted a relationship with me, I wouldn’t have to move there for it.”

Personally, she dislikes William’s father—the way he talks down to William and looks down on the world, the way he so clearly looked at her as a pretty souvenir that William had lugged all the way from Oslo—but none of that bears repeating just now.

“He must be proud of you for applying to law school.” She is. Insanely proud. So proud that she wants to hug him all over again for it, right here on the sidewalk. William is going to do amazing thing, going to put all his intelligence to incredible use, going to fill his life with so much more meaning than he could have found in his dad's office.

Silence again. Not content this time, but hesitant. Building towards—“My father cut me off for applying to law school.”

Surprise almost trips Noora right off the curb and into the street, but William pulls her back. Pulls her closer, his arm around her waist.

“I might need to find a new place,” he adds, one corner of his mouth twitching with inexplicable humor.

Her own lips falls apart as she blinks and stares and grips his hand all the more tightly. “Your father…” A shake of her head. “When?” He knows she’s not asking about the flat.

William runs his free fingers through his hair. “Ten minutes ago, while you were in the store.”

“I was only going for a few minutes!”

“It was a quick text.”

A new, unpleasant heat steals across her cheeks and throat. Hate. She hates William’s father. “What did you say back?”

Fishing a hand into his pocket, William pulls out his phone for her, and slants the screen into her view.

“Whatever,” she reads. It’s only one word, but it feels huge on her tongue, like a piece of cake or melon that she could have cut one more time before chewing. “Whatever?”

He tucks his phone away again, shakes his head. “Noora, it doesn’t matter. It’s just money.”

“You love your money.”

“I love you.” He buries his lips into her hair for just a second. “I like money. And I’ll like it more when it’s mine," another second, another kiss to her temple, "not his."

“William Magnusson,” she starts, then trails off to curl her palms along his cheeks, to make him meet her gaze. Every bit of pride that unfurled in her ribs when he told her about his law school application bursts all over again, straight to her tongue. “I am... so damn in love with you.”

Even though they’re still on a city sidewalk, even though she’s still holding a bag of toilet paper, Noora pulls him towards the nearest wall and wraps her arms around his neck until there’s not a bit of space separating them. Until there’s only the quiet pulse of her heart and his.

William teases that quiet away when they pull apart a minute later. “You're not with me for my money then?”

“No.” Noora presses her lips together, almost unable to believe she’s smiling right now, when half of her wants nothing more than to fly to London and scream at William’s father. “I think I fell in love with you despite your money.”

Within a second, she can feel him grinning against her cheek. “So damn in love with me?”

She rolls her eyes, but can’t stop her curved lips from curving even more.

When they reach her flat, they stall by the door, still connected by their hands and hips. “You should come inside,” Noora urges, even though it was awkward the last time he saw Eskild and Linn. Because of that awkwardness, maybe. Because her flatmates don’t know what actually happened in London, and need to see that William isn’t the asshole they’ve built him into over the last eight months. “Say hi.”

(There will need to be an actual conversation about it sometime soon, just the three of them, where she explains the truth. All of it. Even if it makes them think less of her, mad at her, for the lies she told them after London. For now, she just wants to remind them that they liked William before she moved out of their flat and into his.)

William squints at the door. He doesn’t have to speak, doesn’t even have to look at her, for her to feel his dubiousness.

"Come on.” Hand still clutching his, she pulls him inside with her once she opens the door. “You’re my boyfriend, you can’t avoid my flat forever.”