#wn88

you were sitting on the kitchen counter again, oversized hoodie barely covering your thighs, knees drawn up so your bare feet didn’t dangle too low. it was almost comical—how small you looked in his space, how young you must’ve seemed to everyone, but how natural it felt between the two of you. your voice still thick with sleep, cheeks flushed warm from the coffee he made just how you liked, light and sweet, a little cinnamon. he didn’t even drink coffee often. he brewed it for the smell, and you.

william strolled in shirtless, boxer briefs clinging low to his hips, hair still messy from the night. blond and glinting pale gold in the slant of early sun through the windows, skin kissed with that faint, winter-burnished tan that only northern european athletes somehow carried year-round. he yawned, big and lazy, scratched at his abs absently while reaching for something in the fridge with the other hand, before pausing and giving you a long once-over.

"that my hoodie?" he asked, voice all gravel and velvet, accent still thick because he hadn’t spoken much yet this morning.

"mine now, i guess," you murmured, sipping from your mug, watching him like he was a fucking painting come to life. william nylander in all his morning glory—six foot of sinewed sleep-heavy muscle, hair sticking up stupid in the back, piercing blue eyes barely open. you should've been used to it by now, but every time it hit the same. like your breath wanted to just fold inside your chest and give up trying.

he walked over slow, like he had all the time in the world, leaned between your knees and nosed at your jaw.

"you steal everything," he said, lips brushing your cheekbone, his laugh puffing hot against your ear—god, that laugh, it wasn’t fair. that deep chuckle that always sounded like it caught him by surprise. people joked about it, said they could pick it out from across the rink. addictive, unmistakable. and he’d lean into it too, shamelessly, once he noticed the way your face warmed every time you heard it.

"you like me stealing your stuff," you muttered, trying not to smile too much, tugging the sleeves of the hoodie over your fingers.

"yeah," he said simply, and pulled back to grin at you, like the answer didn’t even need dressing up. "i do."

nonchalant as always. william didn’t do dramatics, didn’t give big romantic speeches or make a show out of affection. but then he’d walk in the door with a new pair of boots you’d once mentioned offhand in a store two months ago. or a stack of polaroids from that trip to stockholm with little scribbles on the back—your handwriting over his, crooked and sloppy, his neater and joking. or wrap his arms around you from behind at parties when someone got too close, and murmur “she’s with me” soft enough only you could hear it.

he paid for everything, every meal, every cab, every little thing you touched. once he gave you a card and said "just use this when you're out," and when you’d protested, he'd only raised one brow and kissed your forehead. “baby,” he said, “i make twelve million a year. please. let me do something useful.”

it wasn’t flashy. he wore all black most days, kept it understated. but there was something about the way he wore a hoodie like it was tailored, or how every chain around his neck looked deliberate, even though he swore he just "threw shit on." he smelled like clean laundry and expensive cologne even after practice, and somehow never seemed like he was trying. even in the chaos of the locker room, when he was half-dressed and throwing a puck at someone or laughing mid-interview, he looked composed. messy and perfect all at once.

“what time’s your flight?” you asked, voice smaller than you wanted it to be.

he reached over you for the coffee mug, took a sip even though he always said he hated sweet drinks, just to taste it from your mouth. his hand was warm on your bare thigh when it landed there a moment later, thumb brushing back and forth.

“not til tonight,” he said, kissing your shoulder, then letting his teeth graze the spot where your neck met your collarbone. "still got hours."

you shivered. “willie…”

“mm?” lips trailing down, breath teasing the fabric as he dipped lower, pulling the hoodie collar aside with his teeth.

“you have practice.”

“optional skate,” he mumbled against your chest, like he’d already decided, and then that laugh again, low and boyish. “i'll skate when i’m in dallas.”

he lifted your hoodie with one hand, slow, watching your face like he liked making you blush this early in the day. bare underneath, just skin and goosebumps and nothing between you. he hummed low, and you felt it more than heard it.

“you’re so bad,” you whispered, but it was shaky, breath catching because he’d started mouthing over your breast, lazy but with that unhurried focus that always made you ache. “you’re gonna be late.”

“you’re gonna make me late,” he corrected, cocky as hell, voice muffled against your skin. “s’not my fault you look like that.”

and you didn’t say anything after that, just arched a little toward him, eyes fluttering closed when his hands slid down to your hips and tugged you closer to the edge of the counter.

“gimme a minute,” he murmured, looking up at you with a glint in his eye that had nothing to do with sleep anymore. “wanna taste my girl before i go.”

he said it like it was no big deal. like it was something he just did, like eating breakfast or brushing his teeth. william nylander, laidback to the point of absurdity, sliding your knees apart without a care in the world, dropping to his knees in front of you like it was his personal fucking church.

“willy,” you gasped, hands grabbing at his hair automatically when his tongue dragged up your inner thigh, slow and deliberate.

“can’t believe how much you like me,” he said, voice all cocky affection, dragging his tongue slowly up your thigh. “must be the laugh, right?” he flashed you a wicked smile, then bited lightly at your hip, and you couldn't help the sound that escapes you, sharp and needy.

“maybe i just like swedes,” you managed, voice ragged.

he grinned wider, teeth flashing. “everyone likes swedes,” he deadpanned, before dipping down, tongue swirling, dragging filthy little circles that left you trembling, moaning, every sound swallowed up by that damned, infuriating, beautiful laugh of his. his style is everywhere, in the way he pulls your hips to the edge of the counter, in the casual drape of his arm behind your knees, in the confidence that never wavers, not for a second, as he makes you come undone for him, again and again, until your head spins and his name is all you remember how to say.

and you let him, because you always did. because when he touched you like that, lazy and smug and worshipful all at once, you forgot your name. because every flick of his tongue was a reminder that this was the same man who dropped four points in a playoff game and then came home to bury his face between your legs like it was the only thing in the world that mattered.

“told you,” he said, licking your taste off his fingers while standing. “worth being late for.”

he kissed your forehead, then your lips, sloppy and still grinning.

William had a problem with dreaming. 

They weren’t nightmares, not really—nothing he could neatly explain away, anyway. He could understand nightmares. Losing a Stanley Cup Final in overtime, legs turning to lead while the puck slid past him. Or something worse—his mother slipping off the edge of a mountain, that awful, helpless drop in his stomach as he could only watch.

Those nightmares made sense in their own terrible way. But he could not understand the dreams he’d been having lately. For the past two months or so, ever since missing the playoffs, something had shifted. He’d told himself it was just that—stress, disappointment, too much time to think. That it would stop once summer started and he had space to reset.

But they hadn’t stopped like he thought they would. If anything, they’d only gotten stranger.

These new dreams lingered in a way nightmares never did. Not sharp or terrifying, but strange—sticky, almost. Like they left something behind when he woke up, an odd residue clinging to his thoughts for hours afterward. 

A few nights ago, he’d been riding a bicycle along the ocean floor, pedaling through a quiet, endless blue while fish drifted past like it was the most natural thing in the world. Another time, he’d been walking on stilts down an empty street, the sky pressing too close, the ground too far away, no destination in sight.

And today he woke up totally disoriented because there’d been a tiger in his bathroom. Just sitting there. Not pacing or growling—just patiently waiting. Watching him while he, in the dream, went about his business like it wasn’t completely insane.

William dragged a hand over his face as he lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, the early morning light barely bleeding through the curtains. He exhaled slowly, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes until white spots swam in front of his vision. 

What the hell was it supposed to mean?

The headache came with it again, right on cue. Always the same feeling. A dull, pulsating ache behind his eyes, like his brain had been working overtime trying to make sense of something that refused to be understood. It wasn’t sharp enough to be painful, but persistent enough to make everything feel slightly off.

And, as always, going back to sleep was out of the question now.

It didn’t matter where he was—on the road, in some anonymous hotel room, or at home in his own bed. The result was always the same. Awake. Way too fucking early. Mind buzzing with absolute nonsense.

Beside him, Alana shifted slightly in her sleep, her quiet, nasal snore continuing in soft, steady intervals. It wasn’t loud. Most people probably wouldn’t even notice it. 

But William did. Because it broke his rhythm.

Every time he tried to settle back down, to chase that drifting edge of sleep again, there it was—a tiny interruption that pulled him just far enough back into wakefulness that trying again felt pointless.

He turned his head slightly, glancing at her, then back to the ceiling.

Yeah. This was not happening.

If it were early enough, he’d usually give up and get up. Make something out of it. Take the dogs out on a longer walk than usual. Watch some game tape, and cook an actual breakfast instead of defaulting to a protein shake. It helped, in a way. Made the whole thing feel less like a loss.

But this was that in-between hour. Too late to pretend it was still night. Too early for anything to really start.

His eyes flicked toward his phone on the nightstand. Stockholm would be five hours ahead by now. It always was. He hated the time zone difference most of the time, but a little less once he’d started being awake at weird hours of the early morning. 

You’d be awake. Probably already at work, tucked into your classroom with stacks of books and half-finished lesson plans spread across your desk. There’d be a mug of tea you kept forgetting about, and some novel open that you were halfway through reading because you always had to be reading something. Just for your own enjoyment. 

You had a book for everything. Seriously—everything.

That included dreams. That was your thing—well, one of them. A high school English teacher by profession, but unofficially William’s go-to for anything that required interpretation or just making sense of things.

Like a personal search engine. That was why he called you so often nowadays, he told himself.

Because of the book. Because you might have an answer. Because maybe there was some hidden meaning in bathroom tigers that his brain just wasn’t equipped to figure out on its own.

Or maybe he just really fucking missed his best friend, and his dreams gave him a perfect excuse to call you more often. 

He didn’t really know why he felt like he needed an excuse in the first place. You’d been friends since middle school. If his dreams annoyed you, you would’ve told him by now. You were painfully honest like that. 

William stared at his phone for a second longer, then pushed himself up from the bed with a quiet exhale. He slipped out of the bedroom, easing the door shut behind him until it clicked softly into place.

For a moment, he just stood there in the hallway, running a hand through his hair, thumb already hovering over your name. He didn’t let himself think too hard about it, so he pressed call. 

The line rang as he started moving, slow and aimless, drifting into the kitchen. His fingers trailed along the edge of the counter, catching on a stray breadcrumb. He flicked it into the sink, then turned the tap on without really thinking, watching the water run for a second before shutting it off again.

One ring. Two.

He leaned his hip against the counter, gaze unfocused somewhere out through the windows. 

On the third ring, he heard you answer, silence turning into a low buzz through his phone speakers. 

“You busy, Sunshine?” 

“Nope, I’m on my lunch break.” 

William let out a quiet breath, something in his chest loosening almost instantly at the sound of your voice, bright and happy in Swedish. You sounded more like home than anything else to him. 

He pushed himself upright again, restless, grabbing a glass from the cupboard just to have something to do with his hands.

“Kids being nice to you?” William asked. 

A soft huff of amusement came from you through the line. “I had to teach a sixteen-year-old that you should capitalize names today. The kids are not alright, William.”

He snorted under his breath, filling the glass with water and taking a slow sip, picturing you on the other end—probably half-slouched in your chair, one leg tucked under you. Ergonomics had never been your strong suit. He could practically hear your mother’s voice in his head telling you to sit properly while you rolled your eyes and slouched even further just to be difficult.

Some things probably hadn’t changed.

“Sounds rough, Sunny.”

“We’re in a crisis, honestly.”

He could hear the smile in your voice—bright, twitching at the corners of your mouth, like you were trying not to laugh at your own dramatics.

William’s fingers tapped lightly against the side of the glass, condensation cooling his palm. There was a shift on your end—fabric rustling, maybe you adjusting in your chair or kicking your feet up onto your desk like you weren’t supposed to.

“Isn’t it really early for you, by the way?” you continued. 

He glanced at the clock on the microwave like he didn’t already know the time. “06:30. Couldn’t fall back asleep.”

He took another sip, slower this time, letting the silence stretch just a second too long before you filled it.

“Another nightmare?” you wondered gently. 

“No, not really.” William paused. “But there was a tiger in my bathroom.”

“A tiger?” 

“Yeah,” he said, already moving again, drifting out of the kitchen and into the living room like the stillness was suddenly too much. “It was really weird. I couldn’t even tell I was dreaming at first—everything else was normal. And then I go to use the bathroom and there’s just…” He exhaled a quiet, disbelieving laugh. “A tiger. Sitting there.”

He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, frowning slightly at the memory, as if he focused hard enough, it might rearrange itself into something that made sense.

“Was it scary?” you asked.

“Nope,” he said easily. “Not at all. It was just—” He hesitated, searching for the right word. “Like a big house cat. Just watching me.”

Like it had been waiting. William didn’t say that part out loud.

There was a brief pause, and he felt it—the way something on your end shifted gears. He knew that pause. He knew exactly what it meant. You were thinking now, digging, already halfway into whatever system you used to make sense of things no one else bothered trying to explain. Your own little superpower. 

You had the stupid dream book with you.

He could envision you almost too clearly—dog-eared pages, little notes shoved between sections, and your handwriting crowding the margins. You’d probably started carrying it around more often lately, ever since he’d started calling about this. Ever since he’d started calling more, period.

“Hm,” you murmured. “I don’t think the book has an explanation for tigers.”

William smiled faintly, dropping down onto the arm of the couch, one foot tapping idly against the floor. “Shocking.”

“Wait a minute,” you added quickly, something sparking. He could hear it. “There’s a section about predator animals. That could be something, right?”

“Alright,” he said softly, settling back just a little. “Let’s hear it.”

He listened to the faint rustle on your end—pages shifting, maybe you pushed something aside to make room. He pictured your brows furrowing the way they always did when you were concentrating, a deep crease constant on your forehead that you couldn’t care less about. 

“They often represent raw instincts. Primal energy. Passionate feelings,” you read, voice slowing slightly as you followed the lines. “It can represent a need to confront a fear if you’re running from the animal… or it can mean those feelings are present in your life already. That they’re uplifting you, I guess.”

William let out a short breath through his nose, gaze drifting toward the window. Early light washed everything out, pale and quiet. “That makes no sense. We just missed the fucking playoffs.”

“Is everything in your life really about hockey, William?” 

He closed his eyes for a second, a faint smile lingering despite himself, like you’d nudged him somewhere familiar and maybe even self-conscious. “Okay, no,” he admitted. “But I don’t know what else it could be.”

And that was the truth of it. He did not know.

Or maybe he didn’t look very hard—didn’t sit still long enough to sort through any emotions that didn’t come with clear rules and outcomes. Hockey made sense. Effort in, result out. Even when it hurt, it was clean.

These fucking dreams weren’t. 

“Your new girlfriend isn’t bringing out any passionate feelings?” you asked, doing a poor job of hiding your laughter.

The question didn’t land as a joke to William, though. He shifted, leaning forward, elbows braced on his knees, his phone pressed a little tighter to his ear as his gaze dropped to the floor.

“No… I don’t think so?” he said finally, uncertainty threading through the words before he could smooth it over. “I don’t know. We’re comfortable. That’s it.”

Comfortable felt like the safest way to describe it. Because that was what it was. It didn’t ask anything of him. Alana didn’t ask anything of him. She fit seamlessly into his lifestyle, like her life had been designed for it. 

There was nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with things being easy for once. 

So why did it feel like something was missing when he said it out loud?

“It’s not some whirlwind romance,” he added, a little quieter. “You know I’m not like that.” 

He didn’t know why he felt like he needed to explain that to you. But he did. Maybe because you’d always had a way of cutting through things he left half-figured out. Or maybe because some part of him wanted you to hear it and think yeah, that makes sense. He wanted your approval, even if he’d never call it that out loud.

There was a small pause on the line, the kind where he could almost hear you thinking.

“I don’t know much about your recent love life at all, William,” you said. “We haven’t even seen each other since last summer.” 

Since last fucking summer. Time moved too quickly. 

Since late nights at beach clubs that blurred into early mornings. Since expensive bottles of rosé were drunk on an even more expensive roof terrace of some rented-out villa. Since it had been easy to exist in the same space as you without the distance stretching everything thinner than it should have been.

William huffed a quiet laugh, scrubbing a hand over his jaw. He really needed to shave. “That’s probably on me.”

More than probably.

He’d let things stay surface-level instead of taking a bunch of baggage from Sweden with him every time a new season started in Toronto. He wished for nothing more than to be able to pause those relationships until he had the time to care about them again, but that only worked one-sidedly. Time didn’t pause for you just because he was gone again. 

“We could catch up, y’know, Sunny,” he said after a moment, tone lighter, like he was stepping around the problem instead of through it. “If you make it to France.”

Placing the ball in your court. 

He didn’t want you to know how much that if really mattered to him. Like the trip would be the same either way.

“I’m going to try my best, okay?” you said quickly. “I have to help clean out granddad’s house first. You know that.”

Yes, he knew that. 

And he knew that house too. 

It had been his first introduction to the archipelago outside of Stockholm. A big, iron oxide red-paneled house with white wooden details and mullioned windows sat on a lonely island, only accessible by boat. 

Where summer days felt endlessly long and no one ever complained. Where he’d been dragged along on visits and somehow never minded.

Midsummer parties, going out in the middle of the night to look for crayfish, or just sitting on the lawn with you, eating wild strawberries until your mouths were stained pink, and listening to your granddad talk about things that didn’t make sense at the time but felt important anyway.

It was strange, trying to picture that place now as something to be cleared out. Reduced to boxes. A closed chapter, decided never to be opened again. 

“I know,” William said, just as quick, like he needed to apologize for even bringing it up. “I’m not trying to push you or anything. I just—”

He stopped, swallowing something down. He pushed up from the couch again, pacing a few steps like movement might shake them loose, his grip tightening slightly around his phone.

“I just miss my best friend,” he finished. “That’s all.”

It sounded weaker than it felt.

For a second, all he could hear was the faint background noise on your end—distant voices, a door opening somewhere down the hall, the low hum of a place that kept moving even while you stood still inside it.

“I miss you too, William.” 

Your voice sounded mumbled. You were suppressing tears, and he knew it. 

“Can we talk more later?” you asked. “I need to eat lunch.”

“Yeah,” he said immediately. “Yeah, of course.” He forced a small exhale, easing some of the tension out of his shoulders. “Go eat.”

You paused, breathing loudly too. “Love you, William.”

He didn’t hesitate.

“Love you too, Sunshine.” 

⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚

Your suitcase had literally never felt heavier.

The wheels caught awkwardly against the uneven stone path as you dragged it toward the villa, your palm damp against the handle despite switching hands three separate times since the taxi dropped you off. The heat of the south of France wrapped around you immediately despite the coastal breeze, thick and golden and relentless, beads of sweat gathering at the back of your neck and along your hairline.

You paused for a second by the gate, pushing your sunglasses higher into your hair as you looked up at the house.

The villa looked like they always did now. Maybe bigger this year. Definitely more expensive, and you probably couldn’t even blame inflation for that one.

It was strange how naturally it had happened over time—the more money the boys made playing hockey, the more absurd these summer rentals became. Though honestly, if you were being fair, this one had Lovisa written all over it. The boys might’ve funded the trip, but Lovisa was absolutely the one who found these places. No one else would care about hot pink bougainvillea climbing dramatically across white stucco walls like the house had been specifically designed for an Instagram post. 

Still, you had to admit this one was beautiful.

Rustic terracotta roof tiles glowed warm beneath the late afternoon sun. Tall manicured hedges curled around the property like something out of a magazine spread, and beyond the greenery you could see flashes of glittering blue water somewhere below the cliffs.

Even the taxi driver had recognized the address immediately at the airport. The small nod he’d given you afterward had said enough on its own.

Rich people.

You almost laughed thinking about the first summer trip this group had taken together. God, was it ten years ago now? Maybe more.

Back when August’s parents had let all of you stay in their tiny two-bedroom apartment farther up the coast because none of you could afford anything else. William and Alex sleeping on air mattresses. Rasmus snoring so loud he’d been banished to the balcony one night. You and Lovisa crammed together on a pullout couch that folded inward every time one of you moved too suddenly.

That had also been the trip where Lovisa discovered her alleged allergy to red wine. She blamed the histamines; you still believed she’d simply consumed an amount medically incompatible with human survival.

The memory tugged a stupid smile out of you before it faded again, something tighter settling into its place instead. A knot slowly pulling itself taut somewhere beneath your ribs.

You were arriving late. Only a day, or maybe two for the ones who’d flown in earlier from North America. Inside the walls of this Villa was already a group of people settled into motion. They were your people, technically, but the distance had started to feel a lot larger recently. 

The past months of your life had felt detached from reality in a way you’d never experienced before.

After hugging your students goodbye for the summer and watching the graduating class sprint screaming out of the school gates for the last time, Stockholm had blurred into snapshots instead of actual days. The city had stayed beautiful, almost annoyingly so in the summer. All bright water and late sunsets and crowded outdoor cafés, while your own life felt paused somewhere slightly behind it.

Everything became cardboard boxes stacked against walls. Dust-coated shelves. Your parents quietly snapping at each other in your grandfather’s kitchen over what should stay and what should go.

Your mother had inherited her father’s inability to throw anything away, and she’d somehow married what was essentially a minimalist in your father, treating sentimentality like something that got in the way of his need to clean. 

And even if your dad was right—if no one realistically needed thirty-seven years of newspapers and chipped porcelain and winter coats from the eighties—it still felt cruel hearing someone reduce a person’s entire life into things that could be discarded.

It certainly wasn’t something you said to an actively grieving daughter. 

But you hadn’t been much help either.

Every room in your grandfather’s house held something capable of stopping you cold. A receipt tucked into a shoebox from 1964 when he bought his wedding shoes. His initials embossed into old stationery in the desk drawer. His reading glasses still folded neatly beside his armchair by the window, like he might come back and ask if anyone had seen them.

You’d thought leaving Stockholm for a while would make you feel lighter; instead, it just felt like you’d stepped away from something unfinished. Exhaustion sat heavy beneath your ribs with every breath you took, the knot in your stomach pulling tighter and tighter until it almost felt physical—coarse rope fraying against itself somewhere inside you.

France was supposed to be a getaway. A safe space, almost. It had become its own little universe over the years. A suspended version of your lives where everyone returned to themselves a little bit more. Same jokes. Same routines. Same people.

Well. Mostly the same people.

Your grip tightened slightly on your suitcase handle as you climbed the last few steps toward the massive front door.

Before you could knock, though, voices spilled out from somewhere deeper inside the house—music faint in the background, overlapping laughter, the scrape of chairs against tile. For a second, you just stood there listening. Then you heard quick footsteps coming, and the front door swung open hard enough to startle you.

“Oh my god, finally.”

Lovisa practically launched herself at you before you could even react properly, all sun-warmed skin and dramatic affection as her arms wrapped tightly around your shoulders.

“You’re sweating to death,” she informed you immediately.

“You’re crushing my organs, Lollo,” you muttered into her shoulder, hugging her back anyway.

“I missed you too, idiot.”

She pulled back just enough to look at you properly, oversized round sunglasses covering half her face and reflecting your own tired expression back at you. Her blonde hair had already gone lighter from the sun, curling at the ends around pink cheeks that were bordering on sunburned despite whatever delusions she’d definitely convinced herself of. 

Warmth bloomed in your chest quickly, a different heat than from the blazing sun. A little feeling of home, even for just a moment.

Lovisa grinned suddenly, her smile crooked and bright, before stealing your suitcase from your hand.

“Come inside before you melt,” she said. “The boys are by the pool and August has already complained three times that you’re ruining dinner timing.”

“That’s surprisingly sweet of him.”

“It wasn’t sweet. He’s hungry.”

The inside of the villa was cool in the way only obscenely expensive places managed to be, the air conditioning soft and nearly silent against your overheated skin. Marble floors stretched beneath your sandals, sunlight pouring through towering windows overlooking the water somewhere below.

You barely had time to process any of it before voices drifted in from the terrace.

“Is Sunny here?”

“She better be, or Lovisa just kidnapped another woman from the street.”

“That happened one time,” Lovisa yelled back.

“Which is one time too many, babe,” August answered.

You were laughing before you’d even stepped back outside again.

Alex was sprawled across a lounge chair with tiny sunglasses on that he had to have stolen from William. August stood by the outdoor kitchen with a beer in one hand and grilling tongs already in the other. Rasmus was halfway submerged in the infinity pool, only his head visible above water, motionless enough to resemble some kind of lake creature. 

For one strange second, the knot in your stomach loosened. 

These were your people. 

“Sunny!” Rasmus called immediately, pushing himself higher against the edge of the pool. Water slicked down his shoulders as he squinted at you through the glare of the sun. 

“Holy shit, you actually came.”

“Unfortunately,” you answered automatically, dropping your carry-on bag on the terrace floor with very little grace. 

A chorus of overlapping greetings followed after that, the kind that talked over each other because nobody in this group had ever mastered the concept of taking turns.

Alex sat up in his lounge chair, just enough to squint at you over his sunglasses. “You look tired, Sunshine.”

You stared at him flatly. “Thank you. That’s exactly what a woman wants to hear after a full day of travel.”

“I’m just saying you look a little rough,” he defended. “That’s not mean.”

“And you’re definitely not balding, Alex.”

The silence that followed lasted maybe half a second before August barked out a loud laugh from beside the grill while Lovisa pointed dramatically between the two of you.

“Nature is already healing.”

Alex looked slightly offended, covering it up with a laugh as he dragged his sunglasses off completely and ran a hand through his hair like he needed confirmation it still existed.

Then your eyes caught on the one person who hadn’t said anything yet, but you’d recognize his squeaky, high-pitch laugher just about anywhere. 

William.

You’d known he’d be there, obviously. The entire trip practically revolved around him half the time. But seeing him in person after basically a year of only phone calls and scattered texts still hit you with an uncomfortable amount of force.

He was leaning back against one of the lounge chairs, shirtless already, his skin a warm golden tone from even a single day in the Riviera sun. His hair had gotten longer since hockey season ended, curling slightly at the ends from humidity, and thankfully he’d shaved the giant beard he’d been stubbornly growing all winter.

And he was looking at you straight on, like he’d been waiting for you to walk through the door all afternoon.

“There she is,” he said finally.

“Hi, William.” 

His expression softened almost immediately at the sound of your voice, and before anyone else could interrupt, he was already crossing the patio toward you. 

“Did you have a nice flight?” he asked.

You snorted quietly. “Are airports ever nice in the middle of summer?”

“Fair point.”

There was barely a second between the end of the sentence and his arms wrapping around you.

William had always hugged you like he meant it. Or maybe he hugged everyone this way. You honestly didn’t know. But there was something about the sheer familiarity of him that made your body react before your brain had the chance to catch up.

He was always so solid and warm, embracing you like it was muscle memory. 

But this hug lingered. Long enough for awareness to creep in slowly and all at once. Long enough for you to become acutely aware that he absolutely should have put a shirt on before greeting you. 

His skin was hot from the sun, chest pressed directly against yours, one hand broad and steady between your shoulder blades. You could smell sunscreen and salt and something deep underneath it that was just William. Or possibly cologne. 

Your arms tightened around him automatically before you could think too hard about it. And God, perhaps it was exhaustion, travel brain, the lingering grief that still sat heavy beneath your ribs no matter how far you traveled from Stockholm, or all three at once, but for one brief second, you wanted to stay there forever—just slowly die in his arms with your cheek pressed into the tuft of hair on his warm chest. 

“Did you shrink or something, Sunny?” he murmured, his chin brushing lightly against the top of your head.

You pulled back just enough to glare at him. “Shut up.”

His grin spread instantly, easy and boyish. “I’m really happy to see you.”

The sincerity in it caught you a little off guard. Not because William wasn’t affectionate—he was, annoyingly natural and without embarrassment. But there was something unusually earnest about the way he said it now, like your arrival had settled something restless in him.

“I’m happy to see you too.”

Behind you, Lovisa made a loud gagging noise.

“Jesus Christ,” she announced. “You two are sentimental.”

Heat rushed belatedly into your face as you stepped back fully, suddenly hyperaware of yourself all at once. Your airport clothes. Your sweaty… everything. And the small fact you’d just spent an arguably inappropriate amount of time pressed against William’s completely bare chest in front of everyone.

Including the beautiful woman who still sat on one of the lounge chairs a couple of feet back. 

William glanced backward quickly, like he’d also realized half a second too late.

“Oh—right,” he said. “Sunny, this is Alana.”

There was the slightest hesitation before he continued.

“My, uh—girlfriend. But you already knew that, of course.”

Alana. 

Seeing her in person felt oddly disorienting after months of hearing her name casually dropped into conversation. Just her name sounded like she could be one of the Hadid sisters, and you knew from pictures she wasn’t far from looking like one of those models. Even more so now that you actually saw her. She was beautiful in a way that looked effortless—jet black hair, sun-bronzed skin, tiny gold jewelry catching the light as she stood up and a bikini with more straps and strings than you figured was necessary. 

And she’d just watched you cling to her boyfriend. Fantastic. 

Alana smiled warmly anyway and stepped forward first, which somehow made you feel worse for acting so awkward. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Hopefully nothing too bad,” you said quickly, your voice coming out bright and way too fucking cheerful. It was so blatantly insincere that you immediately hated yourself for it, but if Alana noticed, she was gracious enough not to acknowledge it. 

Instead, she laughed softly, glancing toward William for a second before looking back at you. “It was mostly embarrassing childhood stories.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Which ones?”

“The boat story,” Alex answered before anyone else could. “Definitely the boat story.”

“Oh my god,” Lovisa groaned, already laughing.

Alana smiled wider. “I think the version William told involved you falling off a fishing boat and knocking your front teeth out?”

You snorted despite yourself, the memory surfacing instantly.

Your grandfather’s old fishing boat—the tiny white plastic thing with faded blue trim that all of you used to borrow every summer despite almost never actually fishing. Mostly it had become an elaborate competition to see who could shove everyone else into the water first, leaving one man standing. 

You had lost spectacularly that year.

Or more specifically, William had pushed you hard enough that your face had smacked directly against the side of the boat on the way down. Your front teeth had literally left dents in the plastic.

You’d spent the rest of the summer with a lisp and a bruised ego while William followed you around apologizing so aggressively your grandfather eventually threatened to throw him into the lake too if he didn’t shut up. 

Not exactly the kind of story you wanted William’s beautiful new girlfriend to remember you by. 

You pointed accusingly at Alex. “I need you to know I’ve never liked you.”

“That’s completely fair,” he replied easily. 

August was still laughing quietly by the grill while Rasmus floated uselessly in the pool like this conversation had nothing to do with him despite definitely participating in that incident. 

“You cried for like a week,” Lovisa added helpfully.

You groaned, dragging both hands down your face while everyone laughed around you. “I was twelve!”

And strangely enough, some of the tension finally started to ease.

Not entirely. You were still hyperaware of Alana standing there. Still aware of William nearby in the way you always seemed to be lately. But the familiar rhythm of the group had started pulling you back into it piece by piece, smoothing some of the awkward edges down.

Before another embarrassing story could surface, Lovisa clapped her hands loudly once.

“Well,” she announced. “I think Sunny needs a drink and probably a shower.”

“And sleep,” you added.

“No sleep, Sunshine,” William said immediately.

You looked over just in time to see him grab your suitcase before you could protest, already hauling it toward the stairs like it belonged to him.

“We’re going out tonight, duh.” 

Of course you were.

You sighed dramatically, exhaustion finally catching up enough to make you almost feel delirious. “Yay,” you deadpanned. “My two favorite things! Sweaty guys and house music.”

⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚

After dinner, the sun had started to settle low over the coastline, coating the entire house in a golden glimmer. Warm light spilled through the tall windows and stretched across the tiled floor in uneven honey-colored shapes. 

August had absolutely outdone himself. 

He was the only one of the boys who didn’t professionally play hockey anymore. He’d quit sometime after juniors because of a stubborn hip injury that refused to heal properly and now worked as a chef instead—which explained the deeply suburban-dad energy he’d radiated at the grill earlier, beer in hand while aggressively telling Alex he was chopping tomatoes wrong. 

You hadn’t realized how much you’d missed his cooking until you actually sat there, shoving forkfuls into your mouth and barely being able to contain yourself from moaning out loud. 

Lovisa had caught you shamelessly sopping up sauce with bread at one point and looked disgusted.

“Please remember you were raised in public,” she’d said, before doing the same thing herself. 

It hit you harder than expected, though. Sitting there at the long outdoor table while everyone talked over each other in a mixture of Swedish and English, music humming quietly somewhere behind you, the sea breeze warm against your skin.

August and Lovisa had moved to the Swedish west coast last year after he landed a position at a Michelin-star restaurant, and while you were genuinely happy for them, you hadn’t realized how much you missed having them nearby until now.

Until experiencing moments like this again.

Watching August lean down absentmindedly to kiss Lovisa’s cheek while clearing plates from the table. Watching her reach up automatically to squeeze his wrist before he disappeared inside with a stack of dishes professionally stacked in his hands. 

It made you miss high school like crazy. 

You couldn’t believe there’d once been a period of your life where all five of you—or six, technically, if you counted Alex, though back then he’d mostly just been William’s deeply irritating little brother, and honestly not much had changed—had seen each other almost every day.

You and Lovisa sat in freezing hockey stands for hours during practice, wrapped in blankets and complaining dramatically while the boys skated until midnight. Then all of you ended up piled into someone’s parents’ living room afterward, supposedly doing homework while William and August screamed at each other over video games and Rasmus fell asleep sitting upright on the couch.

Back then, none of you had needed calendars or plane tickets or group chats to stay in each other’s lives.

You’d just been there for each other.

Your suitcase still sat half-unpacked near the foot of the bed now, clothes spilling slightly from one side while your brain struggled to catch up with everything around you. That was tomorrow’s problem.

For tonight, there was only France. And your hair, unfortunately, because it was still a mess from the shower you’d taken after you arrived. 

You plugged your straightener into the bathroom outlet and exhaled tiredly, catching your reflection in the mirror as the plates heated. The dark circles beneath your eyes weren’t just from traveling anymore, no matter how much concealer you planned on weaponizing against them in the next hour.

At least your hair was about to stop looking like you’d been electrocuted.

From the bedroom, Lovisa was already spreading her makeup across the wide windowsill. Brushes, palettes, skincare, jewelry—all arranged with perfect precision despite the fact that she herself functioned like absolute chaos most of the time. It was pretty impressive, if you were honest. 

“We should invite Alana in to get ready with us, right?” you called, the straightener clamped awkwardly between your shoulder and ear while you separated another section of hair.

The silence that followed lasted just a beat too long.

“Do we have to?” 

You leaned partially out of the bathroom doorway immediately. “Lovisa.”

“What?” she asked, turning toward you with wide innocent eyes that fooled absolutely no one. She picked up a moisturizer and unscrewed the lid with what looked like pure muscle memory. “William is going to break up with her in a couple months anyway. That’s what he always does.”

“Lovisa!”

“What? It’s true.”

“That’s mean to both him and her,” you argued, pointing the straightener at her accusingly. “We don’t even know Alana yet.”

“You’re only defending him this hard because it’s William.”

“That is not true.”

“It absolutely is true.”

You opened your mouth, then closed it again. You couldn’t really argue. 

Lovisa smirked. “Exactly.”

You rolled your eyes hard enough to hurt and disappeared back into the bathroom before she could look too smug about it. The straightener hissed softly as you dragged it through another piece of hair, the motion repetitive enough to quiet your thoughts for a second.

Because maybe Lovisa wasn’t entirely wrong.

Not about Alana—she couldn’t possibly know anything substantial about her yet, and neither could you. But about William. You did defend him more than you defended other people. You always had. It came naturally enough that you rarely noticed when you were doing it.

William was just… like that. As if that explained anything.

You set the straightener down with a small sigh, palms braced briefly against the bathroom counter.

“Fine,” Lovisa announced dramatically from the bedroom. “We’ll be nice girls for once.”

You could hear the scrape of her chair legs against the tiled floor as she pushed herself upright. A moment later, her reflection crossed briefly through the bathroom mirror as she wandered toward the open bedroom door, still absentmindedly blending moisturizer into her skin.

“Alana?” she called toward the hallway. “Do you want to get ready together?”

A second later, Alana appeared around the corner, already halfway dressed for the night in a silky cream-colored slip dress that made the wrinkled pile of outfit options still in your suitcase feel deeply inadequate for the occasion.

“Oh,” she said, visibly brightening. “Yeah. I’d love that. I’ll go get my makeup.”

The moment she was gone, Lovisa wandered back toward the windowsill and dropped dramatically into her chair again, crossing one leg over the other as she reached for a makeup brush.

You watched her through the bathroom doorway for a second before shaking your head slightly.

“She seems really nice.”

“She does,” Lovisa admitted reluctantly. “Which honestly makes it worse.”

You shot her a look.

“What?” she asked defensively, though the corners of her mouth twitched. “I’m serious. If she were horrible, I could be a bitch in good conscience.”

A laugh escaped you before you could stop it, warm and sudden enough that it startled you slightly on the way out.

And, unfortunately, that was the exact moment Alana walked into your room.

For one terrible second, your brain immediately assumed the worst—that she’d heard enough to understand the context, that this entire week was about to become socially catastrophic before the first night had even started.

But Alana only paused briefly in the doorway, carrying what looked like three separate makeup bags balanced carefully in her arms.

“Oh good,” Lovisa said quickly. “Another girl with a chaotic makeup routine. Sunny gets ready in literally three minutes.” 

“No, I just don’t bring every single thing I own when I travel,” you corrected absently, crouching beside your suitcase while you dug around for something wearable. 

Alana laughed softly then, and the initial tension dissolved before it could fully settle into the room.

You held up a pair of black linen pants uncertainly from your suitcase. 

“Can I wear pants and a nice top,” you asked, glancing between them, “or are we going to a dress-and-heels kind of place?”

Lovisa didn’t even look away from the mirror she faced. “Dress and heels, babe. I’m sorry, the boys picked the club.”

You dropped your head dramatically toward your suitcase. “Well,” you muttered, already digging deeper into the disaster you’d packed, “fuck me, I guess.”

“That’s generally the hope when going out in Saint-Tropez, isn’t it?” Alana offered lightly.

You laughed before you could stop yourself again. Honestly, you needed to work on that.

Did Alana have to be funny too? It wasn’t enough that she was drop-dead gorgeous? 

You glanced up at her over the edge of your suitcase, and she smiled slightly before sitting down cross-legged on the bed near Lovisa’s makeup setup, looking entirely at ease despite the fact that she barely knew either of you.

Eventually, after what felt like twenty straight minutes of rejecting everything you’d packed, you disappeared into the bathroom to change before Lovisa could threaten to dress you in something of hers. 

The dress you finally settled on was simple by Riviera standards. Soft white fabric that skimmed your body without clinging too tightly, thin straps resting against your shoulders, the hem short enough that your first instinct upon seeing yourself in the mirror was immediately tugging it lower.

The dress wasn’t actually that revealing or out of your comfort zone; you were probably just showing off body parts that hadn’t seen the light of day since sometime last summer. Which made you vaguely uncomfortable, as if the girl in the mirror wasn’t even you. She was softer, maybe even prettier, and looked nothing like the version of yourself you carried around back home buried beneath sweaters and practical shoes and coffee stains from work.

You stared at your reflection for a second more, then sighed.

“Okay, okay,” you called reluctantly, stepping back into the bedroom. “Is this alright?”

The two girls sitting in front of the window, doing their makeup, instantly turned their heads to look at you. You couldn’t read Alana’s expression, but Lovisa was transparent, her eyes going a little wide as she whistled under her breath. 

“You should show off your legs more often, Sunny,” Lovisa said. 

“What does that even mean?” you sighed. “Just tell me if the dress is appropriate or not.” 

“It means,” Lovisa said dramatically, “that you spend too much time dressing like a divorced librarian.”

“I work with children, dumbass. I have to follow a dress code—” 

“I think you look lovely,” Alana cut in warmly.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed in her silk dress the color of champagne, makeup half-finished, and dark hair clipped away from her face. Without the full polished look from earlier, she seemed simpler somehow. A lot less easy to hate. 

“Thank you,” you said honestly. “You’re significantly kinder than Lollo.”

Alana’s gaze then drifted toward your wrist. “Are you keeping your bracelets on?”

Your hand instinctively brushed the stack looped there—faded thread bracelets tangled beside tiny beads and silver bangles, some old enough that you barely remembered getting them.

A couple were from old France trips. Others had been made by kids at the youth center where you worked in the evenings and over the summers, tiny, uneven knots tied with complete seriousness before being gifted to you like treasures. One very old one was from a hockey tournament William had played in Prague when you were both teens—the red, white, and blue threads from the Czech flag faded from years of wear. 

You still wore them all without really thinking about why.

“Why?” you asked, admittedly a little insecure about it. Maybe they looked childish to her. “Do they ruin the outfit?”

“No, no. They’re cute,” Alana said immediately. Her gaze flicked thoughtfully back toward her makeup scattered across the windowsill. “But…” She tilted her head slightly. “You should totally do colorful eyeshadow to match them.”

Lovisa barked out a laugh so violently she nearly dropped whatever product she was holding. “Don’t give her ideas,” she warned. “Sunny is completely clueless when it comes to makeup.”

“That’s not true,” you argued weakly.

“It absolutely is.”

You opened your mouth to defend yourself further before realizing you had, in fact, used the same simple routine for close to a decade now. There was nothing remotely creative about it.

Alana laughed softly at your helpless expression. “I could help you, if you want?”

You probably made a little confused face as she immediately explained herself further.

“I went to beauty school before I started living off my socials,” she added with a small laugh. “So I promise I won’t make you look like a clown.”

Your eyebrows lifted lightly. “Wait. Really?”

That somehow made Alana feel more human too. Not just William’s gorgeous influencer girlfriend dropped randomly into your friend group—but an actual person with history and jobs and old plans that maybe changed along the way.

You looked between the two of them for a second before shrugging slightly. “Only if you want to,” you said. “I don’t want to take up your time or anything.”

“Nonsense,” Alana said, patting the space beside her on the bed. “Sit down.”

You hesitated only briefly before crossing the room.

The mattress dipped slightly beneath your weight as you settled beside her. Up close, you could see the organized chaos of her makeup collection spread across the windowsill—brushes, palettes, tiny glass bottles, and compacts that all looked far more expensive than anything you owned. You assumed part of it came with her job. 

For some reason, you'd expected her to feel intimidating. You’d known she would be here so it wasn’t like her presence had surprised you. But most times when someone brought a partner on one of these trips that wasn’t already acclimatized to the group dynamics, everything would feel really off. You’d made that mistake yourself a couple of years ago and ended up breaking up with the poor guy as soon as you were back on home soil. 

There was nothing worse than a partner who didn’t mesh well with someone’s friends. Which was maybe why you felt a little confused by Alana. She almost felt too normal. Too easy to be around. And you weren't entirely sure what to do with that.

Especially now that she was about to put her hands on your face. Granted, they were manicured and smooth-looking hands, but still. Stranger danger and all that. 

She grabbed a palette and dipped a brush into a shade you couldn’t really see. You guessed you had to trust her with this. 

“Close your eyes,” she instructed gently.

You obeyed, feeling the soft press of her fingers against your temple as she tilted your face slightly toward the light spilling through the windows. The brush moving across your eyelid tickled at first, and then it was soft as she blended the shadow into place.

For a few moments, all you could hear was the rustle of makeup products, the faint hum of music drifting up from downstairs, and the distant sound of the boys arguing about something entirely unimportant.

Some things really never changed.

“So,” Alana said after a moment, conversational now. “How'd you land the nickname Sunny?”

You kept your eyes closed. “I’m from a place in Stockholm that has sun in the name. And hockey players can’t resist an easy nickname, I guess.” You smiled faintly. “Willy hasn’t given you one yet?”

“No,” Alana said. “Just Alana.”

“I’m sure that’ll come eventually.”

Lovisa leaned back in her chair by the window—you could hear it squeak against the floor even if your closed eyes stopped you from actually seeing her. You could easily picture the smug expression on her face, though. 

“Well, Just Alana,” she said. “How’d you meet William? He literally doesn’t tell us anything anymore.”

“Lovisa,” you warned immediately.

“What?” she said. “I'm being friendly.”

“But you don’t have to interrogate her.” 

Alana laughed softly before answering anyway. “No, it’s okay.” 

You felt the brush leave your face briefly as she reached for another palette, and you dared to open your eyes again. 

“We actually have a couple mutual friends,” Alana explained. “We kept seeing each other at events and stuff. Charity events mostly. Sponsor things. Y’know?”

“No, we don't know,” Lovisa said. “Because he doesn't tell us—”

“—I think that sounds like a great way to meet someone, right, Lovisa?” you interrupted. “That's how you met August, after all. Through mutual friends.”

That made Lovisa shut her mouth instantly. You didn’t need her to intimidate Alana more. 

Alana smiled again, shrugging lightly. “Honestly, William didn’t tell me much about you guys either. He said you needed to be experienced. I think I’m starting to understand that now.”

“That’s because we’re all insane,” Lovisa said.

“We’re charming once you get to know us, I promise,” you added. 

Alana shook her head, smiling to herself as she brushed something softer into the corners of your eyes. You closed them out of courtesy again. 

“I didn’t even realize you and August were together,” she admitted to Lovisa. “Until you called dibs on the same room yesterday.”

You let out a giggle, opening one eye just enough to catch Lovisa's reaction in the mirror. “We don’t believe they’re a couple either,” you said dryly. “So honestly, that’s a fair assumption.”

Lovisa looked scandalized. “Just because we’re not heavy on PDA doesn't mean we’re not a couple,” she defended. “C’mon, we all think that shit is disgusting, right?”

The thing was, Lovisa was probably right. Not about the PDA necessarily, but about the fact that none of you had ever really been that affectionate in public. At least not in the traditional sense.

You and the boys had spent years making fun of her and August for dating, mostly because the relationship itself had felt so absurd when it happened. One day they were two stubborn idiots who'd been friends forever, and the next they were apparently in love.

The announcement had genuinely destabilized the friend group for several weeks. Mostly because nobody knew how to act. You’d spent an entire France trip staring at them like they were participating in some elaborate social experiment. But eventually everyone realized nothing had actually changed. The only real difference was that they left together at the end of the night.

Sometimes there was a hand resting on a knee. A kiss against a temple. Small, little comfortable things. The kind that almost disappeared if you weren't paying attention.

“That’s Scandinavian romance for you, Alana,” you laughed. “Acting like friends in public even though you share a mortgage.”

“I actually kind of agree with Lovisa,” she admitted, looking at you with a sideways smile. “I hate excessive PDA too.”

“See?” Lovisa pointed immediately. “Finally. Another sane woman.” Then she pointed directly at you. “You're just single and touch-starved, Sunny. Admit it.”

“What? How did this turn against me?”

Lovisa looked overly pleased with herself.

Alana grinned slightly as she leaned closer again, dabbing something near your brow bone. “How long have you been single?”

You honestly had to think about it. Was twenty-eight years really the answer? You didn't know. There had been dates. A handful of almost-relationships. People you'd liked well enough. People who'd liked you more than you liked them. Months that looked like something from the outside until they quietly dissolved into nothing. But if someone asked you to name an ex-boyfriend? You weren't sure anyone came to mind.

“Uh…” You stuttered lightly. “Last time I dated someone was maybe eight months ago?But we only saw each other a couple of times. Nothing serious.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever been serious with someone,” Lovisa said. 

You knew she wasn't trying to be malicious. Lovisa rarely was. But the comment landed somewhere uncomfortable anyway, poking at a truth you knew too well but never wanted to admit to. 

“Shut up.” 

“Never,” she laughed. 

You pointed a finger vaguely in her direction without opening your eyes. “And for your information,” you informed her, “I'm thriving as single.”

Lovisa rolled her eyes so dramatically you swore you could hear it. Alana, meanwhile, was smiling softly to herself.

“You don’t miss it?” she asked after a second. “Having someone to come home to?”

You hummed thoughtfully. The truth was, your life had become very comfortable lately. If you ignored the dead grandpa and bickering parents for a moment, you were practically set for life, almost suspiciously so. 

You had your routines.

You woke up alone in a very comfortable bed. You ate breakfast alone. You took the subway to work alone. You spent your lunch breaks alone unless a student wanted to sit in your classroom and tell you about whatever catastrophe had consumed their sixteen-year-old life that week. You went home alone. You ate dinner alone. You spent your evenings reading books or watching horrible reality television alone.

And the horrible thing was you genuinely liked it. You were so comfortable alone that an outside observer might've briefly diagnosed you with something where antisocial was a symptom.

“I bought a pregnancy pillow for cuddles,” you said after thinking about it, “and I moved into a place with a dishwasher recently, so honestly? I’m pretty set.”

For a moment, the room went silent. Then Lovisa dropped something. You opened your eyes to realize she was staring at you in horror.

“Oh, and those Satisfyer toys work better than any man I’ve been with anyway,” you added. 

Alana choked on her own laughter beside you while Lovisa put her head into her hands. 

“Wow,” Lovisa breathed. “She doesn’t even miss dick. I think she’s beyond saving for real, Alana.”

The sound that came out of Alana was somewhere between a laugh and a wheeze. “You seriously don’t miss anything about it?”

You considered it, and maybe there was a thing or two you couldn’t do alone. 

“Okay,” you admitted reluctantly, “it would be nice to have someone rub my back every once in a while and maybe… eat me out until I see stars. But that’s it. I don’t miss anything else.”

Lovisa slapped the windowsill triumphantly. “I knew you weren’t hopeless, Sunny. We’re getting you laid tonight!”

“Oh my god. That’s not what I—”

“What?” she grinned. “This is huge progress for you.”

You swallowed the rest of your words quickly. The worst part was that both of them were laughing now. Together. Like they'd known each other for years instead of less than two days.

“Wait,” Alana said slowly. “Sunny, you actually… enjoy that part?”

Both you and Lovisa stared at her. 

“You don’t?” Lovisa asked. 

Alana shrugged a shoulder, looking suddenly sheepish. It was the first genuinely awkward thing she'd admitted all evening. A faint flush crept into her cheeks as she glanced down at the makeup brush in her hand.

“I mean—I do sometimes. But William is like overly enthusiastic about it.” She laughed softly through her embarrassment. “I don’t know, I guess I just don’t want it that often—”

You and Lovisa reacted at exactly the same time, both making identical sounds of horror, landing somewhere between a screech and a gagging noise. 

“I’m gonna stop you right there actually,” Lovisa cut in. “I’m starting to like you, I really do, but William is basically a brother to us, and knowing he’s a munch is really gross.” 

“Oh my god, Lovisa. Don’t call him that—” 

“What?” Lovisa said. “It’s apparently true!”

You pressed both hands over your face, careful not to ruin Alana’s work, but you also had to hide from this nightmare of a conversation. 

Secrets being uncovered about each other's sex lives weren't unusual in this group. 

Unfortunately. 

There were things you knew about your friends that no person should ever know. The image currently forming in your head of William and Alana ranked dangerously high on that list. Only one memory really competed with it—the year Alex and Rasmus had decided on having a threesome during a France trip and somehow forgotten there were other people in the house trying to sleep.

The less said about that week, the better.

“Did he do it even with that stupid beard he had all season?” you asked before you could stop yourself. 

Silence.

The second the words left your mouth, regret hit you like a freight train.

Alana made a strangled noise, and Lovisa physically folded in half. “Sunny, what the fuck,” she wheezed.

“Wait, don’t answer that, Alana!” you said immediately afterward, slapping a hand over your mouth. “Actually, I’m leaving this room now—”

The girls completely dissolved into dying laughter while you attempted to stand up blindly, only for Alana to grab your wrist gently.

“Nope,” she said through a grin. “Sit back down. I’m almost done.”

You groaned but obeyed. 

The laughter lingered long after the conversation moved on. Little bursts of it escaped every few minutes whenever someone made eye contact. You'd get it under control, then catch Lovisa grinning at you through the mirror and immediately start laughing again. By the end your stomach actually hurt.

“There. All done,” Alana said after a while, clapping her hands together. 

You opened your eyes fully and turned toward the mirror.

Across your eyelids was a light blue shimmer, reflecting with iridescent glitter. Closer to your lashes, she’d smudged out a dark navy shadow. 

It was unlike anything else you’d ever tried, but it wasn’t overpowering. Just enough to make your eyes look a little brighter and more intense, pulling the shades from your colorful jewelry. Just enough to make you feel prettier than you had in…  God. You couldn't even remember how long.

“Wow,” you said honestly. “I don’t even recognize myself.”

Alana smiled. “That’s good, right?”

You turned toward her. Toward the girl you'd expected to tolerate for William's sake and somehow ended up genuinely liking even after spending mere hours with her.

“Yes, absolutely,” you beamed, unable to stop smiling back at her. “I love it.”

⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚

The club sat directly against the water.

One of those half-inside, half-outside places that seemed purpose-built for picture-perfect summer nights. The dance floor glowed beneath shifting colors, clacking softly whenever high heels struck the illuminated panels. Beyond it, a glass railing wrapped around the terrace overlooking the coast, where dark waves rolled lazily against the rocks below.

Because of course it did.

Everything in Saint-Tropez felt engineered to be beautiful in a way that bordered on ridiculous. White lights woven through palm trees. Superyachts glowing in the harbor like scattered stars on a night sky. Bass heavy enough that you could feel it vibrating through the soles of your shoes before you'd even made it past the bouncer.

By midnight, the place had dissolved fully into sweat and noise and bodies moving too close together.

August had disappeared almost immediately after arriving, dragged toward the bar by people he apparently knew from the restaurant scene. You suspected he was responsible for choosing this club in the first place. Alex was deep into the kind of drunken social confidence that made him incapable of speaking below a yell, simultaneously attracting and repelling women in equal measure. Rasmus had somehow befriended a group of Italian men close to twice his age over cigarettes and appeared determined to spend the entire evening with them, looking like a scene out of a bad mafia movie. 

And Lovisa and Alana had decided you were their personal project for the evening.

Not a single song passed without one of them identifying a new candidate. Someone for you to try out, whatever that now meant. You'd gotten surprisingly good at rejecting men from a distance because of it. No man-buns. No sunglasses indoors. No Hawaiian shirts. Lovisa insisted you were being shallow. You insisted you simply didn't want to be set up with strangers on a vacation that was supposed to be about seeing your friends.

Especially after the summer you'd already had.

You were leaning against the terrace railing beside Lovisa, enjoying the brief relief of cooler air after dancing, when Alana reappeared carrying three drinks balanced carefully between both hands.

“I come bearing vodka sodas,” she announced.

“An angel among women,” Lovisa beamed, taking one and nearly finishing half in a single sip.

You accepted yours with a grateful smile.

Honestly, Alana was making it increasingly difficult to dislike her.

She laughed at everyone's jokes, including weird inside jokes that didn’t even make sense to you anymore. She remembered details from conversations. Never tried too hard to insert herself into the group but never seemed intimidated by it either. Somehow she'd managed to slide naturally into a dynamic that had taken years to build.

Which was probably why everyone liked her already. Even Lovisa, and you weren’t even sure she liked you most of the time. 

“So,” Lovisa announced suddenly. The tone alone made you dread her following words. “We're officially fixing this now. No more lallygagging.”

“Fixing what?” you asked even though you knew. 

“Whatever weird celibate nun era you’re going through,” she said. “How about tall, dark, and handsome in the corner booth?” 

As your gaze scanned the room, trying to make out whichever guy she was now talking about, you instead found William—his eyes already locked on yours. 

He’d been more anonymous than the rest of the group tonight. 

He stood near the bar with August and two strangers you didn’t recognize, drink loose in one hand. His white linen shirt was unbuttoned low enough that wearing it must’ve been simply symbolic at that point. August was saying something to him animatedly, but William’s attention looked split at best.

Like part of him was here and another part of him was completely elsewhere. If you didn’t know him, his blank stare might’ve even made you uncomfortable. 

Alana had been standing with them earlier when she'd gone to get drinks, but she'd drifted back to your side within minutes. Maybe they simply weren't one of those couples who stuck like velcro on each other. Lovisa and August definitely weren’t, and they were your closest point of reference. Then again, Lovisa and August also spent half their relationship pretending they weren't dating.

“Stop staring at William,” Lovisa said, and you nearly choked on your drink. “And look at our cute candidate instead.” 

You denied it on instinct, but the knowing look she gave you made it clear she wasn't buying it. With a pointed gesture toward the corner booth, she redirected your attention back to the latest man she'd decided was perfect for you.

You followed the direction she pointed, and the man sitting in the corner booth looked like he'd walked directly out of a cologne advertisement. Dark hair in defined curls, sleeves rolled up at his forearms, a drink balanced lazily between his fingers that looked suspiciously like a Negroni. 

“He’s not even that cute,” you tried. “He’s got a weird necklace on.” 

The necklace in question was, admittedly, completely normal. A silver chain on the chunkier side, but it looked nice against his tan skin. 

“Don't be so picky,” Lovisa groaned.

“He is cute, Sunny. William wears an amulet, that necklace is nothing, I promise,” Alana offered humorously after glancing over.

You narrowed your eyes at her. “Whose side are you even on?”

They both laughed while Lovisa grabbed your wrist before you could escape. “Relax, Sunny,” she said, steering you forward. It was honestly a firm push right between your shoulder blades. “You don’t have to marry him. Just flirt a little.”

Behind you, Alana offered an encouraging thumbs-up.

By the time you reached the booth, the man had already noticed you approaching.

He stood immediately. That was polite. Good posture. Very French.

“Bonsoir,” he said, attention landing fully on you.

Behind you, you could practically feel the girls watching. They’d moved towards the boys at the bar, and suddenly an entire committee seemed to have formed around your social life. The awareness crawled across the back of your neck like static that you desperately tried to ignore. 

“Hi,” you answered.

The conversation started easily enough after that. His name was Jean-Luc. He worked in architecture in Nice. He was funny in a smooth, effortless kind of way that suggested he’d done this many times before. It also made everything he said sound more interesting than it probably was. 

He asked questions and seemed to care about the answers. When you told him you taught English, he looked genuinely horrified.

“Teenagers?” he repeated. “Every day?”

“Unfortunately.”

“I think I would rather be unemployed.”

And while that was a tone-deaf and privileged thing to say, you laughed along because you could tell he meant it as a joke. 

The smile he gave you afterward was warm enough that you immediately understood why Lovisa had picked him out of an entire club full of people. It was terribly unfortunate because now she'd never let you hear the end of it.

Somewhere behind you, yet another song started. The bass rolled through the terrace beneath your feet while voices and laughter blended into one continuous hum. The sea glittered beyond the railing, dark and endless beneath the lights from the harbor.

You let yourself enjoy the conversation for some reason. You stopped paying attention to where everyone else was. Stopped wondering what the boys were doing. Just let this cute Frenchman ask you questions without any substance, but at least it felt easy for once. 

— 

William had been nursing the same drink long enough for the ice to melt. The realization came to him somewhere in the middle of one of August's stories. Or maybe the end. He wasn't entirely sure. The music was too loud, the club was too crowded, and his attention kept drifting before he could hold onto anything for very long.

“...and then he tells me they don’t even have halibut on the menu—”

William blinked. “What?”

August stopped mid-sentence. For a moment he simply stared, and then he laughed. “That's exactly my point.”

William frowned. “What point?”

“That you've been somewhere else all night.”

The accusation should've been easy to dismiss. He could've just picked up on the last thing August said and let him continue the story. What even was a halibut, anyway? Some kind of fish?

Instead, William found himself quiet again, gaze drifting across the club.

The dance floor pulsed beneath shifting lights. Alex was talking to three different women at once and somehow losing all of them simultaneously. Rasmus was still missing in action. The sea beyond the terrace glittered black beneath the harbor lights.

“Okay, what’s wrong with you?” August asked.

“Nothing,” William mumbled. 

“Liar.”

The bartender slid another round of drinks down the polished counter. Somewhere behind them, the music shifted into another song, bass vibrating through the floorboards beneath William's sneakers.

August sighed dramatically. “You've had that exact expression since you arrived yesterday.”

“What expression?”

“The one where you look like somebody stole your dogs.”

William snorted. “My dogs are fine. They’re with my parents.”

“You know what I mean, Willy.” August nudged his shoulder. “You look like you don't want to be here.”

That was the frustrating part. He desperately wanted to be here.

The season was over. Training camp was months away. His friends were here. France looked exactly the way it always had. You were here. The trip was complete now. The group was complete. For months he'd been looking forward to these two weeks.

So why did he still feel like he hadn't quite settled into it? Like some part of him was still waiting for something.

William blamed the drinks for now. Or the humid heat pressing against his skin. Or the fact that nightclubs seemed specifically designed to overstimulate people until their brains stopped working properly.

Any explanation was better than examining the feeling too closely. He’d probably have a weird dream about it tonight anyway that either explained it to him in grave detail, or sent this brewing panicky feeling into something solid and terrifying. 

“You know,” August said slowly, “Alana is going to dump you if you keep ignoring her.”

William frowned. “I'm not ignoring her. She was here literally five minutes ago.” 

His eyes found her automatically. Alana and Lovisa were dancing together beneath the shifting lights, wobbly heels jumping up and down on the floor. Neither of them seemed particularly concerned about where their boyfriends had wandered off to. Their dresses moved easily with every movement, silk catching flashes of gold and pink from the lights overhead.

“See?” William pointed vaguely in their direction and August followed his gaze. “You're not with Lovisa every second of the day and nobody bats an eye.”

“That’s because we’re not in the honeymoon phase,” August argued. 

He said it simply—a mere assumption that since William and Alana were still pretty new to their relationship, certain stereotypes would apply to them. But a strange realization drifted through William. He wasn't sure he'd ever had a honeymoon phase. Not with Alana. Not with any woman he'd dated, actually.

At least not in the way people always described it. There had never been that can't-stop-thinking-about-her feeling. Never any overwhelming urge to learn every single thing about a new person, or drop other responsibilities just because of love. Mostly he'd just enjoyed their company. Enjoyed having someone who could be around at all times. 

The thought lingered for a moment before dissolving beneath the music.

Across the terrace, laughter carried over the bass. A laugh William could recognize anywhere. Slightly louder than most, usually drifting off into a snorting sound before any real cackle could be formed. His attention wandered before he could stop it. Toward you, and whatever guy you were talking to. 

He seemed to be doing most of the work, honestly. Talking with his hands. Leaning forward every time he told a story. The sort of guy who was probably charming in multiple languages and knew exactly how charming he was.

You looked relaxed, though. More relaxed than when Lovisa practically shoved you across the club toward him. Whatever initial resistance you'd had appeared to be gone now. Your shoulders were loose. Your smile came easier. Every so often your head tipped back with a laugh at something the man said.

William watched you for a good moment. You didn't look back at him once, which was what finally made him drag his attention away.

“Sunny can handle herself, you know.”

William's eyes snapped back toward August. “What?”

August took a slow drink, looking entirely too pleased with himself. “You keep checking on her.”

William denied it, but the look August gave him made it clear neither of them believed that. It was the same look he'd been getting since they were teenagers—the one that appeared whenever August caught him in something before he'd caught himself.

The accusation bothered him more than it should have.

He frowned into his glass. “I'm just looking out for her,” he said. “Is that so wrong?”

August froze. “Oh.”

William immediately regretted speaking. “Shut up.”

August's grin came back slowly, spreading across his face. “I didn't even say anything.”

William groaned and took another drink, hoping that would be the end of it.

It wasn't.

A moment later, movement across the terrace caught his eye. You were standing now, leaning down to say something to the guy over the music. He nodded immediately, smiling as you gestured toward the interior of the club before disappearing into the crowd alone.

August followed William's gaze without needing any explanation.

“There she goes,” he said, amusement creeping into his voice.

William didn't bother responding.

“You should go talk to her.”

That finally earned him a laugh. “Why?”

“Because whatever's wrong with you is clearly above my pay grade.” August lifted his glass before taking another sip. “Your mood is Sunny's specialty, not mine.”

William rolled his eyes even if the comment was true. 

You were the only person that wasn’t in his immediate family that he felt comfortable sharing his emotions with. The deep, underlying emotions tended to even weird himself out. He could talk about hockey with the boys, but you understood hockey and everything else. 

A few moments later, he set his still half-empty drink on the bar. August was right. Something was wrong with him, and he needed help figuring it out. Or maybe he simply hadn't had a chance to properly talk to you since you'd arrived, and he was desperately needing that. 

Either way, before August could make another comment, William pushed away from the bar and headed into the crowd after you.

—

It felt like the first time you’d been alone all night. Maybe even all day, if you counted the airport.

The bathroom had been packed with women fixing their makeup and taking mirror selfies, so you'd escaped almost immediately afterward, following the curve of the terrace until you found a quieter corner tucked behind a row of potted palms and white stone walls.

For a few precious minutes, nobody needed anything from you.

No one dragging you onto the dance floor for another round of jumping to house music you didn't even like. No more well-meaning attempts to throw you at handsome French architects. Or Italian lawyers. Or whatever the hell that American stockbroker had been.

You rested your forearms against the railing and let your gaze drift toward the water. Below, the Mediterranean Sea rolled endlessly into darkness, black waves catching silver streaks of moonlight. Salt hung in the air alongside the lingering sting of vodka clinging to your breath.

Maybe you were drunker than you'd realized. The feeling seemed to collect itself all at once now that you'd stopped moving, settling behind your eyes and making the world sway gently back and forth. 

“You good, Sunshine?”

You smiled before you even turned around. William was walking toward you with his hands shoved into his pockets.

“Oh, yeah. I’m good,” you murmured. “Just needed a break from being a contestant on Lovisa’s personal dating show.” 

He laughed softly, leaning his forearms against the railing beside you.

“That’s fair.” 

Up close, you could smell alcohol on him too. Not to make him appear sloppy, just enough for the edges to soften around him. His smile lingering longer, his laughter a little more unguarded. Cologne clung to his warm skin too, mixed with the sweat from the crowded club. 

Fuck. You'd even missed the way he smelled.

For a while, neither of you said anything.

That wasn't unusual. One of the reasons you'd become friends in the first place was because silence never seemed to bother either of you. Or maybe it was just you who liked silence, and William had spent the last fifteen years learning to tolerate it.

He looked like the perfect Swede at first glance, but every now and then something gave away that he’d been raised in Canada. His inability to regulate the volume of his own voice was one of them.

Fourteen years old. The new kid at school. He'd had a terrible accent back then, constantly mixing English into his Swedish.

You still remembered the skating trip where you'd first really noticed him.

One of those bright winter days when the entire school got packed onto buses and driven to the local bandy rink. Kids spent hours skating in circles, drinking hot chocolate, falling over, and complaining about hand-me-down skates not fitting right. 

A group of boys had decided it was hilarious to skate as fast as they could toward girls before spraying them with snow or simply knocking them over like bowling pins.

One of them had caught you hard enough that you'd landed flat on your back in front of half the class. You remembered the taste of blood from accidentally biting your lip more than the fall itself.

The memory was fuzzy now. Maybe half concussed. 

Except for William. The memory of him was still crystal clear. 

You remembered him appearing seemingly out of nowhere, helping you up on your feet again. You also remembered him telling the other kid to fuck off in English, which was harsher than any curse word you’d known in Swedish at the time. At fourteen years old, it had sounded impossibly cool. It had landed him a reputation as a bad boy immediately. 

But William didn’t have a mean bone in his body. He still didn’t. 

He’d just skated with you towards the bleachers, and sat with you in silence until you stopped pouting about your bleeding lip. Not one word about the tears threatening to fall from your eyes, or how absolutely terrible you were at skating. He'd even shared the Oreos his mom packed for him, and only laughed a little when biting into one made you wince.

William still looked eerily similar to that boy sometimes. Especially now, standing beside you, content to leave the silence alone.

You watched the waves, and William appeared to be watching you. His eyes drifted toward your face properly for the first time since he'd walked over. And stayed there.

“What?” you finally asked. “Something wrong with my face?” 

His brow furrowed slightly like he was only just realizing he’d been staring. “Nothing.” His gaze flicked briefly toward your eyes again. “I like your, uh…" He rubbed a hand briefly against the back of his neck. “The makeup. The blue on your eyes.”

You'd almost forgotten about it.

Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was the fact that you'd spent the last hours being pulled around a nightclub unwillingly. At some point, the dress and makeup had stopped feeling unusual.

You’d only briefly caught yourself in the bathroom mirror, and not really thought twice about your appearance. You'd gone back to feeling like your summer-self. Or as close to her as you could manage.

You blinked. “You do?” 

“Yeah, of course.” William’s expression tightened slightly. Almost like he'd realized halfway through the conversation that he wasn't explaining himself very well. “I mean, you don’t look like yourself, but it looks nice. I promise.” 

You stared at him. A full second passed. Then two.

Admittedly, the words landed a little strangely. Because, while he wasn't wrong, it also wasn’t the kindest thing to say. 

You didn't look much like yourself tonight. The dress wasn't something you'd normally wear. The makeup definitely wasn’t. That was all true. But hearing someone point it out felt like you were playing dress-up suddenly, masquerading as someone you obviously weren’t, to him at least. 

William groaned at your reaction. “That sounded worse than I meant it.”

A laugh escaped you. “Oh my God.”

“You know what I meant,” he insisted. 

“I’m not sure I do.”

“You're impossible,” he muttered.

The frustration in his voice only made you laugh harder. Because for someone who spent half his life talking to reporters, William was remarkably bad at explaining himself sometimes.

“You look good, Sunshine.” His voice softened slightly on the nickname. “That's what I meant.”

The warmth that spread through your chest felt entirely disproportionate to a simple compliment. Which was absolutely ridiculous. People complimented each other all the time. It was one of life’s easiest pleasures—people being kind just for the sake of it. 

You'd spent half the evening telling Alana she looked beautiful. Lovisa called everyone hot. None of it ever lodged itself somewhere beneath your ribs like this.

Maybe because William almost never noticed things like makeup. Maybe because he'd known your face for over half your life. Braces, Acne. Bad haircuts. Tear-streaked. Sunburned. Exhausted. Half-asleep and fully asleep, mouth wide open and drooling. 

William had seen every version of you that existed. And somehow this was the one he'd decided to comment on. The one that didn’t even look like you. 

“Oh,” you said, verbally stumbling. “Thanks. Alana did it.”

A small smile pulled briefly at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah?”

“She’s really good at it.”

“She’ll be happy you said that,” he said lightly.

The conversation should’ve ended there probably. Instead, William stayed beside you.

Close enough that your shoulders brushed once when someone pushed past behind you on their way back toward the club. Neither of you moved away.

“So,” he said eventually, voice a little quieter beneath the music now. “Is Lollo's dating show successful at least?”

“Not really,” you snorted. “I’m starting to think maybe I don’t like French men. Beautiful country, but rude and boring men.”

That earned a laugh from him. “Hm.”

His eyes drifted briefly back toward the main terrace. Toward where Jean-Luc—or Luc, or whatever his name had been—was presumably still inside somewhere. Waiting for you or maybe already talking to someone else. You honestly didn't know. You hadn't thought about him since leaving.

“That guy earlier seemed pretty interested, though,” William continued.

You glanced sideways at William. “He was fine,” you answered carefully.

“Just fine?”

A laugh escaped you. “Don’t sound so offended on his behalf.”

William looked away toward the water, hiding his smile behind his hand for a moment. You knew that expression, like he was physically having to stop himself from saying something, or just laughing way too loud. 

“I’m serious,” you continued. “I’m not exactly looking for a husband between the DJ booth and champagne buckets.”

“Good,” he said automatically.

The word slipped out so easily you weren’t even sure he realized he’d said it.

Your eyebrows lifted slightly.

William blinked once, and then seemed to catch up with what he'd actually said. “I mean,” he corrected quickly, “the guys here are usually assholes.”

Your first instinct was to point out that he’d historically been one of those assholes, but that wasn’t even true. 

Sure, he'd flirted when he was single. Most summers, though, William spent more time sitting beside you and Lovisa than he did chasing women around bars. While August, Alex and Rasmus had worked their way through half the female population of southern France through the years, William somehow always ended up by your side. 

He'd never really needed to try very hard anyway. If William wanted attention, he got it. That was how he landed girlfriend after girlfriend throughout his entire life basically. 

You turned toward him fully now. “I can handle myself, you know?” 

“I know,”he said,meeting your gaze without hesitation.

“Then stop worrying.”

A small crease appeared between his brows. “I wasn't worrying.”

“Right. Sure thing.”

William rolled his eyes. “I was just looking out for you.” 

His reasoning landed with frustrating familiarity. Because that was always the answer.

It was the same thing he’d said when you were just a kid, sitting on the ice trying not to cry because your lip was bleeding. The same thing he'd said when he started walking you home after school in the wintertime when it was pitch dark outside. The same thing he'd said over the phone when you failed your master’s thesis opposition and refused to speak to anyone for a week straight.

He was just… looking out for you. 

As if it was the most natural thing in the world. As if caring about you wasn't something he actively chose to do. As if it was simply part of who he was.

And maybe it was. Maybe he also looked after everyone else. There was nothing special about it. You always swallowed it down before it could become anything special in your mind, anyway. 

“Oh my god, William,” you sighed, flailing with your arms in frustration, bracelets rattling with the movement. “Go dance with your girlfriend or something!” 

His expression immediately shifted into one of exaggerated offense. “Wow.”

“No, seriously.” You nudged his shoulder lightly with your own. “We have two weeks to catch up. Don't stand out here with me like some loser.”

A surprised laugh escaped him. “I'm the loser here?”

“Yes. Biggest one I’ve ever seen.”

⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚

The next morning arrived exactly as every summer’s morning was supposed to. Very slowly, comfortably warm and breezy at the same time, and just a little too bright.

You woke up squinting at sunlight pouring through the curtains, your mouth dry, your head pleasantly hungover, and one leg tangled in the thin bedsheets that had somehow wrapped themselves around your ankle during the night. You hadn't yet reached the age where hangovers lasted three days and rendered you incapable of functioning as a human being, but you were getting closer.

That was a deeply unsettling realization.

You lay there for longer than you'd like to admit, basking in the comfort of the bed while trying to gather your thoughts from the day before. Being on this trip again was always fun. Hanging out with your friends was fun. Meeting Alana for the first time was fun. 

Everything waiting for you back in Stockholm was considerably less fun.

No matter how many times your parents had told you it was okay to leave for two weeks, it still felt wrong somehow. Temporary. Like putting a bandage on a wound much bigger and hoping it would magically heal while you weren't looking.

Ugh.

Couldn't things just sort themselves out on their own? Why were active decisions always the answer to making progress in life?

You rolled onto your stomach and buried your face in the pillow, muffling a groan.

Around you, the house had started waking up too. You noticed it by distant sounds, filtering through the walls. Flip-flops slapping down the stairs, a door closing somewhere downstairs, the microwave beeping. The low, comfortable murmur of conversation.

It was annoyingly nice to have people around. Even your fiercely independent self could admit that. Humans were so cute with all their little routines and idiosyncrasies.

You suddenly heard the scream of a familiar voice, followed by “August, I swear to God—” and the splash of Lovisa hitting the pool. 

You smiled to yourself. After all, you had a wonderfully beautiful thing to wake up to. 

By the time you finally made it outside—swimsuit on, sunglasses firmly in place, an iced coffee clutched between your hands alongside your chosen beach read—the rest of the villa was already in full operation. 

The boys occupied the pool. Or more accurately, the pool occupied the boys. It looked like a half-hearted attempt at water polo involving a blow-up beach ball, and a very serious attempt at drowning one another.

Alex was trying to drown August. August was trying to drown Alex back. Rasmus appeared committed to helping both sides simultaneously while laughing hard enough to become completely useless.

William was in the middle of it, which wasn't surprising. Every summer he started out pretending to be mature before inevitably reverting back into a teenage boy the second water became involved.

You watched him disappear beneath the surface after August launched himself at him. Three seconds later he emerged again, shoving August underwater with enough force to create a wave that sloshed over the edge of the pool.

“Good morning, idiots,” you muttered.

“Good morning, Sunshine.”

Lovisa glanced up at you from her sun lounger. She wore an oversized sunhat, enormous sunglasses, and an expression that told you yesterday’s drinks had hit her a little harder than they had you. Somehow she was almost completely dry despite having been thrown into the pool earlier. That was how hot it was outside. 

You collapsed into the empty lounger beside her, the warm fabric pressing pleasantly against your skin. Every inch of your body immediately approved of the decision to lie back down.

The stone patio radiated heat from the morning sun. Lavender grew from oversized terracotta pots scattered around the terrace, filling the air with that distinctly southern French scent that somehow made everything feel expensive, and faintly soapy. 

The Mediterranean glittered impossibly blue in the distance beyond the hillside.

The view was actually obscene. This entire house was obscene. The fact that this had somehow become your yearly tradition remained an absurd thought.

Across from you, Alana looked up from her book. “Alive?”

You laughed, lifting your coffee slightly. “I think so.”

The boys continued their ongoing attempt to commit manslaughter by pool game. Lovisa stretched out in the sun like a lizard on a warm rock. Alana disappeared back into her novel, so you decided to dive into yours too. 

The cover cast a shadow across your stomach as you settled deeper into the lounger, one knee bent, sunglasses slipping slightly down your nose. The book you'd chosen looked absurdly large resting against your lap. Infinite Jest, printed in bright neon lettering against a cloudy blue sky. You'd had several options in your suitcase. 

Naturally, you'd gravitated toward the longest one.

You barely managed three pages before Lovisa commented on it.

“Fucking hell, Sunny. Was your suitcase not heavy enough?” she laughed. “You had to pack a literal brick?”

“It’s not that bad,” you argued. 

You glanced down at the thick paperback. The spine was already creased in several places, multicolored tabs protruding from the pages like a thousand tiny flags. The thing looked diseased with the way you'd attacked it.

You saw no point in being precious about books. They were meant to be read.

“It’s the size of a microwave,” Lovisa laughed again. 

Alana leaned forward from her lounger, curiosity winning out over her book. “How many pages even is that thing?” she asked. 

“A little over a thousand,” you shrugged.

Both women looked mildly horrified. You couldn't really blame them. Books of this size were ridiculous. A feat to write and an even greater feat to finish. Probably a feat that could've been accomplished with several hundred fewer pages, if you were being honest. Even most language teachers would admit that.

“What could someone possibly write about for that long?” Lovisa groaned. 

“Tennis,” you said. “But also addiction and capitalism. It’s got it all.”

That somehow made her look even more annoyed. Maybe because the answer told her absolutely nothing. The truth was, you weren't entirely sure what the book was about yet either. You were only a couple hundred pages in. Practically a fraction finished.

You'd picked it up because of one of your students.

Back in the spring semester, a sixteen-year-old boy named Hugo had submitted a twenty-page analysis on the novel. Not the book report you'd actually assigned. An analysis. Thousands of words of densely packed observations, theories, references, and arguments that bounced somewhere between genuine brilliance and a teenager deliberately trying to rage-bait his teacher.

You'd spent half an evening reading it. Then another evening rereading it, trying to figure out what grade a paper like that was supposed to receive. Usually extra work annoyed you. Every now and then, though, you stumbled across something fascinating.

The best students often did that. They found cracks in books you'd never noticed yourself. They introduced you to authors you would've walked past in a bookstore. Sometimes they were completely wrong. Sometimes they discovered something remarkable. Either way, it was always nice to see a kid genuinely care about learning. It reminded you why you loved teaching so much.

“I had a student write about it,” you explained. “And it was either the most brilliant thing I've ever read or complete nonsense.”

“Well, which was it?” Lovisa pushed. 

“I genuinely do not know,” you admitted. “I could only grade him on the effort because I hadn't read it, so now I'm trying.”

That earned a laugh from Alana, and you smiled a little to yourself. 

There was something deeply satisfying about not knowing the answer to something. Most people seemed desperate for certainty. You'd built an entire career around asking questions that didn't have definite answers. Well, most of the time. Grammar, structure, and references still had rules for a reason.

Alana tilted her head, eyeing the book. “But you’ve already annotated it.”

“No, these are for the endnotes.” 

“The what?”

“The endnotes. There are about two hundred pages of them,” you continued, lifting the book slightly. You knew exactly how ridiculous it sounded. The grin spreading across your face only exaggerated it. “You have to flip back and forth constantly. The author did it on purpose. He wanted the reader to get distracted.”

“Why the fuck would he want that?” Lovisa asked, brows raised so high she looked incredulous. 

“So you end up losing your place, rereading sections, forgetting what you were doing, getting pulled into another side plot entirely—”

“That sounds awful,” she cut in. 

Your grin never left. “It’s actually kind of brilliant.” 

Because despite all the complaining you would undoubtedly do before reaching the final page, there was something immensely rewarding about a book that demanded your attention so aggressively.

It refused to let you consume it casually. And art should never be casual. 

You had to participate. You had to think to understand it. Maybe that was why you liked it so much. The same reason you enjoyed teaching literature to teenagers who would rather be doing literally anything else.

“You're actually insane if you enjoy that,” Lovisa declared.

You accepted that assessment immediately.

“It’s my job to be insane about writing. I chose this,” you laughed. “Besides, if one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” 

“And who said that? Shakespeare?”

“Oscar Wilde, I think. Although he’s often misquoted,” you answered easily. “And Shakespeare didn’t even write books, so why would he mention them? Novels like we know now them didn’t really exist when he lived—” 

Lovisa groaned, cutting you off. “Sunny, I didn’t ask for a history lesson.” 

Across the pool, you heard someone bark out a laugh. William. It appeared he'd been listening the entire time. One arm hooked over the edge of the pool, wet hair pushed back from his forehead, looking far too pleased with himself.

“I think you kind of did, Lollo.”

“You’re a traitor, William,” Lovisa muttered.

A second later, the beach ball came flying out of the pool again, launched with enough force to clear the edge and bounce across the stone patio before rolling to a stop beside the row of sun loungers.

It had become a recurring problem throughout the morning. Every ten minutes or so, one of the boys inevitably sent it flying onto dry land, followed by the expectation that somebody else would retrieve it for them.

This time, however, nobody seemed particularly interested in volunteering. Lovisa didn't even lift her head from the lounger. You and Alana remained absorbed in your books. Still in the water, the boys stared expectantly, waiting for one of you to crack first. Eventually, the girls stared right back.

“Sunny,” Alex called. “Pass the ball back!”

You shook your head, smugly smiling. “I think I’m doing you a favor by not complying.”

A chorus of complaints followed. You ignored every single one. They could call you lazy, or a bad friend, or just lacking basic human decency—the ball still remained exactly where it had landed, abandoned on the warm stone patio a few inches away.

Eventually, the realization seemed to settle over them that nobody was coming to their rescue. William let out a long, suffering sigh and dragged a hand through his wet hair before pushing himself up from the edge of the pool.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll get it.”

Water sloshed over the edge of the pool when he hoisted himself up, droplets falling down his body in little rivers as he crossed the patio barefoot.

You didn’t even get the chance to think before the slap of his feet against the stone got uncomfortably close to your lounger and his shadow cast a cold layer across your body. 

You pushed up your sunglasses just in time to see William bend down and scoop up the ball, and then he shook himself like an actual fucking dog so water flew everywhere. Mostly coming from his hair. 

“William, oh my god!” You jerked backward as cold droplets splattered across your arms, chest, and face. “The water's still cold, you dick—”

His laugh rang out immediately. Worth it, apparently.

“Sorry, Sunshine—”

You glared up at him, fully prepared to continue your rant, when something strange happened. William's breath caught, stopping whatever overly proud words he had planned to say from coming out. The grin plastered on his face faded quickly it almost looked like he was in pain. 

Then his gaze fell, going from looking at your face to looking at something very different. 

Why was he…

“Oh my God,” Lovisa squealed. The words came out far too delighted. “William, you could be a little less obvious while staring!”

Your stomach dropped, suddenly feeling like you’d swallowed chunks of ice even in this blazing heat. 

William looked around uncertainly. “I'm not—”

“Yes, you are,” Lovisa argued. 

“No, I didn't mean—”

His eyes darted downward again before he could stop himself. And then his entire expression changed again. He went back to total confusion after the quick flush of embarrassment. 

“When— When the fuck did you get your nipples pierced, Sunny?”

All that was left was utter silence. Even the boys in the pool stopped yelling. You felt every muscle in your body lock. Then, horrifyingly, of course every single head turned toward you.

Oh.

Oh, you were going to die.

Right here, on the spot. Your school would have to find another English teacher because you were throwing yourself into the Mediterranean and never resurfacing.

“L-like October?” you answered weakly. For some reason your brain had decided honesty was the correct response. “Back when I dated that guy who owned a tattoo studio.”

You wanted to rip out your own vocal cords after that. Because now everyone wasn't just staring at your chest—they also got a quick reminder of the last guy you’d dated. 

Daniel. 

The tattoo artist. The one with sleeves down both arms and enough piercings to set off airport security from three terminals away. The one who always smelled faintly of cigarette smoke even though you'd never actually seen him smoke, and who always tried to mansplain your favorite music to you. 

The one you'd spent a couple of months insisting wasn't serious before accidentally introducing him to half your friends.

You hadn't thought about him in ages. The relationship itself had been fine. Maybe even considered fun for your standards. Very short-lived, like most of your relationships seemed to be, but you had liked him, or aspects of him. At least enough to let him talk you into piercing you after closing one rainy evening.

William continued staring, and he didn’t even do it in a weird way. Not a sexual, lingering thing—it was just pure surprise. Like he'd just learned the… moon was actually made of cheese. Or that today was the day pigs learnt to fly. 

Today was the day William discovered you had secrets.

You sat up straighter on instinct, crossing your arms over your chest and covering the little bumps showing through your top. That was enough of a sign for him to finally tear his eyes away. 

“Didn't really think about how visible they'd be in a bikini,” you admitted. “Sorry if I'm going to be in your nightmares now.”

“The jewelry is heart-shaped if you want to visualize them even better, Willy,” August yelled from the pool.

“August, shut the fuck—” 

“How— why do you know that?” William asked at the exact same time. 

“I get tattooed by his coworker,” August shrugged, looking completely unbothered as he floated along on his back. “I finished up my sleeve the same time she got them done.” 

For a moment nobody said anything. August’s explanation was fully logical, and the truth of that was probably why everyone went speechless. You’d almost forgotten that he’d been there in the room next door, catching glimpses of a little too much. But only almost, because he and Lovisa never let you live this one down. It just wasn’t this public most times. 

“Wait,” Alana said, a nervous giggle escaping her as she glanced between all of you. “Lovisa, were you okay with your boyfriend seeing another girl's breasts?”

“I’m honestly so jealous,” Lovisa replied immediately.

You groaned. “Lollo.”

“No, seriously.” Lovisa pushed herself up onto one elbow, looking far more offended than the situation warranted. “Not because August saw them. I couldn't care less about that.”

“Thank you, babe,” August muttered.

“I'm jealous because apparently my boyfriend knows more about my best friend than I do.” 

A laugh escaped Alana, and Lovisa pointed accusingly between you and August. 

“They’re heart-shaped? I didn't fucking know they were heart-shaped,” she said. “I've asked to see them a million times but Sunny won't let me.”

“Because that would be weird, Lollo.” You dropped your face into your hands for a second. “Can we stop talking about this now?”

“Probably not,” Alana said.

“Definitely not,” Lovisa agreed, and you heard the boys uncomfortably chuckling in agreement too. 

You still considered walking directly into the ocean. Drowning couldn’t be that bad of a way to go, right? It would be better than whatever the fuck this was. 

The embarrassment slowly settled into something duller, but it lingered all the same. Your cheeks practically hurt from how hot they’d turned. Every time you looked toward the pool, there was still a tiny part of your brain screaming that William had somehow been the person to discover your nipple piercings.

If anyone else had discovered them—or if Lovisa just had announced them to everyone, maybe. That felt like something she could do—this would have only been a quick laughing matter. Now it made you feel disgusting for some reason. 

Thankfully, before anyone could continue tormenting you, Alana suddenly looked down at the paperback resting beside her. “Oh, shit.”

“What?” you asked.

She lifted the book slightly. “William totally drenched my book.”

The top corner of the book had curled from where William had showered half the patio with pool water. A few pages stuck together slightly, not enough to ruin the whole thing but enough that it would be unreadable if it didn’t dry properly first. 

Across the patio, William didn't look particularly guilty. He tossed the beach ball back toward the pool with one hand, entirely unbothered by the damage he'd caused. 

“Oops.”

“It’s nothing special anyway,” Alana said, waving it off. “Just stupid romance.”

“No, I, uh—” 

You stopped yourself for a moment. Alana looked at you quickly, instantly realizing she'd accidentally stumbled into territory you probably had opinions about. Unfortunately for everyone involved, she was absolutely correct.

Your eyes dropped to the cover in her hands.

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry.

You’d read that one yourself a couple of years ago, actually—yet again after one of your students had handed in a book report on it. It had been half of what you’d assigned her and half of an emotional breakdown. The kind of paper that would have earned comments from stricter teachers about objectivity and supporting arguments.

Instead, you'd sat at your kitchen table at eleven o'clock at night reading it and unexpectedly ended up crying. Because somewhere between discussing character arcs and the friends-to-lovers trope, a sixteen-year-old girl had managed to articulate something genuine about how humans formed relationships and what they could mean to us. You remembered staring at the last page afterwards thinking, well, shit.

And if you’d cried multiple times more as you read the actual book, that was no one else’s business.

“No, I, uhm...” You shifted slightly in your lounger. “I like Emily Henry. I had a student write about one of her books once and the analysis made me cry.”

Lovisa immediately looked delighted. “You cried over homework?”

You decided to ignore her. 

“And romance isn't stupid, by the way,” you continued instead, looking back towards Alana. “That's an inherently misogynistic way of describing it.”

Alana's eyebrows lifted slightly. You could already hear Lovisa preparing to make fun of you.

“Just because predominantly women enjoy something doesn't make it less important,” you said. “Love is probably what stops all of us from spinning out into the void at the end of the day.”

You expected Lovisa to laugh at your surprisingly poetic statement, but instead her face went a little blank.

“But I thought you were thriving as single, Sunny?” she pointed out. 

“I am.” You shrugged. “I just think love can bring us joy in any shape. Doesn't have to be romantic.”

That answer felt more honest than most things you'd said lately.

Maybe because so much of your life was built around exactly that—love in all its shapes and sizes. Your students. Your parents. Lovisa. William and the boys. Even your grandfather, despite the ache his absence still left behind whenever you thought too hard about Stockholm.

Love had never been particularly scarce in your life. Just a little complicated. 

Across from you, Alana smiled softly. “I like that way of looking at it.” 

You smiled back automatically. The more time you spent around her, the harder it became to understand why everyone had already decided she wouldn't stick around. You certainly didn’t want her to leave. 

“Oh, by the way,” you said suddenly, glancing at the damp book in her lap again. “I have a bunch of books with me if you want something else while that dries.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” You pointed vaguely towards the villa. “I brought way too many. I have the newest Sally Rooney if you like her.”

Alana's face lit up instantly. “Yeah, sure. I’ve been meaning to read that. Normal People is like my favorite book ever.” 

“Good pick,” you smiled, already pushing yourself up from the lounger. “I'll run in and grab it for you.”

Before anyone could volunteer additional commentary about your nipples, your questionable taste in men, or your apparent tendency to cry over student essays, you slipped away from the loungers and headed towards the villa.

You let out a long breath as you crossed the quiet hallway towards your room, feeling some of the lingering heat finally begin to leave your face.

The embarrassment still sat somewhere deep in your chest, but with every step away from the pool it became easier to laugh at. Easier to convince yourself that by dinner everyone would have found something else to talk about. 

Although, the laughing voices carrying in from outside made you doubt it still. 

What a fucking disaster you were.

⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚

The rest of the day slipped away easily. 

The sun hung overhead for hours, eventually turning from blazing hot into something soft and indistinct. Time seemed to do the same. People drifted between the pool and the shade, books were opened and abandoned, and naps accidentally happened.

At some point, Alex had fallen asleep on a pool floatie, leaving a bright white handprint burned into his stomach where he'd apparently rested his own hand while tanning. The resulting sunburn had immediately become the next fun thing to laugh at. 

Nobody could quite agree on when exactly it became evening. One moment it was still unbearably hot. Next, shadows had started stretching across the terrace and you had to go inside and grab a sweatshirt to fight the breeze. 

By seven o'clock, the villa had collectively entered that strange, exhausted state that only seemed to happen after a day spent swimming, drinking, and lying in direct sunlight.

Nobody was exactly tired, but nobody seemed particularly interested in doing anything either. Even the boys had finally calmed down.

The water in the pool sat undisturbed now, reflecting streaks of orange and pink from the sky overhead. Somewhere beyond the garden wall, crickets buzzed lazily in the greenery.

August had naturally claimed the barbecue again. You’d be surprised if you ate a single dinner these two weeks that wasn’t cooked by him. He stood outside in a linen shirt and sunglasses despite the fact that the sun was actively setting, poking at a cut of meat with the concentration of a man performing surgery.

You had to admire the commitment. It had landed him a job at a restaurant with a star, for fuck’s sake. 

The rest of the group had scattered throughout the villa. Lovisa occupied one end of the outdoor sofa with her feet hooked over the backrest, pretending not to stare at her boyfriend every few minutes. Alex had surrendered entirely and fallen asleep on the couch inside, apparently losing a battle against mild sunstroke. Alana had disappeared upstairs to shower off the chlorine from the pool, and Rasmus was attempting to teach William a card game neither of them seemed to understand.

You had escaped to the kitchen—partly to get another moment alone, and partly to not leave August with all the work. You could shop vegetables for a garden salad and prepare drinks without completely failing. 

The villa's enormous kitchen glowed with warm evening light. Sun poured through the windows above the sink, turning the marble countertops gold. You thought of how you'd never cooked in a kitchen this expensive before, looking at the half-finished pitcher of sangria in front of you. The pale stone counters looked like they belonged in a magazine, and you were irrationally worried that one careless movement would send red wine splashing and staining everything. 

Slices of orange and apple accumulated beneath your knife one after another, the scent of them pleasantly hitting your nose. 

Your brain felt pleasantly quiet doing a mundane task. There was something comforting about work that had a clear beginning and end. Cut fruit. Put fruit in pitcher. Wash dishes.

It left no room for you to think about anything that might’ve happened today or yesterday. Or decisions waiting for you back in Stockholm. Those moments had already started dissolving, becoming memories of yet another France trip instead of current problems.

The sound of the patio door sliding open broke through your thoughts; looking up at William walking in through it. He seemed to have had enough of Rasmus’s terrible card game instructions. Instead, he wandered into the kitchen without saying anything at first, one hand settling against the counter as his eyes landed on your increasingly uneven fruit slices.

You watched his mouth twitch. That asshole was judging your knife skills.

You rolled your eyes, suppressing a giggle, and dumped the last of the fruit into the pitcher. Then you turned your back to him, washing off the knife and cutting board in the sink.

William stayed where he was. Not exactly hovering, but you could feel his eyes on you. The way he'd always done, and the way you always seemed to notice, even when you weren't looking directly at him.

“You sleeping okay here?” you asked softly, rinsing the knife beneath warm water. “Haven't asked you that yet. No tigers keeping you up at night?”

A laugh escaped him under his breath. The sound quieter than usual, worn soft around the edges by the lazy evening.

“No, no. I'm good. No weird dreams recently." He shrugged. “Maybe I just needed a vacation.”

You smiled to yourself. For months those dreams had somehow become your problem too. At least twice a week William had called with some new absurdity.

You'd spent entire lunch breaks listening to him recount dreams that sounded less like dreams and more like someone had shaken a snow globe full of random ideas and dumped the results into his subconscious.

And because you were apparently incapable of leaving things alone, you'd looked up interpretations for all of them. Or pretended to. Sometimes you genuinely checked your dream dictionary, other times you just made things up and sounded confident.

William never seemed to notice the difference.

“Or maybe the tiger finally got what it wanted,” you mused. Something about passionate feelings, wasn’t it? He’d be stupid to not feel that for Alana. 

His head immediately dropped, smiling down at the counter. “Shut up.”

For almost a straight year, your conversations had existed mostly through phone calls. Early mornings for him. Lunch breaks for you. The occasional late evening when one of you had too much time and the other happened to answer.

You'd gotten so used to hearing his voice without seeing his face attached to it that having him grinning like a kid right in front of you felt slightly strange. Not in a bad way, you just knew to not take it for granted. 

William rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. The movement immediately made you suspicious. It was never a good sign.

“Look, I'm sorry about earlier,” he said slowly. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. They were just there, in my eyesight—” 

“Please shut up,” you cut him off with a laugh. You stopped washing the knife and pointed it vaguely in his direction before remembering you were actually holding a knife and put it down again.

William looked mildly offended. “I'm apologizing.”

“Nobody asked you to,” you argued. “Honestly, we’re good. Just never mention them again.” 

He smiled again, pressing his lips together into a tight line. “I won’t.” 

You groaned and turned back toward the sink before he could see the abashed expression on your face.

Honestly, William noticing your piercings wasn't even the embarrassing part. The embarrassing part was that you cared that it was him. Way more than you should have over a cosmetic decision you’d made entirely by yourself. 

Which was exactly why the conversation needed to die immediately.

Luckily, August yelled from outside that dinner was ready right that second. 

Fortunately, the universe seemed willing to help you.

“Food's ready!” August's voice echoed in through the open patio doors. A second later came a louder, more offended addition. “And if anyone lets it get cold, I'm never cooking for you people again!”

You let out a relieved breath. You reached for the pitcher of sangria before the conversation had any chance of finding its way back. 

“Can you grab the salad from the fridge?” you asked him. 

William pushed himself away from the counter immediately. “Yes, chef.” 

The refrigerator door swung open with a soft hiss. For a moment, William simply stared inside. You could practically see the exact moment something terrible occurred to him. His eyes landed on the bottle sitting in the door shelf, then slowly shifted toward you.

“Do you think August will cry if I bring out ketchup?” 

You snorted. Professional chefs seemed to regard ketchup as a personal insult. Maybe it was the sweetness. Maybe it was pride. Maybe they simply hated joy. It was certainly unfortunate in this group of people, though, because Swedes treated ketchup like its own food group. You'd known boys when you were in school, and even some of your current students, who put it on everything, including pancakes. 

“Probably,” you admitted. “But I want some too.” 

His laugh escaped first. Yours followed immediately after.

—

Dinner passed smoothly around the long patio table as the sun continued its slow descent toward the horizon, painting everything in shades of pink and orange.

The heat from the day had finally broken. A cool breeze drifted in from the coast, carrying the scent of saltwater and umbrella pines. It was cold enough that sweatshirts appeared one by one. Then throw blankets. Then an argument over who was hogging whose blanket.

Nobody bothered moving inside. The view was too good, and this was always the best part of the day. Not the beach clubs, or yacht days, or even the sunny weather. Just everyone gathered around a table with nowhere else to be and no worries to think about. 

The citronella candles August had lit flickered softly between glasses of sangria and half-empty plates. Somewhere below the hillside, lights had started appearing along the coastline, little clusters of gold scattered against the deepening blue of the Mediterranean.

Conversation drifted lazily from topic to topic. Alex complained about his sunburn. Rasmus started planning a beach trip to some place where you could jump off cliffs. And while you grimaced at that, Lovisa instead said that the girls could hit up a farmers market not too far from there.

While you had mentally wanted to drown yourself in the ocean earlier today, you actually weren’t that keen on jumping from a twenty-meter height into a bunch of rocks and strong currents. Maybe weird fishes, too. Gross. 

August only made one comment about the ketchup. A single, wounded remark before realizing he was hopelessly outnumbered. Everyone except him and Alana promptly continued dipping their steak into it anyway.

The exhaustion from the day settled comfortably over the group. Nobody seemed particularly interested in getting drunk for a second night in a row. Nobody wanted to go out. Even Alex, who usually needed constant stimulation to survive, appeared content to remain seated and watch the sunset. His expression sometimes betrayed him and showed proof of his sunstroke and possible headache. 

It all felt strangely adult. 

At least until August threw a bread roll at Rasmus, and it bounced off his head with a comical sound and then fell onto the floor. Then it felt exactly like every other summer.

By the time dinner plates were cleared and glasses were refilled, darkness had fully settled over the villa. The terrace glowed softly beneath strings of warm lights overhead, the pool reflecting them back in rippling fragments.

Nobody moved to leave the table. The evening simply felt too comfortable to abandon.

Which was usually how the board game discussions started most years. Not because anyone was particularly eager to play one, but because eventually somebody looked around and realized there were still several hours before bed.

Then the debate began.

You somehow found yourself elected to search through the villa's cabinets for entertainment. Apparently being the only person willing to stand up made you responsible.

The owners had stocked an entire shelf of games in one of the living room cupboards. Most looked older than you were. You ignored a box of Trivial Pursuit that looked to be from the eighties, even if that was probably the game you’d be best at, and instead picked whatever things you could remember playing before with this group. 

You carried an armful back out onto the terrace and dropped them onto the table with a dramatic thud. “There’s Scrabble, Monopoly, card games, and Yahtzee.” 

A collective groan immediately followed the mention of Monopoly.

Good. At least everyone had standards. 

Or just really vivid memories of Rasmus once throwing the entire board of the table on a midsummer night at your grandfather’s house. Nothing said idyllic quite as much as verbally abusing each other for eight hours, or however ridiculously long it took for everyone but one to go bankrupt. 

“I demand a rematch in Scrabble,” Lovisa announced, pointing accusingly across the table. “Sunny can't possibly win for the millionth year in a row.”

The accusation would've carried more weight if Lovisa didn't make the exact same speech every single summer.

“I mean,” you said, picking the box up from the table, “we'd have to play in English, though. That's naturally an unfair advantage for Alana and me.”

August looked horrified. “You think I can spell in English, Sunny?”

“No,” you admitted immediately. “You can barely spell in Swedish, dude.” 

That earned a bark of laughter from everyone else.

“No, we'll play in Swedish like usual,” August declared. “I'm already struggling having to speak English all the time.” 

Across the table, Alana laughed too.

The sound was genuine, but you still caught the tiny hesitation behind it. The split second where she'd been reminded she was the only person here who couldn't simply switch back—how easily all of you could talk behind her back and she wouldn’t even know it. 

There was something about her expression that made you speak up. 

“That's just rude against Alana, August.”

Maybe because you'd spent the last two days getting to know her and you seriously had no complaints. Maybe because you saw it with students all the time—how awkward it could feel being the new person in an already established group.

Or maybe because she genuinely seemed to be trying. She'd listened patiently to stories that referenced events she'd never been present for. Laughed at inside jokes she couldn’t possibly understand yet. Followed conversations that constantly switched between Swedish and English without warning.

And she'd done it all without complaining once.

“How about Yahtzee instead?” you suggested. 

“Thank you,” Alana said with a laugh. “At least that's impossible to play in the wrong language.”

“Exactly.”

“Also,” Lovisa added, pointing at August, “less spelling means less opportunities for him to embarrass himself.” 

August threw a napkin at her, which she threw back.

You caught William watching the whole exchange for a second, as you sat back down at the table next to Alana. 

His expression softened briefly before he looked away again, reaching for the Yahtzee box. The moment disappeared almost immediately beneath the usual noise of the group. But it left something warm behind all the same.

And just like that, the decision was made. 

Dice were distributed. Arguments immediately started over rules nobody had even explained yet. You were put in charge of writing everyone's scores down because apparently you weren't only the person most capable of spelling around this table, but also the only one trusted with simple arithmetic.

A responsibility you took very seriously… for approximately seven minutes. After that, the game deteriorated in the way all games seemed to when this group was involved.

People forgot whose turn it was. Someone spilled sangria on the white table cloth. Rasmus accidentally rolled his dice dangerously near the pool. Lovisa accused August of cheating despite there being absolutely no way to cheat at Yahtzee.

The conversation wandered wherever it pleased, breaking away from the game entirely. At some point, Alana mentioned a disastrous family skating day from when William had first introduced her to his team. 

“I fell so hard Willy thought I'd broken my arm,” she admitted, laughing into her glass. “I spent the rest of the afternoon holding onto the boards.”

“I think that's a canon event for WAGs,” Lovisa said. “Most people aren't born with skates attached to their feet like these guys.”

“Sunny couldn't skate for shit when I met her either,” William added from across the table. “Now she's pretty solid.”

You didn’t understand why his first thought was to mention you and your learning curve with skating when Alana and Lovisa had obviously meant to bond over their shared experiences of being girlfriends to athletes, even if Lovisa only got a couple of years of that lifestyle before August retired.

You looked up from the score sheet. “That's an insane amount of confidence considering I haven't skated in years.”

William shrugged. “You'd survive.”

You paused, doing the math in your head. Actually doing the math was becoming alarmingly difficult as the sangria disappeared.

“I think the last time I skated was in Toronto with you,” you said. “And I haven't been back there since… before the pandemic or something equally insane.”

The realization felt strange. Somehow the years between then and now had compressed themselves into nothing. That trip to Toronto still felt recent, even though it absolutely wasn't.

“Because you stopped caring about hockey once we all went to different teams after juniors,” William argued. 

Your mouth fell open. “Oh, fuck off.”

Laughter immediately erupted around the table.

“I spent an hour every weekend on those god-awful commuter trains to see you play in Södertälje,” you informed him. “Don't tell me I wasn't invested.” 

William leaned back in his chair. “An hour?”

“Yes!”

“That's nothing compared to the inner-city traffic I had to survive getting to your side of town, Sunshine.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Oh, we're competing now?”

“We've always been competing.”

“I don't remember agreeing to that.”

A dozen years of friendship had made arguing with William almost effortless. Neither of you even sounded annoyed anymore. Probably because neither of you were. The words came automatically, polished smooth from over a decade of use. The same rhythm you'd fallen into as teenagers and somehow never grown out of.

“And you didn't come to a single SHL game,” William continued.

You stared at him. “Because you were six hours away, dumbass. Even Alex didn't see those games in person.” 

“Thank you,” Alex said, raising a finger from where he'd practically melted into his chair. “But please leave me out of this.”

“And don't even start about me not watching the games on TV,” you continued. “Because you know I did. I literally convinced my dad to pay for the streaming service because I was a broke student.” 

A grin tugged at William's mouth. He opened his mouth to argue, then visibly reconsidered. Because if he kept going, you were absolutely going to bring up his multimillion-dollar contract. He knew you would, and more importantly, he knew you'd win any argument once money was at play. 

You were an underpaid teacher with mountains of student loans, and he’d been pretty spoiled even before becoming a superstar athlete. 

His surrender earned a loud laugh from Alana.

The sound drew your attention toward her. She was smiling as she looked between the two of you, watching the exchange with an unmistakable joy in her eyes. You hoped it was because she saw a side of William he didn’t necessarily show often. 

That stupidly kind boy you'd met with a bleeding lip and bruised pride at a skating rink all those years ago. The one who'd shared his Oreos with you and who'd sat beside you without making a big deal out of your tears.

That boy still existed. You saw him all the time. Maybe Alana was finally getting to meet him too.

Because this was what happened whenever old memories came up. You and William disappeared into them for a while. Everyone else just got dragged along for the ride.

“Oh, oh, Sunny!” Lovisa suddenly snapped her fingers. “On the topic of being a broke student, how are the PhD applications going?”

The question hung in the air for a moment.

Around the table, voices faltered one by one. Even the dice stopped rolling as heads turned in your direction. You hadn't realized anyone besides Lovisa cared enough to keep track of your applications. Now they were forced to.

You glanced down at the score sheet in front of you before setting the pencil aside. The paper had already started to curl slightly from the humidity, or maybe it was from your warm hands.

“Uhm. No real updates,” you mumbled. 

Lovisa rolled her eyes. “What does that mean?”

“It means I applied and now have to wait until August to find out.” 

“Wait.” William looked up. “You actually applied?”

You frowned slightly. “Don't sound so surprised.”

“No, I just—” He sat back in his chair. “I didn't know you were doing it this year.”

Somewhere in there was a running joke that you’d had ever since finishing your master’s degree—that you’d apply for a doctorate position. It was just that it’d been close to five years now and it still hadn’t happened. Because you’d chickened out every time—saying you were comfortable with what you had.

Until this year, of course. You had nothing left to lose this year. 

“Well, I did.” You shrugged, trying to sound more casual than you felt. “Stockholm, Copenhagen, and a couple of places in the UK. I’ll probably get rejected, though.”

You laughed, but nobody tagged along. They must have more belief in you than you did yourself.

You looked down at the table, suddenly aware of how serious everyone seemed to be taking something you'd spent months trying not to think about. The applications had become one of those things you shoved into a mental drawer and only opened when absolutely necessary. You'd written statements, collected references, rewritten research proposals until your eyes hurt, and then sent everything away into the void.

Like you did with most things. 

“You’d actually move from Stockholm?” William asked. 

“If that’s what it takes, yeah,” you said, a little caught off guard by the question. “Easier at bigger faculties with more funding for research. Stockholm’s pretty small when it comes to that.”

You'd explained this before. To colleagues. To your parents. To students who asked why anyone would willingly spend another four years in university.

Research wasn't exactly a glamorous career path. Nobody did it for the money. You did it because the idea of spending the rest of your life reading, writing, and teaching people who actually had an interest in English literature sounded infinitely more appealing than being stuck forever doing what you did now. 

You had to at least try.

Something shifted across William's face. Not judgment exactly, but something uncomfortably close to it. “I didn't realize you were serious enough to move country for it.”

The words were harmless, meaning they shouldn't have bothered you. And yet something about them lodged beneath your ribs. This wasn't some sudden fantasy of yours. It was the plan.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

William rubbed at the back of his neck. “I just mean it's a big thing.”

“I want to work in academia, that was always the goal. You know that.” 

“Pretty drastic to leave Stockholm though, isn’t it?” 

The irritation arrived so quickly it surprised even you.

Maybe because you'd spent the entire year making difficult decisions. Maybe because every conversation back home seemed to revolve around what you were supposed to do next. Or maybe because William, of all people, should've understood what it meant to leave home for something you loved.

“Why does it matter?” you countered. “We only see each other for a couple of weeks every summer. It doesn’t make a difference if I fly in from Sweden or somewhere else.”

The words came out sharper than intended. You saw most people at the table glance between the two of you, unless you’d made them too uncomfortable already. 

William's jaw tightened slightly, but he remained quiet. 

“You do realize I’m the only one still living there, right? Lovisa and August are on the west coast. The rest of you are across the Atlantic. What reason do I have to stay?” you continued, pretty aimless now. 

“I don’t know—” William stuttered. “Your family, maybe?”

“My family?” you repeated quietly.

Your grandfather’s house flashed through your mind immediately, placed there in the tranquility of the archipelago. Nothing but ocean views and greenery as far as you could see. 

The butter-yellow kitchen that hadn’t been renovated since the sixties. The bookshelf in the hallway with all the best authors you could imagine. The dent in the armchair where he always sat. The slow realization that grief often looked less like crying and more like deciding what happened to someone’s collection of Moomin coffee mugs.

There was nothing left of that but boxes now. Nothing left of your family that hadn't already changed shape. Nothing left of the life you'd spent this entire year trying to hold together.

“There’s nothing left of it,” you exhaled, the words leaving your mouth at the same time tears started to fall from your eyes. 

For the first time all evening, William looked like he wished he could take a sentence back—noticing that the judgmental words he’d just spewed actually carried weight. 

“Why should I stay?” you asked. “So on the odd chance you make it home once a year, I’m just there waiting for you?”

“Sunny—” William tried. 

“No.” 

“That's not what I said.”

“But it is, though.” 

“You’re not being fair—”

Your chair scraped loudly against the stone as you stood.

Because the worst part was that even as the words left your mouth, you knew they weren't really about the PhD. They were about years of compromises so small they never seemed worth mentioning.

They were about missed phone calls because of time zones. A bunch of cancelled visits, you having to work and missing his playoff runs, and him missing things like Christmas and birthdays because he had games to play. 

The slow realization that loving someone platonically didn't make distance hurt any less. It didn’t make the frayed edges of your relationship feel any less damaged. 

“You only want me to stay because it's easy for you,” you said quietly. “Because then nothing has to change! It means you don't have to take responsibility for this friendship.”

William looked genuinely blindsided, but that didn’t make you stop. 

“You haven’t been there for me since the day you got drafted, William—”

You finally caught yourself, placing a hand over your mouth, muting both more harmful words from coming out and your streaming tears. The silence that followed was immediate and suffocating. The only sound came from the distant hum of crickets somewhere beyond the terrace.

Then you turned and walked away. Not because you were angry anymore, but because the second the words left your mouth, you knew exactly how cruel they'd been.

You shoved through the patio doors and disappeared into the house before anyone could stop you. Your pulse hammered in your ears as you crossed the kitchen, suddenly desperate to put walls between yourself and the stunned silence you'd left behind. 

Because most of what you’d said wasn’t true. Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all. It was so painfully untrue; you felt like the worst person in the world for even speaking it into existence. 

William had been there through every version of your life. Through teenage wasteland, failed exams, panic attacks, and grief. He'd answered calls from hotel rooms and airport lounges and team buses. He sometimes remembered things about you better than you did yourself. He checked in when things got hard. He showed up whenever he could.

The problem wasn't that he hadn't been there. The problem was that sometimes you wished he could've been there more. And those were two very different things.

You stopped in the hallway and pressed a hand against your forehead.

God. What a horrible thing to say to someone who'd spent years just trying his best.

Back outside, August finally broke the silence.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he whispered under his breath.

Lovisa looked around the table. “You know what I want to do right now?”

Nobody answered.

“I want to go for a night swim,” she declared. “And then I want to go to bed and not think about this. Who's with me?”

⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚

Thank you for reading ◡̈ Please tell me what you think My ask box is always open!

For the past few road trips you have been staying in Willy’s apartment while he’s been gone. Willy claimed it was because he needed you to watch Pablo and Banksy for him, as well as the apartment. Though he would never admit it to you, the real reason Willy wanted you to stay in his apartment while he was gone was so he could come back to you and your scent in his home (and in his bed). Throughout these past few road trips, you’ve developed a strong bond with Pablo and Banksy Nylander. You treated them like your own children, you cuddled and pet them whenever they wanted, you gave them extra treats and food, and taking them on very long walks through downtown toronto.

Willy first noticed Pablo and Banksy’s favoritism towards you around the six month mark in your relationship, it was small, nothing major. You and Willy were relaxing after a game, usually Willy won’t let you sit on the couch unless you’re directly next to him (or on top of him), but this was different. The leafs had lost 6-1 against the sabers. the sabers, Willy couldn’t believe it. He just wanted some space to digress which resulted in you being separated by a single cushion, which may not be a lot to some, but to willy it was like the grand canyon.

Willy was staring at the tv, a random episode of friends playing in the background, when he reached down expecting to find a soft, curly dog head but instead all he found was the soft material of his own sweatpants. He glances around before setting his gaze on you, you’re laying down on your side, facing the tv with a blanket wrapped around you. Pablo is lying down in front of you, his nose tucked under your chin while Banksy is alseep half on top of you. The smile on Willy’s face was there the entire night.

His blond hair is tousled from running his hands through it in frustration, his cheeky grin flickering in and out as he mutters to himself in Swedish, clearly losing patience. His mustache and beard are in full force—an off-season indulgence, just like the sheer amount of cake he’s been consuming lately.

And it shows.

Willy is always strong, always an athlete, but off-season Willy? He’s soft. He still has muscle, but instead of his usual sculpted abs, there’s the faintest hint of a tummy, a little dad bod moment that somehow makes him look even hotter.

Unfortunately, all that raw, Swedish power is currently being humiliated by a simple bookshelf.

“IKEA is a scam,” Will mutters, glaring at the half-built monstrosity. “They make the instructions impossible on purpose.”

“You’re Swedish,” you remind him, sipping your coffee. “This should be, like, in your DNA.”

“Yeah, well, my ancestors built actual ships, not this bullshit.”

He picks up the hex key like it personally insulted his mother, then frowns down at the two pieces of wood he’s supposed to connect. His brows furrow, lips pressing together in deep concentration, and for a fleeting moment, you think—maybe—he’s finally figured it out.

But no. No, he has not.

With way too much confidence, he tightens one screw, nods to himself like a man who knows what he's doing, and then leans his full weight on the side panel—only for it to give out instantly, betraying him in the most dramatic fashion possible.

The entire bookshelf wobbles violently before crashing down in slow motion.

And so does Will.

You watch in horror as your six-foot, professional athlete boyfriend completely loses the battle. He stumbles backward, knocks into a chair, flails to catch himself—too late. His knee buckles, and before you can react, he fully wipes out.

A loud thud. A groan. Silence.

For a split second, your heart stops. You freeze, eyes wide, a sharp pang of panic in your chest. He’s completely motionless, just lying there, staring at the ceiling.

“Will?” you ask, rushing over, hovering a hand over his arm, not sure whether to touch him or call 911.

No response.

Then—he bursts out laughing.

Flat on his back, bare chest rising and falling with laughter, stomach shaking, cheeks flushed—he looks absurdly proud of himself. And you can’t help but laugh too—though only after you're sure he’s not actually injured.

And then it hits you. This man is your emergency contact.

The realization hits you slowly. This is the guy responsible for calling an ambulance if something happens to you. This one.

The same man who once set off the fire alarm trying to “improvise” a grilled cheese with a blowtorch because he thought it would be “faster.”

The same man who got his shoelace caught in an escalator last summer and had to be rescued by a mall employee.

The same man who confidently insisted he could fix a leaky faucet in your old apartment, only to somehow make it worse—so much worse—that you had to call an actual plumber, who took one look at the situation and just muttered, Jesus Christ.

You blink down at Will, still sprawled on the floor, grinning like an idiot, and a strange mix of affection, disbelief, and sheer terror floods through you.

You sigh, shaking your head. “I can’t believe you are my emergency contact.”

You look at him, grinning up from the floor like he just won a prize, and a mix of affection, disbelief, and helpless laughter washes over you.

Will, still sprawled out, turns his head to smirk at you. “Baby. I got you.”

“You just lost a fight to plywood.”

“It was a close fight.”

“In your dreams.”

He just shrugs, completely unbothered, propping himself up on one elbow. “Eh. I’m strong. I can take it.”

You stare at him, still processing the absolute chaos of it all. The lack of concern.

Will sees your expression and smirks, sitting up fully. “You’re thinking about it, huh?”

“I’m regretting it.”

He gasps, pressing a hand to his chest like you’ve just wounded him. “Wow. That’s ruthless.”

“Honest.”

Will squints, then rubs the back of his head. “Maybe. But too late, baby. We live together now. No take-backs.”

You roll your eyes, standing up to help his dumb ass off the floor. He lets you pull him to his feet, then immediately wraps his arms around you, pulling you flush against his chest.

“Will—”

“Shhh,” he says, resting his chin on top of your head. “Let me hold you. I almost died, älskling.”

You snort. “You did not.”

He squeezes you tighter, grinning against your hair. “You were so worried about me.”

You groan, but his arms feel nice, and he smells like cedarwood and the vanilla latte he stole from you earlier. Despite everything—despite his complete incompetence at building furniture or being careful at all—you wouldn’t have it any other way.

You sigh into his chest. “Yeah. You are sometimes actually terrifying. You clumsy idiot.”

Willy laughs, pressing a lazy kiss to your forehead.

“Terrifyingly sexy, you mean.”