Page 9 of A Curse for the Homesick

WHAT YOU WILL

2013

Soren and I didn’t set out to be a secret. Or, at least, I didn’t. It just happened that way.

I didn’t tell Kitty because I didn’t want her to feel like a fifth wheel; I didn’t tell Linnea because sometimes Linnea made offhanded comments about the floral arrangements she’d have at her wedding to Henrik, and if she started talking about me and Soren that way, I thought I might lock myself in a cupboard until graduation.

Not long after whatever was happening between us had started, I was sitting in my history class finishing a reading, and I heard a group of boys come rumbling through the door. One of the others from the soccer team was calling his name: Soren, oi, Soren! He had a book held to his chest in the crook of one arm. Our eyes met as he slid into his seat on the other side of the room. Someone was still jockeying for his attention. He only looked at me. It seemed to me like the sexiest thing in the world: that no one but us knew I had seen him naked twelve hours before.

* * *

My dad probably knew there was something going on with Soren and me, and Elin definitely did, but neither of them brought it up. The only person who confronted me was Dan, my swim coach, who intercepted me on the way to the locker room after an uninspired practice by saying, “What, have you started dating someone, or something?”

I felt exposed on the pool deck and wrapped my towel tighter around myself. “Why would you say that?”

“Because you’re still only doing three practices a week. Because you didn’t even mention the email from the Davis coach. Because it’s like you don’t care anymore.”

I flinched.

The email from the Davis coach had been much like the emails from all the other coaches we’d received recently— Dear Tess, sorry to hear about your injury; unfortunately; not able to offer you a spot at this time; feel free to apply by the regular academic deadline, and we can consider you as a walk-on. The only remaining coach who had not yet sent such an email was from the University of Maine, and I was fairly sure she was just holding off because her dad was Scottish and she felt a certain North Atlantic kinship with me. Maine hadn’t even been on my list, originally, because it seemed cold and north and remote and altogether too close to Stenland. More recently, it had started to feel like fate because would it be the worst thing in the world if I were only five time zones from Stenland instead of eight? Would it be the worst thing if I lived somewhere with mist and wind and frigid Atlantic waters that reminded me of Soren and of home?

I pushed past Dan without saying anything. The next day, for the first time in ten years, I skipped swim practice.

Someone at school got the bright idea that we should celebrate the end of term by breaking into Ramna Skaill. When Linnea told us we had to go, I said I would rather drink cleaning fluid.

“That may well be what’s on tap,” Kitty said.

“Please?” Linnea said. “I really want to go. Henrik said it’ll be fun.”

“Well, if Henrik said.”

Linnea ignored Kitty and turned her big eyes on me. “If you’re leaving me in eight months, you have to do fun things with me now. Those are the rules.”

“I’m not breaking into Ramna Skaill,” I said. “Doesn’t that seem like tempting fate?”

“No?” she said. “I feel like I never see you anymore.”

“You see me all the time.”

“Actually,” Kitty said, “I’m with Linnea on this.”

“How surprising,” I said.

“You didn’t go to Hedda’s with us for brunch last weekend. And you bailed on our study date on Tuesday.”

“I’ve been busy.”

Kitty gave me her most suspicious look. “Doing?”

That was how I ended up at Ramna Skaill.

Kitty and I got ready at Linnea’s house. The keep was on the northeastern edge of the island, so Henrik was going to drive us. Linnea’s parents thought we were spending the night at Kitty’s house, and Kitty’s parents thought we were spending the night at Linnea’s, and my dad wasn’t about to ask. We dressed in skirts that were too short for the weather and our puffiest jackets. Linnea did our hair because she was the best at hair, and Kitty did our makeup because she was the best at makeup, and I snuck into the Sundstroms’ pantry to nick a bottle of gin because I was the best at keeping my face blank and unassuming when I’d been caught doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing. Every few minutes, Linnea’s fifteen-year-old sister, Saffi, would invent an urgent reason to come bother us and gaze around the room with wide eyes. When she stared at us, it made me feel vaguely like a celebrity. Linnea shooed her out again every time.

When Kitty was working on Linnea’s eyeliner, I sat in the corner of Linnea’s nest of turquoise pillows with the gin. My phone buzzed, and I looked at it covertly.

Soren: Henrik is composing a song for Linnea

Soren: He may sing it tonight

Me: You must stop him

Me: This is your quest

Soren: May I request a different quest

Me: No

A pause.

Soren: Driving over now

Soren: Henrik wants to know who I’m texting

“What are you smiling at?” Kitty said.

I looked up. “Nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

“I saw a meme,” I said. “I would share it with you, but I’ve already scrolled past. Such is the ephemeral nature of the internet.”

Kitty rolled her eyes at me, a habit she never grew out of, and resumed perfecting Linnea’s already perfect makeup.

* * *

When Henrik’s car pulled up in Linnea’s driveway, Soren climbed out of the passenger seat and into the back.

Linnea protested. “You have longer legs than me.”

“All good,” Soren said.

He sat in the middle of the back, between me and Kitty. With one hand, he held a beer. With the other, he ran his thumb down the hem of my skirt across the outside of my thigh. The car was too dark for anyone to see him do it. He was able to maintain a perfectly normal conversation with Kitty about our history exam, but when I tried to speak, my voice came out scratchy.

When Henrik parked in the dirt lot and we climbed out of the car, Kitty grabbed me by the arm and said, “I don’t mean to alarm you, but I think Soren might be into you.”

“Interesting,” I said.

“I mean, he wasn’t trying to sit next to me. ”

“Maybe he wanted to have a pleasant conversation with his favorite cousin.”

“Right,” she said. “I hope you know your face is red.”

Ramna Skaill sat at the far end of a peninsula that looked, from some angles, like an island. It was connected to the mainland by just a narrow spit of land, which rose out of the ocean like a spine. Someone had already undone the padlock on the gate, and now it hung open, its rusty hinges creaking in the wind. As we walked down the path, I had to force myself not to look down. I wasn’t afraid of heights, but the land gave way on either side of me in steep, tumbling cliffs. The waves crashed against the rocks, like they could erode them clean through at any second.

The keep itself was a sixteenth-century tower: four narrow stories of moss-covered stone with intricate rams and ravens carved into the bartizans. That was where the skelds stayed. Next to the tower, there was a compact cottage, where the keepers stayed. The keepers were there to keep the skelds in or to keep everyone else out, depending on the era. They were also supposed to bring the skelds food and medicine. Before phones, there’d been some elaborate system of bells they used to communicate.

Through the windows, the light glowed cider yellow. A speaker was blaring music that sounded fuzzy and pleasantly familiar, some 2000s indie-folk-pop hit I couldn’t place. Thomas St. Clair and Delia Haugen were kissing in the courtyard.

Henrik leaned his shoulder into the wooden door until it opened. Inside, darkness fluttered in and out as flashlight beams swept past. Someone had lit a fire in the hearth, but it wasn’t quickly heating the hollow space. Presumably, they only turned the power on during a skeld season. I’d never had reason to wonder about it before.

“Beer?” Henrik said, making finger guns at us. “Tess? Soren, almost done with that one? I’ll get you all beers. Don’t worry—I’m driving. Wait here.”

He disappeared into the crowd, Linnea at his elbow.

“God, I hate him,” Kitty said. “No one’s that nice unless they’re secretly a murderer.”

“Except Henrik,” Soren said.

“Well, then, maybe you should date him,” Kitty said.

“Tempting. I’ll have to pass for the time being.”

“Well, then, maybe you should date Tess.”

“Kitty.”

Soren looked at me over Kitty’s shoulder. His eyes softened. “Interesting.”

“She’s surprisingly strong, which could be useful should you need to move heavy furniture. Additionally, she’s an excellent math tutor, and she won’t make you feel stupid even when you nearly fail your calculus exam.”

“You got an eighty-seven,” I said.

“Really?” Soren said. “I got a ninety-three.”

Kitty pointed at him. “No one asked you. Also, Tess got a ninety-eight, so piss off.”

Soren tilted his beer back, watching us over the top of the bottle. There was a long silence. In my stomach, I felt an unexpected sense of weightlessness. He lowered the beer and said, “Okay.”

Another pause.

“Well,” Kitty said to me, “do with that what you will, I guess.”

I didn’t know Linnea had come back until I felt her tap my shoulder. “I need to pee,” she announced. “Tess, Kitty?”

I glanced at Soren, but he was already wandering off toward a group of soccer players by the fire. Linnea led us beyond the densest part of the crowd and up a stone staircase. It was even colder there, and darker, and though we were standing by a window, the sky outside was black.

“She doesn’t actually need to pee,” Kitty said.

“I gathered,” I said.

“What’s going on with you and Soren?” Linnea said.

The temperature of her tone caught me off guard. I wrapped my arms around my torso, sticking my hands under my armpits, and shrugged.

“A nuanced explanation as always,” Kitty said. “Thank you for apprising us.”

“Why are you two being so…” Linnea’s brows drew together. “You know. First you two get angry at Henrik and me for trying to set you up, and now you’re—”

“I wasn’t angry at you and Henrik,” I said. “Was Soren angry?”

Kitty leaned toward me—her way of establishing sides. “I think you’re overreacting.”

“Overreacting!” Linnea said. “I tell both of you every time I’m interested in anyone. I ask for your advice, and I tell you how it’s going, and neither of you ever tell me anything. It’s like you think I’m stupid or something, or that I wouldn’t be able to understand your feelings because—”

“Linnea,” Kitty said, raising her hands.

“Because you two think it’s pathetic to fall in love with someone Stennish when you’re both going to run away and fall in love with someone so much better . ”

Linnea turned and disappeared back down the stairs. Kitty and I stayed there in the darkness listening to the wind howl against the edges of the tower.

“Well, fuck,” Kitty said finally.

My body felt too heavy suddenly. I leaned against the wall, which was the sort of cold that felt like it was sucking the heat from your skin.

“You and Soren, though?” she asked. “Are you, like, dating?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?”

“We haven’t talked about it.”

“Wow,” Kitty said, “you two, struggling with communication? Shocking. Are you having sex?”

I pressed my hands against my face.

“Oh my god!”

“Kitty…”

“This is much better gossip than when Linnea started having sex. Because, you know, that was personally devastating re: my whole being in love with her thing. But you! Tell me all about it! Wait, don’t. He’s my cousin. Tell me all about it for you, and we’ll just pretend he’s not part of the equation.”

I made a pained noise into my hands.

“The humiliation will cease once you start providing details. How long has this been going on?”

“Two months?”

“Two months!”

“Are you angry?”

“As if I could get angry at anyone for not telling their friends who they’re into,” Kitty said. “Why didn’t you tell us, though?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I didn’t want anyone to think it meant I suddenly wanted to stay here for the rest of my life.”

“If you ever start talking that way, I’ll pull you onto the next ferry by the ankles.”

“Please.”

When we got back downstairs, I found Soren feeding more peat to the fire as a few of the other members of the soccer team talked to his back. You could tell he was listening, crouched at the hearth with his head turned slightly. I liked that I knew those things about him, the little things.

“Yeah, no,” Magnus Invers was saying. “Mum was friends with her before she lost it.”

“How many people was it in the end, do you reckon?”

“Eighteen, I think.”

“Nineteen, definitely nineteen. My aunt was one of them. Nan makes us do a candle thing about it every Christmas.”

They were talking about Matilda. The one who’d lost it . She always came up on nights like these: in the dark, with beer, when boys tried to frighten each other.

I touched Soren’s shoulder, and his hand moved automatically on top of mine. Distantly, I was aware of the trailed-off ends of sentences from the soccer boys, but most of my brain space was occupied with the glow of the fire across his face. Soren’s teeth seemed very white against the darkness, and his eyes too dark to see at all, like maybe they were just pupil.

Magnus said, “All right there, Tess?”

I turned, slow to respond. “Yeah, fine.”

“How’s the swimming? Heard you’re going to the US for it. That’s brilliant.”

I laughed noncommittally. Soren straightened, and I looked back at him.

“Should we go check on Kitty?” he said.

When I nodded, he made off back in the direction of the stairs. I ran a few steps to catch him, and then I said, “You didn’t actually want to check on Kitty, did you?”

“Does she need checking on?”

“No.”

“I assumed your pointed look meant Make up an excuse—let’s leave. ”

“It did,” I said.

Once we were up to the second floor, Soren slid his hand through mine. My eyes adjusted to the darkness and began to pick out the spots of light: the glint of mirrors, the ghostly glow of wineglasses in a cabinet. When we reached the third floor, Soren stopped and kissed me so suddenly I had to steady myself against the wall. He raked his hands through my hair and touched his teeth to my lips, and then he was taking me by the hand again and walking faster down the hall.

“In a hurry to get somewhere?” I asked.

“Yes, actually.”

He almost opened a door, then pulled back when a voice drifted out. I recognized the laugh—Thomas St. Clair, I thought.

Soren took my hand and led me farther down the hall.

“How do you know your way around?” I asked.

“This may not be my first time breaking in.”

“Should I be jealous?”

“It may not be Delia’s first time breaking in either.”

“You never told me you and Delia were a thing.”

“We weren’t a thing. We just kissed on the roof once.”

“I was fine not knowing that,” I said.

Soren stopped at another door. This one, he opened. He stepped into the blackness and turned back to look at me over his shoulder, down the length of his arm and up the length of mine. I couldn’t see anything but him.

He held up his phone to illuminate the room: a mattress stripped of bedding, a hearth with a stack of driftwood, a side table with a lamp. I went over to the lamp and flicked the switch, but it didn’t turn on.

Soren knelt in front of the hearth on a sheepskin rug and began arranging the driftwood. It was set up like someone had planned this—maybe for the party or maybe because the hearths were always ready for a skeld season to begin. I rubbed my hands against my legs. I felt off-balance in here, in this place I had spent my whole life afraid of.

I listened to the scratch of a match striking, the hiss of catching newspaper.

“Henrik said you’d never liked anyone but me,” I said.

“Did he?”

“After Midsummer.”

Soren didn’t respond. In front of him, the fire bloomed.

“Is it true?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”

I joined him on the sheepskin. When he turned to look at me, his face was lit from the side in wobbly honey light. He took my hand and pulled me toward him, into his lap. I was pushing his shoulders down and lying on top of him, my knees on either side of his hips. His breathing went shallow. I could only see him in flickers of gold: the edge of his jaw, the blink of an eye. Beneath him, the sheepskin curled white and pale. I reached my hands up the inside of his sweater, spreading my fingers across his stomach and chest, and he shivered.

“Are you too cold?” I said.

“For this? No.” His hands found my wrists, and then he was guiding me to pull the sweater over his head. Another flash of firelight on the plane of his chest. He took off my shirt next, running his fingers across the lace of my bra.

“Are you worried someone will catch us?” I asked.

“No.”

“Because you don’t think they will, or because you wouldn’t care if they did?”

His hands slid down to my thighs, still on either side of his stomach, and rested there. “Is this a trick question?”

“No,” I said.

“I would care because it might embarrass you,” he said.

“Is it bad that we haven’t told anyone about us?”

He was quiet. I couldn’t tell if he was uncomfortable or just considering the question. “I didn’t know you wanted to.”

“I didn’t.”

“Didn’t?” he said.

“What would I even say?” I asked. “That we’re…”

“Dating?”

“Are we?”

“I make you dinner twice a week, and we’re figuratively sleeping together,” he said.

I ran my fingers down the lines of his stomach, trying to conjure a picture of his body in my mind. I imagined him the way he’d looked the first time I’d ever seen him like this, the night in his room with our translation homework in my backpack.

“Linnea and Henrik go on picnic dates,” I said. “And then they post about them on social media.”

“Do you want to go on picnic dates and post about them on social media?”

“Not really.”

Soren caught my wrist as it traveled across his chest. He pressed his hand on top of mine, flattening my palm to his heart. “We’re not Linnea and Henrik, Tess.”

“What are we?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Us.”

Quietly, I asked, “Does that scare you?”

He gave one of his exhaled laughs, like he hadn’t expected the question. “All the time.” He ran his thumb across my hand, light circles that shouldn’t have commanded the whole attention of my body but did anyway. “Do I ever scare you?”

“You don’t,” I said. Then: “I scare myself, though.”

“What scares you?”

“How much I can want another person.”

His thumb stilled on my hand. He made a soft noise, and then he was unhooking my bra, and I was unbuttoning his jeans, and he was tugging at my skirt. We were acres of bare skin, all of it touching. His fingers were on my hips, and he was guiding us together, and I was wanting and wanting and wanting. My hands pressed against his chest, and he whispered my name until it stopped being a word and became just a sound. No clothes, no lights; we could’ve been two people from any time, any at all, hidden away in the darkness with no sense left but the feeling of one body and another.

After we finished, there was a quiet retrieval of clothes and a gentle kiss on my temple. My stomach was still on fire. Soren had asked what I was afraid of, and the answer was this. That he could expend his desire, but for me, it only ever seemed to grow. Linnea had accused me of thinking it was pathetic to fall in love with someone Stennish, and she was right. How pathetic, to fall in love when you were too young for it to last. How pathetic to seal your fate to someone who happened to be in the right place at the right time. How pathetic to stay when you could leave.

I wanted Soren before we had sex and while we were having sex and after we were done. I wanted him when he was funny and when he was gentle and when he was kicking the mud off his boots after bringing the sheep back home. I wanted Soren in the cosmic sense that I had wanted him for many lifetimes before this one and might still for many lifetimes after.

I told Soren he didn’t scare me, but that wasn’t exactly true.

Soren terrified me because if he offered to ruin my life, I might say yes.