It was later, although I didn’t know the time. The sun had gone down, and the bugs had come up. The three of us had gone out to the dock after our discussion, when Pan declared that he was hungry. Rikky had suggested cooking on her charcoal grill, so we all sat out in rusty lawn chairs. After we ate, we tossed the excess vegetables at Drake the alligator snapping turtle—all while sipping on Omte sangria.
We stayed out there, talking and laughing and drinking, until the air was alive with mosquitoes, then we escaped back into the house, into “my” room, where the screens kept the bugs out but let the evening breeze in. Rikky moved around some of her half-finished projects—a torn-apart box fan, a sanded old nightstand, a stack of driftwood meticulously arranged so it was starting to take shape as reptilian sculpture.
I offered to help, but Rikky waved me off, so I lounged back on the daybed. Pan moved aside a pillow, then lifted my legs so he could sit under them. Rikky talked to herself as she rearranged, muttering her plans for this or that.
In fact, Rikky had done most of the talking all night, mostly regaling me with tales of life growing up Omte. It involved an awful lot of brawls, cookouts, and various adventures in foraging—each story usually featured at least two of those elements. The Omte community seemed a lot more involved with each other and more neighborly than I was used to—albeit more assertive. I couldn’t say if that was because of the warmer climate vs. the subarctic one, or if it was something else.
Rikky straightened up and let out a pained groan. “Oh, my.” She put her hand to her forehead. “That sangria must’ve been stronger than I thought it was, and now with that little bit of work, I am winded.” A small laugh escaped through her strained smile. “I hope neither of you would mind too much if I went to bed early.”
“No, no, of course not,” Pan assured her.
“All right, thank you.” She smiled at him, still strained and uneasy, and when she walked past us, she roughly tousled his hair. “I’m leaving the stereo on because I don’t want to deal with it, but feel free to turn it off.”
“Nah, it’s cool. Everybody loves ABBA,” Pan said with a big goofy grin, then looked over at me. “Right?”
“Yeah, it’s great,” I agreed, but Rikky was already in the main room, the storm door swinging shut behind her.
The walls and door were thin enough that the music easily drifted through—although admittedly the disco pop was playing very loudly inside the living room. Still, when I spoke, I made sure to keep my voice low so as not to bother Rikky.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Good, good.” He laughed and rested his hand on my calf. “But I don’t think I even finished one glass of that, and I think Rikky had, like, three.”
I laughed dubiously. “Did she really?”
That only made him laugh harder, putting one hand on his chest and nodding vigorously. The whole daybed was shaking, but I didn’t really mind, because I slid closer to him, so my thighs now rested on his.
“I can’t believe she stayed up as long as she did,” he agreed once his laughter subsided. “I said she should slow down, but she does what she wants.”
Over the course of a couple hours, I had slowly drunk from my one glass, and I was still feeling it. The alcohol left my stomach hot and tingly, and my head was light and floaty, the words slipping from my lips with an ease I wasn’t used to.
“Thank you for coming here with me,” I told him emphatically, and I put my hand over his—his skin felt so much cooler than mine; how could he stay so cool when my whole body flushed with heat?
“As I’ve already told you, like, a thousand times—you’re welcome.” And that really had to have been at least the tenth time he’d said that.
“I’m really glad that I don’t have to do this all by myself. And I don’t just mean because I don’t know where I’d be staying,” I said, and he laughed again—a quiet, warm rumble. “This is a whole lot to sort through, and I don’t know how I can make it up to you for enduring this.”
“Enduring this?” He laughed and shook his head. “Yeah, it’s so brutal. I’m researching a history that really intrigues me, while hanging out in the beautiful—albeit wild—wetlands, and I get to hang out with a very cool girl while doing it.”
“Aw…” I started to say, when something hit me. “Wait. You do mean me, right?”
“Yeah, of course I mean you.” He rested his head on the back of the daybed and looked at me. “You always gotta make me say how I think you’re funny and smart and beautiful. Who else would I be talking about?”
“I don’t know.” I lowered my eyes and I was thankful for the dimness of the room hiding the blush on my cheeks. The only lights in the room were a kerosene lamp hanging from the ceiling and a few citronella candles.
I wasn’t looking at him, but I could feel his eyes, studying me.
“You thought I was talking about Rikky,” he realized quietly.
“Maybe.” I shrugged. “I don’t exactly know what your relationship is with her.”
“She is my ex-girlfriend,” he admitted slowly.
“How long did you date?”
“A little under a year.”
“Wow. So, it was a serious thing?” I asked carefully, and he nodded. “Why wouldn’t you tell me? You didn’t even say that she was a girl.”
“I don’t know. It was a dumb thing to do, not telling you, but I didn’t know what to say about it.”
Pan fell silent, long enough that I looked up at him to make sure he hadn’t passed out, and he was staring off into the night. I sat up, pulling my legs off his lap and hugging my knees to my chest.
“Okay, so I don’t know how to explain it to you without putting it all out there, so here goes.” He took a fortifying breath. “I like you. And I think you might like me.”
He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, then quickly looked back at the swamp. “And I feel like we’re in this weird spot where we’re not an item but we’re … I don’t know. We’re not really nothing either. And life happened, and the stuff we’re doing to find Eliana and to find your parents, that obviously—and it should—take precedence, but then it makes our non-thing-thing even more confusing to me, and I guess I don’t really know how to act or what the proper etiquette is in this situation.”
“I don’t really know either,” I admitted. “But I think being honest and not keeping things from each other is a really good start.”
“Smart.” He looked at me with a relieved smile. “See? That right there is exactly why I like you.”
I laughed and leaned in closer to him, but I kept my arms around my legs, holding them to me. “So, if we’re being open and honest, is it okay if I ask you about Rikky?”
“What do you wanna know?”
I shrugged. “Nothing too personal. Just the normal basic stuff. How’d you meet, why’d you break up? I mean, I assume it was mostly amicable, since you two are still so friendly.”
“Yeah, I mean, it really was,” he said. “Everything I told you about her was true. We met through the Inhemsk Project. I was going through a rough patch, and we grew closer and we started dating.”
He rubbed his jaw, waiting a beat before continuing. “We had fun, but we moved in together pretty fast, because she didn’t have a place to stay in Merellä. But the truth is that she didn’t really want to stay in the city, not after she connected with her Trylle family.
“She stayed about as long as she could handle it,” he went on. “But I cared too much about the work I do, and I didn’t want to give up my life in Merellä. And that’s what it all came down to. She wanted to go, and I wanted to stay. So, she went, and I stayed.”
I waited a moment before asking, “Do you regret it?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I never have. When we first split, we both left the door open—if either of us changed our minds, we could pick it back up. But neither of us knocked on that door. Not in all the months and months since she moved here. So, I guess neither of us regretted it.”
He groaned and rubbed his hands over his face. “Is anything I’m saying making sense or is this the incoherent ramblings of a semi-drunk man?”
I laughed. “No, I get it. I think.” Then I yawned loudly.
“It’s been a long day. We should both get some rest. We’ve got another busy day tomorrow.” He stood up and stretched. “You’re having brunch with a Queen.”
“It’s not brunch. Just a meeting. But yeah.” I took a deep breath. “I should rest up.”
He looked at me a moment longer, like he was thinking of something more, but instead he said good night and headed into the main room, turning off the stereo before crashing on the couch.