Chapter XIV
XIV
Teddy
I stifle a massive yawn while mimicking Marin’s stance, arms crossed behind her back, as we stand in front of a burgundy hall stuffed with statues at the Thorvaldsens Museum. “Teddy, are you with me?”
I nod, but I also can’t keep from laughing. My body doesn’t know what time it is, but it knows that watching Marin moonlight as a tour guide is sexy, even if I could probably be a bit more engaged with what she’s showing me.
“Oh my god, you hate this. Of course you hate this.” She moves her hand to the sleeve of my coat, her concern genuine. I’m here, but in my head, there’s nothing between her skin and mine. We’re back at the apartment, making up for lost time.
I interrupt, eager for her to know that wherever she is, is exactly where I want to be. “No, not at all, I’m just a little...”
Her tone shifts, and I recognize this tenor from meetings where she plays moderator for dozens of finicky investors. “You’re a modern art guy. Naturally. I’m noting the Japanese denim and APC wool trench you’re wearing. Ok, come on. We’re pivoting.”
Does she know I’d follow her anywhere, and should I be embarrassed by that?
I wonder. To see her act the way she does on the phone and in work calls in real life is almost intimidatingly thrilling.
Twelve hours into this grand romantic gesture, and I’m captivated by how much more spectacular she is up close—even more than I remember.
And I’m floored by how full-body smitten I am in her proximity.
Marin checks her phone and scrunches her nose. “We have twenty minutes to make a train. You ready to book it?”
As I trail her through the streets of Copenhagen, past unaccompanied babies napping in strollers and quaintly tidy trash cans, I can see the city’s appeal.
Maybe I could live here. Maybe it’s as good a place to raise kids as Iowa is.
Isn’t that what people say about Denmark?
Good for families? The thoughts flash through my mind without warning, and I shake my head as if that will set them free.
We arrive at the station out of breath, and Marin punches instructions into a touchscreen machine, buys our tickets, and whisks us onto the metro.
Not a subway car jammed full of deodorant-averse teenagers and the occasional hot-boxing weed-smoker like I’m used to.
A silent train bulleting through the countryside with passengers whispering respectfully and sipping tea from thermoses.
“It gets dark here at, like, four, so time is of the essence,” Marin explains once we settle into seats facing each other.
Our knees knock accidentally, but then they stay there, resting against each other.
Marin raises a hand, a motion I’ve seen her make before in meetings.
She’s about to ask an uncomfortable question.
“Just so we’re aligned,” she starts, then sighs. “Sorry, I don’t know why I’m in work mode right now.” She pauses, and I see the genuine concern in her movements. She fumbles in her bag for her mints, pops one, and offers the tin to me.
It hits me: What I came here seeking is as much of a risk for her as it is for me.
She’s so poised and frank that I sometimes forget that her underbelly is as soft as mine.
Even if glimpses of her more tender parts are what drew me to her in the first place.
I press my shoulders against the seat, rest my hands in my lap, and wait for her to continue.
“You’re not dating Caroline anymore, right? That wasn’t a dramatic embellishment in your monologue last night?”
The square inch where our knees touch feels like a conduit.
I want to reach for her hands, but I tug my ear instead.
“No, we really broke up. After you and I...” I feel my cheeks heat.
“I couldn’t think straight, and I knew it at least had a little bit to do with being in a relationship with someone I couldn’t actually see myself with. ”
Marin nods. The train keeps rolling. It’s almost as if I can see her stuffing her emotions down while her eyes trace the tree line out the window.
There’s so much to say. I think I’m in love with you.
Or, I’m desperate to kiss you right now.
Or, The dullest, bleakest phase of my adult life was when we didn’t speak for years.
But instead, I just watch her. She glances at me, then back out the window for the duration of the ride.
It should be unnerving, but instead, a sense of peace floods my senses.
It feels so easy to be around Marin. No one else—well, maybe Carter—makes me feel this all-consuming calm. I forgot about that part.
The walk to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art from the train is dotted with charming houses and blanketed by wide-open sky.
“Imagine living here,” I say, then laugh when she responds, “I kind of do.” Most of the day’s crowds have headed back into the city by the time we check our coats, and we have entire exhibitions to ourselves.
An Elmgreen & Dragset diving board, designed specifically for a windowed room, stops me in my tracks.
The teal against the gray-blue that’s darkening by the minute feels like an apt metaphor.
I text Carter a picture with the caption “Here goes nothing,” to which he responds, “Is this supposed to be a modern art meme?”
I watch strangers watch Marin. Maybe it’s her ease that they notice, the way she carries herself with a sense that she belongs in every single room she steps into.
It could be her height, which feels fitting amid the towering installations and the backdrop of evergreen pines.
Watching her move, I try to dismiss the sharp pain in my stomach, a pain I’ve been carrying with me for months.
It’s a near-constant ache, right there, alongside joy and hope and what I’m starting to feel certain has to be love.
Marin and I barely speak, wandering from room to room, eventually finding ourselves facing the expanse of water separating us from Sweden.
Arms crossed, she leans her head on my shoulder, and it’s as if she’s breaking the fourth wall between us.
It’s impossible to know what she’s thinking.
But this act of affection—this acknowledgment that there is intimacy between us—is enough at this moment.
“I don’t know what to do with you, Teddy.” Her voice is barely above a whisper, almost lost in the crashing of the waves. I wrap an arm around her shoulder, trying not to shake as we stand there, hopefully, on the precipice of something.
Back at the apartment, it’s pitch black.
Marin lights a sea of candles—“It’s cultural.
I’m not setting the mood”—and pulls ingredients from the refrigerator for chicken soup.
She opens an ice-cold bottle of Grüner, which feels like the last thing I want to be drinking, until she lights a fireplace I barely noticed before.
“A real fireplace, huh? FourVC really hooked you up, Mar.”
“And somehow, I still miss New York.”
The pot’s simmering in the kitchen now, and we’re reaching our hands toward the warmth of the hearth.
We keep finding reasons to stand closer together.
The flames light her in amber. Kissing her is the only intelligible thought I can muster.
She looks around the room, then back at me, straightening the collar on my sweatshirt.
The way she says “New York” makes it feel like she’s saying she misses me. I let my eyes drop to her long fingers wrapped around her wineglass, turning my shoulder into hers, and playfully reach for the drawstring on her cashmere sweatpants.
“I get the feeling New York misses you, too.”
After dinner, dishes drying, we take the rest of the wine to the rug in front of the fireplace.
She pulls pillows from the couch and sits cross-legged.
Marin, the woman whose features I copy and paste on top of every other face I kiss, the person whose gestures I collect like seashells as she reveals more and more of herself to me, is laughing next to me, reaching for my knee to stabilize herself.
Every micro contact turns me on, stirring a desire I swear has been dormant in every other romantic encounter of my life.
“But where’s the slush? How does it stay so clean?
” I ask. We’re talking about snow in Copenhagen, but we’re really talking about that night, when flakes were falling outside my window and we were in bed together with an ocean between us.
Her hand stays on my knee, and her middle finger traces along the bone there.
There’s a gravitational pull tugging us toward the conversation.
Momentum, wine, and the consuming effect of wanting this more than anything.
“New York is dirty,” she says with a shrug. “That’s part of its appeal.” She sets her wine beside her.
We’re going to talk about it. I inhale before diving in, hoping for the mentally clarifying benefits of oxygen, but instead finding the intoxicating scent of fireplace smoke and Marin.
“Everything you said that night,” I start, leaning a little closer, testing the waters, “is that how you talk to everyone on the phone past midnight?” Marin laughs.
Our faces are closer than they’ve been since Envy’s Pub.
I could count the freckles on her nose if it wasn’t for the cool darkness of this room, punctuated by the light of the fire and candles.
Her laugh now is not the one I hear most of the time. It’s deeper, tugging at something she barely allows to see the light of day. I’m scared to move an inch, to break the spell of Marin unarmored.
“You know me, Teddy. I’m a phone sex addict with crippling insomnia.” Her face grows pink from the middle, a softness washing across it. “That was my first time. I don’t really know what came over me.” Her flush suggests a bashfulness contradicted by her direct eye contact when she says it.
I reach for her forearm, reckless or jet-lagged or both. “Mine, too, but I hope you couldn’t tell.”
Her skin’s soft, and I press my thumb against her pulse, wanting to feel her as much as she’ll let me. If we kiss, it’ll change everything, just the way it did the first time. There’s nothing I want more. The seconds drag on while I wait for her to want the same.
Her conspiratorial smile, the way her collarbone moves with her breath against the button-down she’s barely bothered to button. “I could tell,” she says. “And that was part of the charm.”
She reaches for my hand, tracing her finger over my pointer finger and thumb before resting her hand over mine.
The fire crackles. She shifts onto her hip, her eyelids drop, and then, like that, her lips are on mine, soft and deliberate.
Every night I’ve wasted not on the phone with Marin, not here with Marin, unspools in one second—the moment she kisses me, five years later.