25. Rune
Chapter 25
Rune
“Y ou’d better hurry. The forecast said it's going to snow. Don’t want to run into that.”
“I know, I know.” I heft my worn duffel bag into the back seat of my tiny little junk car, next to my suitcase.
“You sure you’ll be ok?” Aunt Mairi shivers in her wool coat, hands tucked deep into her pockets. I've already said my goodbyes to a very sleepy Courtney and Ella. It's only six-thirty and still dark as night outside.
I hold up my travel mug of coffee. “I’ve got this to stay awake and the radio to keep me company.”
“Still, if you get stuck—” her worry hangs in the air, deep lines creasing her forehead as her brows knit together. I think she’s a little scarred about the ditch incident that occurred on my way here. I’m surprised I’m not.
“I’ll be fine. The old bucket will get me back to civilization.” I pat the chipped, rusty blue paint of my car.
“This is plenty civilized for me.” She waves a hand at the buildings behind us. Her log home—warm yellow light shining through the windows—and an old woodshed filled to the brim with freshly cut birch wood to last through the long winter. I'm really going to miss this place.
Aunt Mairi brushes a chunk of graying hair out of her face as the wind picks up.
I give her a big hug and breathe her in one last time. She smells like woodsmoke and cedar. The smell of winter in northern Minnesota. “Miss you already.”
“Don’t be a stranger. You’re welcome here anytime. I love you, sweetie.”
My eyes tear up a little. “I love you, too, Auntie.”
And with that, I begin my drive back south. The roads are clear and nothing slows my journey down to the North Shore, through Duluth, and across the whole fucking state of Wisconsin. I stop once for a bathroom break, once to eat lefse at a Norwegian restaurant, but otherwise—I just drive. I was afraid that I would cry, but I don’t; a numbness descends, blanketing my exhausted emotions. I feel far more burned out by the emotional rollercoaster of the past week and a half than I think I ever experienced during the entirety of my relationship with Sebastian. And that’s including the final, fatal video call.
And this is why we don’t act impulsively , my irritated brain lectures me. It can only end badly .
A few texts roll in throughout the day. Most are from Ella and one is from Danielle, confirming my ETA. Only one comes in from the person I really want to talk to. And when I read it, I’m disappointed by everything it doesn’t say:
Finn the Hero: Safe travels.
Me: Thanks.
Ugh.
I’m tired and cranky by the time I turn onto my street and find a parking spot within walking distance of my apartment. Even though it’s a solid thirty degrees warmer here than in Minnesota, it somehow feels much colder. I hurry through the slush of the un-shoveled sidewalks, dragging my suitcase behind me. It’s a wet, slippery mess. My feet and legs are soaked by the time I make it to the door of my dilapidated little apartment. The one I can’t afford to pay rent on anymore.
As soon as I step inside, I’m assailed by the smell of pizza and the soft murmur of voices. The lights are on in the kitchen and there’s a half-finished wine bottle on the counter. Danielle must have a friend over.
“You’re back!” Danielle shrieks from the living room. A second later, her arms wrap around me in a lung-squeezing hug. “I missed you.”
“Missed you, too.” I look over to see who she’s visiting with—and do a double take at the woman standing by the couch, dressed in jeans and a lumberjack style red button up. Her dark chestnut hair is much longer than it was the last time I saw her. On her face is a brilliant, affectionate smile.
“ Jules ?”
“Surpriiiiise. You going to give me a hug or what?” Jules’ teasing smile is like sunshine to my sad, frozen little soul. I fling myself towards my sister, tackling her onto the couch. Or I try to, anyway. She's got muscles I never had and lifts me up, twirling me around like I'm a little kid.
“Why are you here? Aren’t you supposed to be in like, Sweden or something?”
“I was in Finland, dumbass.”
“But—why? How?”
“An airplane, and because I wanted to spend Christmas with my baby sister.”
“And how was your trip, Rune?” Danielle butts in. “Do we get the full story? Can I get you some wine? Food? Cozy slippers?”
“Wine and cozy slippers,” I decide. There’s a lot to tell. I only sent a few texts throughout the past week and a half, mostly photos of snow and comments about the frigid temperatures. Nothing about anything that really mattered. At first, because it seemed premature, and then—well, it’s just easier to spill the tea in person.
Five minutes later, we’re curled up on the lumpy L-shaped couch, cuddled under an array of blankets, since the heat doesn’t seem to be working as intended.
Then, with one glass of wine down and several to go, I begin to tell the story of my Minnesota vacation. I don't spare a single sordid detail: I might adore my cousins and aunt, but Danielle and Jules are my people. I hold nothing back. When I reach the part where I confronted him, where we had our last conversation, the ongoing commentary from Danielle and Jules falls silent. They just sort of…look at me.
“So that’s it?” Danielle says, brows furrowed.
“He texted me ‘ Safe travels’ today, and I said ‘ Thanks ’ and it’s been radio silence since then.”
Jules is staring at me like I’m an alien. “Can you repeat the part again where he swept you off your feet, invited you into his mansion, showed you what a real fuck is like, and then you get all pissy because he’s also your favorite author of all time?”
I groan. “Don’t say it like that. It was the timing: first his parents, and then the secret identity, and then I got all up in my head. I wasn’t pissy.” I don’t think I was, anyway. I was just…confused. Worried. Helpless. So many pathetic words piled up to describe my emotions at the moment.
“That’s never a good place to be.” Danielle gives a sympathetic smile. She’s an over-thinker, just like me.
Jules purses her lips. “You’ve self-sabotaged. Hardcore. And now let me guess: you’ve decided it’s best to just let things die.”
I hate that she knows me so well. “It’s one thing to be in the middle of a winter romance, feeling all the feels. It’s another to be back home, looking around at the dingy apartment walls that scream this is my reality . I just need to get used to it.”
“Oh, please,” snorts Jules. “It’s like you’re being intentionally illogical.”
“Can’t you be on my side? Say nice things and make me feel better?”
“Would it work?”
No, it would not. “I have less than five hundred dollars in my bank account. What am I supposed to do, beg him to take me back and start a relationship when I could very well end up in Florida with Mom and Dad by February?”
“You’re so dramatic, and I’m almost positive you’re not counting the money I sent over.” Jules rolls her eyes. “Just move in with me if you can’t afford rent.”
“She can stay with me! I’m not kicking you out because you don’t have a job,” Danielle argues.
“Anyway,” Jules continues, “the relationship is obviously already there. What you’re doing is sabotaging it. I hope you realize that the reason you ran away to Minnesota in the first place was to avoid confronting the fact that you lost both your job and your boyfriend. Sounds like when things got confusing up there, you ran away again. You can’t keep running from your own life. At some point, you’ll have to actually live it.”
I hate what she’s saying. I hate that it feels true. “I was living it! But I don’t want to start a relationship where there’s secrets.”
Jules leans on her elbows. “Finn isn’t Sebastian, Rune. Judge him all you want for his own mistakes, but you can’t base your treatment of him off the trauma in your past. Not every secret is a harmful one. It sounds like he intended to tell you.”
Well, now I feel like shit.
“Anyway, whatever,” she continues. “You screwed up and he probably should have apologized in a more epic way. All water under a bridge, as they say.”
“Thinking positive. I like that,” I say wryly.
“Since we can’t go back in time, what say we take a few days to forget about stupid romance, which is clearly overrated, and focus our attention instead on making this a cozy little Christmas?”
“I’m all for that,” Danielle toasts emphatically. Hypocritically, too, since she has a boyfriend.
“Cool, so let’s finish this bottle of wine and start on the next.” Jules wraps her arm around me. “Little Rune can drown her boy problems in a nice cheap bottle of blackberry wine.”
“Yeah, give her something more to regret,” Danielle giggles.
I smile despite myself.
Having my sister here is comforting in a way I didn’t realize I needed. Growing up, it was always Jules and I contra mundum . We held each other’s secrets and relied on each other exclusively through every phase of growing up with emotionally distant parents. Even our personalities balanced perfectly: despite the fact that I’m two years younger, I was the motherly one and she the adventurer. Where I’m shy and indecisive, Jules is confident and quick to take action. I hope she rubs off on me while she’s here.
In fact—there are a lot of things I will shamelessly lean on her for during the two weeks she plans on staying with us. Starting with my living situation.
“Do you still want to move in with Brian?” I ask Danielle the next morning, when the three of us are eating a breakfast of fried eggs and English muffins together. She decided to take the whole week off work to use up a sick amount of PTO.
“Yeah,” she admits. “But it’s not like, super urgent or anything. We have time to figure things out.”
“And by things you mean me?” I clarify. Before she can protest, I continue, “Does his offer of a room in the basement still stand? If so…I think we should definitely move before this apartment lease renews.”
I kind of expect her to jump at the idea. Instead, Danielle looks torn. “Is this because it’s what you want to do? Or is it like one of those sad I can’t be with my love so you might as well be with yours things?”
Jules snorts into her coffee.
“I don't think that's a thing,” I say. “Anyway, it’s not like this apartment is a winner. It’s been good, but maybe holding onto it is also holding us back from something else.”
“Maybe,” Danielle says carefully, “but is Brian’s house really the something else that you want?”
“If I hate it, I’ll just find another place to live,” I point out. “Do you think Brian will give me a little friends and family discount?”
“He definitely will.” From the look on Danielle’s face, I wouldn’t be surprised if she sets that as one of her own stipulations for moving in with him. She’s a good friend like that. And Brian’s a good enough guy who will hopefully just go along with it.
“Ok, well—” I glance at Jules, who nods. “Want to start moving this week?”
“Wait, are you for real?”
“The renewal is on the fifteenth, which means we have three weeks to vacate our place. Since there are three of us here, I figure we can just tackle the worst of it right away.
“Okay, but is that really how Jules wants to spend her vacation?”
“Please, it’s far better than sitting here and listening to Rune’s sad stories. Stop glaring at me, you know it’s true,” Jules adds to me.
I give her a rude gesture with my hand.
“I’ll give Brian a call,” Danielle says, brightening considerably. “See if he’s up for that.”
As it turns out, Brian is, indeed, up for our idea. He even pledges to take a couple afternoons off work to help us transport some of our stuff.
Which is definitely good news, since Danielle and I both have collected far more than we realized in the years we’ve lived here. Every now and again, I hear her swearing in her bedroom as she tries to cram her life into a sensible number of cardboard boxes.
Normally I’d offer to help her, but—after a few days, things really aren’t going any better with my own belongings. There’s an entire box with just knick-knacks in them.
“I should donate these,” I muse. A lot of them are souvenirs that Sebastian picked up for me on his journeys. I don't need them in my life, even if they are really pretty.
“So do it,” says Jules. “Things weigh you down. It's time to start a new life.”
Sometimes I really do hate how much sense she makes. Especially when it means parting ways with the sparkly snow globe full of tiny horses that Sebastian gifted me from Iceland.
In the end, I donate three large boxes, the contents ranging from the stupid knick-knacks to old clothes that I was saving for…I don’t even know. Nostalgia, I guess.
Jules volunteers to do the driving to and from the donation center. I suspect she’s just tired of being cooped up in our musty little apartment, because she takes a suspicious amount of time—and comes back with coffee.
“Are you going to give away your smut books?” Jules laughs, reaching into my pile of books for a paperback with a shirtless man and neon letters on the front.
“Absolutely not. It's probably the most action I'll get for the rest of my life.”
She rolls her eyes. “Speaking of…are you going to invite your boyfriend down for the big housewarming party next week?”
I wince. Brian is dead set on throwing a big party for us, probably to show off his girlfriend to all his entrepreneur friends. Which is fine and all, but I don’t think that a party with strangers is the right place to meet up with Finn again…if he wants to meet up, that is.
“I’m not sure.”
“Why not?” she demands. “Have you officially ended your thing?”
I narrow my eyes. Jules looks far too innocent for a question that she already knows the answer to. Have I texted him? Yes. And he texts back. But the spark just isn’t the same over text. Sexy winks and comments have been few and far between. I’ve been having a hard time figuring out whether he’s sending me messages to be polite or because he actually wants to.
Regardless, I’m far too self-conscious about my living situation to invite him down for a housewarming party with a bunch of strangers.
“We never officially started it,” I say finally. “Anyway, it’s Christmas tomorrow. Can we just not talk about him?”
“Yes, let’s get into the Christmas spirit,” Danielle agrees from the doorway. “We can sing carols to each other in front of the fake Christmas tree.”
I snort a laugh at the mental image that evokes. She brought one of those two-foot-tall fake trees home from a nearby thrift store. We intend to re-thrift it the moment we move out of the apartment.
“To kick things off, I have an early Christmas present for you.” Jules produces a small thin box wrapped in newspaper, with an extravagant ribbon taped to the top.
“My Christmas present to you is free housing for as long as you’re here,” I joke, unwrapping the package to reveal a thick black satin paper sealed with a gold stamped wax seal and a spray of tiny etched leaves. It looks fancy. It looks expensive. When I open the envelope and realize what it is, I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry.
Two VIP tickets to the Faelight Fantasy Ball on New Year’s Eve, a week from now.
“How did you get these? The ball has been sold out for months—and VIPs are by invite only.” I turn them over, awed.
“I have my ways.” Jules looks smug.
“Okay, but how?—”
“Please, you’ve been resharing the posts for months on social media. It doesn’t take a genius to know that you want to go. So I made it happen.”
“That’s definitely not how it works,” I argue. “How did you get the invites? Who are your connections?”
“Just say thank you, Rune,” Danielle says, sounding mildly exasperated.
“Fine. Thanks.” I turn them over again, taking in every luxurious detail of the tickets. “I assume this means you’re coming with me?”
“Unless you want to invite your man.”
“I don’t have a man.” And also, it’s New Year’s Eve. I’m sure he already has plans with his family. I’m very scared of rejection if I ask and he turns me down. Better to live with a teensy bit of delusion than hopelessness. That’s my new motto.
“In that case, yes. And just wait until you see the dress that I got. It’s all kinds of classy and boobylicious.”