Me Here Without You Now


A Love Story After the Love Story


		 Edie D. Browning





Me Here Without You Now

Copyright © 2023 by Edie D. Browning

REA, Maribor

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods except in the case of reviews, without prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, contact Edie D. Browning at www.ediebrowning.com.

The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

Book Cover by Sarah McBeath

Edited by Caroline Vaught

First Digital Edition 2023

Kataložni zapis o publikaciji (CIP) pripravili v Narodni in univerzitetni knjižnici v Ljubljani

COBISS.SI-ID 159957251

ISBN 978-961-96320-1-7 (ePUB)





“You left…And forgot to tell my heart…How to go on without you.”





To my dad who left this world far too soon and to my mom who empowered me with the strength of a remarkable woman in his absence.





Acknowledgments





This book was written while listening to Eyes Closed by Ed Sheeran on repeat and Sam Heughan acting out the scenes in my head. I’m grateful to both of them for their unknowing contribution to this creative journey.

Countless others, unknowingly but undeniably, played a part in bringing these pages to life. Among them, a vibrant community of Booktokers from all corners of the world, whose encouragement served as an extraordinary source of inspiration and motivation. I am immensely grateful for their support.

The twelve-year-old Edie, who used to make up stories in her mind every night, is thankful to her older self for transforming her dream into a reality after years of doubting its worth.

Yet, my utmost thanks go to my mother. Throughout the challenging years I faced, she never wavered in her belief in me and kept encouraging me to take a chance and start writing. Well, Mom, it has been written. And it is with immeasurable gratitude that I dedicate this book to you.





Contents




1. KAPTEENI CHRIS CAPTAIN CHRIS





2. SARA SARA





3. SUPERFANI SUPERFAN





4. PETER PETER





5. KAPTEENI CHRIS 2.0 CAPTAIN CHRIS 2.0





6. MIA MIA





7. SAMI SAMI





8. BOLT BOLT





9. VIRTUAALIRAKKAUS VIRTUAL LOVE





10. NORA NORA





11. PIKKUJOULU CHRISTMAS PARTY





12. JATKOT AFTERPARTY





13. NORA TAAS NORA AGAIN





14. KUVA PHOTO





15. TREFFIT DATE





16. HIIHTOTREFFIT SKI DATE





17. ENSI-ILTA PREMIERE





18. POISSA GONE





19. LOPPU END





20. ALKU BEGINNING





21. HYVÄSTI GOODBYE





22. MAT MAT





Also By

About Author





1





KAPTEENI CHRIS





CAPTAIN CHRIS





As the Battle of Wakanda raged on as a horde of grotesque aliens attempted to penetrate the shield and Captain Chris looking as fierce as ever, Louise nestled on the sofa, while Bolt snored beside her, both oblivious to the world outside.

“Mom…” Louise quickly turned off the TV when she heard her son, but not before Peter caught a glimpse of the battle on screen.

“We’re going to be late! Volleyball, remember?” he said picking up the water bottle on the kitchen table.

Louise checked the time, realizing they had to get going. “Oh, right, look at the time. Let’s go!” She stood up.

“What were you watching?” he asked, curious.

Louise quietly murmured: “Infinity War.”

Peter rolled his eyes: “Mom, seriously, again?”

Louise put her finger in front of her mouth, signalling a kind of do-not-say-it, walked past him, grabbed the car keys, and said, “Let’s go!”

Silence filled the car on the way to the practice, Peter’s head in his phone, playing some game, while Louise lost in her own world, contemplating whether this whole phase of Captain America, aka Chris Evans, aka Captain Chris as she nicknamed him, had been going on for too long. She had been watching and rewatching the films for over two years now. Had it been it three already? She’d start with Captain America: the First Avenger and make it all the way through Infinity War, then she couldn’t get herself to watch Endgame, so she would start over, but this time, she’d begin with Civil War, then wonder how the Avengers ended up in Civil War and went back to some other film in the franchise.

Louise had had previous obsessions, as evidenced by the ten posters of Keanu Reeves plastered all over her room in the 90‘s. She had a talent of getting lost in fictional characters, whether on paper or on screen. One of the reasons she pursued a degree in English language and literature, she hoped it would one day be her job to get lost in fictional worlds and explore them. She’d read for days and nights, with a flashlight under the covers, watch and re-watch her favourite films, TV shows, record the shows on VHS tapes back in the day, and buy DVDs later on. A sort of escape for Louise when life got hard and these obsessions provided a safe haven. She found comfort in the predictability of repetition, in reading a book, or watching a film for the second, third, fifth, even tenth time knowing every line of dialogue, every frame, every plot twist that was about to unfold.

As a a huge science fiction fan, she watched all the Star Wars, Star Trek in the 90‘s, saw all the X-men films, and of course Keanu aka Neo in the Matrix. She was also no stranger to the Marvel universe; she had been watching the films since Peter introduced them to her and Mat some years ago. Then sometime after that fateful night, she threw everything out and abandoned the franchise completely. However, when Covid hit, Louise and Peter were forced to spend all their time in their big, empty house with nothing but painful memories and just around that time Disney+ launched in Finland, so suddenly all her favourite characters were in her living room always available. She needed an escape from the reality more than ever before, and endless distraction was right in front of her. Over time, everything else faded away and Louise didn’t need anyone else but Captain Chris. And she needed him. She knew Captain Chris down to the core; she knew what she was getting into, the stories, the outcomes, whereas, with the other films, there was always that element of surprise and Louise couldn’t deal with surprises.

The internet helped – it made everything and everyone just a click away. In the 90s, an obsession for one character or person couldn’t be easily sustained for a longer period of time by people in general. Films could be watched and re-watched, and information about various personalities could be read in magazines, but the content of the magazines was beyond their control, and there was little choice other than not buying them if the cover was disliked. Now, with the overwhelming amount of content available, Louise could spend days, weeks, and months devouring Captain Chris and still have more to see. And she did. Apart from the films, she’d watch Chris Evans interviews on YouTube. All the press junkets for all the Marvel films, all the interviews with the late-night comedians, you name it. It was fair to say she knew most of Captain America’s lines by heart in the films, not only that, but she also knew what Chris would say in interviews, simply because she had watched and rewatched all of these so many times. She loved how wordy Chris Evans was, his English teacher had to be proud of him, Louise thought whenever she watched him talk in interviews. She knew full well that Captain America and Chris Evans were not the same person, that they were a fictional character and a real person and there was a fascination with both the character and the actor that definitely went beyond just a physical attraction, but she certainly couldn’t take that component out of it. Just the Infinity War Captain Chris. The hair, the beard, the body, the outfit. My God. Louise sighed at the thought of it, imagining it in her head. Peter looked up from his phone and asked, “Mom, are you OK?” Louise smiled and nodded, shifting gears at the traffic lights with the drivers behind her honking. “Yes, fine!”



They arrived at the school and Peter got out of the car. “Have fun! Mia’s picking you and Nora up after, remember?” Louise said, anticipating having about three hours of spare time in the afternoon as a result.

Louise had two jobs; a teacher, and a mom. She prided herself on excelling in both of these roles, spending countless hours preparing lessons, grading papers, and reviewing tests. She taught English at Kouvola lukio, a high school located in the heart of the city. A tough but loving teacher who could get most of them really excited about the language, reading, and writing. Her job was her priority but so was her son.

Peter was an intelligent, down-to-earth teenage boy, who loved physics, volleyball, anime, and all things Japanese. While Louise adored her boy and Peter loved his mom, they didn’t have that much in common. If you imagined a 16-year-old Louise in physics class in high school, she would be sitting in the very back row, chatting away, making no sense of the symbols and numbers written by the professor on the board, hiding a book on her lap under the desk. She felt baffled by her son’s love for the subject; she couldn’t understand it. But she loved him, like she loved teaching. She had her life together. Her love for Captain Chris was merely a temporary distraction. A phase. A way to relax after a hard day at work, to escape her thoughts, feelings, and memories. A way to escape the memories of Mat…



As soon as she opened her front door, she quickly scrolled through her Facebook and saw a selfie of Mia in front of a mirror at the gym. She stood with her back to the mirror showing off her butt with a caption under it in Finnish that could be translated to ‘early bird gets the peach’. Although Louise found Mia’s Facebook posts inappropriate and even vulgar at times, she still hit the Like button as usual. She was in a strange relationship with Mia. They had actually met at the hospital, when Louise gave birth to Peter and Mia to her Nora, the two were birthday twins. They weren’t really friends, not anymore, but lived close by, hung out in similar circles, met at PTA meetings and so forth.

Mia was a party girl who certainly wasn’t a girl anymore. Her Facebook life displayed tons of posts showing off her having a good time. She would post photos of herself in a beautiful dress showing off her cleavage, out hiking in shorts and a tank top, and cooking with full makeup on. She had divorced her husband a couple of years ago. There were rumours about her affair(s), and her newfound singledom had caused her to spiral even further as witnessed on Facebook. She was out every weekend if not more, constantly posting kippis (‘cheers’ in Finnish) and photos of her in another slinky dress with a cocktail in her hand and a smile that would light up the darkest room. What was not on Facebook were rumours that men were coming to Mia’s house day and night, that Nora, her daughter, would encounter strangers in the hallway at 2am on a Tuesday on her way to the toilet. Louise, who had only been with three men (and that one time almost with a woman) in her life, with her last being Mat almost three years ago (was it four?), found it outrageous but didn’t say anything as it was not her place. She couldn’t imagine having sex with strangers, as she hadn’t been on a first date in twenty years, which was apparently what Mia was doing on a weekly basis.

Louise had a petite and curvy figure, not skinny, not plump, but somehow perfect in between. Mia was the tall blonde with the perfect body, who, at 39, could still rock a crop top with her toned abs and miniskirts with her long legs and would, in fact, wear both together as a kind of uniform. Louise had a fuller bum, an attribute that was, to her surprise, getting more and more popular over the years. She couldn’t comprehend it; she had hated her sizable backside ever since it started growing when she was a teenager. It made no sense to her that women nowadays were undergoing surgery to obtain bigger butts, when she had been trying to hide hers in maxi dresses and long cardigans for years.

As she scrutinized the provocative photo, she wondered about Mia’s ex-husband and his take on these fishing-for-lustful-likes posts. He had moved away and broken contact with everyone still involved in Mia’s life and unfriended Louise on Facebook, so she had no idea he had been up as of divorce. His daughter Nora apparently saw him now and then, as far as Louise gathered, but for the most part, she was with her mom. Louise felt sorry for Nora, as the girl had kind of lost her father and was now also in a way losing her mom, as she was on her escapades.

As soon as Louise liked Mia’s photo, a message popped up in her Messenger. It was Mia.

Lucy! Pilates tomorrow?! She wrote with a strong-arm emoji following.

Every Monday and Wednesday Mia would message Louise to remind her of their Pilates class, usually with a silly gif of women working out or a strong-arm emoji. And every Monday and Wednesday, Louise would linger with the reply, turning on her airplane mode on her iPhone so Mia would think she hadn’t seen the message and reply hours later usually with ‘Sorry, can’t today’ or rarely ‘Sure, excited!’.

“Oh, hell to the no!” Louise said out loud. She had no desire to go to Pilates after seeing that picture of Mia in her all-red ensemble working out at 6am. Bolt looked up thinking what was happening. Louise reached over to pet him behind the ears.

“Sorry… Wish I could, cramping so bad… First day of period,” Louise sounded out loud as she typed out the words and added a hands-up-in-the-air emoji before sending the message. She looked up at the clock and realized she had more than an hour before Peter got home. She walked over to the fridge and poured herself a glass of wine. It was Wednesday after all. Just as she poured the wine into her glass, another message from Mia came through. It was a sad smiley face. Louise took a big sip of wine.

For sure on Tuesday! She replied with a strong-arm emoji thinking that on Tuesday she might actually be on her period. She turned the TV back on. An hour later tears streamed down her face as she watched her beloved Captain Chris not being able to save Vision from Thanos for the umpteenth time.



When Peter got to practice, the first thing he did was look around to see where Nora was. He couldn’t see her right away as the girls were on the other side of the gym, but then he spotted her. She and the other girls were already running laps on their side. Nora wore her usual volleyball practice outfit, an orange T-shirt and black shorts with her blonde hair pulled back into a high ponytail, bouncing left and right as she ran. She may have looked just like any other girl on the team, as most of them were wearing T-shirts and black shorts with their long, blonde hair in high ponytails, but to Peter, she was gorgeous.

He waved in Nora’s direction, hoping to catch her attention, but she didn’t notice him. Instead, Barbara, one of her teammates, running next to Nora, waved back, thinking that Peter greeted her. Peter blushed and turned around. He high-fived the other boys, and they also started running laps.

When practice ended, Nora waited for her mom to pick them up in front of the school. She scrolled through her phone, as was he, wondering what to say.

“Hei, hei,“ he said, making a tiny wave as he came closer her.

“Hei, hei, Mom is on her way.“ Nora said without looking up.

“Great…” Peter looked at her but quickly went back to staring at his phone as she didn’t look up.

Mia came around the corner, and they got in the car.

“How’s school, Peter?” She asked as usual and Peter responded with “Fine, thanks.” Nora’s mom talked a lot, always bombarded him with endless questions. How was practice, how was Louise, how was Bolt, ... She had the radio on quite loud, and if a good song in her opinion came up, she’d turn it up even more and start singing and dancing while driving pretty fast. Then another question popped into her head, and she’d turn it down again or shout it over the music. Peter could see it was annoying to Nora. She’d roll her eyes, never looking away from her phone, and if Mia started singing and dancing, she’d ask her to stop. Peter would smile; he kind of liked it. His mom would never act like that, not even if they were alone, let alone with someone else in the car. Mia looked like a fun mom, while his mom was the opposite.

When the third sing-along song came up and Mia started trilling again, Nora, for a second, looked Peter in the eyes and mouthed ‘kill me now’ before returning to her phone. Peter’s eyes stayed on her face, examining it. Her face was delicate, with high cheekbones, a small nose, and full, pink lips. There was a trace of freckles on her cheeks that he remembered would become more pronounced in the summer. She was so pretty.

As he was admiring her beauty, the car suddenly stopped.

“Here we are,” Mia said. “Bye, Peter! Tell Lucy I’m counting on her for Pilates on Tuesday!”

“Will do, Mrs. Korhonen. See you Friday!” Peter said, closing the car door and turning to Nora. She looked up from her phone for a split second and smiled at Peter. He didn’t want to leave as he locked eyes with her, but she immediately looked away. He mouthed ‘moi, moi’, but she was already giggling watching a video.

“Hi, Mom, I’m home. Mia says she’s counting on you for Pilates on Tuesday,” Peter called out as he came into the living room. The TV was switched off. Louise was carrying an empty wine glass into the kitchen, sniffling.

“Mom… You OK? You been crying?”

“Erm, no, sweetie… just allergies. You know how I get them,” Louise said, clearing her throat. It was almost November, and nothing that would cause allergies grew at this time of year in Finland, Peter thought, but didn’t say anything. Instead, he just nodded suspiciously.

She walked over and gave Peter a big hug, sniffling some more, then urged him to eat something, as she glanced down at his jeans, which hung loosely off his skinny, lanky frame. It was hard to believe how much Peter had grown in a year, he now towered over his mom when not long ago, he was shorter than her. She told him that she was going to do some schoolwork.

“Sure, Mom. Bolt go on his walk yet?” Bolt looked up, recognizing the word walk, and started wagging his tail.

“Yes, we already went. He’s good.” Louise replied.

Peter made himself a sandwich with Bolt sitting next to him, patiently imploring him with his eyes to get a piece. As he was eating and scrolling through Instagram, Peter noticed Nora had put up another selfie just minutes ago. She was trying on some new lipstick. Damn, that girl looked good. He quickly clicked on the heart under the photo and thought about leaving a comment. Something cool. He scrolled through the emojis on his phone, thinking of a clever comment.

Wow, looks great!

That colour looks good on you.

Love it!

Nice!

Thumbs up!

Heart emoji!

Cool emoji!

Fire emoji!

He mulled it over in his head, but in the end, it all seemed pretty lame to him, so he didn’t comment. Would she think it was weird that he liked her photo so quickly? She just posted it two minutes ago. Was he the first to like it? Well, he couldn’t unlike it now; that would be even stranger.

He went upstairs to shower, and as the hot water poured over him, he found himself thinking about kissing those pink, full lips of Nora’s.





2





SARA





SARA





Years before now, before Captain Chris, before Peter, before Mia - it was just Mat and Louise. They had been through it all – a chance meeting that sparked a great love, then lost each other in the chaos of life, and finally made their way back to each other – and after all the drama, all they craved was to make a life together and have a baby. But having a baby involved making a baby, then keeping that baby alive in the belly, giving birth to a baby to then finally having a baby to call their own. It seemed Mat and Louise struggled with each step of the way.





As a nurse entered the hospital room, Louise stirred from her half-conscious state. She spoke little Finnish at the time and could only make out the word operaatio which surely meant operation; she figured they were starting with the procedures. She didn’t look in her direction, her gaze transfixed on the colourful, sunny day outside.

The room overlooked a garden, but being on the third floor, Louise could only see the treetops dancing. The spring day was full of light, birdsong, and promising warmth. A particularly striking tree was just on the outside of the window, adorned with delicate pink flowers that had just begun to bloom. She marvelled at the tree’s beauty and its ability to procreate. It was clearly capable of growing life unlike her. She hugged her knees close to her chest.

After half an hour, the nurse came back again and called Louise by her last name; she was getting another ultrasound. She wasn’t actually there; it was as if her soul had left her body. She slowly peeled her eyes away from the window and followed the nurse out the door with her head bowed down.

The, what felt like, one hundredth ultrasound, was over quickly. Louise couldn’t look at the black and white screen but stared at the green wall on the opposite side of the room. She only understood bits and pieces out of what the doctor was saying. “… Sorry … no heartbeat…. ten weeks… heartbeat…”. The fact that he was speaking Finnish, made Louise feel even more removed, as if all of this wasn’t actually happening, it was just some strange recuring dream.

Another doctor came in. She looked like she was about to pop with a beautiful, big, baby bump, sighing as she waddled across the room to Louise. She looked at the ultrasound screen then Louise, touched her arm, sighed deeply, and shrugged her shoulders.

“Se on harmi…“ she said, looking at the screen.

Someone then must have mentioned that Louise didn’t speak Finnish as the heavily pregnant doctor continued: “It’s terrible… I know. But you are young, you’ll have many children… Yes? You’ll see.”

Louise felt even more lifeless, as this woman with two heartbeats beating inside of her had just told her that her baby was dead. She couldn’t look at her, she wasn’t listening, but kept her eyes on the wall, just waiting for it to be over. The first chance she got, she asked if she could go back to her room and left.

The procedure didn’t last long. A nurse was by her side, holding her hand when she came to. She knew she was alone again. The baby was gone, the promise of a baby was gone.

Three hours later, Mat picked her up at the hospital. He kissed her on the forehead, and Louise curled up in his chest. They shared a hug and cried.

Mat said, “It’s just not the right time, you’ll see. We’ll have so many babies, you’ll see.”

Louise shrugged, wiping away her tears, and they went home.



Louise contemplated about which pharmacy to go to this time. She couldn’t go to the pharmacy around the corner and run into the black-haired pharmacist again. Or to the pharmacy in the centre where the short-haired lady with the glasses worked. There were over twenty pharmacies in all of Kouvola and in her mind, all the pharmacists in all of the town knew her. Knew how many pregnancy tests Louise had already bought, how desperate she was, how she bought the prenatal vitamins already, and how there was never a baby bump to be seen and certainly no baby.

Perhaps she didn’t need to take a test just yet. She looked up pregnancy symptoms on Internet Explorer once again between her English classes. She worked at a local language school and had classes almost every day. Her online search was of no use. She was either pregnant or premenstrual. Damn! She needed to take a pregnancy test. After her classes she drove through the busy streets of Kouvola, her eyes scanning the rows of colourful storefronts. She drove on both banks of the city’s Kymijoki river several times in search for the lit up green cross on the white background, her gaze darting from side to side as she passed by modern buildings with sleek lines and large windows as well as more traditional, rustic-looking ones with wooden facades and sloping roofs. Finally, she spotted a pharmacy sign and turned into the parking lot. It was a small pharmacy with a brick façade, and a sign hanging above the door that read ‘Kouvola Apteekki’. She was in luck; she had never before laid eyes on this particular pharmacist. When she came home, Mat was still at work. She had to do the test now. She couldn’t do it in front of Mat. He’d always convince her to wait, but she couldn’t. No, she had to do the test now.

A blue line, as always. Then it seemed that another blue line was becoming more and more visible. Could it be? Could she be actually pregnant again? It could! It was! Louise covered her mouth trying not to scream. A baby. Well, not a baby. A promise of a baby. This meant nothing, it was just a promise. She would keep it a secret this time, she wouldn’t tell anyone, not even Mat. She had been through this promise before. She had lived two, three months like she was going to have a baby, she even bought that maternity blouse the last time, only to realize it was all just a lie and that the baby inside of her was gone. Mat was practical about the whole thing. It wasn’t really a baby in his mind. Which made sense as it wasn’t really. However, his breasts didn’t get swollen, his body didn’t feel any different, whereas Louise’s did. He was sad, of course, and cried with her, but after some time, he was back to himself and ready to give it another try. No, he didn’t need to know just yet. Even Louise could pretend she didn’t know just yet. She had four weeks to her first examination, then four weeks to the end of the first trimester. This was just the beginning. She could do it; she could keep it a secret and no one needed to know.

Louise held it together those first couple of weeks. Until it was time to go to the toilet. Then, she would break out into sweats, dread seeing blood on her panties, stare at the opposite wall the entire time, and not look down at the toilet paper after she had wiped.

She would also have dreams of waking up in bed covered in blood and would wake in the middle of the night horrified. However, nothing happened, and Louise was in a way prepared for the worst, while expecting the best possible outcome. An actual baby.



The weeks slowly passed. Mat still didn’t know when Louise went in for her first ultrasound to confirm the pregnancy. By that time, Louise had been living in Finland for about two years, she hadn’t made many friends and still spoke little Finish. She and Mat talked in English, he was fluent in it and would only say Oh, my God in Finnish during sex as he was about to come or when he was talking in his sleep. Louise found it adorable. She wanted to learn the language and had been attending Finnish for foreigners, but it took time as Finnish was so different from English. It was not an issue though, as pretty much everyone spoke English and even if they were out with friends and she was the only foreigner out of twenty people, everybody would switch to her native language on her behalf. It was nice, but also made it impossible to practice her Finnish outside her Finnish class.

When Louise came in the gynaecologist greeted her with the usual, “Oh, how’s my English teacher doing?” Louise had got to know the doctor fairly well over the last couple of years with the miscarriage and trying to get pregnant again. Besides, she was probably her only Irish patient, so she wasn’t surprised that she remembered her. Louise would smile and greet her with “Hyvää Päivää”, Finnish for good day.

“Louise, this is your second pregnancy, yes?” The Doctor asked as she climbed up on the table.

“Mumm, yes…. second,” Louise replied, sounding hesitant and avoiding eye contact, not wanting to recall the number of pregnancies she had experienced. She didn’t look at the screen, something she wouldn’t do for the better half of her pregnancy. At least not until she could feel the baby kicking and practically seeing him from the outside. She always looked away, searching for something to focus on. She couldn’t see out the window, it was too far away, instead she would focus on the blue-coloured door in front of her. It had a poster on it for prenatal vitamins or something. She couldn’t really make out the words, but there was a picture of a woman’s belly with her hand on it. She was absorbed in her thoughts, when she finally heard the doctor say: “A heartbeat, listen! Strong. Well, everything looks great!” Louise smiled, glanced at the doctor, avoiding looking at the screen.

“Great…” she said softly. She hesitated to allow herself to feel joy. This had happened before, she reminded herself. She had been at this point before, and it didn’t end well.



Louise had been pregnant for a good ten weeks and was slightly showing. For one, her boobs had become huge, and her bras barely fitted her anymore. She still hadn’t told Mat or anyone for that matter. She drove to another pharmacy in a different direction to get her prenatal vitamins this time and luckily didn’t see anyone familiar. She decided to wait a little longer before telling Mat. This wasn’t a baby, she kept telling herself, but just a promise and promises didn’t always hold up. Telling Mat would make it real; a real baby and she couldn’t do it yet.

It was a lazy Friday afternoon and Mat and Louise lay in their soft bed, covered with a warm duvet. The gentle breeze permeated through the window, bringing in the sounds from the streets below. They lived in a two-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a modern, grey building. The apartment was small and cozy and had a lovely view of the city.

As Louise opened her eyes, she could hear the beeping that signalled pedestrians to cross the street. It was a familiar sound that she heard every day, only louder when the window was open, as it was now. Mat made a grumble and intuitively reached for Louise’s breast in a half-asleep state, then lowered his hand, touching her belly, which felt somewhat rounder than usual. Louise began moaning, turned around, and started kissing him on the mouth. In that moment it hit him that they had been having sex a lot lately. There was usually a pause during Louise’s Code Red, as she would call her pretty regular periods. Regular enough for Mat to kind of be aware of the breaks in between, although he hadn’t been tracking them. Was she pregnant again? He cupped one of her breasts some more; it definitely felt bigger. He stopped kissing for a moment and glanced at her belly and then her eyes. She opened her eyes.

“Are you…?”

“Raskaana?“ Louise nodded, smiling slightly, and closing her eyes again, hiding the tears in her eyes. Mat started to well up with tears and closed his eyes too. He lowered his face to hers, kissing her again on the mouth. They began kissing more and more passionately. He kissed her on her neck, her ears, her lips, fondled her full breasts, and began making his way down. He stopped on her belly and kissed it so many times, as if pouring all his love and welcoming his baby. Then he began to make his way further down, between her legs, but Louise couldn’t wait and pulled his head back up and started kissing him passionately again, hugging him with her legs. Mat thrust himself into her and, moved faster and faster until they both reached their climax in each other’s arms.





3





SUPERFANI





SUPERFAN





Louise paced around the classroom, peeking over students’ shoulders at what they were writing, stopping every so often, and whispering to the students, making sure everyone worked on what they were supposed to. Louise went out of her way to not look in any way provocative or sexy, being self-conscious of her wide hips and round butt and well-aware that the teenage boys in her classroom might find her curves distracting. She was wearing a crisp white blouse and tailored black trousers with green pumps, her outfit completing the professional look she had always aimed for. Her straight, dark brown, almost black hair flowed past her shoulders and her eyes were looking more grey than green that morning reflecting the grey clouds outside.

The video she showed rumbled on the board. She walked way to the back of the class, with her nose almost touching the notebook of a student of hers, explaining something. They were so engrossed that she had not noticed that the YouTube video ended, or that the classroom fell silent.

“Opettaja, you’re really into Captain America!“ Louise heard a student say, and everyone broke out in laughter at that remark. “Iiiiiin loooove!” someone else shouted, and everyone started whistling and laughing. Louise and looked up at the board. A full screen of images of Chris Evans or Captain America popped up in a grid of YouTube recommendations of what to watch next.



Interview with Chris Evans and Hayley Atwell – CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER

Top 10 Moments That Made Us Love Chris Evans

The Best of Chris Evans on ‘The Ellen Show’

Best of Steve Rogers

Captain America: CIVIL WAR PRESS CONFERENCE

Captain America: Civil War Cast Funny Moments

Avengers: Infinity War Full Bloopers and Gag Reel

…

Louise felt flabbergasted, her mind began racing. She must have accidentally signed into her personal YouTube account rather than her work one. She had done that before, sure, but she couldn’t recall having so many Captain Chris suggestions on YouTube. Normally, it was a crazy mix of dance songs like “Faithless” by Insomnia, love songs like “Said I Loved You But I Lied” by Michael Bolton, Conan videos, and the occasional grammatical lesson or some audio story she was listening to. She had never seen a complete wall of Captain Chris.

Moreover, she typically watched YouTube on her phone, but now the images took up the size of a small cinema screen on the board. Louise rushed to the front of the classroom. Autoplay was on and before she reached the computer, Scarlett Johansson and Chris Evans appeared on the screen, playing some type of guessing game with Ellen DeGeneres. Scarlett needed to guess what Chris was doing in a photo naked from the waist up. “Oh, my God,” Louise whispered to herself. More woo-hoos and whistling ensued as the class fell into a complete frenzy of laughter. Louise finally got to the computer and turned it off, blushing. She took a deep breath.

“Oh, my son must have been watching this on my phone again… He’s such a Captain America fan, watched all the films, super into these silly comic films, you know…”

She didn’t look up from her computer, quickly clicking away with the mouse, closing one tab after the other, and switching off the projector. The class began to settle down, and Louise thought to herself, ‘OK, they are buying it. At least some of them.’ The bell rang and Louise smiled to herself.

“Ah, saved by the bell, I guess. Class, please finish the state verbs by tomorrow, so we can continue.”

“Sure will, Miss Peggy,” Louise heard someone say half out loud, referring to Peggy Carter, Captain America’s love interest.

“Well, she does sound a bit like her,” someone else said in Finnish and more laughter followed. Louise’s Finnish was pretty good at this point, she had been living here for almost two decades. Still, she pretended not to hear it, kept her teacher show-no-fear-no-emotion face, and quickly exited the classroom, her green pumps clanking on the hardwood floor.



Louise spent the next week obsessively double, triple checking if she had signed into her work account on the school computers in the classrooms, before completely abandoning showing anything on computer during classes to barely turning on the computer unless absolutely necessary. It was like going back to school in the 90‘s, with no internet, no videos, and no computers. Nothing but worksheets and the sound of Louise’s voice explaining something with the occasional commonplace chitter-chatter from the students. The incident had been forgotten and Louise’s not-really-dirty little secret was safe with her once again.

However, her peace of mind was short-lived, as one day, a student from her disastrous Monday morning class waited for her as in the hallway as she made her way to her teacher’s room. As usual, Louise had her fully packed hold-it-all bag over her shoulder and three rather sizable books in her hands.

“Hei, opettaja!” the student, Janne, greeted her cheerfully. He was a short boy, about the same height as Louise, unlike most of his classmates who had already hit their growth spurt before starting high school.

“Hi, Janne. What are you doing waiting here? Do you need something?” Louise replied, slightly surprised.

“Oh, no, opettaja, I brought something for your son.“ Janne said smiling.

“For my son? What…, what are you talking about, Janne?” Louise frowned, looking perplexed. Peter attended another high school. There was no way Janne could have known Peter. Louise also rarely spoke about her private life or Peter to her students.

“Oh, you know, that last time in class…. You said, he’s a big Captain America fan, remember?” Janne started explaining. “So, I thought, I’m a huge Captain America fan too and I’ve read like all of his comics…” Janne opened his school bag and started taking out hordes of Captain America comics. “Maybe he’d like to read these?” He stacked the comics and handed them over to Louise.

“These are just some of them. I’ve got tons more at home, and I’ve read them many times… Anything for a fellow superfan, opettaja,“ Jane said with a smile.

Louise felt astounded but also bemused, realizing that her trick last time had apparently worked. He actually believed that it was her son who was watching those videos, not her. As anyone would. Who would believe that she would spend all day watching YouTube videos about Captain America? Which she didn’t anyway… Well, definitely not Janne.

“Oh, Janne, that’s wonderful. Thank you so much! Peter will be over the moon. I don’t know what to say… Thank you. This is just great!” Louise exclaimed, her eyes widening as she counted the eleven, no, twelve, Captain America comics that Janne brought for her…, well, not her, her son. “Are you sure I, well…, my son, can borrow these?”

“Yes, no problem, opettaja,“ Janne replied with a smile. “Like I said, I’m happy to share.”

Louise nodded, carefully placing the comics one by one on top of the books already in her hands, almost covering her eyes now.

“Great, Janne! Thank you so much! Peter will love these…. Can’t wait to show him.” Louise started walking away backwards, barely holding all the books in her lap and the bag on her shoulder.

Janne turned around and started running down the stairs. As Louise turned around and was about to continue her walk towards her room, she accidentally collided with someone, causing the Captain America comics to fly up in the air before scattering all over the floor. Louise looked up to see David, the P.E. teacher, standing in front of her with a smirk on his face.

“Lou, what’s this? Have you finally run out of books to read?” David teased, looking down at all the Captain America comics sprinkled all over the floor, then bending to help her pick them up.

Louise felt slightly annoyed at being called Lou; no one else called her that. Not anymore, anyways.

“You could apologize for bashing into me, David,” Louise said fixing her jacket. “And no, I didn’t run out of books to read,” Louise said stressing the ‘I’. “This is for my son, if you must know,” she said almost convincingly.

David started picking up the comics and admired the cover of one of them. She tried to grab it back from him, but being quite taller than her, he held it out of her reach, continuing to tease her.

“I didn’t crash into you, Lou, you crashed into me. Next time watch where you’re going,” David said still examining the cover.

“Wow, Captain America: Arena of Death. I had no idea you were into this, Lou! Don’t you read Shakespeare or something like that? Look at those muscles, that’s something! It’s like looking at my brother,“ David remarked, smirking, and flexing his own biceps.

Rolling her eyes, Louise tried to grab the comic out of her reach. “David, stop it, it’s not for me. It’s for my son!” David lowered the comic and let Louise take it back, still grinning.

“Sure thing!” he winked as he handed the comic back to her.

“You know, Lou, if you’re into tall, blonde, muscular men, I’m available,” he whispered in her ear.

Louise couldn’t believe her ears. He lingered, looking her straight in her eyes. Louise took the comic and didn’t look away from his flirty blue eyes. Only a huff came out of her mouth, and she walked away visibly agitated.

David shouted after her, “Is that a no? All right, then.” David shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and walked away.

Louise finally reached her room, unlocked it, and closed the door behind her. She leaned against the door, sighed, and looked up at the ceiling. The nerve of that man.



Peter arrived home about ten minutes after Louise did. His mother wasn’t in the living room, but he could tell she was home; he noticed her bag on the chair. Then something else caught his eye. A pile of Captain America comic books on the dining table. Captain America: Arena of Death, Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty, Captain America: Symbol of Truth. Peter couldn’t help but wonder what was going on. First, the films, and, now she the comic books as well.

“Mooom! Where are you?” he called out. Louise emerged from her bedroom changed into grey sweatpants and a sweatshirt, looking her usual self.

“Mom, what’s this? Why is there like a dozen Captain America comic books on the table?” he asked, gesturing at the stack.

Peter’s eyes darted between the comics and his mother.

Louise walked over and kissed him on the forehead before heading to the kitchen.

“Oh, hi, sweetie. How are you?” she greeted him, glancing at the comics on the table.

“These? Oh, these… are from a student of mine. For you, actually. I was talking about how much you love anime and this type of superhero stuff, and he brought these comics for you,” Louise explained with a shrug, essentially claiming no responsibility. According to her, the student was just being friendly and brought all these comics for Peter, someone he had never met.

“Mom, what are you talking about?” he asked sceptically. These were surely not meant for him.

“Look, Peter, I think he got the wrong idea... We were talking about comic books, and I might have mentioned that you’re…. like into this… You know? And the next thing I know, he brings over all these comics for you. He’s a fan… you’re a fan, he thought you’d like them. What was I supposed to do? Say no, thanks?” Louise said, opening her arms and shrugging her shoulders.

Peter shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t know, Mom…”

“Look, let’s just keep them for a week or two and then I’ll return them, OK? I couldn’t NOT take them.” Louise stressed the incorrect not and took the comics to put them away in her bedroom.

“OK, if you say so...” Peter replied thinking she had probably bought these comics herself or got them from the library.

He watched as his mother walked away and couldn’t help but say: “Mom, are you OK? I mean… you’re watching these films all the time… now the comics…” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

Louise halted but didn’t turn around. Her eyes welled up with tears, and she made a little sniffle as she looked up at the ceiling. A moment of silence dragged on and Peter regretted saying anything. Finally, she spoke so softly, as if someone had turned down the volume on her.

“I’m fine, Peter. The comics are just a misunderstanding from a student… and the films are just films. We used to watch them together, remember? We could do that again sometime. How about tonight?” she asked, raising her voice.

She walked back over to Peter, and hugged him, although it looked more like Peter embraced, as she buried her head into his chest.

Peter wished he hadn’t said anything. “Sure, Mom, let’s watch the latest Thor together,“ he suggested.

“Great, we’ll watch Thor! Fun!“ Louise exclaimed, punching her arms in the air to show her excitement.



Peter didn’t really want to watch Thor again, he had seen it on his own a week before, but he said he would and so he had to. After dinner, the two started watching the film and it took Louise a total of ten minutes before she started scrolling on her phone. She had a pillow in her lap, her phone slightly tucked under it with Peter sitting on her left. She tried to conceal it, but Peter noticed right away that she wasn’t watching the TV.

About twenty minutes into it, Peter said, “Oh, damn, I just remembered I have to finish something for history tomorrow. I’m sorry, Mom, you watch it, it’s really great. I’ve seen it like last week.”

Louise’s eyes shot up from the phone, which she quickly slid back under the pillow. “Sure thing, sweetie, you do what you have to. I’m definitely watching it… Good night,” she said, her voice carrying a sense of relief.

Peter stood up and hugged her, and Louise kissed him on the forehead before he went upstairs. As he finished brushing his teeth, he could hear the TV volume increasing. He tiptoed back downstairs and stood behind the door to listen more closely. It was not the Thor film they were just watching. No, that was definitely the voice of Chris Evans as Captain America on the TV.





4





PETER





PETER





“ Sinä olet niin suuuuuri !“ Mat’s mom would always cry out whenever they met. Louise was ten days past her due date and her bump was huge. So enormous that it seemed her mother-in-law as well as other people were shocked by the sight of it. She lost count of many times she had heard how big she was or asked whether she was having twins.

“Mom, you can’t say things like that!” Mat apologized to Louise for his mom’s rude remark.

“If she’s big, the baby’s big. This is good!” His mom would say.

There was no ignoring the fact that the baby was here, because her belly was so huge and when it was kicking, she could actually feel and even see its leg or arm. He was here and not going away. Louise was no longer afraid of going to the bathroom, seeing blood at this point would only mean that she was going to finally meet her boy. Louise knew it was a boy when she got pregnant. She just knew.

At one of her check-ups, she asked while looking at the blue door, away from the screen, “Is he OK?”

“How do you know it’s a boy?” The doctor asked looking at the screen attentively. She continued in Finnish: “Hän on OK,“ which didn’t reveal the sex, as there was only one word in Finnish for he and she - hän, reminding Louise of what was the only thing that mattered – the baby was ok. Louise smiled. But just a minute later the doctor said, “Poika on OK!“ revealing that Louise was in fact carrying a baby boy. She was right all along.

Although Louise was overjoyed to be pregnant, pregnant for so long, her emotions were mixed. On one hand, she was excited to meet her son for the first time, which she was not able to do with her previous baby. On the other hand, she felt apprehensive about everything, from giving birth to what seemed would be a huge baby, according to the size of her bump, and Mat’s height, to caring for a completely dependent little human being. Throughout her pregnancy, she had tried to deny the reality of having a baby, fearing disappointment. But now, it was becoming unequivocal that her baby was real and almost here.

By her third trimester, Louise had stopped working and she and Mat agreed she would stay at home with Peter for at least a year. Louise worked at a language school at the time, and it was no problem to take time off. Mat was working with his dad in their law firm, so money was also not an issue. All Louise had ever wanted was a big family and many children. Growing up in a small apartment in Cork, she only had her mother as her family, since her dad passed away when she was young. Her mother never remarried, and she had no aunts or uncles, or cousins. She had one grandmother on her mom’s side, but she too died when Louise was a teenager. It was just her and her mom and Louise so desperately wanted a house full of people and laughter instead of the empty, quiet one she grew up in. Mat felt the same. They had been apart for some time, but now that they were finally back together, they wanted to start their life as soon as possible with children of their own. Then life happened.

Some years ago, Louise couldn’t get pregnant and her wish for a big family was broken down into stages. At first, all she wanted was to get pregnant, that would have been a triumph in itself. Then, when she lost her baby at ten weeks, she just wanted to get pregnant again and stay pregnant. The idea of actually having a baby was so surreal to her that she erased it from her mind - let alone more than one baby. Now, she had accomplished what she longed for so much. She was pregnant, she stayed pregnant, and was actually having a baby. But as much as she yearned for this moment, she was not entirely sure if she was ready for it.

Teaching was also her passion, and although she had lived and breathed for a baby for the last three or more years, now that her wish was finally coming true, she secretly longed to go back to teaching and not have the baby. It was conflicting for her. She felt guilty for feeling this way, as she strongly believed that every mother was eagerly awaiting to meet her baby and had no doubts, let alone a mother like her who had to wait over three years to get to this point.

Louise had moved more than 4000km to be with Mat, but it wasn’t really a choice for her. She knew Mat was the one since they met six years ago. She fell in love with Finland when she first came here, with the nature, the towering pine forests filling the air with the refreshing scent, the soft glow of the constant dusk, the charmingly colourful houses. The snow, which seemed to blanket everything in sight in the peaceful, even the dark winter added to the cosy, and comforting atmosphere. It felt like home. Then she met Mat, and she knew it was fate. She knew she would one day be with him and stay here – with Mat, in Finland, forever.

After she had moved to Finland, she went back to Cork several times a year, and her mom also visited, but she hadn’t been in Ireland since her second trimester. Therefore, it was dawning on her that it would be just her and the baby – her and Peter. Mat, too, of course, but Mat worked late at times. And she was certainly not going to be able to hop on a plane and go home anymore whenever she felt homesick.

“I’d be glad to come, Louise.” Her mom would always say on the phone, whenever they spoke. She was retired, lived alone, and Louise was her only child, who had now moved so far away, and she wanted dearly to remain a part of her life. But then she’d quickly remember that Finland was very far away and very foreign to her.

“Why’d you have to leave anyway Louise? Go all the way to bloody, cold Finland. I’d love to come, I really would. But it’s beyond the beyonds. And you can’t catch a word of what they’re saying, not a bleeding word the same as in English. Besides, I have a life here, you know? My knitting club, my art class, and we’re going on that trip down to the coast we always go in a couple of months.”

“It’s fine, Mam,” Louise would say slipping very quickly into her Irish accent whenever she talked with mom.

“I have Mat, we’ll be fine. Don’t worry!” She always assured her, not telling her about Mat’s working long hours or the fact that she might spend a lot of time alone with the baby, for fear of worrying her.

Still, she believed she could do it by herself. She had to, really. It was only logical after waiting and hoping for this baby for so long. She was in no position to complain about being afraid of how she would cope or how she would be with this tiny stranger all day and night long. Besides, she and Mat were living in a two-bedroom apartment at the time, so having her mother stay for weeks or months was not really an option.



It was already fourteen days past her due date and Louise was sick of being pregnant. She was bombarded with calls and messages from everyone, asking if the baby had arrived yet.

Still in one piece, Louise?

Are you OK?

Breathing with you!

Text me when you go.

They had been ready for the baby to come for over a month. Everyone was saying, “Oh, it could happen anytime, even a month before the due date. Be careful, and don’t stray far away from the hospital. You never know when it’s going to happen.” However, almost two months later there were no signs that Louise was in fact going to have a baby apart from the enormous bump that preceded her wherever she went.

The doctor took an ultrasound in silence, turned to Louise, and said, “Louise, we are going to…how to say it…start the delivery, OK? Don’t worry, the baby is great, but it’s….you know...time. Yes?”

Louise, who was finally able to look at the ultrasound screen, kept glancing at it and then at the doctor.

“You mean, induce labour?” she asked.

“Yes, induce labour,” the doctor replied, not coming up with the word before.

Louise felt tears welling up in her eyes; she was going to meet her baby today. “OK, it’s time,” she responded anxiously.

The doctor inserted a white chalky thing to help soften Louise’s cervix and hopefully start contractions. She was admitted to the maternity ward down on the second floor. When Louise called Mat, he immediately rushed to the hospital, panicking on the way over worrying he might miss the birth of his first-born son. But by the time he got to the hospital, he was surprised to find Louise reading a magazine in her room alone looking her usual self.

“No, still in one piece…” She said as he barged into the room. She explained that nothing was happening just yet and that it could take hours before anything would. They left the hospital room and as soon as they stepped into the hospital garden, they were immediately embraced by a sense of serenity, taking in the air filled with the sweet fragrance of blooming tulips and delicate daisies, and lush greenery. The winding paths led them under towering trees and past small ponds, their eyes taking in the tranquil surroundings as they chatted about the impending arrival of their baby.

“It’s never like this on TV, is it?” Louise remarked as they settled onto a bench overlooking a shimmering pond. “There, the woman has a contraction, puts her hand on her bump, her water breaks, and boom, three contractions later, the baby is out.” She gestured the boom sound with her hands.

Mat wrapped his left arm around her and rested his right on Louise’s belly. “Hei, he’s coming, OK? We’re almost there,“ he reassured her. Louise rested her head on his shoulder, knowing there was nothing to do but wait. The day was beautiful, and she wanted to take in all the scents and views of the moment, knowing she would remember this day forever.

As the hours passed and still, nothing appeared to be happening, Louise told Mat to go home.

“These things take time, don’t worry,” Her doctor said to her when she had finished her shift for the day and came to check on Louise.

And sure enough, as the night wore on, just as Louise was drifting into sleep, she felt her belly tighten and release for the first time. The contractions had begun. She didn’t want to call Mat right away like she did before, convinced this was going to still take time.

But by the time Mat arrived in the delivery room, she was exhausted and in so much pain that she was passing out between contractions. It was early in the morning, and she was not fully aware of what was going on. She could hear machines beeping and people talking. A midwife had spent the night with her, but now more and more people in white robes were rushing into the room, talking loudly over her in Finnish. She couldn’t understand what they were saying as she was so exhausted and also didn’t really know that much Finnish. Finally, Mat told her that she was going into surgery because the baby’s heart rate was dropping. Louise was not dilating. Louise couldn’t really comprehend what he was saying from the enervation, but a sense of fear took over her.

As they wheeled her into the operating room, it hit her. The panic, the number of people around her, the shouting, the beeping. She knew then. Her baby was going to die. She shouldn’t have hoped, she shouldn’t have been complaining. She was a complete failure. It was never meant to be, and it was all her fault. Tears streamed down her face as they put a mask over her face to sedate her.





5





KAPTEENI CHRIS 2.0





CAPTAIN CHRIS 2.0





After the incident at school, Louise had been extra careful. A glance at her YouTube suggestions would show only songs and the occasional how-to video and that was it. No Captain Chris in sight. She hadn’t watched any videos on her phone or her computer and forgotten about the comics in her bedroom. One night she started watching Captain America: The First Avenger but stopped after the first half an hour. It was ridiculous. Time to move on and stop this stupid obsession. She hadn’t talked to Peter about it anymore, and although they only spoke between the lines, she had heard him loud and clear and the incident at school was not going to happen again either. It was a silly phase that had gone long enough, and she was moving on with her life. She picked up some books at the library, determined to go back to her true love - reading.

Then one evening as she looked for a grey-and-red checkered scarf in her wardrobe to wear to school the next day, she moved away a box and there they were. A dozen Captain America comic books she had stored away weeks before. They were still there; she hadn’t returned them yet. She would return them the next day, she thought. Louise took them out, inspecting the covers one after the other, glancing over the images. She stopped at one. There was Captain America in what looked like charging into battle with Black Panther and other superheroes behind him. Louise gasped. Chris Evans was beyond ripped in the film version, but the sketched version had layers and layers of muscles on top of muscles, some of which, in Louise’s opinion, could not possibly be anatomically correct. Before she realized, she was tracing the contour of the drawn body with her fingers.

It was late in the evening, and she was about to go to bed. She forgot about the scarf she was looking for and took the comics with her to bed.

“My God, the drawings.” She bit her lip tracing her finger on the cover. Louise was dumbfounded.

Captain Chris was by all means, attractive in the films, but the comic book version was just out of this world: the shoulders, the legs, the arms, the chin, the hair.

Two hours later, Louise was nose deep in the third comic book, enthralled with it all, not really paying attention to the stories as much as admiring the visual art. She had never touched herself while watching the films; it was, in a way, too real for her. Hell, she blushed and looked away from her phone if she was watching an interview with Chris Evans, and he looked at the camera. Even though they were separated by space and time, and he had no idea that Louise even existed, it felt like he was looking directly at her, and Louise couldn’t handle it. But this…this was different. Louise found herself strangely aroused by it and by the time she started the fourth comic book, her hand was in her panties, and by the time she got to page ten, she had already climaxed. It was 2am on a Wednesday. Louise rolled her eyes when she saw the time on her phone. She quickly put away the comics back in her wardrobe and went to sleep.

After that night, she still kept away from Captain Chris on TV, her phone, and her computer. It was as if she had moved on from the outside. But instead of spending her evenings in front of the TV, she spent them in her bedroom, telling Peter that she was reading. She was in fact reading, but probably not what Peter assumed. She started a proper comic book exchange at her school with Janne, who had introduced her to the comic world. She bought a couple of comics online, borrowed some from Peter, and although those were not Captain America, her student Janne was thrilled to get them and brought her more Captain America comics in return. She made sure to go to great lengths talking about how much her son loved the comics to him to avoid any suspicion that she was in fact the one reading them. Luckily, Janne didn’t seem to suspect anything, and her secret obsession continued. Behind locked doors she would read the comic books under the covers like a thirteen-year-old boy reading a Playboy magazine in the 90‘s and getting lost in her fantasies, touching herself. Still, every time she was near the end, just before her body started shivering from her touch, she would close her eyes and an image of Mat would come to her as if he was there with her. No matter the images of Captain America before her, no matter the accurate drawings, no matter the sensual way in which he was portrayed, in the end, it was always Mat. There was simply no way of escaping him.



Louise didn’t want to go to the same Pilates class as Mia on Thursdays and went on Tuesdays by herself when Mia accidentally met her one Tuesday at the studio. In her words it made no sense that they were going to the same thing on different days. So, Mia sometimes switched to Louise’s class and also asked her to go with her on Thursdays. Louise had a hard enough time going by herself to Pilates without seeing the seemingly perfect Mia there. As a result, she often came up with excuses and skipped the class practically every other week.

Louise was the complete opposite of Mia, happiest at home with her books and family. Well, and Captain Chris now. Never much for seeking attention, she didn’t enjoy being in crowds of people and because of her work, she craved for silence in the afternoons and evenings. When she went to a party, she found herself subconsciously shushing people when the conversation or music got too loud. It was automatic, something that she got used to doing in class, like a reflex.

But she promised to go to Pilates last Tuesday, making an excuse for Thursday the week before. She had to go. On the way over they spoke of things that they had in common, their almost grown-up children, like who was driving them to volleyball practice and when. Mia would often talk about her latest boyfriend, who was definitely the one this time, and Louise would listen and try to remember his name until next time. Louise never talked about her love life, but in all honestly when someone is having an affair with a comic book character, there is nothing to tell.

They got to the studio and started to change. Louise had just stopped talking to Peter on the phone, put the phone down on the bench, and took off her jacket. A message popped up on her Messenger:

Hi, Louise, how are you doing? I just wanted to let you know…

Before Louise was able to reach for her phone, Mia stopped scooping up her hair in a ponytail, picked up the phone and started reading the message out loud, “… wanted to let you know that I’ve changed schools. It was lovely to meet you, hope we stay in touch. Give that Jurtanen boy a break, you know he’s not really college material... Smiley face, smiley face, smiley face. Woo-hoo, who is this, Louise? Are you finally seeing someone? It’s been, what, three years, so long overdue,” she winked at Louise and handed her phone back.

Louise’s face flushed as she grabbed her phone back, replaying the message in her head.

After a second of pause, Louise responded. “Erm, eh, don’t be silly. Sami’s just a colleague from school…or he was a colleague at school, apparently, I have no idea what this is about…”

Louise met Sami at the beginning of the school year. He was only at the school for a couple of months. They talked in the hallways a few times about the classes they had in common, about the school, about a couple of ‘difficult’ parents, and on several occasions, about a certain boy named Jurtanen, who was quite a troublemaker.

He also seemed genuinely interested in her being Irish, about Ireland and liked to practice his English with her. He seemed very nice to Louise, but she didn’t see anything beyond that. There was absolutely no way that he had any kind of feelings towards her; he was just being polite.

Finally, she had her phone back and was reading the message herself.

“I don’t know, that’s a lot of smiley faces for a casual message…” Mia said, winking at Louise.

Louise rolled her eyes and put her phone away, “Oh, it’s nothing.” They finished changing and headed to class. By the time Pilates finished, Mia clearly forgot about the whole thing because all she talked about on the way home was her boyfriend. Juha? Juhani? Joonas? The name escaped Louise.

By the time Louise got home, all she could think of was Sami’s message. What was that all about? He was probably just being nice; she had no idea he left their school, interesting. He probably just wanted to say goodbye. She didn’t know what to do; she couldn’t reply right away, but she couldn’t reply late at night either. That would be strange. It was nine pm. If she responded the next day, that would be kind of rude too, she thought. No, she had to reply tonight. A few hours had passed anyway since she got the message, so she figured it was OK to reply. After several minutes of pacing back and forth in the kitchen and Bolt walking behind her in tow, she finally sat down and started typing.

Oh, hi, Sami, lovely to hear from you! I had no idea you’ve changed schools, how are they treating you over there? Will try with Jurtanen!

…

What about emojis? She figured if he sent three smiley faces, she should respond with the same. There, done. Friendly, cute. He couldn’t read into it as something more because there was not anything to read into. As soon as she put her phone down, she heard a ping. Sami had already responded. That was quick.

You know what, so far so good. It’s a smaller school. I quite like it so far, but you never know. How are you holding up?

Louise sighed with relief. Silly Mia, she thought this was some sort of flirting. How far off she was. Sami clearly just wanted to stay in touch, to chat. Like friends do.

They spent the next hour or so messaging back and forth about school, other teachers, and the classes they both taught. It was probably the first night in a long time that Louise hadn’t spent in front of the TV or in her bed reading with Captain Chris. She was actually communicating with someone. Not in person but still. The comic books stayed in her wardrobe, and this was probably the first night she had not thought a single thought of Captain Chris… And probably the first night in a an even longer amount of time that she hadn’t thought of Mat…





6





MIA





MIA





Although Peter was not heavier than any new-born baby, to Mat the tiny boy felt immensely heavy. It wasn’t just the physical weight of the baby in his arms, he was carrying the silent burden of the lost babies, and the pain Louise had endured as he cradled the little one in his arms. Time seemed to stretch on forever as Louise lay unconscious on a stretcher in front of them. The nurse had left the room, leaving Mat to his thoughts.

He kept repeating quietly, “Älä itke, Älä itke,“ while shushing his new-born son, hoping he wouldn’t start crying and holding Louise’s hand, hoping she’d come to soon. He was overjoyed that their baby was alive, here with them, but at the same time devastated at what Louise had to go through. It was all so overwhelming, and he was holding back tears most of the time, not really knowing whether they were tears of absolute sadness or complete joy, probably a mixture of both. He tried to be strong for Louise and his baby boy, but deep down, he was holding back an ocean of emotions.

Louise woke up coughing and gagging with a burning sensation in her throat from the anaesthesia tube, only to sense even more pain in her mid-section which had been cut open to remove the baby from her belly. For the first time in her life, she had no idea where or when she was, it was as if she had returned from the dead or a completely empty plane of existence, where there was nothing. She looked to her right and saw Mat standing over her with a baby in his hands.

“Oh, right, I had a baby,” she said to herself, slightly smiling. Mat squeezed her hand firmly before kissing her on the lips. Peter was here, her baby was alive. Her baby was alive, but she felt dead. She couldn’t move, when the nurse came back in and put Peter on her stomach so she could feel him. Peter began sucking on her breast. To Louise’s surprise that was quite painful too.

“Oh, this is going to be fun,” Louise joked.

After some time, they wheeled Louise and Peter into a large room, where Louise would spend the next seven days with four other new moms. The bed next to her was empty, the other three occupied by women who had given birth a couple of days before. After they got her to her bed, Louise almost immediately fell back to sleep as did Peter in his cot next to her. The experience was traumatic for both.

As Louise awoke in her sore body, unable to make the slightest movement without pain, Mia and Nora were wheeled in late in the evening on the empty bed next to her. To Louise’s astonishment, just minutes after being wheeled in, Mia walked over to the bathroom to take a shower. Louise was in shock. Here she was a cripple who couldn’t get pregnant in the first place, then couldn’t keep the baby alive, then couldn’t get pregnant again, then couldn’t give birth to the baby in time, so that the doctors had to force Peter out of her, then couldn’t push Peter out so the doctors had to cut him out of her in the end. A complete and utter failure of a mother. And here was Mia walking up straight and having a shower less than a couple of hours after giving birth. Louise watched her closely but said nothing.

Later that evening, a nurse came and took Louise to the bathroom. She walked to the toilet like a 90-year-old on her death bed all hunched over with the nurse supporting her under her arm. As Louise tried to stand back up from the toilet, nausea shot to her head. She gripped the wall rail, dizziness overcoming her. The room began to spin. She managed to say: “I think I’m going to…” before she blacked out on the floor.

When she came to, there were three nurses around her shouting at her in Finnish. The doctor came soon after.

“You are English?” he asked.

Louise looked at him and responded weekly, “Irish, yes.” Looking over in Mia’s direction, she asked, “Can you help me? I don’t really speak Finnish.” Mia nodded.

The doctor spoke in Finnish and Mia translated to her. “He’s saying you lost a lot of blood…” Mia paused to listen to the doctor, “and so you’re getting a blood transfusion…. soon. Tomorrow… This is why you passed out. He needs you to sign some papers that you understand that you could get HIV,” Mia explained casually.

Louise turned her head from Mia and looked at the doctor, then back at Mia. “HIV? What does that mean? I don’t want HIV.”

“You’re not getting HIV, don’t worry. They check the blood. You just have to sign that you are…how to say it… aware of the dangers of transfusion. Yes?” Mia explained.

“Oh, OK, I guess.” Louise responded with a sigh. She turned to the doctor, “Check for HIV, OK?”

They both smiled. The doctor left and Mia walked over to her bed, “I’m Mia by the way.”

“Hi. Nice to meet you. I’m Louise. Thanks for that.”

Louise felt and looked much like Quasimodo, hunched over whenever she even stood up, which did not happen often, and Mia, in a way, became her personal nurse. She would bring Peter to her as Louise couldn’t pick him up from his crib, adjust her bedrest or pillows when she needed to, bring her food, and help with translating with the other women in the room and the hospital staff. Shortly after Louise got the blood transfusion, things began to look up. Louise finally had more strength and energy and although she was still in pain, she was getting better. Peter was also getting better and by the third day, he was eating and crying more, demanding a lot of attention and care.



While Louise stayed in the hospital with Peter, Mat was still working, but got off work early practically every day and rushed to be with them in the hospital. He did everything for her while she was there, brought her flowers, chocolates, anything she wanted, swaddled Peter in his arms, and changed his nappies with the nurses. Everything he could do to speed up Louise’s recovery. Every day he came as soon as he could and would stay with them until it was late in the evening and one nurse or the other would come and tell him it was time to go home. Seeing Louise like she was the first couple of days after giving birth, Mat swore to himself that he would never let Louise go through this kind of pain again. The dream of their big family was dead and buried, and Peter was going to be an only child. He knew that then.

By the fourth day the other women had gone home, and Mia and Louise were the only two left. Mia was leaving the following day, and Louise was supposed to stay a day or two longer. They quickly bonded over their mutual experience of having a baby, giving birth, and being pregnant. They discovered they were both the same age and lived close by, so they exchanged their numbers, promising to get in touch first thing when they got home, which they did. They would go for walks together and talk about everything and anything.

Mia was working at a bank and her English was very good, although Louise suggested that they also speak Finnish sometimes so she could practice. Mia would make fun of Louise’s Irish Finnish, but not in a bad way. For a time, it seemed as though Mia was Louise’s only friend; they would talk on the phone every day, message back and forth, and see each other several times a week. Louise’s friends from the language school also kept in touch, but they were working; some of them had no children and some of them had older children, so they were all at a completely different stages in their lives than Louise was in and did not really have the time to spend it with her. Mia on the other hand was in the same boat, breastfeeding, changing nappies, losing sleep at night, being alone at home during the day, and Louise was thrilled that she had someone to go through it with. Of course, Mat was also going through it all with her, but his experience was very different than hers.

Louise quickly figured out that Mia was the complete opposite of her. Mia got pregnant by accident and decided to keep the baby. No multiple pregnancy tests, no lying on her back with legs up in the air trying to keep the baby in. No endless worries about losing the baby. And to top it off, Mia gave birth in just three hours - a mere, what, thirty hours less than Louise endured. Heck, she was walking like nothing happened just an hour after giving birth. Mia’s Nora turned out to be the dream baby, practically sleeping through the night. So, even though they both went through the same thing, it was a whole different ball game for them, and Louise always felt like she was playing catch-up.

Ever since the first couple of walks they took together after leaving the hospital, Mia never hesitated to talk about sex and how much she missed it. It was like she was in a different universe, while Louise was still trying to figure out how to find her footing in this new world of motherhood and Mia complaining about not being able to wait until six weeks and her postpartum check-up.

Louise was in awe when she listened to Mia talk about it. Although her downstairs region was intact, as she had a caesarean, Louise couldn’t imagine having sex ever again. Not so much afraid of the physical pain, as that really could not happen, just the thought of the possibility of getting pregnant again was something she could not bear.



As they took a leisurely walk along the charming streets of Kouvola, one of them would enter a shop while the other looked after the babies in their strollers. Eventually, they swapped roles, with the other visiting a bakery while the first kept the babies cozy under the blankets. On one such walk perhaps four, five weeks after they had given birth, Mia came out of the bakery taking a bite of a croissant she had bought and boasted that she had in fact done the deed. Louise felt her mouth drop open, “You did? Already? Well, what was it like?”

Mia handed Louise her croissant and Louise began nibbling it as they continued their walk.

“It was nice, a bit uncomfortable at first, like some pulling sensation down there, but that went away quickly. You should definitely do it, Lucy,” she said, winking and looking at her downstairs region. Mia burst into laughter, nearly choking on the croissant in her mouth.

Later that day Louise decided she needed to step up her game and felt determined to try and have sex with Mat as well. She wasn’t able to take a shower right after giving birth, she couldn’t push her baby out of her, there were so many things that she couldn’t do, but surely, she could have sex with her husband five weeks after birth. This was something she could and had to do. So, when she put Peter to sleep that evening, she came back into the living with red lipstick on her lips.

“Hei, hei,” she said softly, leaning on the wall behind the TV. Mat sat on the sofa watching a volleyball match. He didn’t look up at her and said, “Come watch this, they’re down five points.” He said, gesturing to her to come over. Louise came over and sat next to him. She put her arm around his shoulder and started nibbling his ear. Mat looked at her in disbelief, remembering her lying unconscious on a stretcher in front of him not long ago.

“What are you doing?” he asked noticing the red lipstick on her lips.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Louise said softly, nibbling his ear some more.

“Should we be doing this? Is it…. safe?” Mat whispered looking in her lap.

Louise nodded and kissed him to stop him from talking. He returned the kiss passionately, grabbing her legs to make her sit on his lap. He kissed her neck, his lips smudging the red lipstick all over her lips. Louise moved her hips back and forth, grinding on his lap. He carried her over to the bedroom, where he asked her several more times, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Each time Louise responded with a nod. Finally, he very gently entered her, and they both got lost in each other. They were one once again. And Louise proved something to herself. She might not have been the perfect mother, but she was the perfect wife.





As the babies slowly grew, the two mothers drifted apart. Louise realized that Mia was a very competitive woman; each day, she would ask some silly question about Peter or her.

“What’s your waist size, Lucy?”

“Can you fit into your old jeans yet, Lucy?”

“Oh, really? I’m one size smaller than I was before. Except my melons, they have gone a size up.”

“How did Peter sleep last night? Really? Are you sure that is OK, him waking up two times? Nora slept through the night again.”

It was too much for Louise. On her own she had a strong feeling that she wasn’t doing a good enough job as a mother, still traumatized by the birth, her failure to give birth naturally, and the miscarriage. Now, she was going through sleepless nights, still having the weight of Peter and more on her body than what she had when she got pregnant, whereas Nora was apparently sleeping through the night with her Barbie figure back in what seemed like overnight. This friendship was taking a further toll on her well-being, as she couldn’t really compete with Mia, and although Louise loved having someone to go through this early motherhood together, over time, it became clear that their experiences were completely different, and that this friendship was not good for her.

Nothing was said, it just became natural that the daily calls between the two turned into weekly check-ins and that the relationship began to fizzle. When Peter was about three and a half years old, Louise got her teacher training program done in Finland and began working at Kouvolan lukio, one of the high schools in town. Her teaching and taking care of Peter completely took over her life, and Mia and she barely talked once a month and saw each other perhaps once every six months. In all truth, they didn’t have that much in common other than their children being born on the same day.

As Peter and Nora were nearing their teenage years, there were rumours that Mia and her husband were going to separate because of another man or even more than one, but by that time Louise and Mia’s close friendship was a distant memory, and they were merely acquaintances at best. And acquaintances do not tell each other about affairs or the state of their marriages. They make assumptions about them by seeing posts on Facebook.





7





SAMI





SAMI





A few months ago, Louise and Sami stood in the expansive hallway of Kouvola lukio together at the open house night, waiting for parents and students to give them a tour of the school. Louise wore a stylish black dress with white lines running down the sides. The dress hugged her curves in the right places and accentuated her figure without being overly provocative. She paired the dress with black knee-high boots. Her hair was so thick and long that whenever she wore it in a high ponytail, the weight of it caused her head to hurt, so she almost never wore her hair that way. Today was no exception, as her dark brown hair was elegantly styled in a low bun, giving off a professional and sophisticated vibe. Sami looked handsome wearing a shirt neatly tucked into a pair of well-fitting, dark blue jeans, completed with a pair of polished, brown leather shoes. The high ceilings and polished floors added to the grandeur of the space, while the floor-to-ceiling windows bathed the area in natural light. As soon the parents and students arrived, their eyes were drawn to the impressive façade of the school, admiring the sheer size of the windows and the architecture.

Throughout the evening, teachers would take a parent or a group of parents with their children and walk with them through the school, take them to various presentations and workshops in different classrooms, and give them a tour of the school. Sami was only filling in for another teacher; he was new at the school, whereas for Louise this was probably her tenth or eleventh open house night. They were standing in the back and Louise explained to Sami the whole process, where he needed to start, and where he went next, as Sami did not really know the school that well.

“So, you start at the classroom down the hall, then work your way up the stairs and just pop into the open classrooms for the presentations. There will be other teachers and parents there, so just follow them, and if a classroom is too packed with people, just skip it and come back to it later,” she explained slowly.

They were standing next to each other facing the entrance.

Sami nodded, “OK, got it. Do you think we’ll be here long?”

Louise glanced at him quickly and then back at the door. “Oh, about two, three hours, depending on the turnout,” she said, knowing that this could be a long night.

As the two stood in the back for over an hour, their colleagues up front began to depart with the parents and soon-to-be students on the school tour. They were not facing each other and instead kept their eyes fixed on the entrance. Louise had her arms crossed defensively in front of her at first, as if putting up a barrier with her arms, while Sami had his hands behind him. About half an hour in, Louise lowered her arms and slowly but surely began to shift her body more and more in his direction. Likewise, Sami was doing the same thing, turning ever so gently more and more in her direction. It was a slow night, and they chatted and laughed every so often about something someone said, commenting on the children and parents coming through the door.

“Oh, oh, he looks exactly like Jurtanen. Do you think that’s his brother?” Sami asked, looking at the brown-haired boy who had just entered the school with his mother. Louise chuckled.

“I don’t recognize the mother, no. Besides, I don’t think he has a brother. Thank God!” Louise said and the two laughed as the boy and his mother started their tour.

About an hour in, a thought popped into Louise’s mind. Could she be attracted to Sami? Could she imagine sleeping with him? The idea wasn’t even rooted in reality, just in theory, could she imagine it? Sami was certainly no Captain Chris, but he was quite handsome. She peeked in his direction and looked up. He was tall. Louise liked tall men. And broad shoulders. Shoulders were the first thing she noticed in men apart from their height, probably because she was the exact opposite, short with narrow shoulders and wider hips. In class, she was always excited if she met a student shorter than her, as most of her students outgrew her before she became their teacher. It felt to nice to be taller than a student but not than a man. No, Sami definitely fit her type, she thought. He was a proper wardrobe of a man, tall, not too muscular. He had dark hair and… She quickly turned to Sami once again and looked into his eyes for a split second. Beautiful, brown eyes. And glasses, apparently. Louise never noticed if people wore glasses or not, but she did see them on Sami then. This was the first time she had looked at him in that way. Or any other man for that matter. She was so into her Captain Chris that she didn’t really notice anything going on in the real world, she didn’t go around looking and checking men out, she simply didn’t notice them. The real world ended for her abruptly three (was it four?) years ago after Mat. She hadn’t been with anyone other than Mat for almost twenty years. Not just that, she hadn’t even asked herself if she was attracted to anyone else for the past twenty years either. She simply hadn’t been. Well, except for Captain Chris. She didn’t need to ask herself about that, she knew she was attracted, but he wasn’t a real person.

Now, here she was standing next to a real man asking herself that. Was it time? Could she open herself up to the world and another man after so long? Louise patted her belly, tracing her scar gently hiding under three layers of clothing. She thought about taking her clothes off in front of Sami. Could she do it? The last she had taken her clothes off in front of a man for the first time was over twenty years ago. She thought about her body then and compared it to her body now. She thought about how Sami would see her scar, her bodily reminder that she had a son even if she wouldn’t tell him. She thought about him seeing her soft belly. Instantly, Louise sucked her stomach in and rolled her shoulders back. Who cares if she could do it, she thought. He was, what, ten years younger? She wondered, glancing at his face once again, looking for signs of grey hair or any tell-tale signs of his age. Her guess was thirty-five, thirty-six. Yup, ten years younger. She began to think about her life ten years ago, when she was his age. Peter was in first grade, so cute, missing his two front teeth. She and Mat were planning a family of five again; they were going to have two more children. It wasn’t just a dream, but a definite plan that they were already working on. It was such a long time ago, and yet felt like it was just yesterday. Their dream life was finally coming together.

A mom and son walked into the school and Louise and Sami were up. Louise was so absorbed in her thoughts that she barely noticed that Sami had started walking in their direction to greet them.

“You’ve got this,” Louise whispered behind him and showed Sami the thumbs up.

Sami smiled, “Thanks!”

Louise watched as he walked away down the hall, talking to the mother and son. It hit her then. She couldn’t sleep with him, even if there was the slightest interest on his part. He was lifetimes away from her, in another world completely.





8





BOLT





BOLT





Mat and Louise lay in bed with their fingers interlocked. Louise rested her head on his shoulder and gazed into his eyes for a moment before gently kissing his lips. Peter was visiting his grandma and grandpa, Mat’s parents, for the day.

“What do you want?” Mat asked, running his fingers along her arm.

Louise paused, giving him another kiss before responding. “I don’t know… We have this huge house with so many empty rooms and we’re still young. Well, young-ish.” she said, smiling and paused for a second.

“Another baby?” Mat finished her sentence curiously.

At the time, Peter was starting school, and Louise had been focused on her teaching career. They had put their dream of a big family on hold. Mat had even vowed to never get Louise pregnant again, not wanting to subject her to the pain and the trauma of childbirth. But as time passed, the memories of the childbirth, however traumatic and painful, eventually subsided. The memories of the struggles of getting pregnant faded even further. Perhaps there was still a chance for the big family they had wanted so badly.

The house they bought soon after Peter was born, had four bedrooms upstairs, which was more space than they needed for just the three of them. One was used by Peter and the other by Mat and Louise, while the remaining two sat unused. Located on the outskirts of the city on a verge of a pine forest, the house was nestled amidst a tranquil setting and Louise would sit out every day and enjoy in the peaceful garden after a long and tiring day at the busy, noisy school.

One of the first words Peter learnt as he was growing up was orava, which was not surprising as the brown, cute, furry creatures would frequently visit the trees behind the house. For Louise, who had grown up in a tiny, one bedroom apartment in the heart of Cork, adjusting to the vastness and peacefulness of this house was not easy, especially as she hadn’t been able to fill it with children yet. It had a modern design, with a combination of white walls and wooden elements on the exterior. The open-plan living area on the ground floor was a far cry from the cramped kitchen and living room of her childhood home. The house was screaming for more people to live in it and for more children to grow up in it.

Louise nodded shyly, tears welling up in her eyes.

“Are you sure?” Mat asked softly. Ultimately, it was her decision. They were going to go through it together, and Mat would be there for her through it all, but in the end, she would have to do most of the hard work by herself. Mat’s part was easy.

Louise shrugged her shoulders, unsure if she was ready to hope again, but on the other hand, she was not ready to give up hope.

“I don’t know. You’re probably right, it’s just not meant to be for us. We’ve been trying for so long. Peter is six years old; I am about to be forty...” Louise said when Mat interrupted her.

“Well, you’re not going to be forty for quite some time,” he said.

Louise smiled. They had gone from her convincing him to him convincing her in a couple of minutes.

They were both silent for a while, each wrapped in their own thoughts until Louise finally spoke.

“Alright, here’s an idea! We give ourselves, and this baby if it’s meant to come, a deadline. We keep trying until my fortieth birthday, not a day longer,” she explained, scrolling through the calendar on her phone. There was still hope, more than three years, thirty-sex months. And if not, it just wasn’t meant to be. She looked up at Mat, wondering what he thought of the idea.

“I like it!” Mat said.

“Deal then?” Louise asked, reaching out her hand.

“Deal!” Mat said, pulling her close and kissing her on the lips. He stopped a second later.

“You sure you want to go through all of that again? I mean, you know both you and Peter almost died last time. Not to mention…” he said quietly.

Louise sat up in bed. “Well, you’ll be with me, right? We’ll go through it together.”

Mat tilted his head and looked at her. Louise began kissing him again. “It’s not like you have that much to do either.” She gave him a little slap on the shoulders.

Mat smiled and kissed her back. He climbed on top of her and whispered in her ear, “Oh, I can do my part. You can count on that.”

He started kissing her more passionately, slowly moving his lips down to her neck, then her breasts, her belly, before ending up between her legs. Louise began moaning louder and louder, clearly enjoying his tongue on her body. Minutes later, his lips were back on hers again and he thrusted himself into her.

“This part is definitely easy,” Louise whispered, smiling.



Louise didn’t get pregnant by her fortieth birthday. Over the almost four years of trying, there was at least no false hope, no promise of a baby only to have it die after a few weeks, as her periods were so regular, and Louise found comfort in that. When Louise celebrated her fortieth, they ignored their deal and kept trying without talking about it. It was left unsaid. Finally, just when Louise was getting ready to have the talk, three months after her birthday, she found out she was pregnant. She was scrolling through the calendar trying to calculate her due date. She had taken a pregnancy test just a week ago. As she looked at the calendar, she gasped when she realized that her baby’s birthday was going to be in October; just like the baby she had lost so many years ago. Back then, she had a feeling that she was carrying a girl, but Louise lost her so early that there was no way to know for sure. She had always had a name for a girl since she was a child herself. Sara. This time, Louise’s pregnancy felt uneventful. Her bathroom visits were strangely calm, and there was no sign of spotting. She had some nausea in the mornings, but nothing that a cup of ginger tea in the morning could not fix. She kept busy with her work at school and Peter. A sense of new hope overwhelmed her and Mat, a feeling that everything was still possible and in the future for them.

In June, at her regular check-up, the doctor said, “Se on tyttö…” while looking up at the screen. Louise was overjoyed, her baby girl Sara was coming back to her. By summer, she and Mat had decorated her room, painted the walls, set up the crib, and put the name Sara in colourful wooden letters on the door. Peter was excited about his baby sister and often played in her room with Legos like he said he would do when she was born.

Louise’s bump was getting huge, just like with Peter, and she was excited about the arrival of her baby girl in October. In late July, she went for her regular check-up.

Her gynaecologist greeted her with the usual: “Oh, there’s my English teacher. How are you?”

By this time, her gynaecologist was the one doctor Louise had seen more than any other in her life. Over the years they talked about IVF, ICSI, IUI, all the cool abbreviations for ‘fun’ ways on how to get a woman pregnant if nature didn’t do its thing, but Louise decided against it.

Louise smiled and greeted her with “Hyvää Päivää,” as usual, and climbed up on the table. They continued their conversation in Finnish.

“How are you doing, Louise?” she asked, rubbing the cool gel on Louise’s bump.

“I’m good, good. Still struggling with heartburn, especially in the evenings,” Louise said.

“Yes, that’s quite normal,” the doctor said, gliding the wand over Louise’s belly. The room was quiet except for the faint whirring of the ultrasound machine. Louise focused on the blue door as usual, wondering what the poster on it was advertising this time.

Suddenly, the doctor’s face turned grave.

“I’m so sorry, Louise,” she said gently, “hän ei ole OK. She’s not OK, there’s no … heartbeat… I’m searching for it, but there’s no heartbeat.“ The doctor barely held back her tears, shrugging her shoulders in disbelief.

Louise fixated so intently on the poster for incontinence pads on the door that it took a minute to hear what the doctor said. She seemed like that picture of the three monkeys, the deaf, the blind, and the mute, as she could not hear, nor see, nor speak, but also, she could not think. She went into shock, as the doctor continued speaking softly and calmly, explaining what had happened and what would need to happen next. Louise wasn’t there; she felt like she had left her body. She had no idea how long she had been waiting at the doctor’s office before Mat got to her and took her home.

Because Louise was already seven months pregnant, they couldn’t put her to sleep and just remove the baby and the next day, Louise was in the delivery room of the Kouvola hospital, pushing her lifeless baby out of her, with Mat by her side. Her body was in so much physical pain, but the pain in her heart loomed over it. Louise pushed with all her might, tears streaming down her face, as she tried to bring Sara into the world. The pain was excruciating, and she felt as if her heart broke a little more with every push. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the baby was out. The room was silent, except for the sound of Louise’s ragged breathing and Mat’s sniffling. Their hearts were broken, and everyone was unsuccessfully hiding their tears. A midwife wrapped the baby in a soft blanket and placed it in Louise’s arms. She was quiet and still, and Louise’s heart ached with grief that she could not put into words.

As she held her baby, she whispered into her face, “My baby girl, Sara... Mommy loves you so much.” She started sobbing and handed her lifeless little girl to Mat.

Mat spoke through his tears and told her that daddy loved her so much in Finnish. They remained in that room with Sara for what seemed forever.



The next couple of months were difficult. It became clear that there were no more babies for Mat and Louise in the future. Nothing was said, but they both knew.

When they were all together, they found escape in watching and rewatching all the Marvel films released at that point, with Mat bringing home one DVD after another. It was for Peter, he simply loved them. So, one week it was Thor, the next Iron Man, Ant-Man, and Captain America. It helped them regain some sense of normalcy after Sara was taken away from them so abruptly for the second time. It quickly turned into more than just for Peter. They all managed to forget about the outside world for a little while and simply get lost. Louise’s favourite was, of course, Captain America. Chris Evans looked so handsome and every time he appeared on the screen, Mat would joke, “It’s like looking in the mirror,” or “My brother from another mother,” and Louise would smile and cuddle in his arms.

In October, Louise was still on maternity leave. It felt ironic to her that she was on maternity leave without a baby. There were still days when she would sleep through the day, while on others she appeared almost as her old self. However, she barely left the house out of fear of seeing a young mother with a baby, which would certainly cause her to unravel.

One afternoon, Louise sat on the floor in Sara’s tidy room, stacking Peter’s Legos pointlessly on top of each other. Mat had just come home and called for her, then went to look for her upstairs when she did not answer. He found her crouching on the floor in the baby’s room.

“Louise, where are you? I have some-…” he said and stopped mid-sentence when he found her crouching on the floor.

“I’m a complete failure of a mother,” she whispered.

“What? Louise, don’t say that.” Mat tried to reassure her, but she continued.

“Couldn’t keep a baby alive for more than three months…Almost killed Peter because I couldn’t give birth to him...Couldn’t get pregnant for so long. And now I’ve killed another one... I’m such a failure.” Louise said sobbing uncontrollably by this point clutching Lego pieces in her hand.

Mat ran over to her and held her tight, shushing her and saying, “You know that’s not true; you’ve done nothing wrong. It’s not your fault. There was nothing that you could have done. And no one could have gone through what you went through for Peter and for Sara. You’re the strongest woman I know. You’re practically a superhero.” Mat said lovingly as he held her shoulders. Louise smiled through her tears when she heard the superhero.

“Yes, a downright supermom,” she said in a cynical tone.

“I love you so much, please, stop crying.” Mat said, holding her tightly.

Just then, Peter burst through the door holding a beautiful little silver-grey puppy.

“Mom, mom, look!” he shouted. The puppy had eyes that resembled Louise’s, a mixture of green and grey, and big, oversized ears flapping around his snout.

Louise smiled through her tears and looked at Peter and then Mat.

“What’s that? A puppy?” she asked excitedly.

“I think we are complete now,” Mat said, kissing Louise and Peter on the forehead. He hugged them both and held them close. They sat in a circle playing with the puppy in the centre for quite some time, and Louise felt her heart fill with a slight sense of joy after so long of feeling nothing.



They spent the next couple of months remodelling the upstairs bedrooms. One was turned into a sauna with a shower. The other became a home gym with a bench, weights, stationary bike, and a treadmill. During the coldest winter months, Mat would run and train in there, and as Peter got older, he became more and more interested in his father’s workouts. He would watch intently as Mat lifted weights, and ran on the treadmill, and it was not long before Peter was asking to join in on the workouts. It became their thing, and they would spend many afternoons and evenings challenging each other to who could do more push-ups and bonding as a father and son. Meanwhile, Bolt had become a beloved member of the family and a reason for Louise to get out of the house every day. She would take him for long walks, enjoying the fresh air making her remember why she fell in love with Finland in the first place, giving her a reason to appreciate everything she already had. With Bolt by her side, she felt less alone and more connected to the world around her, knowing that, although she was never going to have a big family and a house full of people, their house was no longer empty, and their family was complete. This was enough.





9





VIRTUAALIRAKKAUS





VIRTUAL LOVE





The day after the open-house night, a group of teachers in the teacher’s room chatted about Sami. Someone said how great Sami was, how all the schoolgirls were infatuated with him, when someone else commented,

“Well, of course they are, he’s practically their age. When did he graduate from high school, six years ago? Oh, right, eight. Well, my point exactly.”

As soon as he said that all the teachers started laughing. Louise eavesdropped by the coffee machine, having just taken a sip of coffee. When she heard the ‘oh, eight’, she almost spat her coffee out but gulped it down instead and started coughing and choking on it. The other teachers turned around.

“Are you all right, Louise?” Two of them rushed over to her and started patting her on her back.

Just then David walked into the teacher’s lounge and saw Louise gagging by the coffee machine.

“Lou, are you alright?” He joined the other two teachers, and together they formed a circle around Louise, concerned about her. She was still coughing, waving her hands in front of her and scrunching up her forehead, indicating that she was all right. David went and got her some water and offered it to her. Louise took a sip and finally stopped coughing as much. The two other teachers left, and Louise and David were standing there alone.

“Thanks,” Louise said gesturing at the water in her hand.

“No problem,” David said and winked at her before leaving out the door. What was that about? She had no idea. Her mind went back to racing as she remembered ‘oh, eight’, and started doing the math in her head. If Sami graduated from high school eight years ago, that would make him what? She wasn’t very good at math. Thirty? No. Definitely not thirty yet. Twenty-eight? No. She became annoyed with herself, took out her phone, opened the calculator, and entered nineteen plus eight. The numbers that popped up on the screen were twenty-six. TWENTY-SIX. Ten years less than thirty-six, which was what she believed him to be. She didn’t want to subtract the numbers from her age, not needing to see that number, and unable to do the math in her head She quickly deleted the numbers and put her phone back in her back pocket. She looked up at the ceiling, blushing at the thought that she was considering for a millisecond about possibly sleeping with him.



After Sami’s message Louise received when she was with Mia, she and Sami had been messaging back and forth for over a week. A gif in the morning, something work or school related, a joke around midday, a how-are-you in the afternoon, followed by a gif of a person falling to the ground from exhaustion with more chit-chat in the evening. By that time, she had forgotten about Sami’s age, as there was nothing even remotely romantic going on anyway. It was about ten in the morning, and Louise was in the hallway going from one classroom to another, checking her phone, when her eyes lit up as she noticed a message from Sami. It was a silly gif about teachers before Christmas, and Louise burst into laughter. Before she realized where she was and where she was going, her head was in someone’s chest. Looking up, she realized she had bumped into David once again. Her phone almost fell out of her hand, but she managed to grip it.

“Lou, you really should watch where you’re going. Do you bump into everyone like this? Or is it just me?” David smirked, watching her put her phone away all giddy.

Louise was wearing a black turtleneck, black trousers, and a colourful cardigan over it which slightly opened from the bump. She closed her cardigan back up and crossed her arms in front of her.

“Davvvv,” she said, shortening his name and lingering on the v on purpose making it sound like an f.

“YOU keep bumping into ME. Not the other way around,” Louise said, sounding quite annoyed.

David smiled, and nodded: “Sure, sure... What’s so great on your phone that you don’t even look where you’re going? Another Captain America comic delivered today? Or have you switched to Doctor Strange?” he asked, grinning.

Louise rolled her eyes. What was it with him? She had known David for over fifteen years. However, their conversations usually stuck with casual chit-chat and pleasantries. She knew little about him, other that he was the P.E. teacher and that he loved skiing. She remembered him always talking about being a ski instructor in America years ago. It was a big secondary school and David spent most of his time in the gym, whereas Louise was on the opposite side of the school in the language section most of the time. She practically never went into the gym. She might have met him in the halls every now and then, but she certainly didn’t remember bumping into him on a regular basis as she was now. It was probably connected with the last time when she dropped a handful of Captain America comics in front of him, that must have amused him.

Before she could come up with a witty remark to throw back at him, David said, “Sorry, it was probably my fault, I didn’t mean anything, just kidding. Are you OK?” He put his hand on her arm and looked into her eyes.

“I’m fine, thanks, don’t worry.” Louise lifted her eyes from the ground, looked into his eyes and then at his hand on her arm. What was going on?

“Well, Lou, don’t let me keep you, you have a nice day. Are you coming to the Christmas party on the 16th?”

Oh, the Christmas party. She rarely went; she much preferred to stay at home. Perhaps this year she could go, Sami might be there as well. Her much younger, fun friend. Much younger. But just a friend.

“Oh, the Christmas party. I don’t know yet…Perhaps I could go.” There was a hint of a smile in her eyes and lips.

David nodded, smiling. “OK, well, great, hope to see you then there.” He gave her a thumbs up and gestured a low wave with his hand. “Watch your step.” He winked and walked away.

Louise rolled her eyes but smiled.

“You too, Davvvvv!” Her phone beeped again, and she remembered Sami’s message.

What? You can’t relate?

He wrote under a plucked chicken photo, which she had not responded to yet. Louise smiled. Of course, she could relate, she was the plucked chicken. She wrote back as much adding three laugh-out-loud emojis. She stood in the middle of the hallway staring at her phone as he was typing something; she could see the three dots on her phone.

Are you coming to the teacher’s Christmas party on the 16th?



It was a typical weekday evening for Louise and Peter. They had just finished dinner and were now sitting on the sofa, watching TV. Their phones beeped every two minutes. Peter’s phone would beep first, followed by Louise’s. Smiling, they responded, both in their own worlds and connecting with people far away while sitting next to each other. Bolt was lying next to Louise, hogging more and more of the sofa with each stretch. Louise would occasionally look up at the TV and Peter, trying to pretend that she was paying attention to whatever they were watching. After about five minutes of pretending, Peter suddenly remembered something he had to do for chemistry the next day.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I have to do something...” He looked at Louise and noticed his mom’s lap lighting up under the pillow.

“Of course, sweetie, no problem. Do what you have to do.” She barely acknowledged him.

Peter hugged her and kissed Bolt on the head. As soon as he turned around, his head was back in his phone, smiling and typing, as was Louise’s. She removed the pillow and looked back at her phone. Her evening chat with Sami was on. They had just exchanged the how-are-you’s when Sami wrote something strange.

I’m actually a little down these past few days… He wrote with no emojis following.

Sami, hey, what’s going on? The kids getting on your nerves? Can’t wait for the holidays?

There was a slight pause before Sami responded.

Hmmmm, I don’t know if I should tell you this… He finally wrote and added two winking emojis.

Louise found the message heart-warming. She had made a new friend; he wanted to confide in her, ask for advice. She was lying on the sofa, covered in a blanket, patting Bolt with one hand, and holding her phone with the other.

You can tell me anything. Come on, spit it out.

It took a while again for him to respond. What was going on?

Oh, it’s just that I…I broke up with my girlfriend… He finally wrote.

Louise made an ‘oh’ face reading the message.

Let me guess. She wanted to get married and have kids and you didn’t? She joked, trying to keep it light-hearted.

Not really. She doesn’t want to get married. Or have kids. And I kind of got interested in someone else and she found out. He replied.

Louise wasn’t sure if she believed him; wasn’t it usually the other way around?

Uhh, I see. Well, if you’re interested in someone else, perhaps it wasn’t meant to be? Were you together for long? She wrote while making the ‘oh’ face again while typing out the words.

Sami was quick to respond.

Six months...

On and off, though.

He paused for a bit, then continued.

You won’t believe the woman I fell for now.

“Awww, how sad,” Louise said so loudly that she quickly looked around the room making sure she was alone.

I see… Louise started typing.

… Look, if after six months, she still doesn’t know where she stands with you… Then it’s probably for the best, Sami. You know?

She was nodding her head and gesturing her left palm up. Even though she wasn’t actually talking with anyone, she was communicating with her hands as if he were in the room with her.

And liking someone doesn’t mean anything. As long as you don’t act on it if you’re in a relationship.

But you’re single now, so, what’s stopping you? Who is she?

Louise kept repeating ‘poor Sami’ in her head. Here he was, trying to make this relationship work and she just blew him off after he naturally got attracted to someone else, and he hadn’t even done anything. Terrible. She shook her head.

It’s an older woman, probably your age. Sami wrote, adding three smiley faces to that one.

“Oh!” Louise exclaimed after which she quickly looked around if she was still alone again. She figured out what was going on. Of course, he was confiding in her; if he had a crush on an older woman, he needed her advice.

Haven’t done anything about it… Yet… He finished his message with a winking emoji.

Oh, so a real woman, then? Louise joked, adding three laugh-out-loud emojis, chuckling a bit as she wrote it.

She found it adorable, that Sami had a crush on some older woman and told his older woman friend – her, about it.

Yes, a real woman. Funny… Sami responded. So, what do you think of me now? Do you think it’s strange?

Louise laughed out loud, causing Bolt to grumble at the disturbance to his nap.

Why would it be strange, Sami? Love comes in all shapes and forms, and we just have to go for it whenever we can find it. Hell, I’ve been living in a foreign country for almost twenty years because of love. She said glancing over at the empty chair at the dining table where Mat used to sit.

Sami was quick to respond.

I should do something about it then, Luisa? He asked, adding a smiley face.

Luisa? Where did that come from?

Of course, you should tell her. See where it takes you. Take a chance... Louise typed out, nodding vehemently, and making a slight fist with her left hand. She felt good about herself, helping her young friend, helping young love. Well, not young love, if the woman was older. New love. She could see Sami typing, but nothing popped up on her screen for a while. She was thinking that there was more to the story, he’d explain more. Three dots kept appearing and disappearing for quite some time. It took so long that she got up from the sofa, walked over to the fridge, and poured herself a glass of milk while keeping her eyes on the phone. She had just made a sip when the message finally came through.

It’s you, Luisa…

Louise started choking on the milk a second later, coughing like crazy. Bolt woke up from his deep-sleep state and rushed over to her, wagging his tail and barking. Peter was down in a minute, worried what had happened.

“Mom, are you OK?” He shouted.

As soon as she saw her son, she quickly turned her phone upside down on the kitchen counter, waving her head right and left, making a circling gesture with her hand, indicating that she just needed to cough up the milk. As she stopped coughing and took another sip, she looked her son up and down a couple of times, thinking in her head how Peter was about the same height as Sami, dreading to think of their age difference, which was probably smaller than theirs.

“I’m fine, dear, thanks. Just some milk… Erm, went into the wrong end,” she said clearing her throat some more.

When Louise finally stopped coughing, Peter hugged her goodnight and went back to bed. Bolt retreated to his spot on the sofa. Louise still stood in the kitchen, staring at her phone. The adrenaline had helped with her math skills, and she had finally figured out that a man, who was only ten years older than her son and eighteen years younger than her had just confessed he had feelings for her. Louise kept going over and over the whole conversation, well, correspondence. They had not actually talked to each other since Sami left school months ago; they never spoke on the phone, so these were technically only typed-up words. Perhaps he was just making fun of her, she was thinking. For all she knew, he could have had a few friends over and suggested that they make fun of her to get her to react and start drooling over him on Messenger. She could picture them giggling, waiting for her response. Louise couldn’t believe this was real.

Funny! Nearly choked on a glass of milk, woke up my sixteen-year-old son. He came rushing down thinking I was dying. Hilarious, Sami!

She threw in the sixteen-year-old son on purpose in there.

Sami didn’t respond for a while, which made her even more certain she was right. It was all a silly joke. She went to brush her teeth, put on her pyjamas, and went to bed. Just as she was about to put her phone away, the screen lit up, and Sami’s name popped up on the screen.

I am not joking, Luisa…

No emojis, nothing. Louise didn’t know what to answer. The message popped up on her screen; she hadn’t actually opened it in the app, so she was pretty sure that Sami wouldn’t know that she had read it. She couldn’t open it. She started scrolling online and stumbled upon photos of Chris Evans. He was named the Sexiest Man Alive recently. Once she paused and clicked on his photos and videos, more and more of his photos popped up as she was scrolling down. She had quickly blocked out the messages from Sami and was on YouTube, thirsting for more Chris Evans videos, photos, content. This was easy; this was her safe place. The videos kept coming, YouTube was on autoplay, and Louise got lost down her rabbit hole once again.



The next day was Friday. Louise woke up suddenly to the alarm clock, which she had been dancing to in her sleep for a while. She was all groggy, not sure what day it was, what time it was. There was a Captain America comic to her left parted in the middle, and her phone on the pillow next to her. She put her hand over her eyes, feeling disgusted with herself. This was a new low for her. When did she fall asleep? Peter was calling her, shouting they were going to be late.

“Ugh, coming, just wait in the car.” She jumped out of bed, got dressed in a second, and hurried out of the house. While she was rushing to the car, it hit her. Sami. She hadn’t even responded to his last message. Damn. As she parked her car in the school parking lot, she glanced at her phone, which she probably put down just four hours ago, and discovered she had several messages sent some time apart.

Luisa?

…

Well, say something.

…

Anything?

A bunch of emojis followed. The smiley face, the winking one, the hands up in the air one. The last one was sent at two am. She must have been awake at that time. She was a horrible person, not even responding after what he had written. Just before she entered the school, she stopped under the steps looking at the majestic entrance and massive windows making up the majority of the front wall, thinking this was the last time she had seen Sami. She took one step up the stairs, typed three words, stood there, deleted two, took another step, typed some more, deleted them again. This went on for a couple of minutes when she finally managed to write:

So sorry, Sami, fell asleep last night...

She looked at the big clock above the entrance, she had less than five minutes to her class on the second floor. There was no time.

You do know that I’m much older, don’t you? Anyway, chat later, late to class.

She put her phone on silent mode and rushed to class. Throughout the day, the words ‘It’s you, Luisa’ popped up in her head, and she replayed the entire thing. Whenever the students were doing something on their own, she would get lost on a rollercoaster of her own thoughts, rethinking, revisiting every single interaction like a hamster on his wheel. Her internal monologue was always the same. Firstly, doubting his attraction to her, then contemplating whether she was attracted to him, which almost immediately followed with a picture of Captain Chris popping up in her head; then her common sense would kick in and remind her of their age difference and finally her heart would sense the desperate emptiness and longing she felt, and tried so hard to hide, for Mat. She was thinking about any past signals of Sami’s affection. Were there? There were none. They didn’t even talk that much when he was still at school. Louise hadn’t been dating or flirting for over eighteen years, if there had been signs, she wouldn’t have noticed them. He was nice, though. And handsome. Well, not like Captain America.

“Captain America is soooo handsome,” Louise mumbled behind her desk at the computer. She blushed when she realized she had said that out loud, putting her hand over her mouth quickly. One student in the front row looked up from her notebook.

“What’s that, opettaja?“ she asked.

“Oh, nothing, just reading something about cats in America, completely unrelated but so interesting.” She pointed at her monitor. The student continued with her work and Louise quickly returned to her thoughts. Captain America didn’t exist, Louise reminded herself in her head. Then the most important piece of information hit her. She remembered Sami was twenty-six or something. Louise was twenty-six almost twenty years ago. Twenty. Years. Ago. She had taught students older than him. Heck, she could have been his mother. He could have been her and Mat’s son. If Mat knew that she was being hit on by some twenty-something-year-old, he’d have so much to say about it. He would tease her about it, but he’d also be a little jealous. And she would reassure him that he was the only man for her. Oh, Mat.



She hadn’t looked at her phone the whole day; the day got past her. She was on autopilot for the most of it, her classes, driving Peter and Nora to practice, taking Bolt for a walk, heating up dinner from the previous night. Louise was just going through the motions, while the hamster wheel in her head was not stopping for a second.

“Mom. Did you hear what I said?” Peter asked while they were eating dinner.

“Oh, sorry, dear, I was in my thoughts, what did you say?” Louise looked at Peter attentively.

“Nora asked me to help her with math, so I’m going to go over there sometime this weekend. OK?” Peter shrugged his shoulders and looked up at his mom.

“Of course, if she needs help. Nice of you to help out.” Louise smiled.

“Nora asked if you want to come over as well. Her mom would love to see you.” Peter continued.

Louise remembered that day at the Pilates studio when Mia saw the message from Sami. Louise hadn’t talked about Sami to Mia after that and she surely had no intention of revealing anything more, especially not mentioning the latest bombshell.

“Oh, sorry, sweetie, I’m so busy this weekend. I was planning to decorate the house for Christmas, and I have papers to grade. You go and help Nora with the math and tell Mia that I’ll see her at Pilates on Tuesday. I’m definitely coming next week.” Louise couldn’t remember how many Pilates classes she had missed since then and she wasn’t planning on coming this Tuesday either, but it was a handy excuse to not go with Peter and see Mia. She didn’t need a discussion with Mia about this whole situation; the conversation in her head was loud enough.

“Sure, I’ll tell her.” Peter shrugged his shoulders and continued to eat.

After Peter went to his room after dinner, Louise finally decided to check her phone. She felt worried that she would find a bunch of unanswered messages from Sami sent during the course of the day, making her feel even worse about not responding sooner. To her surprise, there was only one red notification on her phone. She let out a sigh and put her hand over her mouth as if she was bracing for some terrible news.

Are you now? Very much doubt that. Let me know when you’re free to chat… A bunch of emojis followed: the winking face, smiley face, and upside-down head emoji…

Louise was not well-educated in emojis; she used a grand total of probably five emojis, which were the laugh-out-loud, the strong-arm, the heart emoji, the hands-up-in-the-air emoji, and the crazy emoji with the tongue out. She had no idea what the upside-down head meant. She blushed a little and started responding.

Well, take a guess then…

In a matter of seconds, Louise could see that Sami was typing his response.

Hmmm, that is a tricky question, isn’t it? Not sure if I should say anything. He ended the message with an upside-down head again and a winking face emoji. Louise had no idea what that meant.

Oh, come on. I won’t get hurt, promise. She responded with a smiley face.

I think you’re probably in your early thirties, I don’t know thirty-three.

Louise was smiling from ear to ear.

I know how this works…you think of a number and subtract about five years out of politeness…

Still, you can’t really think that I’m in my thirties. She responded and added the laughing-out-loud emoji.

You’re not?! You look amazing. Does it matter, though? Sami wrote, clearly wanting to take this further.

Well, I don’t know, doesn’t it?

Louise wasn’t sure what to think.

Is this a joke? You didn’t even talk that much to me while you were at our school. Louise replied, finding it all hard to believe.

I was too nervous to talk to you... Sami wrote almost instantly.

Too nervous? You are kidding me. She added the hands-up-in-the-air emoji on that one.

You didn’t notice how I always tried to be close to you? Sami wrote.

Louise started replaying the events in her head, thinking about the times they were standing together in the hallway and that afternoon at the open-house day. He was so reserved; they didn’t even talk much.

No, not at all. She replied, a frown creasing her forehead and gesturing her palm up.

Well, I’m glad I managed to keep it a secret. He wrote, adding the winking face emoji.

You’re serious? You find me attractive? Do you have a thing for older women?

Louise was going to get to the bottom of this.

Why would you think that? Sami replied.

I don’t know, just trying to make sense of it. Louise wrote.

I don’t, so, you’re my first. Sami wrote and sent a bunch of grinning squinting face emojis.

Louise had never used that emoji either, what was that one about? She was completely out of her depth; the last time she was flirting, she wasn’t doing it on text. People talked back then, in person.

Sorry, this is so hard to believe… Louise was shrugging her shoulders as she was typing.

Why? What’s so hard to believe? Sami asked.

This… You’re like what, twenty-five? I’m forty-four, that’s twenty years older.

…

I could be your mother for that matter.

…

Aren’t there girls your age?

It took Sami some time before he finally replied.

None like you, Luisa. And no, I’m actually twenty-six. You’re not really good at math, are you? He added a number of emojis to that one, none of which Louise even recognized.

She felt hot.

You definitely don’t look forty-four, by the way. Even stranger emojis followed that Louise had never seen before. It was like encountering another foreign language, and she knew she’d need a translator, but she focused on the words instead.

Up until this point, Louise had been pacing up and down in her kitchen with her phone in her hand. The only light on was behind the sofa, slightly dimmed. Her face was lit up by her phone as she was gorging and rereading the messages. Finally, she sat down on the sofa. Her body relaxed a bit. She bit her bottom lip.

Well, what do you like about me?

She put her left index finger in her mouth and bit it slightly. She could see the three dots appearing and disappearing on her screen.

Well, what’s not to like? Your eyes, your hair…your round bum… He wrote straightforwardly and followed it with a smiley face emoji and the one with the monkey covering his eyes.

“Oh, no, you didn’t!” Louise gasped and said out loud after reading “round bum”.

You want me to go on? Sami continued.

She paused for a second, thinking about what to write, looking up at the ceiling.

Go on, then…

Louise was biting on her finger in her mouth, remembering his posture, his broad shoulders, his dark brown hair parted in the centre and tucked behind his ears, constantly falling forward to his forehead.

“Ouch,” she bit her finger a little much. She took her finger out of her mouth and started picking apart her hair. Sami continued.

You in that black dress with the white stripes is so sexy. The number of times I thought about you in that dress. I can’t stop thinking about your bum in that dress…

“Phew!” Louise exclaimed. Which black dress was he talking about? The plain, black, turtleneck one that ends below the knees? Louise always thought that she did a particularly good job hiding her curves. She just realized how silly all this was. There was no way he found her sexy in that dress.

You can’t be serious! That dress? That is like the plainest dress ever. And I don’t dress sexy. I think you have me mistaken for some other teacher.

Louise grew anxious as there was a slight pause, worried that she had been rude. She hadn’t been flirting in so long and didn’t know how to flirt when she was younger either. Mat. She once again imagined telling Mat about a twenty-six-year-old teacher hitting on her. He wouldn’t believe it. She could picture him laughing at her.

Ha, ha, funny, Louise! I don’t know why it is so hard to believe.

…

I like you…I think you’re hot and no, I don’t really care how old you are.

…

Before Louise had a chance to respond, Sami wrote. So, what are you wearing now?

Louise blushed, feeling flattered but also sceptical. Was this sexting, what they were doing? Was this how people flirt nowadays? She felt a flutter in her stomach as she read his words. She glanced at her outfit although she was well-aware of what she had on at the time. She considered for a moment writing about wearing some sultry, tight red dress but changed her mind the next second.

Oh, nothing special, just some grey sweatpants and a T-shirt. They go well with my dog’s grey hair. She responded and added some smiley faces. She didn’t know what she was doing.

Well, I bet grey looks great on you. He added a winking face emoji at the end.

Ah, yes, rocking the grey sweatpants. If you like that dress of mine, you’d love this look.

She noticed the TV was still on and turned it off.

Send me a photo so I can see for myself.

Louise felt her stomach flutter. Was this actually happening?

No, definitely not doing that, use your imagination. She replied and quickly continued.

Do you have your Levi’s jeans on? The dark blue ones.

Louise had a vivid image of him in those jeans. Yum.

Oh, looks like someone likes my jeans. Or me?

There was no going back at this point.

Well, those jeans are pretty cool, and you do look good in them. Louise flirted back with a smirk emoji.

Well, I’m glad to hear that, Luisa. I am in fact wearing my dark blue jeans…

The flirty exchange continued for a while with Louise reacting and responding and trying not to be too much of a prude but also keeping it light without getting too heated. Sami had asked her several times for a photo of herself which she did not do. After some back and forth, he asked her about the Christmas party.

So, are you coming next week? It’d be great to see you...

…

You could wear some sexy black dress, unlike your plain one. I can definitely wear my dark blue jeans.

…

We could see where the night takes us.

…

I have a feeling it could be a night to remember.

Louise felt a mix of excitement and nerves. She hesitated for a moment, thinking about David as she remembered that he had also asked her if she was coming. And she remembered all the other teachers that were going to be there.

Hm, sounds interesting… We would have to keep it a secret, though. Don’t want the other teachers to think of me as some old pervert. Louise said cautiously.

Sami’s response was almost immediate.

Sure thing, you OLD pervert, you! Cannot wait to see you. He added four laugh-out-loud emojis on that one, he must have found it really funny.

As they continued their conversation, Sami kept teasing her about their little rendezvous while Louise was trying to keep it light. He kept urging Louise to send him a photo, but she didn’t give in. Although it was all still quite unbelievable in her mind, Louise couldn’t resist the thrill of being with someone so young and handsome, of making a connection with someone. As she lay on the sofa sometime after, all she needed to do was to touch herself for a moment to feel her whole body exploding with such pleasure she had not experienced in a long time. She couldn’t wait for the Christmas party next week.

Just as she was getting ready for bed, her phone beeped again.

How do you like this one?

Before she managed to read the message, a photo of Mia wearing a red velvet teddy and red thongs popped up on her screen. She was leaning against the wall, facing the camera, smiling. Louise was taken aback.

Sorry? She responded.

Oops, my mistake, Lucy, it was meant for Luis. Mia explained with three emojis of face-with-hand-over-mouth emojis and a laugh-out-loud gif.

Do you like it, though?

Louise burst out laughing, and Bolt ran to her, concerned.

I mean…it is pretty hot, you look good. It shows that you’re going to your Pilates classes, unlike me, Louise replied laughing.

Thanks! Are you coming next week? Mia wrote, adding a strong-arm emoji.

I should, right? Will try!

Louise stood in the bathroom before her bathroom mirror that covered half of the wall and showed Louise down to her thighs. She quickly snapped a photo of herself in her white T-shirt and grey sweatpants. She was giggling as she sent it to Sami.

Hyvää yötä!

Sami responded with three heart-eyes emojis and a kiss:

Good night, ihana!

“Gorgeous?!” Louise shouted and laughed.





10





NORA





NORA





“You’re good at math, right?” Nora asked Peter without looking up from her phone as he got out of school. They were waiting for Louise to come and pick them up after volleyball. Nora was always the first one out of the two of them, as the girls didn’t shower after practice.

Peter hadn’t responded right away, and Nora looked up. “Your hair is wet.” Peter always showered after practice but never dried his hair because he was in such a rush to get out as quickly as possible so he would have more time to chat with Nora while waiting for their ride. Peter put his hoodie on, not even noticing that it was cold, as was perfectly normal for December in Finland. He pulled the strings on his hoodie a bit tighter.

“Math? Math is like my second favourite subject,” he said, chuckling. “What do you need?”

Nora had on a pink beanie with two pompoms, her blonde hair peeking underneath. He felt a droplet of water slowly running down his neck. A hat would be a good idea at this point, as Nora certainly didn’t look cold. She looked at him like he had just said that he liked Nazis standing in swimming trunks in the middle of Antarctica. Had she never noticed that his hair was always wet after practice? Surely, she had heard his mom scolding him for not wearing it in the car. After a few moments of awkwardness, Nora turned her gaze back to her phone.

“Well, hooray for you, I guess. Are you busy this weekend? I really need help with this test. I’ve failed it already, and it’s not looking good this time. Hmmm?” She asked, staring at her phone.

Was Nora asking him to come to her house? He didn’t want to sound too excited, although he would follow her home this very minute if she had asked him to.

“Sure, sure thing. Let me just check my plans.” He quickly grabbed his phone and started scrolling through the calendar app, which was clearly empty, but she didn’t know that. More and more droplets of water practically streamed down his neck at this point.

“Well, I can come by on Saturday in the afternoon, around three? How’s that?” He rubbed the back of his neck trying to prevent the water from reaching his T-shirt.

“Sure, three’s fine by me. Great!” Nora looked at him and smiled.

By now he really started to feel the cold. Luckily, Peter’s mom just pulled up and they quickly got into the car.

“Peter, is your hair wet again? What are you thinking? It’s freezing out here. Have you two been waiting long?” Louise asked shocked at seeing Peter’s drenched hair dripping underneath his hoodie.

Nora was smiling in the back of the car, not looking up from her phone.

“I’m fine, Mom, we just got out,” Peter said as he scratched his neck some more and adjusted his hoodie over his head thinking how lucky he got out as quickly as he did. If he had blow-dried his hair or even towelled it a bit more, his mom would have probably been waiting in the parking lot for them by then, and Nora would have never asked him to come over on Saturday. Nora had asked him to come over on Saturday! Peter smirked from ear to ear the entire time on the way home while trying to appear super calm and chill.



Nora lived not far away from Peter’s house. It was a fifteen-minute walk; ten if you walked fast. They said at three, and Peter, being the punctual, caring friend, was on his way a good half an hour before. He was never late for anything; on the contrary, he was usually annoyingly early for everything. He probably got this from his mom, who made sure that whenever they had a doctor’s appointment or anything basically, they were always there a good half an hour before.

“Better to be early than late,” his mom would always say, and he agreed.

Snow fell down heavily on that day, and before he left the house, he put on his hat and looked for his scarf. He couldn’t find his, so he grabbed one of Mom’s, a grey-and-red checkered wool one, thinking she wasn’t going to miss it for a few hours, as she wasn’t leaving the house.

By the time he almost reached Nora’s house, the snow was coming down harder and harder, blanketing everything in sight with an even thicker layer of white. His phone beeped, and he saw that Nora had messaged him on Snapchat.

3.30, OK?

He could see her house in the distance. It was quarter to three, which meant he had forty-five minutes to spare.

Sure, heading over there in a half of hour. He replied as if he had just remembered that he was meeting her that day.

He couldn’t go back home, because his mom would ask him a bunch of questions about why he came back so soon, so he decided to walk around, which was not something someone would want to do in this kind of weather. He walked over to a forest behind Nora’s house, where he spent the last twenty minutes leaning up against a tree watching One Punch Man on his phone, hunched over to protect it from the snow. His hair wasn’t wet, as he was wearing a hat, but his hat, scarf, and jacket were practically soaking wet by the time he was at Nora’s doorstep at twenty-five minutes past three. Still early, but not too early. Nora came to open the door wearing grey sweatpants and a white T-shirt that just barely covered her navel. Peter’s eyes went straight to her waist trying to catch a glimpse of her bellybutton. Was that a piercing?

“You’re wet again?” Nora said, smiling. He took his jacket, hat, and scarf off and Nora put on a rack next to the door them to dry off.

“My hair’s dry,” Peter said, shaking his head a bit as he took off his hat.

They went straight to her room. The house was silent; it looked like there was no one at home.

“You alone?” Peter asked as he walked up the stairs behind her, trying not to stare at her butt which was in his direct eyeline as she was two stairs up.

“Yup, Mom’s at some work seminar, I think. She’s rarely home on the weekends anyway.” She turned around and shrugged her shoulders, catching his eyes on her behind but didn’t say anything. Peter quickly looked up, flushed, and nodded.

As soon as they got up into her room, she went back down and came back shortly after.

“Here, I got us a couple of beers.” She put a beer on the desk in front of him and opened hers. “Cheers,” she said and took a sip.

Peter had never had beer before in his life. There had been parties where he saw his friends drink, but he never wanted to. He remembered how appalled his mom was last summer when he told her how some of his friends got pretty wasted at the end-of-school party, how there were parents at the party as well and how unaffected they were by the underage teenagers drinking in their backyard. Up until this time, Peter had always politely declined when offered something to drink, and no one really pressed the matter further. Nora had already started to drink her beer as if it was as casual and normal as taking the next breath. He looked at her, then looked at the beer in front of him and wondered what to do. He wanted to look cool in her eyes, and he had been walking around in the freezing cold for the past hour, perhaps the beer would warm him up. He was sixteen, after all; everyone drank beer at sixteen, he thought.

“Cheers!” He popped the can and took a large sip. Almost immediately, he started coughing; it was bitter and bubbly, very much like he imagined it would be. How could people drink this stuff?

“It’s really cold.” He managed to say when he stopped coughing and smiled. He put the beer back down on the desk, determined to drink it as slowly as possible.

Nora laughed. She took a few more sips and then got out her math test. For the next hour or two, Peter wrote and talked about the x’s and the y’s and scribbled on three sheets of paper. Nora listened, looking very confident as Peter explained and solved the problems and extremely puzzled when she tried to replicate his work. By the time they had finished, Nora popped downstairs and came back with more beer. Peter had barely drunk one-third of his first beer, so he guzzled down the rest of it before thanking her for yet another. He felt slightly woozy soon after and flushed, his cheeks turning red, while Nora seemed just fine, which made Peter wonder how much beer she usually drank. He noticed a picture of her and presumably her dad by her bed. They were posing for a photo on a sandy beach, both smiling widely. He knew her parents got divorced some years ago and that he had moved away.

“Where’s that?” He asked politely looking at the photo.

Nora tipped her head way back, indicating that she had almost drunk the entire beer in the last five minutes. She looked at the photo, then to the window.

She inspected the photo and said, “That? Oh, that’s…Crete, I think… Two years ago.”

Peter nodded. “Do you miss your dad?”

Nora redid her ponytail and replied, “Do I miss him… I mean, sure… I see him sometimes and he calls every now and then...” She kept pulling the strands of her hair appearing nervous. “It’s complicated. Sometimes…I don’t want to say it but… Sometimes, I think it’d be better if he was dead, you know?” She said with her eyes fixed on the window and the white rooftops outside. “I know, horrible…” The snow continued to fall on the other side of the window.

Peter sat there, shocked at what she had just said. “You can’t mean that…You’re so lucky that your dad is still alive and part of your life. No?” Peter stared directly at her, urging her to meet his gaze.

“Erm, I don’t know. I think you’re pretty lucky your dad is like gone, gone...You never have…like hope that he might call. You know?” She stopped fixing her hair, the ponytail secured and continued. “You never have to wonder if he’ll find the time, you never have to wait for him to come and be disappointed yet again when he doesn’t,” Nora explained, still staring out the window.

“You know?” She asked finally meeting his eyes.

Peter couldn’t believe it and looked away from her, slightly shaking his head. “You can’t say that... You don’t know what it’s like to not have a dad anymore, to never be able to speak to him again, to never be able to see him again…” Peter cleared his throat. “Your dad’s still here. You can talk to him today, like right now. Now!” Peter said raising his voice at the end. How could she say something like that? How could she say it out loud to him?

Nora turned away from the window, walked over to the bed and sat opposite Peter.

“Yes, he’s still here, and your dad…isn’t…” She turned her lips down. “And yes, I can see my dad, I can talk to him, I can spend time with him. And you don’t have that chance. But your dad didn’t decide to go away, he had no choice.” She paused, leaning slightly closer to Peter. “And my dad did. He abandoned me... And every day he can spend time with me, he can call me, he can visit me, he can hang out with me...” Nora paused for a second. “And on most days, he doesn’t…” There was a tear in the corner of her eye. She looked away, ran downstairs and quickly returned with yet more beer.

“Never mind, OK?” she said and raised her third beer before taking her first sip. She looked at the photo again.

“That’s Elafoni…, Elafonisi, on Crete… Beautiful,” she said while staring at the golden, sandy beach merging into the turquoise blue sea and intermingling in the light blue sky in the distance.

Peter didn’t know what to say. What he would do to have his dad back, just to speak to him one last time. There were so many mornings when he woke up, fully expecting his dad in the kitchen eating breakfast, waiting for him in the car to go to school, only to be instantly reminded that he was gone. To talk to him once more, to hear his voice just once again would be unbelievable. He couldn’t understand what Nora was saying. In his mind she didn’t know how lucky she was that her dad was still around, even if he wasn’t there a lot of the time. He was still there! He looked at the half-drunk beer in front of him and another one on the right. He had enough. He lifted the can to take one last sip of the opened beer but put it down seconds later. He didn’t like beer.

“Well, it’s getting late, I have to go. I think we have pretty much gone through the math stuff...” He stood up getting ready to leave.

“You should definitely do these problems on your own once more.” He said and pointed to the jotted pieces of paper on the desk.

Nora gulped her beer and barely made eye contact. “Yeah, thanks, it was really nice of you to come. You’re not going to have one more?” She asked, pointing at the beer in front of Peter.

Peter waved his hand in front of him and politely refused; he felt lightheaded and could feel a burp making his way up. He struggled to keep it down.

“No, thanks, I’m good,” he said as if he drank beer all the time but just didn’t feel like it now.

As they walked down the stairs, just before Peter opened the door to leave, he turned around and looked at the beer in her hand and then at her eyes.

“You always drink this much?” he asked, gesturing at the beer in her hand.

Nora rolled her eyes and made a phew sound. “What? It’s like beer. And it’s Saturday.” She shrugged her shoulders.

“Sure, sure,” Peter said, putting his hands in his pockets. “Well, I’ll see you on Monday at practice. Take care, Nora.” He paused for a second, looked her directly in her eyes, then her lips, then back into her eyes. She had the most beautiful blue eyes, the colour of the ice melting against the blue sky in the spring. For a split second he instinctively leaned his face towards her, as if something was pulling him towards her, just to be a little closer to her, to feel her breath on his face, to smell her, let alone to touch her or kiss her. He could have kissed her right then, but the smell of the beer was so strong between them, and he couldn’t keep the burp down much longer. Nora was oblivious to his intention, standing in the doorway waiting for him to leave.

“Yup, you, too. Thanks, Peter!” She said and quickly closed the door behind him. Peter let out a big belch as soon as she closed the door. He started to hiccup, which didn’t stop until he got home.

It was already dark by the time Peter got home, because of all the snow it probably took him a good half an hour. He took some deep breaths outside of the house and tried to breathe into his hand to check if he still smelled of beer before he remembered Mom had gum in the car in the garage and went to get some before he went inside.





11





PIKKUJOULU





CHRISTMAS PARTY





After spending an hour and a half changing in the bathroom, Louise finally settled on a black, long velvet dress and knee-high boots. Her first choice, the burgundy, tight dress seemed too slutty, the leather leggings and a white, long shirt dress looked too formal, and the three other dresses made her look fat in her mind. She had been exchanging racy messages with Sami all week. Well, Sami sent her randy messages and she tried to divert the conversation to more light-hearted topics. Still, in theory they had covered pretty much everything that would or more likely could happen that night. They hadn’t seen each other since the open house night, nor had they even talked on the phone; their whole relationship was founded on flirty messages exchanged on their phones. Louise thought about the whole getting-naked-and-having-sex thing and felt nervous as well as unsure if she could actually do it but, in a way, also excited. She didn’t really feel like she was falling in love or anything, but she was attracted to Sami and flattered he was apparently interested in her. When she got ready, she started firing messages.

See you in one hour!

…

Do you want to meet in front of the restaurant and go in together?

…

Like we just bumped into each other, no one will suspect a thing.

…

Have you been to that restaurant?

…

It took a while before Sami responded and Louise started to worry if they were still on.

Yes, sounds great. Quarter to seven then? Sami finally wrote.

OK, see you then. Hope you’ll like what I’m wearing. Louise smirked.

She looked at herself in the mirror and touched her hip feeling good about herself.

I’m sure I will. Sami wrote back adding a winking emoji, smiley face and a bunch of other ones Louise didn’t recognize.

“How do I look?” She asked Peter as she emerged from the bathroom.

“Wow, looking amazing, Mom. Have a great night!” Peter said flicking up from his phone.

Louise beamed at the compliment. “Thanks, sweetie, please go to bed by ten, OK?” She looked over at Bolt who was lounging on the sofa. “And don’t let Bolt on your bed,” she instructed him.

“Peter, have you seen my scarf? The grey and red one?” She shouted minutes later while rummaging through the wardrobe by the entrance.

Peter walked over to help her look for it, but then froze as he remembered wearing it the other day when he went to Nora.

“No, I haven’t se-” Peter began. Could he have left the scarf at her place? It was quite wet from the snow, and she put it to dry off.

“Where is it? I’m going to be late.” Louise became nervous plucking out one scarf after another. Peter finally spoke up.

“Mom, I might… have left it at Nora’s place the other da-” Peter said almost inaudibly worried his mom was going to lose it.

“How, Peter? That’s my favourite scarf, I need it.” Louise said almost shrieking at him.

“I’m really sorry, Mom…I’ll get it back as soon as possible.”

“Well, Peter…I need it today,” Louise said still pulling out one scarf after another in frustration. “It’s my scarf anyway, whatever gave you the idea that you could take it in the first place?” Louise was visibly angry. Peter couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. They had like at least ten other scarves.

Peter picked up a plain, red scarf off the ground and offered it to his mom. “You could take this one,” He looked at her in her all-black attire thinking that the scarf would go well with what she was wearing.

“It’s Christmassy…” he added, shrugging his shoulders.

Louise seemed offended at his suggestion and let out a deep sigh.

“I don’t want that one, I want my grey-and-red checkered one.”

Peter didn’t know what to say anymore. He stood there silent with the red scarf in his hand.

“Fine, just give it to me,” Louise said eventually, grabbing the scarf from his hand.

“I need my scarf back, you understand?” She said pointing her finger in his face. Peter nodded afraid to say anything else. Even though she was angry with him, she kissed him on the cheek and went to the car.



The drive to restaurant was a short one. Like mother like son, she was there at half past. It was freezing with temperatures way below zero.

Little early, I’ll wait for you in front of the restaurant. She wrote to Sami letting him know she was there.

Sure, coming. Sami replied in short.

Despite her warm coat, the red scarf, gloves, and a hat, the cold still managed to seep through, especially after standing in it for a couple of minutes. She was stomping her feet left and right to keep herself warm, checking her phone every couple of seconds.

As Louise stood to the right of the entrance, she noticed some other teachers approaching. Hoping to go unnoticed in the dark night, she turned around.

You close? She wrote.

Almost there, five minutes top. Sami replied almost instantly.

Suddenly, she heard someone say: “Lou, you came?”

She was all too familiar with that cheerful voice and there was only one person who called her that. At least now. She turned around and saw David standing before her.

“Hei, hei, David, how are you?” Louise replied, forcing a smile.

“Who are you waiting for in this freezing cold, Lou? Captain America has arrived!” He said smiling and pointing at himself. Louise rolled her eyes.

“Ha, ha, David, so funny. Still not letting go of that, are you?” Louise said.

David gestured for her to follow him inside. “Just kidding. Let’s get out of this cold and go inside, come on.”

Louise had no other choice but to go in. She walked on in front of him as he put his hand on her back. As he took off her coat, she quickly grabbed it and typed a message, concealing the screen from David’s view.

Had to go in, met some other teachers.

She followed David to the table taking a seat between him and Minna, another teacher. In a matter of seconds, the seats around her filled with more people. Louise kept her eyes on the entrance waiting for Sami’s arrival. However, by the time he finally arrived, the only available seat was about ten seats away from her.



As the night progressed, the music and the table got louder and louder as they chatted, laughed, and ate. Sami was far away, and they hadn’t even made eye contact since he got there. After dinner, people started dancing, but Louise couldn’t find the energy to join in, obsessively checking her phone hoping for a message from Sami while also looking in his direction for him to acknowledge her. Minna tried to get her onto the middle part of the restaurant which served as a makeshift dancefloor multiple times, but Louise remained seated. David on her left was absorbed in a conversation about hockey with another one of their colleagues on his left. She looked at the ceiling and down feeling foolish for even entertaining the idea of a fling, for letting her guard down, for this entire silly little love affair, well, more like a sexting affair, with a man half her age. She thought about all the embarrassing messages that had gone on for far too long. Meanwhile, Sami was engrossed in a conversation with three other teachers, all probably in their mid-twenties, all blonde, drooling over him and laughing like hyenas. She checked her phone, nothing.

“Your phone is definitely your best friend, huh?” David said breaking her thought.

Louise smiled. “Oh, I’m just checking if Peter went to sleep. He hasn’t replied, so he’s surely asleep. If you believe it.” She said smiling politely. She hadn’t sent anything to Peter.

“Your son? How old is he now?” he asked.

Louise nodded and smiled. “Sixteen.”

“Oh, he’s definitely asleep. Home alone, what else is he to do?” They both laughed at the thought.

“You have a daughter, David, is that correct?” Louise asked turning her body slightly towards him.

He leaned towards her a little as the music had got so loud it was difficult to hear each other.

“Two actually, they are at their mother’s this weekend. So, probably asleep by now.” David said sipping some beer.

Louise nodded, remembering her Sara for a second and quickly glancing in Sami’s direction who was still preoccupied with the three blondes around him.

The song Walking on Sunshine started blasting on the speakers. Instantly, Louise felt sick of sitting and waiting at the table for something to happen. She was going to get noticed.

“Oh, I love this song, you want to dance?” she asked David gesturing to the dancefloor.

“Lou, I don’t know, I’m a terrible dancer,” David said, raising his eyebrows and looking at the other people dancing behind them.

“Come on, I’m not any good either,” Louise said and put out her hand. As she stood up, she looked in Sami’s direction to see if he had noticed her standing up. No, he was completely absorbed in his blonde company. David hesitated for a moment before finally following Louise to the dancefloor. They shuffled their feet left and right with Louise singing the chorus every now and then. She was trying hard to be spotted but Sami didn’t seem to care. The next song was a slow one and before Louise had the chance to return to her seat, David had already taken her hand and they started a slow dance. Not a dance in particular, just moving their feet left to right to the slow beat. Louise couldn’t help but glance over to Sami who was still surrounded by his group of admirers. She felt a pang of jealousy in her chest. David noticed her distraction and leaned in to speak over the music.

“Everything OK, Lou?” he asked.

Louise nodded and smiled. “Yes, sure.” She didn’t know what to add to that, so she remained quiet and lingered on his eyes for a few seconds before looking away again. David sensed that something was bothering Louise, but he didn’t want to pry too much. They continued their slow dance in silence, with Louise’s mind wandering to Sami. When the song ended, she felt a tap on her shoulder. Finally, Sami found the courage to approach her, she thought. But as she turned around, she saw Minna with a big smile on her face.

“Mind if I cut in?’” Minna asked.

Louise shook her head and stepped back. She made her way back to the table. Feeling defeated, she pulled out her phone, started scrolling through messages hoping for a sign that this was not just make believe. Did she imagine it all? Did she miss something? They did flirt. Didn’t they? Was it all in her head? He came on to her. Didn’t he? Perhaps she misread the whole thing. It must have been the emojis, she knew she should have looked them up. After another hour of sitting, checking her phone, and chatting with a few other teachers, Louise put her phone away and got up from the table.

“This is ridiculous, I am going home,” she muttered to herself. As she got up from her seat and turned around, she found herself in someone’s chest. She stumbled back a step, nearly losing her balance. She looked up to find none other than David, of course. She quickly regained her footing and forced a smile.

“You leaving so soon, Lou?” he asked, opening his arms in disbelief.

“Yup, I’m feeling a bit tired,” she lied, trying to sound casual.

“Se on harmi...,” he said quietly to himself, but Louise caught it. What a shame indeed, she thought. This is not how she imagined this night to go.

Louise furrowed her brow. “What, you don’t want me to leave?”

“Well, I was hoping we would hang out some more,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

They stared into each other’s eyes for a couple of seconds and Louise considered staying. David was like most P.E. teachers, tall and broad-shouldered with an unmistakable athletic build. His hair was a soft, wheat-blonde, that fell around his chiselled jawline. In that instant, Louise could see a hint of Captain Chris in him and couldn’t help but admit to herself that David was a very attractive man. She could stay… Just then she noticed Sami walking towards her. But before he reached them, one of the other teachers called out to him and he veered off in their direction.

Louise shook her head slightly.

“Sorry, I feel a headache coming on, I should really go.” Louise said.

“Sure, sure. Let me walk you out.”

Louise smiled gratefully. “That’d be nice, thank you.”

David walked her right to her car with her hand under his arm. It was freezing cold, and David had no gloves or hat on. Louise’s black Ford C-max was covered in ice.

“Why don’t you start the car and I’ll clean the windshields?” he offered.

Louise started the car and handed him an ice scraper. They worked around the car, walking in opposite direction, laughing about something someone had said. She could see the heat evaporating out of his mouth in the cold air as he was talking. In a minute, the car was warm, and the ice almost gone. They both stood in front of the driver’s door. David handed her the scraper back.

“Thanks so much, David, this was really nice of you. Now, get back in there before you catch a cold,” she said, pointing at the entrance.

“Can Captain America catch a cold, though? He’s superhuman, isn’t he?” David asked.

Louise smiled, noticing his piercing bright, blue eyes. He moved closer and looked into her eyes, then her lips, then back into her eyes.

“Voi,” he exclaimed softly, “Lou, your eyes are something else. What colour is that? Green? Grey?” He asked gently touching her cheek with his hand. It was cold from the ice scraper, but Louise didn’t have time to notice or answer because she felt his lips on hers. She opened her mouth a little and felt his warm tongue gently touching hers. They kissed for a few moments before Louise pulled away.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have do-” David said, stepping back.

“No, no, don’t be sor-…,” Louise started when David leaned in to kiss her again. This time she stopped him by putting her hand on his chest.

“I really have to go,” Louise said reluctantly looking to the ground nodding as if she was convincing herself to leave when all she wanted was to stay.

David nodded in response. “Hyvää yötä, Lou,“ he said, touching her chin gently.

“Good night!”

Louise got into her car and watched David walk back to the party, his hands in his pockets and his coat collar up. She took out her phone to check if Sami had written anything. Nothing.



When she got home, the house was quiet. She went to check on Peter, who was sound asleep in his bed with Bolt by his feet. She gave them both a kiss on their foreheads before heading to her bed. She had left her phone in her purse and returned to the one thing that made sense in her life. The one thing that was always there for her. The one thing that would always offer her comfort when she needed it. In a short amount of time, she had forgotten about the kiss, about David, about the raunchy messages, about Sami. She was once again almost instantly lost in her own world, touching herself to numb away all the pain. As she orgasmed, the Captain America comic dropped to her left and she stared at the ceiling.

“Oh, Mat,” she said out loud and tears started to run down her face.





12





JATKOT





AFTERPARTY





Where are you?

Ihana?

Luisa, where are you?

???

…

Hei, ihana… I can’t stop thinking about you in that black velvet dress tonight...

It was the morning after the Christmas party. Louise opened her eyes and immediately walked over to her purse and checked her phone. She couldn’t believe what she saw. Sami had completely ignored her the whole evening and now this. Unbelievable. Without responding, she got up, walked to the kitchen, and placed her phone on the kitchen counter. Moments later, another message came through.

Hei, hei, Lou,…You feeling better, how’s your head?

Suddenly, the memory of her kiss with David from last night flooded her mind. She didn’t respond to David’s message either and honestly; she had no idea how she felt about it. This all came as a big surprise to her. She had no idea Sami was attracted to her (was he still?), and she certainly didn’t know David liked her. Besides, just twenty-four hours she had been kind of ready to have sex (well, probably not full-on, naked sex, more like some dry humping and hot making out) with a man other than Mat for the first time in over twenty years. This was a huge step for her. And now in a matter of a few hours she had kissed a third man, all the while hoping to get together with the second one. This was a mess.

Peter came down into the kitchen rubbing his eyes.

“Hyvää huomenta, äiti,” he said walking past her to the refrigerator.

“Morning, son,” she replied kissing him on the cheek.

Louise’s mind was racing as she tried to decide how to respond to either of the two men. Peter sat at the table, eating porridge with Bolt resting his head on his knees, hoping to get a taste. The sunlight was coming through the windows, promising a beautiful winter day. Christmas holidays were just one week away.

“Mom, I’m going to the gym with Olli and Vesa, is that OK?” Peter asked eating his porridge. “Oh, and Nora asked me to come again because she is retaking the test this week. So, I’ll probably head over to her place in the afternoon. Good news, then for you, you’re getting your scarf back today.” Peter said as he finished his porridge showing her a thumbs up.

“OK?” He asked, taking the bowl to the sink. Bolt yawned and slowly walked back to the sofa.

Louise’s thoughts were elsewhere, and her response was delayed slightly as she was preoccupied with her love triangle.

“Oh, OK, sure, no problem.” she said.

“Did you hear what I said?” Peter asked again. The missing scarf that was practically a matter of life and death the night before, now didn’t seem to matter anymore to her.

“What’s that, sweetie?”

“You’ll get your scarf back today; you know the one that you can’t live without,” Peter enunciated each word as he said them.

“Oh, the scarf, yes, wonderful, dear.” She finally said unaffected. “Will you be home for lunch?”

“We’ll probably grab something downtown, OK?”

“Of course, no problem, just so I know. Have fun!” Louise said absentmindedly.



When Peter left, Louise was once again left alone with her thoughts and unanswered messages on her phone. She decided to put them off for a little longer and went for a long walk with Bolt. But as soon as she walked out the door, she began to reread the messages from Sami and David. Holding off on responding to Sami for the time being due to him technically ‘ghosting’ her as people would call it nowadays, she began thinking up a reply to David instead. Almost an hour into her walk she finally came up with the most casual and boring response.

Hei, hei, doing better, just taking a walk to clear my head.

David on the other hand almost instantly replied with a thumbs-up emoji.

Great! Have a great weekend, see you at school!

Louise was taken aback. That was it? Nothing about the kiss they shared. She let out an exasperated sigh: “You have a great weekend, too,” sarcastically, before replying as much in Finnish.

After having spent two decades in Finland, Louise spoke Finnish quite well. She could hold a conversation in Finnish, although she still mainly communicated in English, especially at school. Pretty much everyone who knew her was aware she was not Finnish and would speak to her in English and she would be happy to oblige and continue the conversation in her mother tongue. Then sometimes she would switch to Finnish, especially when she wanted to show that she was not a foreigner anymore. At home with Peter, she mostly spoke English, the language she had spoken with him since he was born. With Sami they used a mix of English and Finnish, with him starting in Finnish and continuing in English or vice versa. With David they spoke in English. David was always eager to show her that he was fluent in English because he had lived in America for so long, which was something he would tell her straight away when they met years ago.

“I used to spend six months of the year working in the US, in Utah, as a ski instructor,” he said.

“That’s why my English is so good.” Louise couldn’t care less; many people would try to impress her with their English when they found out she was an English teacher.

But in that moment, Louise felt compelled to use Finnish with David. It was a way to feel closer to him, speaking his native language while at the same time distancing herself from him, speaking a language that was still foreign to her, no matter if she had been living here for almost twenty years. It was a strange mix of intimacy and separation that Louise needed to feel right now, as David shut down further communication. She put her phone away and slipped on her gloves, setting off at a brisk pace with Bolt by her side.



By the time Louise and Bolt got home, it was almost time for lunch. With Peter out with his friends and later heading to Nora’s, Louise presumed she would have the house to herself for a while. After reheating some leftover vegetable casserole from the fridge, she settled herself on the sofa and found herself rewatching Infinity War practically on autopilot as if unable to tear her eyes away from the screen.

Just before the Battle of Wakanda, she dozed off and when she woke up, she had no idea where or when she was. She lovingly called out for Mat in her delusion thinking he was upstairs working out or in the bedroom before quickly realizing that he was gone and feeling completely empty. She petted Bolt who was napping on her leg and checked her phone. Another message from Sami brought her back to present and she remembered the events of the previous night.

I really can’t stop thinking about you in that dress yesterday...

After ignoring her for practically the entire evening, he had the nerve to continue to message her. Louise had enough of this, and the words were quick to follow.

When? Yesterday, when you didn’t even look at me?

Louise saw the dots appear and disappear on the screen for a while. He clearly didn’t know how to respond. Finally, the words appeared.

Believe it or not, all I wanted to do was take you somewhere where we could be alone.

Louise scoffed. Unbelievable.

Well, it sure didn’t look like that. It looked like we were complete strangers. She replied not believing a word.

I don’t know, I wanted to keep it a secret so bad, I guess. But all I wanted was to leave with you.

“You can’t be serious,” Louise said out loud sarcastically.

Wow, and you thought that by flirting and giggling with everyone else, that would get me to leave with you. Just, wow! Unbelievable!

Anteeksi, ihana… I don’t know, I just couldn’t believe, how gorgeous you looked or that any of this was real… Sami continued, and Louise eased up a bit after reading those last words. She typed and erased words for a couple of moments before finally answering.

Should have worn the plain, black dress then?

Louise relaxed, giving him the benefit of doubt that he might have been in fact too nervous to approach her. There were a lot of teachers there last night and the blonde threesome was all over him. Sami responded with three laugh-out-loud emojis.

Maybe sweatpants would have been even better. Then I’d be able to talk to you. He wrote adding a strong-arm emoji.

…

What are you doing now?

…

What are you wearing now? Sami finished with the upside-down emoji.

Back at it, Louise thought and rolled her eyes knowing full well where the conversation was leading to. They had done it a couple of times before and she couldn’t help but wonder how he could write such things to her but couldn’t talk to her in person.

Seriously, we’re doing this again? Louise wrote, trying to change the subject.

What? I can’t help it if I can’t get you out of my head. You’re to blame by wearing that dress yesterday. He said, his tone suggestive.

Louise rolled her eyes, not wanting to get pulled into this again.

So, did you stay long yesterday? She asked.

Not long, about two am. It was all right.

With the blonde troika? Louise asked.

Ha, ha, ha. Are you jealous, ihana? He teased her, trying to bring the conversation back to a more flirtatious tone.

Her jealous, what an idea, she thought.

Jealous? Please! She replied, trying to sound nonchalant.

You go and play with your young girls all you want.

She immediately regretted that last message. Who was she to be jealous? It wasn’t like anything had happened between them, just some harmless chats, some meaningless flirting. And besides, she was the one who kissed another man last night. Sami did not respond right away.

I’d rather play with you, ihana…

When she read that last message, Louise felt a warm feeling spread through her. Did he just write that? She didn’t know what to respond, walked over to the kitchen and started pacing with her head in her phone. She shouldn’t do this. She should just stop. She shouldn’t respond to that last message. She should just put the phone away and not respond. Which she did. She put the phone down on the counter, then picked it up again and put it down again. She did that several more times until she finally responded.

Oh, really? And what would you do?

In a matter of seconds, he replied: Whatever you want… with a wink emoji.

Louise could not help but smile.

“Here we go again…,” she said out loud with a sigh, walking back over to the sofa, sinking in, and curling up into the blanket.





13





NORA TAAS





NORA AGAIN





Peter arrived at Nora’s house five minutes before their agreed meeting time. As soon as he walked in, Nora handed him the grey-and-red scarf that his mother had missed so dearly one evening, then couldn’t care less about it the next morning.

“I’m just going to put it on and not take it off anymore,” he said wrapping the scarf around his neck. “Thanks!” Peter thanked her when he heard giggling coming from inside the house.

“Do you have someone over?” he asked. Nora rolled her eyes as she closed the door behind him.

“No, my mom has her new boyfriend over. I just met him today. Luis or something. I think he’s from Spain. Never mind.”

She made a slight waving gesture with her hand. Peter followed Nora upstairs to her room, where they started studying. The sounds of laughter and giggling from downstairs grew louder, soon joined by moans and cries. Peter felt slightly embarrassed, imagining what was happening below. Nora attempted to drown out the sounds by playing music loudly on her phone, but the passionate noises from downstairs still managed to seep through. Peter noticed Nora becoming increasingly nervous, and eventually, she slammed her pencil down on the desk.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said abruptly, standing up and heading towards the door. Peter followed her quietly outside, where they found a path leading towards the forest full of tall, snow-covered pine trees close to Nora’s house, where he was watching One Punch Man the other day. Despite the darkness, the full moon provided enough light to make it feel more like dusk than night. They stumbled upon a cut-down log and sat down on it, looking up at the sky, hoping to spot a shooting star or even Northern Lights. They were rare this south, and none had been seen that year, but still.

As they gazed up into the sky, Peter couldn’t help but ask, “So, your Mom has a boyfriend? Is he nice?” He didn’t want to talk about their missing dads anymore.

Nora kept her gaze towards the sky. “I don’t know, I just met him today. It’s hard to keep track of all of them. He’s like the third this month. Before him was Jukka for about two weeks and one other that I don’t know his name.”

Peter was surprised by Nora’s answer. He couldn’t imagine his mom dating anyone. As far as he knew she hadn’t been on a single date, and he definitely didn’t meet any stranger at their house. “That’s a lot of boyfriends,” Peter said trying to hide his shock.

“Yeah, she keeps herself busy. What about your mom? Is she seeing someone? When did your dad die, one year ago?” Nora asked.

Peter stared up at the full moon, reminiscing how he, Dad, and Bolt would take moonlit walks, sometimes runs, during it.

“It’s going to be four years soon,” he remarked before turning to Nora with a grin. “And no, as far as I know, my mom’s not dating anyone, but she’s got a serious thing going on with Captain America.” He smiled.

“What? Captain America?” Nora burst out laughing.

He nodded, still smiling. “She watches his movies on repeat and has a secret stash of comics hidden under her bed.”

Nora chuckled. “Well, at least she’s not bringing home random strangers like someone’s mom.” Nora winked, playfully shoulder-bumping Peter, and continued, “but, if I remember correctly, I think your mom does have someone real in her life, I remember my mom saying something about your mom hooking up with someone. No?” Nora asked, frowning her forehead.

Peter shrugged, looking a little uncomfortable. “I wouldn’t know. We don’t talk about that stuff. We don’t really talk about anything for that matter. It’s like there’s a wall between us. Whenever I even try to talk about Dad or anything, she pretty much shuts down, so I stopped trying. What about your Dad? Does he know about your Mom and all the boyfriends? Is he seeing anyone?” Peter asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think he cares really. It’s not like she tries to hide it. But he’s in Turku now. I haven’t seen him in a while.” Nora said, and Peter could sense the sadness behind her words.

By this point, their puffy coats, gloves, hats, and scarves did little to fight off the biting cold. They hadn’t seen any shooting stars or Northern Lights either.

“Let’s go back home, I’m sure they’re finished by now,” Nora said, rubbing her hands together to keep warm.

“But we haven’t seen a shooting star yet? Or Northern Lights?” Peter protested, thinking that this romantic setting definitely surpassed the one at home and that he had a better chance of kissing her here than at the house.

Nora shook her head, her teeth chattering. “I’m too cold to wait. Let’s go.” She stood up and Peter followed her on the path back.



When they got back to the house, Mia and Luis, a medium-height, Mediterranean-looking man with the darkest brown eyes Nora had ever seen, were just leaving.

“There you are, Nora,” Mia said with a wink. “We’re off for a bit. You two have fun, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

As she and Nora passed in the hallway, Nora muttered to herself: “Is there such a thing?”

Peter heard her and started to giggle, trying to hide it so Nora’s Mom and her man wouldn’t notice.

As soon as Mia and Luis left, Peter’s phone beeped. It was his Mom, worried about where he was and if he was okay. Peter hadn’t realized that it was already six in the afternoon. He hadn’t been home since morning.

“Oh, shit, I have to go home. Sorry, Nora, I didn’t know it was this late.” He shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s OK, I understand. Thanks for today. For math and this,” Nora said, making a circle with her hand.

“Yeah, no problem. Well, good luck with the test, and call or text if you have any more questions.”

He hesitated in the hallway, wondering if he should try to kiss Nora again. He hadn’t kissed a girl since kindergarten and barely remembered that kiss. He leaned slightly towards her when his phone rang. It was Louise.

“Yes, Mom, coming!” he said, looking away from Nora. The moment was gone. Nora mouthed goodbye and Peter left, disappointed that he had missed yet another chance of kissing Nora. He double-checked if he had the scarf on him and scurried home.





14





KUVA





PHOTO





Last class before the holidays, Lucy, you have to come today! Mia wrote that Tuesday.

She had promised Mia to come to Pilates today, she needed to go. Besides, she was kind of curious about that Luis man Mia sent those sexy lingerie pictures to.

After a few moments, she replied, Yes! Pick you up at six.



After Pilates, Louise and Mia decided to head to the nearby café for a drink. The accidental lingerie picture Mia sent Louise brought some awkwardness between them, but Louise felt like she could reconnect with her friend again. Besides, with all the drama happening with Sami, Louise was curious to know more about flirting and Mia’s perspective. Clearly, Mia was quite confident in her body and not shy about sending racy pictures to others. In a strange twist, Louise went from being judgmental about Mia to somewhat admiring her boldness and confidence.

Sami repeatedly begged her to send “hot” pictures of herself, and every time she responded with photos of her cuddling with Bolt, some silly photo of her naked knee, or a pan with sizzling meat on the stove with the fire emoji with the message saying, ‘something hot for you’.

She would go out of her way to turn everything potentially sexual into funny. This was completely new to her; she was terrible at flirting in person when she was young and worse at flirting online at this time.

“So, Lucy, what’s up with that teacher friend of yours? Are you finally doing it?” Mia asked before they even managed to sit down. Louise was taken aback at her straightforwardness but quickly remembered that this was the Mia she knew. She was surprised that she remembered Sami since they hadn’t spoken about him since Mia read out loud his first message to Louise.

“No, we’re just talking abou-…” She replied, intending to go on when the waiter arrived to take their orders.

“…About it… Well, not really talking, texting, messaging…,” she continued when the waiter left.

“Mmmh… You need to take it to the next level. Have you sent him anything to … encourage him to make things more real?” Mia asked, winking at Louise.

“Like what, Mia?” Louise asked. In a matter of seconds, Mia whipped out her phone and started showing photos of herself in titillating lacy things that barely covered her “peach” and “melons,” as she referred to her butt and breasts when the waiter came back with their drinks. He turned red at the sight of Mia’s phone at the centre of the table, but Mia was unconcerned, which was fine as Louise felt mortified for the both of them turning away, hoping to disappear into the ground.

As soon as he left, Mia started hissing, “What, Lucy?!”

“Well, I don’t know, how about that man just saw you in a thong?!” Louise whispered angrily.

“So what? He doesn’t know me. I don’t care what he thinks,” Mia said, looking at him walking away. “Besides, he doesn’t look that bad,” she concluded, checking out his behind. Just then the waiter turned around, and Mia winked at him.

“Mia!” Louise almost shouted like she would trying to get Bolt to stay put.

“What?” Mia asked angrily. “I’m just looking.”

“Aren’t you seeing…?” Louise asked, forgetting the name she knew minutes ago. “Someone…” she finished without coming up with the name.

“Well, yes, I’m seeing someone, but it’s not like I’m married...” Mia paused. “Not anymore anyway,” she finally said, looking down at her glass, and Louise knew that she was in no place to judge Mia. They were both doing their best trying to cope with losing their husbands. Hell, she was masturbating to Captain America comic books. Definitely not taking any chances. While Mia, on the other hand, was certainly taking chances, opening herself up to new opportunities, and that was OK too. Only three men (and almost one woman) had ever seen Louise naked and no one since Mat, and that was OK too. But that was going to change, Louise thought, it was time.



Feeling emboldened by Mia’s example, Louise made the decision to take the plunge. The ghosting at the Christmas party was forgotten, and Louise was going to make her next move. As they headed home, Louise felt a newfound sense of confidence and excitement, she was doing it.

The moment she got home, she started rummaging through her wardrobe, searching for lingerie, only to stumble across a problem. She didn’t have any sexy underwear. She had a lot of soft, comfortable bralettes, that in all honesty, did nothing for her breasts and a lot of beautiful, colourful panties without matching bras. She tried on several things in front of the mirror, but nothing worked.

“I could rock a sports bra,” she said, looking at herself in the mirror. “Well, the six-pack is missing,” she continued, feeling at her less-than-toned belly. She remembered how Mat never cared about lingerie. He loved her body naked and couldn’t care less what she was wearing, just wanting to take her clothes off as quickly as possible. Eventually, as the evening wore on, it hit Louise: a shopping trip was in order. With Christmas around the corner, the shops were due to be swamped with shoppers, so the sooner she went, the better.





She rushed to the shopping centre straight after school the next day, eager to find a lingerie shop. To her surprise, as she had never really looked for one, there were quite a few to choose from. She went into one after another and started trying on different bodies and teddies. The shop assistants were all very helpful, even too helpful in Louise’s opinion, checking on her in the dressing room on several occasions, making sure she had the right size and happy to offer their opinion while looking up and down her body. One of them barged in on Louise in a black lace corset body and started vigorously cupping her breasts, making sure they were in the correct position.

“Seksikäs!“ she said after she had finished.

Louise stared at herself in the mirror. She wasn’t used to seeing her body in this sort of underwear wondering if it really looked sexy like the shop assistant exclaimed. She was unsure what to make of it; it did not look like her. At that moment, her phone beeped.

What do you think, steamy enough for Christmas?

It was Mia with a photo of herself in a red, shiny latex body with a zip starting at the front of her crotch continuing all the way between her legs. Louise couldn’t help but gasp at the photo, immediately hiding it from the shop assistant. Comparing the pretty, black body on her with the red, shiny, latex one on Mia was like comparing apple juice to vodka.

Minutes later, she walked out of the store with the body in her bag, determined that this was happening.



Sami and Louise hadn’t seen each other since the party. On top of that, they hadn’t actually spoken to each other since the open-house night, which was before Sami revealed his feelings for Louise. Were they actually feelings or was it just physical attraction? If you asked Louise about Sami, she couldn’t tell you much about him. She didn’t know where he lived. Did he still live with his parents? Didn’t know what kind of car he drove. Not that it mattered. Didn’t know what kind of music he liked. That definitely mattered. Didn’t know if he liked science fiction. Kind of mattered. Nothing, really. Apart from the fact that he was a teacher and that he liked her bum, which is something he often jabbered about. Louise didn’t really think about not knowing much about him. She had also forgotten about the whole Christmas party disaster when he didn’t even look at her, let alone speak to her. They quite seamlessly resumed their daily correspondence on Messenger with Sami trying to spice up the chats in the evenings and Louise keeping it cool and funny, steering the conversation to more mundane topics, but eventually giving in just a little. Despite not knowing anything about him really, Louise was about to make a move that would make this relationship even more carnal. That afternoon, while Peter was at practice, Louise was in her bedroom wearing the new, black, lace body and full make-up, which was completely uncharacteristic of her during the week. The only time Louise wore more than mascara and a touch of lip gloss, was to special events, which were once-a-year things. She had no selfie stick and was finding it hard to take a picture fitting her whole body in it. Then, mid-filming, Bolt barged in on her and began licking her face. This was nothing like she imagined it would be. She spent several hours moving around snapping pictures only to delete them moments after. Eventually, she made one of herself leaning forward to the camera, blowing a kiss with her cleavage showing and the intricate lace down to her waist. She saved it, as she had already wasted too much time as it was. She changed back into her sweatpants and hurried to pick up Peter as she realized the time.

After Peter went to bed that night, Louise was on the sofa, flicking through TV trailers in search of something different to watch than her usual choice. She was a new woman making new decisions. But despite her best efforts to get into some mystery series, soon enough, she found herself lost in her rabbit hole watching old videos of Chris Evans on her phone until she received a message from Sami.

Hei, ihana, what are you doing? Just two more days of school to go.

She recalled that she had yet to send the photo of her. It was not one of those things that you could do during the day anyway; it was something that you shared only in the dark, she thought, and it was pitch black now. After pouring herself a glass of red wine, she returned to the sofa, took a deep breath, and knew it was now or never.

Nothing, just chilling on the sofa.

She took a big sip of the wine, almost finishing it in one go, clicked on the photo of her in the body and hit ‘send’. It was done; there was no going back now. She nervously awaited his response. Mia would have been proud of her, she thought.

Almost instantly, Sami replied with three heart-eyed emojis.

Coming over now! What’s the address?

He responded with a sense of urgency and Louise couldn’t help but laugh and sent a laugh-out-loud gif. What was she doing? As soon as Sami started with flirty innuendos, she sensed the need to slow things down. It hit her then that she didn’t really know anything about him. Besides, she wanted more than just this virtual flirting, where you had to do everything on your own anyway. She craved real, physical touch. She wanted him next to her, longed for him to touch her; she desperately needed to feel alive again. But definitely not at her house. She wrote as much, and soon they were planning on meeting the next week. However, after some teasing about actually meeting up in person, Louise had second thoughts again. The thought of meeting Sami and making this real both thrilled and terrified her. After Sami had promised to do everything and anything to her body, Louise felt she needed to be honest with herself and him.

Sami… I don’t know if I can do this… She started sharing her reservations reluctantly.

It’s been twenty years since I’ve been with someone other than my husband….

….

That’s almost longer than you’ve been alive! And my body doesn’t look like it used to. I’m not sure I can even take my clothes off in front of you.

Louise traced her fingers over her belly. She finished her glass of wine in one sip waiting for his reply.

Älä huoli, ihana. Sami wrote. Not to worry.

We can keep our clothes on.

Louise started laughing with tears in her eyes.



The next day while leaving her teacher’s room with books in hand and discussing the printer not working with another teacher, she opened the door and unexpectedly collided with someone’s chest. This had become so commonplace that she knew right away before even looking up who it was; there was only one person she had been constantly bumping into recently. She hadn’t seen him since the Christmas party when, unlike now, he was wearing jeans and a shirt. He looked just as handsome in a tracksuit, though. She blushed for a second, thinking about the kiss they shared the last time they were standing this close.

“David? What are you doing here?”

“Hi, Lou, I’ve been looking for you…” He said looking around, “but haven’t seen you... Got a minute?” David asked nervously.

“Hm, sure…” Louise said, shutting the door behind her. “I’ve got a class to go to, but I have a couple minutes. What’s up?” She asked, noticing that he was looking away. Was he nervous?

“Well, I was thinking with the holidays coming up, and I don’t know if you have any plans or anything… but I was thinking that maybe, if you don’t have any plans…,, I was thinking that maybe you would like to go skiing one day maybe? With me? Maybe?” Louise counted the maybes in her head, was that, four?

“I’m planning on going to Lahti around the 28th and thought maybe we could go together,“ he continued. “If you’re free, of course and if you want to... Maybe. What do you think?” He asked eagerly, locking her eyes with her as he finished.

Louise was shocked. First, he kissed her out of nowhere at the Christmas party, then didn’t talk to her for four days, and now he was asking her to go skiing with him. She couldn’t believe it.

“Skiing? Like actual skiing? You do know I’m Irish, right? Have you ever heard of an Irish skier?” She smiled, trying to remember if a famous Irish skier existed. Definitely not one she had heard of, but she was not that into sports, to be sure. Let alone skiing.

“Well, I don’t know, Lou, I just thought it could be fun, you know? We could bring the kids along if you want to, make it a fun day, you know?” David continued with a nervous smile on his face.

Louise had no idea what was going on. Here, she was planning to sleep with a man almost twenty years younger whom she hadn’t even gone on a date with and barely spoken to in person, and now a man who had kissed her was asking her to go skiing with. With their kids. She took a deep breath, trying to make sense of it all. Dating was nothing like it used to be twenty years ago. Then she remembered how Peter had been asking her to take him skiing ever since Mat died. He and Mat wanted her to join them every year, but Louise never went. So, they went on their own every winter but that all ended like so many other things three years ago. And David was an excellent ski instructor; he always emphasized that. Perhaps he could teach her how to ski. She could finally learn to ski and then actually go skiing with Peter. This might just be fun. But why was he asking her to go skiing? Surely, it wasn’t just skiing, was it? He probably wanted something more. At least Sami made his intentions clear from the start. Well, wrote them to her late at night. But David had kissed her less than a week ago. And actually, talked to her at the party. But she was in a kind of a relationship with Sami, so going skiing with David would kind of be like cheating, would it not? She didn’t know anything at this point, confused with the real versus virtual relationships between the two men. The bell rang and Louise had to go to class.

“I don’t know, David, could be fun. I’ll think about it, OK? I don’t have any plans yet, so let’s see where we are and what we are doing, OK? I’ll let you know,” she said eventually. She patted him on the shoulder and rushed to class.





15





TREFFIT





DATE





By Saturday, Louise had essentially forgotten about David’s invitation as today was the day. Louise was going to lose her virginity for the second time in her life. She spent the whole day thinking about the day she had actually lost her virginity to Sean so many years ago. They both lived at home with their parents at the time, so they pretty much stole all their kisses outside, at parties, or in his car. They had been together for about six months when they drove up to Ballincollig Regional Park late one afternoon. They knew, without saying as much that that was the day, they were going to go all the way, and Sean had brought flowers and condoms. And although it took place in the parking lot in his shabby red Ford Fiesta that took forever to get the seats down, it was, in a way, romantic.

As the evening was approaching, it finally hit Louise that she didn’t even know where Sami lived. She hadn’t thought about where they were going to have their night of passion. Similarly, as with Sean years ago, she was living at home, not with her Mom, but with her son. She was certainly not going to let Sami come to their house, and she was definitely not sleeping with him in the car in the shivering cold of Finnish winter. She and Sami hadn’t talked about the location yet, just the time they were to meet for dinner that Saturday. She told Peter she was going out for a few drinks with some of the other teachers from school, and he didn’t seem to suspect anything different. She put on the black dress with white stripes on the sides Sami liked so much.

Typical for her, Louise got early to the restaurant and while waiting in front she soon noticed a red Ford Fiesta turning into the parking lot with Sami behind the wheel. This new, sleek, and modern model was a far cry from Sean’s boxy one with dents and scratches on the side. Still, she broke out laughing at the synchronicity of the moment and felt assured that it was a sign that this was meant to happen. Soon after, she noticed Sami walking towards her. He looked attractive from afar, wearing a long unbuttoned grey coat, blue jeans, and a blue sweater. He made a couple of fists with his hands to fight off the cold. Perhaps it was his height or the glasses he wore, but he definitely didn’t look like a man in his twenties, Louise thought. She wondered when Mat was his age only to realize that it was when they first met more than twenty years ago. She brushed the thought away; Sami was not Mat. Not by far but she couldn’t go through this while thinking of him. Once Sami got over to her, he leaned forward to give her a gentle one-arm hug and kiss on the cheek, and Louise was happy to oblige before they proceeded into the restaurant. He didn’t say anything about her dress when she took her coat off, which Louise found surprising.

“See what I have on?” She asked when she sat down at the table. Sami looked her up and down.

“Oh, the dress,” he said suggestively remembering it from the open-house night. He leaned across the table and whispered, “Are you also wearing that black, lace body under your dress?”

Louise flushed, feeling a rush of excitement. She was not ready for such a direct question; she had spent hours planning and expecting small talk about his new school and their colleagues, to finally get inside of him a bit before she allowed him into her body.

“You’ll just have to wait and see, I guess,” she responded in a raspy voice, taking a sip of wine. Sami smiled. She replayed the night in her head over and over that day to the smallest detail. Slightly caught off guard, she tried to go back to the plan and started asking him about the school he worked at now. He politely responded to each question but sneaked in a suggestive comment whenever he could. The sexual tension was definitely growing, but more so for Sami than Louise. However, she willingly played along to see where this was going to take her, while still trying to steer the conversation in a serious direction. She started talking about one of their mutual students while taking a bite of broccoli.

“I like you with your mouth full,” Sami said at that moment, and Louise almost choked on the broccoli in her mouth. She had to spit it out before she started laughing like crazy. Sami didn’t see what was so funny. Louise took another big sip of the wine; she was going to need a lot more. And perhaps it was because of the wine or just the time that had passed, but when they finished their main courses, Louise had finally loosened up and surrendered with Sami whispering sweet nothings into her ear and Louise playfully teasing him back. Come dessert Sami was spoon-feeding Louise chocolate cake and practically eating her up with his eyes. After dinner, they sat in silence for a moment before Sami asked,

“So, what do you say we go back to my place?”

Of course, he had a place of his own, Louise thought. How silly of her to think that he wouldn’t have one. No need for her to make out in a Ford Fiesta tonight.

“Sure,” she replied biting her lip.



Louise declined Sami’s offer to drive her to his place, knowing it would be better to take her own car and leave whenever she felt like it. She followed Sami’s red Ford Fiesta out of the parking lot towards his apartment, repeating to herself in a mix of excitement and nervousness, “I’m really doing this, Mat, I’m really doing it. I’m really doing this… Oh, my God.”

As they got to Sami’s apartment, Louise felt a strange sense of excitement mixed with unease. The open space of the living area and kitchen felt quite welcoming, although it was small. Louise had grown up in an apartment not much bigger than this and found it strangely familiar. As she walked further in, she noticed the end of the bed behind a partial wall that separated the living area from the bedroom. She leaned to the right to get a better look. The bedroom, or more like just the bed, was clearly there. This is where it was going to happen, she thought to herself.

Sami invited her to sit down at the small kitchen table with two chairs. He poured them some wine. Although the apartment was tiny, it felt quite cosy, and Louise couldn’t help but think how you couldn’t feel lonely in such a small place. There was no need to fill the empty space, because even if you were alone, the space was already full. Unlike her spacious house, full of empty space with the large dining table with eight chairs when she and Peter only ever used two. Filling two chairs was so much easier than filling eight. She began to ponder the idea of her and Peter moving to a smaller place with a smaller dining table, fewer rooms, less empty space, fewer echoes, fewer memories. Fewer memories of Mat. Oh, Mat…

“So, you want to move to the sofa?” Sami asked, breaking Louise’s train of thought. Louise’s gaze drifted toward the bright orange sofa with colourful pillows on it facing the TV in the corner.

“Here we go,” she mumbled to herself as if she was preparing for a sports match. She could do this. It was the right time to do this. It was the right place to do this, and Sami was the right person to do it with. Or so she believed. As she walked over to the sofa, she took a glimpse out the window and noticed the parking lot under the apartment building. Sami’s shiny, sleek, red Ford Fiesta was parked just below the window. So many signs that she was right where she was supposed to be, doing just the thing she needed to. This felt right. As soon as she sank onto the sofa, Sami turned on the TV. Louise was stunned when she recognized a familiar face in front of her on the big screen. She knew exactly which film it was, the scene, even the next line the man was going to say.

“You like superhero films?” Sami asked. No, this was not happening, definitely not happening. Louise was not going to sleep with Sami in front of Captain Chris. She grabbed the remote out of his hand, switched the TV off, and started kissing him fervently as if she hadn’t eaten in days and he was her first bite of bread. Soon, she was straddling him and moving her hips rapidly while he struggled to keep up. He put his hands on her buttocks, squeezing them and guiding her movements. Louise pulled him in closer, widening her mouth, kissing him as if she was trying to devour him. Sami finally managed to get from under her grip and pinned her down on the sofa. In the process, Louise’s back hit the remote and the TV flickered back to life. Suddenly, Captain Chris was back in the room with them.

“Take me to bed,” she said, pushing him away and jumping up. Sami took her hand and led her behind the partial wall into the bed. Before she managed to lie down, Sami had pulled down her stockings, and Louise unbuttoned his jeans. They fell on the bed with Sami on top of her, kissing her passionately. She wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders, gasping for air between kisses. Sami jumped up again, quickly removing his underwear while Louise slipped out of her panties. He mounted her again and thrust himself into her. Louise was unsure what was happening. Was he inside of her already? Then he said, “I’m coming,” a few seconds later.

There were five more thrusts before he let out a loud “perkele” and began shaking and grunting. Louise realized that their encounter had ended before it even properly began. So much talk and very little action. She lay there in disbelief, hearing Chris Evans’ voice coming from the TV. This was a disaster. Trying to compose herself, she excused herself and went to the bathroom. As she wiped herself, she realized that this man had just come inside of her. Thank God she had inserted her diaphragm before leaving home. When she returned to bed and started getting dressed, Sami was lying there looking all smug and satisfied.

“So, you enjoyed this young piece of meat, did you?” he quipped, gesturing at his own body. Louise stared at the ceiling, pondering the quickest escape route.



It was after midnight when she returned home. Peter was sound asleep and Bolt, to her surprise, was lying on the sofa instead of on Peter’s bed. As soon as she sneaked into the living room, Bolt jumped up and greeted her with tail wags and grunts, curious about where she had been all evening. Louise spoke to him, “Trust me, you don’t want to know,” as Bolt walked around her sniffing her all over. Louise opened the fridge and closed it without taking anything. She walked back to the TV and briefly considered watching the Captain Chris film she couldn’t watch at Sami’s but decided against it. She retreated to her bedroom, taking a comic book from under her bed. She knew her body so well that she could have easily come even faster than Sami did earlier that evening, but in reality that was an impossible record to beat. Just before she went to sleep, she glanced at her phone and saw a message from Sami.

Coming for more of this tomorrow?

In the next moment, an extremely close-up image of a penis appeared on her screen. Louise sighed and covered her eyes, thinking of the mess she had got herself into.





16





HIIHTOTREFFIT





SKI DATE





In the days that followed Louise did what she did best, ignored the problem. She spent the next few days cleaning the house, rearranged the living room furniture, put up the Christmas tree, and baked five trays of cookies. One evening as she and Peter sat eating dinner at the large dining table, she remembered the small table at Sami’s place and what she felt like sitting at it.

“Sweetie, what do you think about us moving to a smaller house or an apartment? The three of us don’t really need that much space,” she asked Peter looking over at Bolt. Peter looked up from his plate.

“What? Why would we move, Mom? Where to?” As far as Peter knew, he had always been living in this house; he knew of no other home. And apart for a brief time when his grandma urged them to come live in Ireland, the idea of living somewhere else had never crossed his mind. This was his home.

“I don’t know…I was thinking this is such a big house, the two of us don’t need it and there are so many memories of Dad in it that it might be easier to go live somewhere else. Make a fresh start for ourselves, you know?” Louise continued.

Peter grew visibly angry slamming down his fork. “So, you want to forget Dad, is that it?”

Louise’s heart sank. “No, of course I don’t want to forget Dad, I mean. I can’t forget him. I will never forget him. I just thought that perhaps we could make a fresh start somewhere else in a smaller place with fewer empty chairs around us...” She said, looking at each chair around the table, counting them with her eyes.

Peter looked at the chairs, puzzled by what she was saying. “I don’t want to live anywhere else; I want to stay here,” he stated emphatically, taking his plate to the sink as he left the room.

Louise sighed, looking at Mat’s chair opposite her.



Christmas had come and gone, and Louise still hadn’t found the courage to face, more like, message, Sami. She retreated back into her hiding place with Captain Chris. Sami on the other hand wasn’t giving up. At the start, his messages maintained their playful and flirtatious tone with a slightly disgusting, dick-pics-in-abundance hint to them. However, by the fourth day, his messages began to reveal his true nature. He started by ending his messages with multiple question and exclamation marks, then escalated to calling Louise derogatory names in English. By the fifth day, he had called her every Finnish swear word in existence, not being able to convey his anger towards her in a foreign language anymore; it apparently had to be done in his mother tongue. This behaviour soon became a pattern: first the flirtatious, inappropriate messages, followed by insults in English, ending with curses in Finnish. He would eventually apologize profusely and resume flirting in English. Louise was shocked by Sami’s behaviour and found herself unable to respond, stunned over and over again by yet another horrible message. She began to fear her phone and kept it on silent for most of the time so no one could reach her as she hid in her bedroom, feeding her obsession. As much as she tried to hide, her addiction was becoming increasingly apparent to Peter. who was spending most of his time at home because of the holidays. For one, Louise almost never left her bedroom, only appearing to eat something or take Bolt for a walk. One such evening, as Louise lay in bed, engrossed in another Captain America comic book, Peter stormed into the room in a flurry.

“Mom, where are you? I can’t find my-” he shouted when he saw her with a comic in her hands and three others by her side. He rolled his eyes and lashed out, “Seriously, Mom? Don’t you have anything better to do than read those stupid comic books and watch those ridiculous films all day long?” He slammed the door and left.

Louise was taken aback by Peter’s sudden outburst and felt a wave of anger rising in her. He didn’t just shout at her? She quickly got up and ran after him, determined to set him straight.

“Peter? Peter!” she called out, which made him stop.

“You do not speak to me that way, young man,” she said, firmly pointing her finger at him.

“I’m not doing anything wrong; it’s called reading. You should try it sometime.”

Peter turned around to face her, visibly irritated by her behaviour. “Fine, whatever, I don’t care,” he muttered before brushing past and heading back to his room. Louise watched him go, feeling frustrated and hurt by his lack of understanding. It wasn’t like she was drinking or taking drugs. She was reading, for God’s sake.

She glanced at her phone reluctantly afraid to find more messages from Sami, She opened the chat, and sure enough, there they were. Louise scrolled to the end of them to find a ‘miss you’ message with a broken heart emoji. She couldn’t deal with this now; she put the phone back down, determined to head back to her safe haven when another message appeared.

Hei, Lou, how are you? Have you thought about skiing? Want to make your country proud? We’re going tomorrow, the three of us, would love for you (two) to join us.

Louise chuckled at a strong-arm emoji. “Oh, how nice of him…” she said, touching her heart with her hand. She looked up from her phone at the eight empty dining chairs and glanced down the hallway to her bedroom.

“Peter, get down here now!” she called out in a determined voice.

Peter came down the next minute with his hands in his pockets, looking like he couldn’t be bothered.

“We’re going skiing tomorrow!” she said, refusing to take no for an answer.

“What? We’re going skiing? You can’t ski,” he said shocked.

“I can learn. And we haven’t done anything together in ages. It’ll be fun. Another teacher from school is going to be there with the kids, so you won’t have to babysit me. You can just laugh at your Mom falling on her behind all day long. Besides, at least I won’t be in my bed reading comic books.” She shrugged her shoulders to further support her case.

Peter looked at her and remained silent for a while. He hadn’t skied in a while; he loved skiing. He remembered how many times he and Dad had tried to convince Mom to go skiing with them. Even before his lips moved, his jaw began to relax, and his eyes showed a glimmer of a smile. He started shrugging his shoulders while still keeping his hands in his pockets.

“You sure you can break away from your ‘books’ for a day?” he asked with a smug tone. Louise looked at him, shooting darts out of her eyes. He knew he overstepped the line.

“Sure, I guess, why not? Let’s do it!” He finally murmured, trying to conceal his excitement.

“Great, it’s a date then.” Louise reached out her hand.

They shook hands, and Louise pulled him in for a hug.

“You know I love you, right?” She whispered in his ear, holding back her tears. Peter nodded but didn’t say it back.



Louise and Peter drove to Lahti the following day to meet up with David and his girls. Louise sported a white ski suit she had borrowed from Minna, which looked stunning on her despite her preference for darker colours. Because it was white though, Louise worried about falling down and getting lost in the snow, thinking surely beginners ought to wear bright red or contrasting black ski suits. Minna probably wasn’t a beginner.

She didn’t feel nervous about seeing David again, as she convinced herself by this point that this was clearly just about two friends hanging out with their kids, nothing romantic. With all her other love drama, David’s kiss at the Christmas party had completely slipped out of her memory. Every now and then she’d check her phone and without reading them, scroll to the end of Sami’s messages, she couldn’t stand having the red badge alert showing up on her phone. She was prepared to spend the day on the bunny slope alone, as the others were probably good skiers and would tackle the steeper ski slopes. She imagined David introduced his daughters to skiing before they could walk properly, and Peter was a good skier too, so she wasn’t worried about him either.

Despite being just a few days before New Year’s Eve, it was actually not that cold, which came as a pleasant surprise. When they parked their car, Louise noticed David coming over with two brown-haired girls trailing behind him. She excitedly waved her arms in the air to catch his attention. Peter looked up and was surprised to see a man walking over; he was sure that his mom’s friend from school would be a woman.

“Hi, there. Here we are, ready for skiing.” Louise shouted at David walking towards her. She shook both the girls’ hands, introducing herself and David in Finnish.

“Hei, nice to meet you. I’m Sara,” one of the girls said, and Louise felt her heart skip a beat as she was immediately transported in her mind to the hospital room on that day years back when she lost her Sara. Time froze for a second.

“Sara, what a lovely name…Nice to meet you.” She mumbled after some time.

David glanced at Louise from head to toe and complimented her, “Wow, Lou, you look the part.” He then extended his hand to greet Peter who reluctantly shook it. Peter picked up on the nickname and felt even more curious as to what was going on.

“So, you’ve never skied in your life, Lou?” he asked, turning back to Louise. Was this man flirting with his mom, Peter thought to himself. Louise smiled and shook her head. Was his mom flirting with this man?

“What about you, Peter, you know how to ski?” David asked Peter facing him.

“I’m really good skier like my Dad,” Peter replied smugly.

David nodded, saying, “That’s great! So, we just have to teach your mom how to ski.” After they all got ready, they agreed that they were all going to start on the bunny slope for a few runs and see how it went from there. But by his fourth run avoiding toddlers and clumsy adults, Peter was getting bored and irritated at watching his mom and a complete stranger having fun. Louise laughed and chuckled while this David person was showing her how to ski. The girls were having fun on their own and Peter didn’t really want to talk to them; they were a few years younger, besides, they were girls.

When Louise reached the platter lifts, Peter came to her, “Mom, I’m going to the ski lift, OK? On the other side.”

“Oh, Peter, you’re bored here, aren’t you? I’m sorry, but I can’t go with you. Perhaps David can take you there? I don’t want you to go on your own. What if something happens?” Louise said, looking at David.

“Sure, I can go with you, and you girls can stay here,” David said. The girls were enjoying themselves on the bunny hill with one sticking her poles in the snow and the one behind picking them up.

“No, that’s not necessary. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry, Mom, I’ve been here many times before,” Peter said, clearly not wanting to go skiing alone with David.

Louise looked at Peter, then David, then back at Peter. “Are you sure, Peter? I wouldn’t want you to get hurt. Will you be careful?” she asked.

“Of course, Mom, don’t worry,” Peter assured her.

“Fine, go then, if you must, but stay on that one slope over there and be back here in an hour, OK?” Louise said.

“And be careful. It is still icy, even if it’s not that cold,” David added.

Peter nodded, eager to leave.



Louise, David, and the girls stayed on the bunny slope and by the time two hours had passed, Louise managed to make five ski runs without falling. She wasn’t turning or anything, just snow ploughing from the top to the bottom, but she was proud of herself. As she waited by the platter lifts, she began to think that it had been a while since Peter went off on his own and started to worry. She looked over at the chair lifts on the other side, concerned. She checked her phone only to find more messages from Sami. She quickly hid it to conceal it from David.

“I’m worried about where Peter is. It’s been more than an hour,” she said to David.

“Have you checked your phone?” David asked.

“Yes, nothing,” she said.

“I can go look for him…He said he was going to be on that slope over there, right?” David said, pointing in the direction of the chair lift.

“Would you do that?” Louise asked pleading with her eyes.

“Sure, no problem. Will you stay here with the girls?” he asked, looking at the girls laughing a few steps behind.

Louise nodded, mouthing thanks. David left, and Louise went up the ski platter with the girls right behind her. As Louise went up and skied down with the girls, they took on the role of her teacher. They were laughing and having fun and Louise was missing her almost-daughter even more while also worrying about Peter.

David returned after the girls completed eight more runs. Alone. He was shaking his head as he approached Louise. Louise checked her phone once again and called Peter for the tenth time. She was panicking at this point. Life had taken so much from her, and now this. Did she truly deserve to lose Peter after everything she had gone through, everyone she had already lost? With every minute going by, Louise became more and more convinced that this was what was in fact happening, she was going to lose Peter too. The one person she still had in this foreign land she called home. Peter wasn’t answering his phone. Louise was pacing back and forth, holding back her tears mumbling “fuck, fuck, fuck” under her chin. David was trying to calm her down, reassuring her that Peter was a good skier and that he was probably just having fun. Louise was nodding but didn’t believe him. If anything, the past was clear. The memories of losing her babies, of losing Mat were washing over her again and again. It was as if she was losing them again and again. And Peter was going to be next. She was losing him too.





17





ENSI-ILTA





PREMIERE





Peter, Louise, and Mat had spent the weekend binge-watching Marvel films, anticipating the upcoming premiere of the epic conclusion on Monday. They had purchased the tickets a week in advance. After losing Sara, the superhero films served as a kind of healing balm that glued the pieces of their broken family back together. Bolt, their beautiful Weimaraner, also kept them occupied and provided them with the necessary everyday walks, which could not be avoided, although Louise, in her pain, still sometimes only wanted to curl up in her bed and never get out again.



As the evening of the Endgame premiere drew close, Louise and Peter were getting ready to leave while Mat was still at work. Louise nervously kept looking at the clock and checking her phone every five minutes, hoping Mat would walk through the door any minute. The news was on in the background, and they were showing the first-ever image of a black hole, which had been revealed to the world just a couple of weeks before. The image showed a bright ring-like structure surrounding a dark centre. Louise called Peter to come and take a look at it, as he was interested in all things space and astronomy. They were both amazed by the image on the screen which looked like an eclipse but different. It looked so small, and they couldn’t imagine its true gigantic size. Finally, a message from Mat.

Sorry, stuck with this thing at work. Will leave in half an hour. You two go ahead and we’ll meet at the theatre.

Louise sighed; they had waited for this night for a couple of months now, and she felt disappointed that now, on the day of it, there was this big rush, and they couldn’t enjoy the evening like they were supposed to.

Will you make it? The film starts in one hour. She responded, worried.

Sure, there are always trailers and commercials before it… That’s like 15 min. I’ll be sitting next to you before the opening scene, promise.

Despite the last-minute rush, Louise thought Mat would make it before the film began, given all the trailers that preceded the film like he said.

Your ticket is with a pretty brunette with a high ponytail at the entrance. Louise wrote, adding a winking-face emoji when she and Peter arrived at the cinema.

She and Peter joined the throng of Marvel fans, walking to their seats with popcorn in hand. The theatre was packed with people eagerly anticipating the last chapter of this saga. The commercials started rolling and Louise put her phone on silent mode, still checking it every two minutes.

You close? Hurry, we’ve already seen two trailers. Three… Four… And five… Hurry! It’s starting!!!!

“Where’s Dad?” Peter whispered when the opening scene started.

“Parking,” Louise replied, certain Mat would rush in any second now. When the film started, she put her phone away for a while, only to check it after almost ten minutes when she realized that the seat next to her was still empty and that Mat hadn’t come yet. She had five unanswered calls from an unknown number. Alarmed, she whispered to Peter that she needed to step out to make a phone call, hoping everything was okay. Peter nodded, eating his popcorn, not taking his eyes away from the big screen.

In the empty hallways between the cinema theatres, Louise returned the call. As soon as she hung up, she started shaking and crying. She screamed for Peter and rushed back into the theatre to get him. They quickly left and rushed towards the hospital.



Upon arriving at the hospital, Peter sat down and looked at his mom while she talked to one of the nurses in the middle of the waiting room. He couldn’t make out what they were saying. Shortly after a police officer approached Louise. When the police officer finished talking, he saw his mom gasp. She kept crying.

Louise was too distraught to comprehend what the officer was saying. The officer checked with Louise to see if her husband was Matias Ranta, but she was unable to answer with anything other than a slight nod and cry.

Peter ran over to her to hear the officer say, “We’re so sorry, Mrs. Ranta. It was a head-on collision an-,” Louise wasn’t listening. She and Peter held each other in a firm embrace, unable to speak. Their cries eventually turned into sniffles as the hours passed when a doctor finally came out of the surgery room and walked over to Louise. Louise stood up to meet him halfway, shushing Peter to stay there. From a distance, Peter saw the doctor shaking his head from side to side and his mom dropping to her knees, crying uncontrollably. He immediately ran over to her once again and fell to his knees, burying himself in her chest, crying. They knelt there in an embrace, inconsolable for what seemed forever, completely oblivious to the outside world.

The image of the black hole Louise had seen earlier that evening appeared in her head, and she saw it growing larger and larger and suddenly as if she was falling into it, losing all sense of reality, losing her life. She kept repeating the word no, louder, and louder, and as much as Peter was distraught about losing his dad, right then he feared he was losing his Mom too. Shortly after, Mat’s parents arrived at the hospital crying, and although they were in great pain as well, they managed to somewhat console Peter and took him home with them. In her state, Louise was admitted to the hospital for the night. After being administered strong sedatives by the nurses, she drifted off to sleep. To her, it felt like an interminable descent into an unending, pitch-black void, where she was enveloped by a profound sense of emptiness and solitude. She continued to plummet without any sign of reaching the bottom, lost in the boundless darkness of her mind.





Louise finds herself lying on a picturesque, sandy beach, basking in the scorching sun. She turns her gaze towards her right and sees Mat and Peter frolicking in the shallow waters, holding hands with a little girl who reminds Louise of her mother when she was young. They are giggling and laughing as they play in the water, occasionally gesturing for Louise to join them, but she is overjoyed just by watching them. Suddenly, a strange-looking wall appears out in the sea, growing by the second and rapidly approaching them, threatening to crash onto the beach. Louise screams at Mat and the children to watch out, but they are too engrossed in their playful antics to hear her. She sprints towards them and manages to grab Peter by the hand a second before the wave crashes into the shore.



Louise awakened abruptly, the vivid image of the sandy beach fading quickly as she realized she was in a stark, sterile-looking room. The catheter in her left-hand vein brought back the memory of the previous night. She curled up on the bed as if still bracing herself against the wave. Tears had deserted her by this point, and she stared out of the window at the maple tree with its branches dancing in the breeze. The cheerful chirping of the birds indicated that spring had finally arrived in Finland. Soon, Mat’s mom arrived to take her home, but as Louise saw her by the door, she turned away. She closed her eyes and remembered how it was Mat who came to take her home after the first miscarriage, when Peter was born and when they lost Sara. He would never again come to take her home with him. The car ride was quiet, with neither woman speaking a word.



The months that followed Mat’s death were like wading through a thick swamp with rocks in her shoes; every step felt heavy and laboured. At first, she was in denial and although she had lost her two babies and knew loss so well, she still imagined Mat coming through the door at any moment. She expected him. Perhaps it was because the babies were never really part of her life, whereas Mat had been for so long. Then, she moved on to anger and on one particular afternoon Peter found his mother hurling Marvel DVDs across the room, yelling to never watch them again. Soon after, her anger dissipated, and she slipped into depression.

Louise’s mother came and stayed with them for a few months, taking care of the daily mundane tasks such as cooking, cleaning, taking care of them, all the while urging them constantly to move back to Ireland with her. In the afternoon on the day she left, Peter came over to Louise and sat next to her on the sofa.

“Are we going to live in Ireland with Grandma, Mom?” he asked quietly.

Louise looked at her beautiful boy, so much like his father, and kissed him on the forehead.

“No, sweetie. Ireland’s no home for you and not for me anymore either. Besides, vaari and mummi are here. We can’t take Bolt on the plane, and we can’t leave him here,“ she replied, shrugging her shoulders. Peter felt relieved that he wouldn’t have to abandon his friends, grandma and grandpa, and the only life he knew behind. Bolt crawled up next to them as they sat in silence in each other’s arms for a while.



As time went on, Louise slowly started to regain some sense of normalcy. She went through the motions of daily life, but everything felt muted and dull. It was as if her life had turned from a colourful film to a monotonous black and white movie. Still, repeating the same tasks day in and day out gave her a certain sense of safety. Then Covid hit, and Louise found herself trapped in her home unable to escape the painful memories that piled onto her like a wall of bricks. Luckily for her, Captain Chris was around the corner, even closer, in her living room.





18





POISSA





GONE





Louise’s heart raced as she continued to scan the slopes for any sign of her son while calling him on the phone. Panic set in as she tried to stop the flashbacks of the past and visions of the future flooding her mind. Peter was gone, she knew it in her heart. David tried to calm her down no avail. By that time, the girls were getting nervous too, sensing the tension in the air, which was getting colder by the minute as the sun set. David suggested that one of them should head down to the lodge and have someone go look for Peter. Just before Louise managed to respond, she noticed a familiar figure skiing towards them. It was Peter. Relief washed over her as she ran towards him in the heavy ski boots and rammed into him, hugging him tightly. The next second she pushed him away.

“Where were you? Do you know what time it is? Where were you? I was worried sick that you hurt yourself,” she shouted, taking a step back, her eyes red and swollen.

“You can’t do this to me, Peter, you know you can’t!” she shouted, her voice trembling with anger and fear.

Peter sighed and rolled his eyes. “I’m fine…I was just skiing and lost track of time… I’m sorry,” he said quietly, just then realizing what he had caused.

The ski trip was over. She thanked the girls and David before leaving. They drove home without saying a word in the car.



The next day, Louise hadn’t forgiven her son. She felt an emotion she had almost forgotten existed. From the depths of sadness, misery, fear, and anger, a new sensation was born - she was livid. Livid that Peter could let her believe she had lost him for three hours, angry about losing Mat, bitter about the whole Sami situation.

Peter knew that what he did was wrong, but he didn’t want to admit it. They spent the day giving each other the cold shoulder, speaking only when necessary, and staying out of each other’s way.

By midday, Louise’s attention got dragged into her virtual love affair once again as Sami’s messages began pouring in. They followed the same familiar pattern as before. Flirting, inappropriate messages, insults in English, curses in Finnish, and broken heart emojis in the end. This time, Louise wasn’t having it – it was enough. After everything that happened with Peter the day before, she wasn’t going to put up with Sami’s behaviour anymore. This had to stop. She opened the contacts on her phone; determined to do this the old-fashioned way - by calling him, sitting down with him, and telling him this had to end. As she scrolled through her contacts, she realized something shocking – she didn’t even have his number. How could she have slept with someone and not even have their number? She had no other choice but to message him.

Sami, hi. Can I have your number, please? I think we need to talk.

Sami responded right away with heart-eyes and heart emojis followed by a crude comment about how he knew she’d want more of his ‘young meat’. Louise felt a wave of disgust wash over her.

“How could I be this stupid, Mat?” she asked out loud, looking up at the ceiling.

She didn’t respond to his last message, and after a few moments, Sami sent her his number. Louise took a deep breath, started pacing in the kitchen, and dialled the number. She was going to put an end to this. As the phone rang, Louise felt her heart beating faster and faster. When Sami picked up, his voice was smooth and seductive.

“Hei, ihana. I knew you were going to call eventually.”

Louise gasped, wondering what she was going to say to him. Her formal, serious teaching voice kicked in.

“Hi, Sami. I wanted to talk to you. Perhaps we could meet some day?” she asked, her tone remaining steady. Sami was quick to respond with a suggestive remark.

“Mmm, you want to come over, don’t you? Well, I’m free, how about today? I’m not doing anything…I can just keep the bed warm until you get here.”

Louise looked up at the ceiling, remembering the disastrous two (was it that long even?) minutes she spent in his bed last time. This was going to be much more difficult than she imagined.

“No, Sami, no. That’s not what I meant,” Louise said, determined to put an end to this. “Look, I’m just going to come out and say it, OK?” she continued.

“Look, this has been…,” she tried to think of a word to describe it, “let’s say ‘fun’, but it’s gone out of control, and it needs to stop. I can’t do this anymore. You need to stop with the constant messages, then the insults, the inappropriate comments, the Finnish curse words… That night was a mistake that I deeply regret, and I don’t want to do this anymore.” Louise felt guilty for potentially leading Sami on, then remembering all the times she tried to steer the conversation away from flirting.

“Look, I am sorry if I have misled you into thinking this is something more, and I’m sorry I wasn’t able to tell you straight away, that I ignored your messages up to this point, but I was just shocked at everything, you know?” Louise paused again. Sami kept silent.

“I hope you understand, and I really wish all the best to you. I only hope you find someone who will fall for you as madly as you fall for them.” Louise took a deep breath before continuing.

“I’m sorry to tell you like this, I really wanted to do this the old-fashioned way, you know, face to face, but I really don’t want you to get your hopes up.” Louise stopped talking, waiting for a response. Seconds passed, and Louise wondered if he understood what she was saying.

After what felt like forever, Sami finally exploded, “Huora!“ and hung up on her. Louise was stunned, feeling as though she had been punched in the stomach. Did he really just call her a whore? It didn’t stop there. Sami started sending send message after message. They were all in Finnish, all in capital letters, all words she would never say out loud even if she was on a deserted island with no one around, let alone to a person. Louise was enraged; she wasn’t going to put up with this. She remembered a time when a student of hers lost it over a grade. She kept her cool then; she was going to keep it now. She tried to reason with him and warned him she was going to have to block him and report him to the police for harassment. Sami refused to stop, and Louise continued to copy-paste her calm response. After a while, Louise realized that there was no other way, she was going to have to block him. She turned her phone over on the table. She held her head in her hands, thinking of the mess she got herself into. Although it was midday, she walked over to the fridge and poured herself a glass of wine. Her mind began racing as she wondered if Sami knew where she lived. She was sure she never mentioned it. She began scrolling through their messages to double-check. She hadn’t mentioned it, but had she told him over dinner? She didn’t think so but couldn’t remember. She genuinely felt afraid of what he could do to her, afraid he might come over and assault her. Her phone tooted again, and Louise froze, fearing it was Sami. Didn’t she block him?

How is your wandering skier today?

To her relief, it was David. Louise smiled, remembering the whole Peter-was-missing-for-hours incident from the day before. She remembered practically ditching him yesterday and he clearly had no idea of the drama that was unfolding today. She desperately wanted to confide in someone about what had just happened with Sami. She scrolled her contacts again only to find out that she did have David’s number. Without replying to his message, she called him. It rang two times before he answered it.

“Lou, well, this a nice surprise…”

“Hi, David…This might sound strange, but do you have time for a coffee or tea today? Maybe?” she asked her voice shaking. “I mean, I know, it’s the holidays, and you’re probably busy, so…” She held her breath mid-sentence, unable to finish, when David interrupted her.

“Sure, Lou, I’m not doing anything special, and the girls are with their mother,” he replied in the calmest voice possible. “When, where?”

Louise, finally able to exhale, felt relieved that she would be able to confide in someone. They agreed to meet at a café by the river in the centre in the afternoon.



Later that afternoon, she told David everything, except leaving out certain details about actually sleeping with him and the fact that it was Sami, who David also knew. Her hands were shaking and her voice breaking by the time she finished. David reached over the table and cupped her hands to stop them from shaking.

“Lou, that’s horrible. Who is this person? Do you want to press charges? Shall I take you to the police station? Do you know where he lives? Do you want me to go over there and have a talk with him? I’d be more than happy to do that.” David was visibly concerned about Louise.

Louise shook her head. “No, no, it’s fine. I’ve blocked him on everything, so I can’t get his messages anymore, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know where I live. I just needed to tell someone…you know? It’s all my fault. I should have ended it sooner. I shouldn’t have gone to dinner with him. I was so stupid.”

David took both of her hands into his. “Louise, you did nothing wrong. He’s the one who crossed the line, or lines, several times, not you. Don’t blame yourself for his actions.” Louise looked up at David with tears welling up in her eyes. David wiped a tear from her face. “Louise, please, don’t cry. It’s not your fault, you have to know that.” Louise smiled through her tears.

“That’s the first time you called me Louise,” she said. “If only I knew that was what I had to do, I would have cried sooner.” Louise smiled, and David chuckled.

“I like calling you Lou, sorry. Won’t do it anymore if you don’t want me to?” David asked.

“No, it’s fine, I like it too...” Louise whispered, holding her gaze in his eyes. They looked at each other in silence for a while.

“So, how’s your fearless skier, safe at home?” David finally broke the silence. Louise had practically forgotten about the drama unfolding the day before, and in light of today’s events, it seemed like water under the bridge. She wiped her tears away.

They spent the next couple of hours talking about the ski trip, the kids, parenting, and Louise started to relax again. When they left the café, David walked her over to her car and hugged her tightly.

“Remember, Lou, I’m always here for you. If you need anything, just give me a call, OK?”

Louise tilted her head up at him. She was wearing jeans and boots with fairly high heels, but he was still almost a head taller than her. She looked into his eyes again. Suddenly, she stepped on her toes and kissed him. David was initially surprised but soon opened his mouth wider, returning her kiss passionately. They stood there by the car, kissing for a couple of minutes, lost in each other. Finally, Louise broke away, feeling slightly embarrassed. She looked around to see if anyone had seen them only to find that they were alone in the parking lot.

“So, tomorrow is New Year’s Eve…” Louise began tentatively. “I know you probably have plans, some big party or someth-.”

David was already shaking his head before she finished her sentence.

“Well, Peter is going to his friend’s place, there’s a bunch of them getting together. I know this is out of the blue, and I probably shouldn’t be making rash decisions given my recent experiences, but perhaps you’d like to come over for a toast?” Louise was not entirely sure what she was doing, but she felt it was the right thing to do. She felt safe with David. She wanted him to come over. She wanted him...

David’s eyes lit up.

“I’d love to, Lou,” he said, staring back into her eyes.





19





LOPPU





END





On New Year’s Day, Louise’s phone remained uncharacteristically quiet. There were no demeaning messages coming through from Sami and everything seemed to go back to normal.

As she scrubbed the dishes, Peter came over, skulking in much like Bolt after snatching a piece of bread off the table earlier that day.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” he said, his head bowed low, “I didn’t mean to get you worried, I wasn’t thinking, really. I was having fun, and I thought you were having fun on your own, lost track of time... I’m sorry.”

For Louise, it was a moment of relief, as after the day before, she wasn’t feeling up for another battle with her son.

“I get it, sweetie,” she said. “I was just really scared I might lose you… You know? We said one hour, and you were gone for… like two or three even.”

Peter looked up at her, meeting her eyes with remorse. “I know, I’m sorry.”

And with that, they embraced.



Later that evening, Peter went over to Nora’s place. She was having some of her friends there to welcome in the new year. Louise was assured that Mia was going to be there the entire time and about ten of Nora’s friends. Peter was going to be back not one second later than a quarter past midnight, or Louise was going to call the police. Louise trusted him, though, as he seemed genuinely sorry about the other day on the ski trip, and she was sure he wasn’t going to let her down. She hadn’t told Peter about David coming over. The plan was that they were not going to meet, as David was just coming for a quick drink and leaving before midnight like Cinderella fleeing from the Prince’s ball.



There were already more than twenty people at Nora’s house when Peter arrived, and most of them looked quite older, possibly in their early twenties, definitely out of high school. Nora welcomed him in with a paper cup in her hand smelling strongly of vodka. She was overjoyed to report that she had passed her math test and thanked him for his help. She offered him some vodka, but Peter declined. Mia, Nora’s mom, was nowhere to be seen.

“She’ll be back in a couple of hours,” Nora said when Peter asked where she was. Peter nodded, although he wasn’t really sure if he believed her.

The teenagers were dancing, talking, and most of them drinking. After some time, Peter attempted to get closer to Nora, but she was constantly surrounded by people. When someone asked Peter for the fourth time if he’d like some vodka, Peter gave in, “Yeah, sure!”

It seemed like everyone was drinking, and it might make him less nervous, as he didn’t really know anyone else that well apart from Nora. He looked over just then and found Nora sitting alone on the blue sofa in the middle of the living room. He quickly sat next to her, and they grinned as they hit their cups together making no sound, as they were made of paper.

“Kippis!“ They shouted before taking a sip, Peter’s much smaller than Nora’s. Peter watched her for a moment before finally mustering up the courage to ask the question that had been on his mind for months.

“So, Nora, I was wondering… you seeing anyone?” He draped his arm behind her shoulder, making sure not to actually touch her. Nora’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Me? No, definitely not. There’s no one here for me.” She glanced around the room dismissively, clearly not even considering Peter as a potential option.

“I see…” Peter said, dipping his head. He wasn’t quite ready to give up yet. He leaned in for a kiss, but Nora quickly put her hand over his mouth.

“What are you doing?” she asked, confused.

Peter didn’t say anything, just looked away in embarrassment.

“Want a refill?” he asked, seeing that her cup, like his, was almost empty. When he returned, Nora was talking with three other girls. He handed her the cup, finished his, and went back for more. Soon, he was starting to feel dizzy. He noticed a group of boys huddled in a circle, laughing, and looking at someone’s phone. Someone mentioned a teacher at Kouvolan lukio, where his mom worked. He got closer when one of the boys turned to him.

“Peter, Peter, isn’t that your Mom?” When he glanced down, he saw a photo of a woman in black lace leaning forward and blowing a kiss. It was his mother dressed in a way he had never seen her before. He wobbled a little, before pulling himself together.

“No, that’s not her,” he scoffed.

“You sure? She looks exactly like her.” the boy said. Peter shook his head and went to get more vodka. More and more people gathered, cackling as they stared at the photo of his mother almost naked.

“Apparently, she was sending him naked pictures of herself, begging him to fuck her.” someone said.

“Such a slut!” another one replied.

Peter turned around so he couldn’t see them, although he could still hear them perfectly well. He continued to chug the vodka to numb out the outside world.



Louise changed into another one of her many black dresses quickly after Peter left. Almost an hour later, David arrived with a bottle of champagne and a bouquet of white and blue paper flowers. Louise looked at it curiously and smiled.

“Some flowers for the lady,” David said, handing her the bouquet. “Couldn’t find any Captain America comics on such short notice,” he grinned.

Louise playfully slapped his shoulder and examined the flowers. “Wow, David, I had no idea you’re such a craftsman, these are beautiful,” she said, smirking.

“I feel bad now. I didn’t get you anything… Well, make,” Louise said.

David shrugged. “Well, you did cook something, right? I am hungry,” he asked, smiling.

Louise nodded, chuckling, and ushered him inside. Bolt came over to sniff the stranger practically from head to toe before quietly returning to his spot showing that he approved of the guest.

As they ate their dinner, they talked about everything and anything. They talked about school, students, other teachers, skiing, and how Louise was a natural talent. The only thing they didn’t talk about was about kissing or sleeping together, and Louise was overjoyed that David was so unlike Sami. It made her want him more, and by ten o’clock, Louise was determined to get him into bed before the year ended. As they were putting away the dishes and standing together by the dishwasher, Louise once again stood up on her tiptoes and kissed David. He responded eagerly at first but then pulled away gently.

“Hei, Lou, slow down a bit. What’s the rush?” he said, brushing a strand of her hair behind her ear. Louise looked down at the floor, wondering if she had made a mistake. Perhaps the moment was gone; he didn’t want to be with her anymore. It wouldn’t be surprising, considering the whole Sami debacle. But looking back into David’s eyes, she was sure she sensed a desire in there and started kissing him again. David reciprocated. He pushed her up against the kitchen counter before lifting her up on it.

“I want you,” Louise whispered into his ear before gently biting it.

They continued kissing passionately when Louise reached down with her hands and started unbuttoning David’s jeans, not breaking away from her lips with his. Suddenly, David pulled away again, taking one step back, and buttoned back up his jeans. Louise remained sitting on the counter, closing her legs, covering her thighs with the dress.

“Lou, we shouldn’t...” David’s voice was soft, almost a whisper, as he leaned closer, their foreheads almost touching. Louise’s heart sank, a leaden feeling enveloping her. Of course, he didn’t want to go down this path. She was making a fool of herself. Again.

“Not that I don’t want to,” he continued, a gentle brush of his fingers on her cheek as he spoke. “I do, badly.” The touch sent shivers through her. He kissed her gently on the lips.

“But I don’t want you to do something you might regret later, like you just did two nights ago. You know?” His hands found their way to her shoulders, Louise nodded, and David continued,

“Besides, I don’t want just this…” he said gesturing between the two of them, “I want more. I want to be with you, get to know you...You know?” In that moment, everything around them vanished and time stopped. It was just the two of them, consumed by the intensity of their emotions. Louise was shocked by how strongly she felt, never imagining she could feel this way again. It wasn’t just physical attraction; she wanted to be with someone other than Mat. She wanted to be with David.

“Me too…” she managed to say, and David began kissing her with even more passion than before. Lost in the moment, their desire for each other grew until Louise’s phone started ringing.

“Hold that thought,” she said, placing her finger on David’s lips, and climbed down from the counter to answer her phone.

She listened to the person on the other end mumbling every now and then, but as soon as she hung up, she started crying.

“It’s Peter…” she said, her voice shaking. Without letting her finish, David grabbed her hand, and together they rushed out the door.



When they arrived at the hospital, Louise was unable to speak. Nora and Mia were huddled in the corner, both looking as if they had been hit by a truck. David rushed over to the nurses, pretending to be Peter’s father to learn what had happened to him, leaving Louise catatonic in Mia’s embrace.

“They say it’s alcohol poisoning,” David said when he returned. “He’s going to be alright; they’re just keeping him for observation for a couple of hours, then he can go home.”

Louise looked at him like she had just come back from the dead and started yelling,

“Where is he? I need to see him! Where’s my son?” One of the nurses approached and gestured for Louise to follow her. She was led into a sterile room where Peter lay on the bed, groggy but awake. Louise cried as she rushed towards him and started bombarding him with questions without giving him a chance to answer.

“Peter? Peter, are you alright? What’s going on? What are you doing? Why are you doing this? First, the skiing, now this. You don’t drink. What’s going on? How did this happen?”

Peter remained silent, staring out the window.

Louise pleaded with him, her voice growing increasingly desperate. “Look at me, Peter, look at me, look at me, please, look at me...You’re the only person I have left. Only you. You are the only one. I can’t lose you. You hear me? I can’t lose you! I’ve lost so much. If I lose you too, I’ll die. I’ll just die… I love you so much. I can’t lose you… I can’t lose you...” Louise kept repeating louder and louder. A tear rolled down Peter’s cheek. He turned towards his mom. Did she mean that?

“I’ve already lost you,” he said finally, shrugging. “I’ve lost my Dad, but I’ve also lost you too. You don’t care about me; all you worry about is Captain America and that idiot teacher friend that you sent those sleazy pictures to.”

He couldn’t bear it anymore, he had to confront her about the truth. About the photos, about everything. Louise was stunned by his words. It felt like someone had just stabbed her in the heart and started picking it apart. What was he talking about? Peter started nodding.

“You think I don’t know about your slutty little photos that you sent? He sent it to everyone,” he said, continuing to nod.

“Everyone, Mom! Everyone’s seen them. Everyone’s making fun of you, how you’re crazy about him, sending him photos like that every day. Disgusting!”

Louise’s mind was in a muddle. What was Peter talking about? What photos, who was this? And then it dawned on her. The photo of her in black lace. Sami. It must have been him. The words ‘I’ve already lost you’ hit her hard once again. How could he even think that, let alone say it?

“Oh, Peter, I’m so sorry...” She grabbed his hand in hers. “I was drowning in my own grief, you know? It was like being trapped in a black hole with no way out. I couldn’t see a way out. But I should have been there for you, I know that now. But you can’t get out of a black hole, can you? It’s too strong.” Louise tried to explain herself.

“No, of course you can’t get out of a black hole; the gravitational pull is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape from it,” Peter chimed in, sounding like a professor. Louise put a finger in front of his lips, not in the mood for a physics lesson.

“I’m sorry, OK? But you must know I love you more than anything, Peter. I will always love you…you are my world. You can never lose me! You must know that?” She said, planting a kiss on his cheek before burying herself in his chest. Tears started streaming down Peter’s face as he listened to her.

Peter’s face twisted like it did when he tried pumpkin squash for the first time as a baby. “What about the photos, Mom? Everyone’s seen them, everyone at the party, and, who knows, how many more out there? It was humiliating seeing my own mother naked on some stranger’s phone.”

Louise’s mind was in turmoil as she tried to process the whole thing. How did Peter come to see it, and how many others had seen her naked? Well, not naked, almost naked.

“Peter, I know. It’s awful,” she said raising her head up again, her voice cracking. “Can you imagine how I feel after hearing this? I can see it being hard for you, but it’s my body, you know?” She said pointing at herself. “Look….I’m not making excuses, but I trusted someone I shouldn’t have, and I sent him a single photo,” Louise said, holding up her index finger, making the number one, “…meant for his eyes only. And not a naked one either. It was a stupid mistake, one that I regret deeply, but I’m only human, Peter. We all make mistakes. The important thing is that we own up to them and try to make things right.” Louise took a deep breath before continuing.

“But that has nothing to do with us. Please, Peter, don’t ever doubt how much I care about you. You’re the most important person in my life, and I would never intentionally hurt you.” She took his hand in both of hers, clasping them tight against her chest. “I promise, I’ll fix this, we’ll fix this. It’s you and me, Peter, we’re a team. The only Rantas left...Well, apart from Grandpa and Grandma…” Checking the time, she saw it was seconds to midnight.

“Look at that, sweetie. A new year. I have a good feeling about this one.” As fireworks erupted outside, she gazed out the window. “After everything we’ve been through, we deserve some happiness. I’m clawing my way out of this black hole, you hear me? Even if not a glimmer of light can escape it, I will.” Peter grinned at her determination.

“Well, technically you ca-,” he started saying, but Louise shushed him before he could finish. They embraced tightly.

“Hyvää uuta vuotta, äiti, minä rakastan sinua,“ Peter whispered in her ear.

“I love you too, sweetie,” Louise responded.



When Peter was discharged from the hospital and Louise and he were ready to leave, David was still waiting for them. He stood up to meet them, but as soon Peter laid eyes on him, he charged towards him, screaming at him in Finnish and attempting to hit him. David shielded his face to protect himself. Upon seeing this, Louise sprinted over to intervene and stop the altercation.

“Peter! What on earth are you doing? Stop it!” Louise shouted at her son.

“He’s the one who shared that photo of you, Mom. Don’t you see?” Peter retorted, reaching out to try and hit David once again. Louise felt momentarily bewildered, but quickly realized what was going on. Peter didn’t know about Sami; he thought David was to blame for the not-actually-naked photo circling around. One of the security guards started to approach them, but Louise mouthed that they were fine.

“No, Peter, no, that’s not him. David is a friend. It’s all a big misunderstanding.” Louise explained.

“It’s not him?” Peter murmured. Louise shook her head. Peter looked to the floor feeling embarassed. He kept his eyes on the ground but reached out with his hand and apologized. David understood and shook his hand in return, then offered to drive them home.



Peter fell asleep in the car on the way home. David offered to carry him inside, as although he was as tall as him, he couldn’t have been half his weight. Louise refused and gently woke Peter up and asked him to go inside, telling him she would follow shortly. She watched him walk inside, feeling a mixture of emotions, but certainly grateful for David’s presence.

“Hyvää uuta vuotta!“ She almost sang and reached out her hand to shake his.

“Happy New Year,” David responded, ignoring her hand, and leaning in for a slight kiss on the lips and a hug instead.

“We’re quite the drama queens, as you can see. It’s like the end of the world every day in a different way. Someone missing, someone panicking, someone almost dying...” Louise continued.

“Looks like you need an actual superhero in your life,” David suggested, and Louise smiled.

“Know anyone in particular?” Louise asked, playfully bumping him with her shoulder.

“No, of course not. You do know superheroes aren’t real, don’t you, Lou? Duh?” David grinned.

Louise couldn’t help but laugh at his response. She looked at him seriously the next second.

“How come you’re divorced, David? I mean you’re perfect…” she spoke softly looking at him up and down, then touched his cheek. David took her hand and kissed it before looking out the window.

“Perfect, huh? Well, Eija didn’t see it that way, I guess,” he mumbled, absently, as his eyes focused on something undecipherable in the distance. His words hung in the air, heavy with unspoken sadness. “It turned out my best friend seemed a more ideal match for her…They were sleeping together behind my back for four years,” he trailed off, allowing the words to seep into the surrounding silence. He shrugged, a slight smile turning up on his lips.

“I suppose it’s all turned out well in the end. They’re happy together now, and the girls are doing alright.”

He blinked and shifted his gaze, his tone changing as he pointed to a vague shape outside. “Is that a squirrel?” he asked, a forced cheerfulness creeping into his voice.

Louise squinted, crouching down to get a better look out of the window. She shrugged. “Sorry, can’t really make out anything,” she replied, turning her gaze back to him.

She wrapped her arms around him then, kissing him softly on his cheek. “I’m so sorry...” she murmured, resting her forehead against his. How selfish she had been wrapped up in her own grief like she was the only one dealing with problems. It was a sobering reminder - everyone was embroiled in their own mess, dealing with the unique mix of chaos life threw their way.

David’s voice turned serious as he asked, “What are you going to do about your naked photos circling the town?” He figured out what was going on from what Peter shouted at him at the hospital. Louise let out a sigh and rubbed her forehead.

“Technically, they’re not naked naked photos or photos as in plural, just the one, but yes…” she paused, thinking this was how rumours spread, getting worse and worse. “I should probably call the head teacher and tell her myself before someone else does,” she said, her voice heavy with resignation. “And then, I guess I have to go to the police station and report him.” She added, shrugging her shoulders.

“Of course! What time should I pick you up?” David asked. Louise smiled gratefully at David, appreciating his presence and help. She was no longer alone.





20





ALKU





BEGINNING





It was the beginning of a new year that seemed like a new life and Louise felt as though she’d been jolted back into existence. Mat’s presence in her mind reminding her of his absence was now more like a faded echo and she became finally released from the iron grip of depression, unshackled from the relentless surge of painful memories that had held her prisoner for far too long. The trudging swamp of her mind had blossomed into a vibrant meadow and she felt lighter on her feet. Sure, the landscape outside remained firmly in the grip of winter’s chill, the spring still a distant promise on the horizon. But within her, things had shifted, transformed. One morning she and Peter were strolling with Bolt when they ran into Nora somewhere between their and her house.

“Hei…” Nora approached Peter softly as she drew nearer.

Peter responded with a subdued, “Hei…”

“I’ll give you two a chance to talk. Come, Bolt!” Louise said, continuing her brisk walk with Bolt and leaving Peter behind. Peter nodded, silently thanking her with his eyes.

Nora and Peter stood in awkward silence for a moment before Nora spoke up.

“You really scared me the other day,” she said, looking up at him, remembering him lying on the floor looking white as the wall behind him.

“Yeah, scared a lot of people, including myself.” His hands were in his pockets as if he was trying to hide but also trying to keep them warm in the heart of winter.

Nora’s concern was clear as day as she asked, “You OK now?” His face looked more of natural colour, she thought.

Peter answered with a nod, “Yup, just fine. Can’t leave the house alone other than going to school or practice until next year, probably, but fine.” Nora chuckled, and Peter joined in.

“And never touching vodka again for as long as I live. Or alcohol...” He shook his head then like he was just being offered a glass.

“How can you drink that stuff?” he asked, not understanding her drinking even before his alcohol poisoning, now even less.

“I stopped drinking too. My mom freaked out when she saw what happened with you and when she found out that I’ve been drinking too. It wasn’t pretty. But I freaked out too, you know…I thought you were going to die. I was really scared…” Nora paused replaying the scene in her head.

“So, I quit too. But before… I don’t know. It was a way of feeling less if that makes sense? I don’t know.” Nora admitted with a shrug. Peter knew all about that.

“I’m sorry for trying to kiss you that night….Well, last year,” Peter said, his eyes fixed on the snow on the ground.

“It’s my fault,” she said, “I didn’t really explain myself well… I was drunk... I’m sorry. You’re a really nice guy, Peter, it’s just that I’m on the orange team, you know?” She glanced to the right, and Peter looked to the right trying to spot something orange over there. There was nothing.

Peter’s mind was racing. What was she talking about? What was the orange team? And then it hit him. Of course, the girls’ volleyball team had orange jerseys.

“Oh, you mean you’re into gi-,”he started to say, but Nora cut him off.

“Yes, girls,” she said, avoiding eye contact. “I didn’t want to tell you at the party… Mom doesn’t even know. I haven’t like actually come out yet. It’s all a bit confusing.”

Peter nodded. “Well, don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.” He was finally able to look at her. He wasn’t rejected; Nora simply wasn’t into boys. “Thanks for telling me. It means a lot.”

Nora changed the subject, sounding enthusiastic,

“Barbara’s really into you,” she said.

Peter was surprised. “Barbara? Really? I had no idea. I only ever noticed you at practice. I’ll have to check her out,” he said with a smile.

As they began to walk in opposite directions, Peter called out, “See you at practice next week!”

“Actually, no, I’m not coming. I’m leaving…” she said.

Peter walked back over to her. “Leaving? Where to?” He asked.

“With everything that happened with you and my mom being my mom, she and Dad decided it best that I go stay with him for a while. So, I’m going to Turku!” Nora said, almost singing Turku.

“Oh, nice! That’s great you’ll get to spend some time with your Dad, I’m happy for you,” Peter said.

“Yeah, we’ll see. I know I’m lucky I still have the chance to be with him unlike…” Nora’s voice trailed off as she gestured towards Peter.

“Yup, don’t have that chance anymore...I miss him…” Peter said, feeling a lump form in his throat.

Nora hugged Peter. “I’ll miss you…” she said quietly.

“Me too,” Peter replied, slowly breaking away. “We’ll stay in touch!”

“You’ll still be the first to like my pictures on Instagram?” Nora asked with a smile on her face.

Peter laughed, recalling the photo of Nora wearing lip gloss.

“You bet!” He replied, giving her a thumbs-up.

Peter watched as Nora walked away from him, her figure gradually fading into the distance. He began walking in the opposite direction, trying to catch up with Mom and Bolt. Just when Nora was almost out of sight, Peter halted and turned around to look at her one last time. A feeling of sadness washed over him. He was going to miss her.



Louise took a deep breath standing outside the classroom, knowing full well what was waiting for her on the other side of the door. Dressed in a black skirt and black stockings with a white glossy shirt, wearing just a touch of make-up, she looked like a businesswoman ready to take down Wall Street. It was the first day of school in the new year, and it seemed her one-not-naked picture spread like wildfire among the students. The head teacher had been understanding, and supportive, and for that, Louise was grateful. As she entered the classroom, students began snickering and whispering. Louise kept her composure, took the marker, and wrote “to address the elephant in the room” on the board. Turning to face the class, she asked what the phrase meant. A girl in the front row explained that it meant to talk about something unpleasant that everyone knew about but chose to ignore it. Louise thanked her for her answer and proceeded to talk in an I-mean-business voice.

“So, let’s talk about the elephant in the room, shall we?” Her teacher voice filled the classroom, commanding attention.

“Now, you know me as your teacher. I am your teacher. But I am also a woman. I am a mother. I am a widow. I have many different roles. I am a human being, and like all humans, I am imperfect. We all make mistakes. We all do things that we shouldn’t; we act without considering the consequences. We jump before making sure that the water is deep enough.”

She paused, taking a deep breath. The classroom was dead silent. No one was fidgeting with their pencils, no one moved a muscle. The eyes of everyone were fixed on her.

Louise cleared her throat, hesitating for a moment before speaking.

“I made a mistake, a mistake of trusting someone I shouldn’t have,” she said, her voice cracking slightly. “I shared a part of me that I shouldn’t have to someone who took advantage of me. It wasn’t a mistake I made as your teacher, but as a woman, as a human being.”

She paused again looking at a girl that reminded her of herself when she was that age.

“It was a mistake I will never repeat. I’ve learned my lesson the hard way by making it. But the beauty of mistakes is that we can learn from them, not just our own, but also from the mistakes made by others as well. It was my mistake, but you can learn from it. Learn from my mistake. The only thing you mustn’t do is judge me because we are all human and we all make mistakes.” Her eyes canvassed all of the students in the classroom, meeting their gazes with calm assurance. The air in the room was heavy with contemplation and the weight of her words hung in the silence.

Louise had always been a no-nonsense kind of teacher, and her sincerity was palpable. She finished her speech by emphasizing that sharing naked pictures of someone else was a serious offense, and anyone caught doing so would be reported to the police. As she looked around the room one last time, several students hung their heads low, clearly embarrassed.

“Clear?” she asked, raising her voice slightly. The students nodded in agreement.

“Great, then let’s get to work,” she said enthusiastically.



By the end of the day, she had repeated the talk three more times, knowing she would need to do it several times more on the following day. With each class, it got easier, and Louise found it almost cathartic. She and David had agreed to meet after school for a drink; Louise knew she was going to need a glass of something after that day. They met in a cafe near the school, and just when Louise was about to sit down at a table, she heard David say.

“Oh, look, Sami’s here. Do you remember him? He used to work at our school earlier this year. Well, last year.” He began waving at him, but stopped when he turned to Louise and saw that she looked like she had seen a ghost.

“That’s him, David,” she muttered so quietly that David missed it.

“What’s that, Lou?” David asked, oblivious to her unease.

“That’s him,” she repeated, this time a little louder.

“That’s him?” David’s tone was laced with fury.

Louise nodded, her heart thumping as if she had just sprinted 200m as David stood up and stormed towards Sami. She was afraid he was going to hurt Sami and softly kept saying ‘no’ of fear of what was going to happen. She watched from a distance as David towered over him and said something into his ear. Louise couldn’t bear to watch, afraid that David was going to kill Sami there and then while, for a split second, a part of her wished he would do just that. To her surprise, David returned to the table as if he had just gone to say hello to a friend. A minute later, Sami left the cafe without looking in their direction.

“What did you say to him?” Louise asked, her curiosity piqued.

David smirked. “Nothing I could repeat in front of you,” he said, his lips curling into a grin. Louise leaned all the way in and kissed him on the lips, examining his face.

“I want you so bad right now.” She looked into his eyes seductively.

“Peter’s at practice?” David asked softly. Louise nodded, biting her lip. David traced his finger on her bottom lip.

“Want to get out of here then?” David looked around the room, thinking he couldn’t keep himself much longer from kissing her, and there were way too many people for them to be making out in front of.

“Well, I don’t know. You were the one saying you want to take it slow, so I don’t know if you’re ready… I definitely am,” Louise said going up and down his arm with her finger.

“That was last year,” David said. They quickly got up from the table before even ordering and rushed out of the café.



When they pulled over at Louise’s house, they started kissing passionately, not breaking their lips for more than a second while walking over to the door. Bolt came running to them and started jumping up and down in front of them from all the excitement. Louise kept telling him to get down and go away, but he didn’t listen.

“Let’s go into the bedroom,” Louise whispered.

“Lead the way,” David replied with a chuckle.

It was already dark out. Louise slowly backed into the bedroom, pulling David with her, and leaving Bolt outside. He protested by whining for a minute but soon gave up and returned to his spot on the sofa.

Louise stopped for a second.

“Did you see it?” She asked.

“See what?” David responded, planting a kiss on her lips.

“The picture,” Louise replied, meeting his gaze.

“What picture?” David didn’t know what she was talking about.

“The picture, David,” Louise said louder.

David finally realized which picture she had in mind.

“Oh, the picture, right! Who needs a picture when you’ve got the real thing in front of you?” He said, admiring Louise with his eyes.

Louise hit the bed with her foot. She turned the lights on and David suddenly commented, “Maybe we keep the lights off?”

Louise pulled back, frowning, and David quickly added, “I don’t know, I’m not like in Captain America shape, if you know what I mean,” he said shyly. Louise started cracking up like it was the funniest thing she had ever heard looking at him. She scanned him from head to toe, a look in her eyes that suggested she could devour him on the spot. He looked very much in superhero shape.

“And I’m Wonder Woman,” she retorted, still laughing, and began kissing him with even more passion than before. David smirked and began to kiss her neck and ear and whispered in her ear,

“You are to me.” His words sent a chill racing down her backbone. They continued kissing passionately. David started unbuttoning her shirt, releasing, and cupping her breasts, slowly kissing her on her stomach. Louise didn’t want David going all the way down there in the light; she wasn’t ready for him to see the scar, her worst hang-up. She quickly reached over to turn off the lights.

“Lou, what are you doing?” David asked, surprised.

“You’re right, better with the lights off…” she murmured. David continued kissing her stomach again, before he pulled up her skirt, and undressed her stockings and panties, while Louise made louder noises as he was getting closer with his mouth.

“Do you want me to stop?” David asked out of the blue not sure if he would be able to stop if she had asked him to.

“No, don’t stop…” Louise almost shouted to David’s relief. She arched her back and opened her legs, letting out a long sigh as she felt the warmth of his breath on her. He reached up again and put his hands on her breasts, squeezing her nipples in his fingers, and softly kissed her below. He would tease her for a bit, only kissing her gently before he let her feel his warm, soft tongue inside of her. Louise moaned louder and louder, completely surrendering herself to his touch and eventually calling out his name when she clenched her legs and tightened her legs around his head. David moved back up and whispered into her ear, “Want to see my shield?”

Louise was still shaking, not making much sense of what she had just heard.

“What?! Your shield?” she finally managed to ask.

“You know, Captain America. Well, not actually a shield, more of a sword.” David explained. He thought he was so clever with his puns.

“Fuck Captain America,” Louise said, throwing David on his back and climbing on top of him. She positioned his ‘sword’ on her entrance, and slid in smoothly. She started moving her hips up and down, and soon David’s moans were getting louder and louder. He paused for a bit and turned her on her back again, thrusting himself into her faster and faster. He was completely lost in her, and she was completely lost in him. Soon he let out a cry before he too started shaking and fell on top of her before rolling to his side.

“Well, I think that makes you my favourite teacher, Lou” David said, kissing her on her forehead, smirking.

“Oh, nice, thank you,” Louise said, smiling, not returning the compliment. They lay there together side by side looking at each other in the dark.



Louise went to pick up Peter after practice. He was standing outside the gym waiting, but the girl standing next to him wasn’t Nora.

“Hi, sweetie, where’s Nora? She didn’t come today?” Louise asked.

“Nora’s left.” Peter replied.

“What? Where did she go?” Louise asked, shocked.

“She’s going to live with her Dad for a while, she said. I think it might be good for her; she really misses her Dad, and her Mom looks like she needs some time for herself,” Peter explained. Just then he opened the Instagram app and saw Nora posted a selfie of herself in the middle of a square with the hashtag Turku. She looked radiant. He quickly hit the like button.

“Oh, that’s great for her… for both of them, really…I’m happy for her.” Louise thought for a second about Mia. She’d go to Pilates on Tuesday and a have drink with her after.

“And who’s this girl? She looks cute,” Louise asked, looking at the curly-haired girl in the rear-view mirror.

“That’s Barbara, another volleyball player. She’s nice, yes.” Peter said, waving at Barbara in the mirror.





21





HYVÄSTI





GOODBYE





Louise had managed to get through the first week of school in the new year, which was, considering the challenges she had to overcome, an accomplishment. She reported Sami to the police, and they were bringing up charges. She was unsure if she would seek civil damages in court; she just wanted to be over with it all. She had no contact with Sami since she blocked him and hoped to keep it that way. Things were returning back to normal; she and Peter were talking more, going on walks, and things were getting serious with David as well. They were planning another ‘big family’ ski trip that weekend; this time they were going to go in one car. The big family that Louise had always dreamed of, but never had with Mat, was becoming a reality in a different way. But there were still things that Louise needed to do. On that Friday afternoon, she kneeled by her bed and reached for her stash of comic books. She needed to let them go. She worked quickly, separating them into groups. The ones that belonged to Janne, those that were hers, and those that were from the library. She was to return them and gift Janne with her own collection. From one superfan to another.



That evening when she and Peter sat on the sofa, Louise declared firmly,

“Well, there’s only one thing left for us to do now.” She finished with a tiny shake of her voice.

“What’s that, Mom?” Peter asked without a clue as to what was about to happen.

She turned on the TV. “For us to finish Endgame!“ she said, putting her arm around his shoulder. They had never watched it apart from the first twenty minutes on that fateful evening almost four years ago. David nodded gently without saying anything.

As the opening scene began, they both had tears in their eyes. They knew the exact moment when they stopped watching the film the first time; Louise remembered walking out of the theatre, and Peter remembered Mom getting him all distraught minutes later. For a second, it was like a film scene replaying in their heads. They looked at each other, knowing what the other was thinking without either of them saying a word. The moment passed, and by the time Captain Chris and Peggy were dancing away in each other’s arms at the end of the film, Louise was sobbing uncontrollably and smiling at the same time, “He went back to her...” They hugged and cried in each other’s arms for what seemed like hours.

“You and I are going to be fine, you and me, you hear? We’ve got each other. Always!” Louise stated.

“I love you, Mom.” Peter said.

They held each other and grieved for a while when Peter finally pulled away.

“Mom, I know you want to, but I really don’t want to go live somewhere else, I really want to stay here,” Peter said in an almost pleading voice. Louise was quick to reassure him.

“No, Peter, it was just a silly idea. I couldn’t leave this house…our house. You grew up in this house, we got Bolt in this house…” Louise turned to Bolt napping on the edge of the sofa while kissing Peter on the forehead.

“There are so many memories here and although sometimes I’d love nothing more than to escape them, deep down, I’d much rather treasure them.” She looked over at the dining table in the kitchen at Mat’s empty chair.

“But… we are definitely getting a smaller table,” she said.

“I’m not eating surrounded by six empty chairs anymore.” Peter nodded, smiling at his mother. “Sure, we can get a smaller table.”



Louise is following Mat’s footsteps as he is leading up a trail, walking up a hill. A little girl is walking behind her. She has the most beautiful, auburn hair and eyes the colour of the ocean. Louise turns around, “Come, Sara, this way.”

It is dusk; the bright, orange ball in the sky slowly disappearing behind the horizon. They are joking, laughing, and chatting away. They reach the top just before the sun disappears out of sight. Mat and Sara hug Louise tightly. She knows this is goodbye; they are going away. They do not speak. Mat looks behind her to the valley they left behind. She knows in her heart she must turn around and let them go. She cannot follow them to the other side, she needs to go back.

She hugs them one last time and kisses Sara on the forehead. She mouths ‘I love you’, turns around and, begins to descend the hill slowly. She turns around one last time and sees them waving before continuing their journey to the other side. She looks ahead and notices the shapes of familiar faces in the distance becoming clearer. Peter is there waiting for her, Bolt is there. Someone else is there in the distance. A tall man with two little girls standing beside him. Louise begins running towards them. Her new life awaits her, her new family. Tears of joy come over her as she runs into their embrace.





22





MAT





MAT





Marja and Louise had been planning their ferry trip from Helsinki to Stockholm for some time. Louise was on exchange at a school where Marja taught as one of the younger teachers and the two hit it off from the moment they met. Marja became Louise’s unofficial tour guide for Finland, and they spent most of their weekends exploring and dreaming up future adventures. Both were in their early twenties with their whole lives in front of them, seeking fun and excitement and discovering themselves in the process. While Marja was single; Louise had an on-and-off-again boyfriend back home in Cork, but he made sure to tell her that he wasn’t waiting for her while she was spending the next six months teaching English in Finland. In fact, they rarely kept in touch, phone calls were expensive back then and with the dial-up modems, sending an email was at times an hours-long process.

It had snowed the night before the trip, and temperatures were low, although it was early October. As Louise stepped out of her apartment that morning, she quickly realized her Irish more rain-than-winter coat was no match for these cold temperatures in northern Europe but had not managed to buy a warmer one, as the snow came as a surprise. As a result, she was forced to take the overnight ferry trip to Stockholm wearing her thin coat, hoping to find a warmer one in Stockholm.



The ferry left in the morning hours, and although Louise and Marja were among the first passengers in port, a line of people was already queuing up to the ferry. As they were standing in line, a group of four men waited in front of them. They looked in good spirits, laughing and chatting with each other. One of them glanced in their direction and said something in Finnish, but Louise didn’t understand him because she spoke almost no Finnish at the time. The other three friends laughed at what he had said. Marja leaned towards Louise and told her that apparently, he was worried about her being cold because he said something about her being dressed the way she was. Louise did look cold with her thin red raincoat on, no scarf. and no hat, just her dark, long brown hair reaching past her shoulders and her arms wrapped around herself, trying to warm up.

“I am cold!” Louise responded in English loudly, slightly shivering. The men who were laughing and talking amongst themselves, fell silent.

Without a word, one of them took off his long, grey-and-red-checkered wool scarf and offered it to Louise.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t take it, thanks,” she said, surprised by the kind gesture.

The man insisted, saying they were all going on the same ship anyway, and she could return it later.

“Take it, I don’t need it.” He had a puff coat on, a hat, and gloves, so definitely did not look like he would miss a scarf as well.

“It matches your red raincoat, too,” he added.

Reluctantly, Louise accepted the scarf and thanked him. After some time, she and Marja finally boarded the ferry, and the men disappeared from their sight. Although the ferry had thousands of passengers on it, Louise was certain they would bump into the men sooner or later and wore the scarf the whole day just in case. To her surprise, over the course of the day and evening, she hadn’t seen the man who gave her the scarf again. She regretted taking it in the first place and worried about being unable to return it. The following morning, they were among the first to disembark in Stockholm. The sun was out, and it didn’t seem it was going to be that cold after all but stepping outside, Louise could feel the chill penetrating her. Still, she wanted to return the scarf, but the men were nowhere to be found. She spent the day exploring Stockholm with Marja, still wearing it.

When Marja and Louise headed back to the ferry and Finland, despite having bought a thick down winter coat in Stockholm, Louise still wore the scarf with the hope of returning it to its owner. She searched the crowd boarding the ferry but couldn’t find the man or his friends. They were nowhere to be seen and Louise figured they must have stayed in Stockholm.

Although she was sure she would never find the owner of the scarf and return it, Louise wrapped the scarf around her shoulders and wore it like a cape that evening. It was like a warm cardigan; and it wasn’t that warm on the ferry, perhaps because she spent the day before and half of today freezing. After dinner, Marja and Louise went to the bar on the ferry for a drink. As they sat at the bar, enjoying their vodkas with cranberry juice, chatting away, Louise suddenly heard a deep voice behind her and turned around.

“I believe that’s mine.”

She recognized the tall, broad-shouldered man with light brown hair and steel blue eyes, who was standing over her from before and quickly started to unwrap the scarf from her shoulders.

“Oh, hi, great to see you again, I’ve been looking for you…” she started, slightly blushing as she probably looked a little too comfortable in the man’s scarf.

“…but you disappeared,” she continued, holding out the scarf in her hand.

“Just kidding, you can keep it. You need it more than me,” he said, smiling. He leaned towards her and whispered in her ear. “Besides, it looks better on you.” Louise smiled.

He put out his hand to shake hers and said,

“I’m Matias. What’s your name?”

“Hi, Matias, nice to meet you. Louise,” she said, shaking his hand.

As he sat down next to her at the bar, Matias said, “Louise? I think I’ll call you Lou.”

She was amused by his confidence and replied, “Really? Just like that? Well, if you’re going to call me Lou, then I’ll call you Mat.” As they locked eyes, it felt like time stood still and Louise knew right then and there that she was definitely keeping his scarf.





THE END





Mat and Lou will be back in the next book...





Also By





Me There With You Before is the love story of Mat and Lou, of how an Irish woman ended up with the love of her life in Finland.





About Author





Edie D. Browning has always had a passion for writing and literature, and after many years of teaching English, she has finally decided to pursue her dream of becoming a published author.

She has a deep appreciation for the written word and a keen eye for detail. Her writing is focused on strong female character-driven stories and emotionally resonant themes of love, loss, and motherhood.

Edie is happiest when travelling and discovering new places and meeting new people and has been to many different countries over the years. She has lived in Idaho, United States, Finland, the Netherlands, Australia and is currently living in Slovenia, She says that living in different parts of the world has given her a broader perspective on life and has inspired her writing, as well as her debut novel Me Here Without You, which is set in Finland.

When Edie isn’t teaching or writing, she loves spending time with her family and her three children or running with her dog. She says that running is her way of clearing her head and getting inspiration for her writing. As for reading, she is a voracious reader and loves nothing more than curling up with a good book when she can find the time. You can learn more about Edie at www.ediebrowning.com or follow her writing journey on TikTok.