Finally I found the courage to translate one of my works in English. English is not my first language, as you can guess, and I encourage you to keep this in mind while reading this oneshot. Please don't judge my writing skills based on my poor knowledge of the English language. I'm still learning so if you spot a mistake put it out to me so I can correct it and learn the right way to say/writing something. Also let me know if you liked this shot! Thanks for your time :) enjoy!
SUMMER SOLSTICE
She couldn't believe it. Even better, she didn't want to believe it.
However, the facts were clear and overwhelming, absolutely amazing, as far as it seemed impossible to her. Kristoff had forgot her birthday! How on earth he could have forgot it? She had reminded him at least every day in the last month, openly or with astute and studied phrases. They had been together for three years, they knew each other since they were ten, and he had forgot it anyway. Absurd!
That morning there had been no happy birthday kiss, no muffin with a candle waiting for her in the kitchen, nor the stupid happy birthday song, or stupid wishes from stupid Kristoff!
"Idiot." She hissed, grinding her teeth.
In that moment, closed in her small office with an infinite amount of work to be done, she couldn't think of anything else: she hated him. She would never have believed such a thing and yet the germ of hate was affecting the infinite dose of love and goodness she usually poured on him. She hated him for not remembering it, and consequently to have ruined her day.
She wanted Kristoff to pay for what he did. Well…for what he didn't.
She signed a contract and then got up to take a glass of water in the coffee room. From a slit in the door she saw a bellboy get out of the elevator, with an immense sunflower bouquet in his arms. A little awww escaped her lips and her heart skipped a beat when the secretary at the front office called for her. In a few seconds she denied all that her brain had thought until a moment before: Kristoff was the best boyfriend in the world and she could never have hated him, not even and above all in such a day.
And the flowers weren't from him.
There was a greeting card attached to the flowers. To the best friend I could ever have. Happy birthday! –Olaf. She smiled unconvinced at the bellboy and at the secretary and then she closed herself in the small office again.
She put the flowers on the desk and as she watched the bright yellow, the stream of her ideas focused again on a single thought: how to get back at Kristoff.
A lopsided grin bloomed on her lips when an idea stroked her mind and her revenge slowly began to take form: no sex, for at least a month. She would've teased him until he was exhausted, he would've gone mad and then she wouldn't let him touch her with a finger. She was certain he would learn the lesson.
She was not sure she could succeed, because she too would have be affected: in the end she was a human being in the full of her hormonal phase, and he was him, and she was her. Keeping him away would be like putting a match near the fire and expecting it not to fire. But she would have made of that little revenge her personal crusade and wouldn't have failed. The cellphone vibrating in her handbag distracted her from her little conspiracy. She read the name on the display: Elsa.
"Els…"She answered but she was stopped open-mouthed by the voice, or rather the voices on the other side of the phone that were singing happy birthday.
"…happy birthday to you!" Elsa took a deep breath. "How is going your b-day, sis?"
"I was enjoying it until I was deafened by you and that stoned bell of your husband. You yelled so much I could have heard you from up here without my cellphone." Anna chuckled. "It's going well…yeah, great." She added with little conviction.
"What's up? You seems off." Her sister's voice had gone up an octave, a sign that she had begun to worry. She didn't want her to worry for such a stupidity, but it was difficult to control Elsa's anxiety when her sister's happiness was at stake.
"N-no. Is everything okay. Really."
"I'm not buying it. Do you want me to come earlier? I could come tomorrow or even tonight. Hans wouldn't mind, in fact, he need a break from his job. His father oppress him with ungrateful and degrading tasks, and he is all mute and obedient. I think he is near a breaking point. We should move from Copenhagen." Anna heard Hans complain on the other end and she could almost see Elsa's eyes rolling. "It's useless denying it. It's true and you know it." Elsa was answering to something her husband said to her.
"Don't worry, I'm fine. It's this hellish hot that suck all my energy away. Can you believe it? There are 30 degrees outside. I'm not in Arendelle, I'm at the tropics." She joked undertone.
"Anna, you love sunny weather and all summer related stuff, then unless you've been fired or that you run out of chocolate ice cream at home, it seems that this complaint of yours is related to Kristoff. I'm almost sure of it." A moment of silence. "You know, he is not yet your husband, you can leave him whenever you like."
"Elsa!" She scolded her. "How can you say such a thing? I thought you liked Kristoff."
"Oh but I do, until he keeps his hands in place and treats my little sister well." She said matter-of-factly.
"He treats me more than good and he is so thoughtful." She protested. "As for his hands…you know, we are two consentient adults so I don't think I have to ask for your permission anymore, also because we go at i-…"
"Ah-ah-ah. I don't want to hear that, thanks." Elsa stopped her, taking away the phone from her ear enough to not hear the rest. She knew Anna was a self-sufficient businesswoman, but hearing her talk about what her and her boyfriend did under the sheets, unnerved her. It was something she would never get used to. Anna was still her exuberant and capricious little sister, who woke her up in the middle of the night to sneak in the kitchen to take a snack or worse to play in the snow.
Anna knew it and she did it on purpose to see her sister blush out of embarrass. She smiled at her almost puritan morality regarding certain arguments, even though she strongly doubted that her sister and Hans only looked each other in the eyes after two years of happy marriage.
"It seems to you that I tell you what's going on in my bed?" replied Elsa.
"Well, if you want to, you can do it. I could take a cue." Anna snickered, hearing Elsa's breath caught in her throat.
"You are a little minx."
"It's always been like this." She teased her, sliding with her chair to the window overlooking the fjord. "Do you remember what grandma said? The devil and the holy water. Things, I see, have not changed." She peered through the shutters, lowered to shelter her from the sun.
"Whatever." Elsa sighed resigned. "However you yet have to tell me what's the reason of your bad mood. Spit it out, it's Kristoff's fault. Am I right?"
"What did Bjorgman do this time?" She heard Hans inquire.
"He forgot my birthday." She blurted out bitterly.
"What!? Not even best wishes?" Elsa was incredulous.
"Nothing. Niente. Nada. Nisba. Niet. Rien!" she burst, springing up from the chair. "You heard me right! He left home barely greeting me and I was standing there looking like a fool. I even checked the calendar to check if it was indeed the 21, because I couldn't believe he had forgotten it. I hate him!"
"Do you want me to give him a call?" proposed Elsa.
"What? Absolutely no. I want him to remember on his own, otherwise my revenge is ready."
"I'm afraid to ask you in what your revenge consists."
"Trust me. You don't want to know."
"Okay. I will pretend that you never said a thing to me but if you need me, please call. Arendelle is on a rocky shot from here, in less than two hours I'll be there."
"Don't worry, I'll be fine." She reassured her. "I love you, say hello to Hans from me."
"Love you too. Have a good day." She hanged up.
Chatting with Elsa always managed to calm her down, but on that occasion even a whole bottle of Valium couldn't keep her at bay.
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The sun was still high in the sky when at 17 o'clock she was out of work, but the suffocating heat of that morning had attenuated, swept away by a refreshing breeze blowing from the sea. The streets of the center were still in business and the tourist boats poured a vacationer's river from the harbor, just back from a tour of the fjord.
The clip-clap of her sandals on the paved road was distracting her from her vindictive thoughts. On her way home she treated herself with a chocolate ice cream: to hell with the line and the dress rehearsal, today was her birthday and everything was granted to her.
When she came in front of the garden of the little house she shared with Kristoff, she hesitated. One hand on the gate and the other still tight around the now sticky cone. His car was in the garage, so he sure was inside. Why did she stop? She was not the one in the wrong! Still she didn't feel ready to face him.
She took a deep breath, threw the rest of the ice cream in a nearby trash can, and finally opened the gate. In front of the front door she had another moment of hesitation, but it lasted only two miserable seconds.
As soon as she walked through the door a giant brown mop jumped on her. "Yes, Sven. I missed you too." She told to the big Irish setter, patting him on its hairy head. "I'm home." She added raising her voice, but with less enthusiasm than usual, slipping along the entrance to the living room. Sven trotted for a few seconds beside her and then ran away to the kitchen or to the back garden. Kristoff was nowhere to be seen.
His already precarious condition continued to worsen. "Kristoff?" She turned into the living room, holding the shoes she had just unfastened. Where the hell was he hiding? Why he wasn't answering her?
She hurried to the kitchen, literally fuming with rage, ready to scream at him for all the frustration and resentment that she had been crawling throughout the day, when suddenly he was in front of her, out of breath and with his face red. "Hey, already at home?" He kissed her on the forehead, obstructing the kitchen's view with his bulky frame.
"I'm always out at this hour." She paused, studying him from head to toe. "What happened?" She investigated, raising an eyebrow.
"What are you talking about?"
"You are almost breathless and your face is tomato red…what are you hiding from me?"
"Absolutely nothing." He gave her an uneasy smile, leaning on the doorframe. "Why don't you go over there and rest, mh? You look tired."
"I'm not tired. I'm angry. Nay…" she searched for a better word "I'm furious!" She yelled, deadly mad. "Do you wanna break up?" she asked him out of the blue. "Because in this the case I…" she pointed her finger at him.
"Hold on!" he put his hands on her shoulders to calm her. "Why would I break with you? What make you think such a thing?" She shook his hands off of her and took a deep breath.
"You know what day is today?"
"June 21."
"Exactly. Indeed no. Well yes, but I didn't mean the date. Today is my birthday, you know, that thing when you grow older of yet another year and usually you like to have the closeness and the affection of your loved ones to feel less the advance of the final oblivion, and since you are the only loved one I see around here, I expected at least a happy birthday, what do you say? I spent a day of hell because of you." She concluded out of breath. "And what are you hiding? Why do you seem to have just finished running the New York's marathon? Mh?" she tried to get around him but he looked ahead, preventing her from looking beyond his shoulders, filling the whole width of the door with his body.
"Listen. I…I am sorry I have ruined your day. I've been distracted by…other things."
"I'd like to know what have occupied your head enough to forget about your girlfriend's birthday." She tried to kick him in the shin.
"Could you stop for a moment?"
"Only if you let me pass."
"Um ... no."
Anna folded her arms across her chest and put on a pout, sticking her lower lip out and frowning "I'm still waiting."
"What? That I let you pass? You will wait in vain, feisty pants." He confirmed, remaining motionless in his defensive position of the kitchen door. "Go on there, I'll call you soon." He said pointing out the living room down the hall.
She pretended to turn, but when she saw him relax and lose concentration, she broke off his defense.
"No, Anna. NO!" He tried to stop her, but by now she had gone through the door and had conquered the kitchen.
Of all she expected to find, there was nothing: neither a lover, nor the utter destruction, nor nothing of anything. What instead left her with her mouth wide open was the row of candles that departed from the French doors overlooking the garden and reached into a small wooden gazebo, which they had built together the previous summer (actually Kristoff had done all the work, while she had supplied him with carrot cake and lemonade), full of lights and flowers (mostly sunflowers, her favorites). In the center, instead of the rocker they usually used to relax in the shade, a table set for two.
"Oh holy North Mountain!" She breathed out, afraid that her eyes could pop out of her head anytime soon.
"I give up! It's impossible to surprise you." He complained.
She watched with rapture the candles, not all lit, whose flames danced cheerful in the summer breeze, and everything became clear.
"Was it all a fake?" She turned to him, speechless. He was scratching the back of his head, guilty. She approached him and then, without warning, slapped him on his left arm. "You could at least say best of wishes, you know."
"Hey!" he complained, more for the unexpected gesture than for the nonexistent pain. "Actually" he began taking a step back, away from her "I really forgot to make you my best wishes because the idea of this dinner totally took me and I had to prepare everything, I wanted it all to be perfect for you: the flowers, the candles, the dinner at the sunset..."
And then she was on him, clinging to him like a koala to a branch of eucalyptus, and printed a kiss on his lips, causing him to step further back. "Only you'd be capable of something like this: forget the reason you're doing something. Have I already told you that I take back all the bad things I've said about you today and the little revenge I planned?"
"What? You even planned a revenge? I must have made you really mad." He puts his arms around her waist to steady her, while with his other hand he moved a strand of hair from her eyes.
"Yup, I cursed all day, calling you with various appellations I would rather not repeat, and I've even come to consider you a bad boyfriend. But now I'm all down: can the sky strike me if I'll question again your ability to keep this couple together." She pointed at them both and swore solemnly, bursting into laughter a second later. "And you could never pardon me if I told you what my revenge was…"
"It's that bad?" Anna was wearing her lopsided grin. He was curious.
"For me it would have been. A real torture for you too, of course." She winked at him and kissed him again, but this time more slowly, barely pressing her lips against his, licking his lower lip. Then with the same slowness she moved her mouth to his left ear and revealed to him her previous intentions with honeyed voice.
"I didn't know you could be so vindictive."
"Not for nothing you call me feisty pants." Their lips meet again halfway. The fuse was on, now nothing could have turned it off.
"You know what day is today?" she asked again, brushing his nose in a Eskimo kiss.
"Gosh, Anna. Are you already forgetting things?" he said teasing, snickering quietly.
And a gust of wind blew out the fuse and Anna's enthusiasm.
She raised an eyebrow and became serious all of a sudden "You killed the atmosphere." She freed herself from the save grip of his embrace and turned to leave but Kristoff stopped her pulling her by her arm and resting his other hand over her waist, locking her in place.
"You can't leave like this." He shook his head. "Enlighten me. What day is today, aside from your birthday?" he blew in the hollow of her neck making her shiver from pleasure. How did she planned to be away from him for so long? Their bodies were desperately reaching for one another, reacting to their closeness. She smiled at herself. She was a loser, she surrendered with too little: kisses and languid caresses were her weakness.
"Today" she began, placing a hand on his chest "It's the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. The sun almost never set at these latitudes." Her hand began to roam between the valleys and the heights of his hard work carved body. "Do you know what that means?" she whispered in his ear.
He shook his head breathless. He didn't trust his voice in that moment.
"Dinner at sunset can wait, the sun will stay there for a while." She suggested with a contagious darkness in her eyes.
"Do you have any suggestions to kill time?"
"Definitely, yes." She chuckled, anticipating what was coming.
He took her in his arms and walked rapidly toward their bedroom, while Anna kept laughing like a love-struck schoolgirl with her face hidden on his shoulder. Sven suddenly appeared, recalled by Anna's cheerful voice, anxious to have fun with his master and his human companion, trotting behind them along the corridor.
When Kristoff tried to close the door with one foot, the huge dog ran straight into it. "Sorry mate, this is not a pajama party." He justified himself, winking at Sven. The dog yelped his dissent and made his way back: it would be consoled by the triple chocolate cake that Kristoff had prepared for Anna. When they would've come out of their room, they would've find a good surprise waiting for them.
The two lovers were totally unaware of Sven's thoughts, taken in the heat of their passion. Within a few seconds Anna's summer dress was discarded with such ease that it seems a magic trick; the same fate befell Kristoff's shirt while she unbuckled his belt, with such readiness she almost tripped in his pants.
In record time they ended up lying in bed in a tangle of arms and legs, hot mouths and wandering hands, chained to one another, unable to stop. They knew their bodies by heart, inch by inch: he had mapped all the constellations of freckles on every inch of her candid skin, and she had memorized every sensible spot of his body, all his secret ravines that teased properly would have produced verses of pleasure.
For them there was no middle ground between having sex and making love: they put equal passion and energy in every single situation, so that the boundary between them was really indefinable. Rolling in the sheets or making it in the shower or against a wall for them was the same.
The "I love you" and the "oh my God" abounded in that bedroom and were lost in a symphony of moaning and sighs. Anna was drunk with Kristoff's passion, with the way he was moving over her, against her, inside her; his large hands were making her crazy. He had left a wave of kisses all over her body, from her neck, down the valley of her breasts, to her flat belly. He was inebriated by her scent, entranced by her high-pitched voice whispering his name between choked sobs at the rhythm of his thrusts, her little hands clinging to his hair, to his shoulders, and all he could think of was Anna, Anna, Anna, and only Anna. There was nothing else. His little world was there, between those four walls, in his arms.
Eventually they fell down from their roller coaster of bliss, she shouted Kristoff's name and he whispered hers in her ear, between labored breath, letting himself go.
Sven barked in the garden, unaware of the festivities inside, rolling in the grass with what remained of Anna's birthday cake.
After resuming their breath, they both found themselves staring at the ceiling, their hands still interlaced, and galloping hearts.
"Wow." Puffed Anna.
"Only?" He said indignant.
"Double wow! This goes straight in my Gone at it top 3 list, just after the one time in the sauna at Oaken's, and that was just…oh my, I can't even find words." She exclaimed, languidly leaning her head on one hand. "Best birthday present ever!"
"Freckles, you are a woman of little faith. Do you really believe that I haven't thought of another gift?"
"The sunset dinner?"
"No, that was just to appease your gluttonous side. This" he said brushing her lips "served to appease your lustful side and then I have also something for your romantic side." She smiled at him.
"Oh my god, what is it?" She lighten up, throwing herself at his neck.
With the hand he was not holding her, he fumbled in the nightstand and pulled out a blue velvet box and handed it to her.
Her smile disappeared from her face and her eyes widened beyond belief. Kristoff had managed to keep secret at least that surprise and she was stunned.
"Tell me that's not what I think." She said holding the box in the palm of her hand.
"Would you mind if it is?"
"No ... I mean, oh my god, absolutely not!" She yelled as she sits up. She stared at the box for a few more seconds before Kristoff's voice awakened her from the trance she had fallen in.
"What are you waiting? Open it."
"If inside this box there is a forever and you are offering it to me, know that there is no turning back: you will be condemned to live with me, to endure me, to support me ... to see me grow older!"
"Geez, I didn't think it was eternal damnation," he joked, snorting for her melodramatic tone.
"Are you sure of this choice?" She asked, pointing at herself with wide and theatrical gestures.
"More than anything else in my life. And it seems to me that I had already said this to you and given you another ring."
"We were in high school, that doesn't count. We were young and reckless." She said with an half smile, her gaze once more on the box between her hands.
"The fact is that I am absolutely certain of my choice."
"Really?"
"Really." He confirmed, going down to capture her lips.
When they parted, Anna opened the box "Then forever?"
Kristoff took the small ring from the box Anna was still holding in her trembling hands, and put it on the finger that in a not too far day would host another ring, one that would've confirmed their promise of love.
"Forever."