Chapter 12
That night, Chris didn't get much sleep. He remembered closing his eyes several times but whenever he opened them again to check his phone, he saw that barely ten minutes had passed. The clock on his wall above his desk ticked away every goddamn second, and in the middle of the silent night, it made ten times the noise it did during daylight. Somewhere between two and three in the morning, he thought he would lose his wits if he had to suffer one more minute of this infernal tic tac tic tac, and he got up and opened the window to throw the damn thing out.
"Chris?" Mara's sleepy voice called his name.
Whether she was awake due to him leaving the bed or the cold gust of wind that come in through the opened window he could not tell.
"What did that poor clock do to you?"
"It was so noisy! Didn't you hear it?" He complained, slamming the window shut.
"No, I was asleep," she said, leaning on her elbows to look at him though it was pitch black expect for the faint moonlight. "Why are you still awake?"
"I can't sleep," Chris groaned as he climbed back in bed, under the comforting warmth of the sheets and beside Mara.
She shifted position and laid across the bed so her head could rest on Chris' stomach while she faced him. Without thinking about it, they intertwined their fingers.
"What are you doing?" Chris asked in a hushed voice, although there was no one else but them in the entire two floors, suburban house Chris lived in.
"I'm not sleeping if you don't," she simply declared, her eyes never leaving his.
Chris chuckled and smiled fondly before directing his gaze upward.
"You're just as stubborn as him," he said, knowing that Mara would know he was talking about William.
"Yes, but I'm cuter than him which means I can get away with it."
That earned a huff and a frank snort from Chris who apparently wasn't convinced.
"That only works with parents, and it's because you're their only daughter. If Will were the only child – or even the only son – he would be the little Magnusson prodigy."
Mara was about to say something to demolish his argument but she bit her tongue before accidentally saying the wrong thing. Family in general was a rather touchy subject for Chris. Therefore it would have been insensitive of Mara to object that he was an only child, and yet he wasn't anywhere near being the prodigy child of his family.
Actually, it would have been terrible to say this out loud. Even thinking the words made her feel like a horrible person. It wasn't Chris' fault that his parents never gave him the time of day – or the time of year. Though she knew, without having to ask, that he blamed himself for his parent's lack of interest in him. That's why he pushed himself so much. He was one of the best students of Nissen, though he might deny it if someone asked, and he excelled at an impressive number of extra-curricular activities too, including a large panel of sports and playing a couple instruments. Surprisingly enough, he was also an excellent cook – mainly due to the fact that he lived alone.
"You should try to sleep," she told him, bringing their joined hands on her neck to place his hand here, where she knew she was warm. "I'm upset too, Chris. But we have to sleep on it, and tomorrow it won't feel as dramatic anymore."
He nodded slowly, distractedly rubbing circles with his thumb on Mara's neck.
"What have you been thinking about all night if you haven't slept?" She questioned as she returned to her initial position – that is, with her body pressed against Chris'.
He avoided looking at her, and tried to shrug the question off, as though it was too boring to tell her and of no important whatsoever. With two fingers, Mara turned his head toward her, forcing him to meet her eyes. The look she gave him must have convinced him to answer.
"I've been replaying the last four months in my head, trying to think about what we would have done differently, but-"
Mara waited patiently for him to finish, despite having an idea of what he was trying to put into words.
"-but there isn't a second of the time I spent with you that I'd want to change. You keep me going, Mara."
You keep me going. It wasn't an 'I love you', it was a thousand times better – it meant something to Chris. It meant everything to her.
"Come here," she instructed, gesturing him to put his head on her chest.
Too exhausted and sleepy to argue with her, Chris complied and nestle his head against her bosom, immediately welcomed by her soft warmth that she seemed to be the only one to emit. Her hand massaged his scalp and Mara's chin came to rest on his head.
As promised, she didn't close her eyes before she was certain Chris had fallen asleep, to the steady sound of her heartbeat .
000
The next couple days were a mix of random happiness attacks followed by self-reproach whenever William's name sneaked its way back into the conversation or their minds. At first, it was great, it was like having a party in tête à tête, with the whole house at their disposition.
"I guess your parents won't be coming home and find us hanging around with barely any clothes on?" Mara had asked in carefully thought out voice, laced both with playfulness and concern. Chris had shaken his head no, the tip of his nose brushing against hers with every movement.
"This means I can stay for the week-end?" She insisted, feeling overwhelmingly happy at the simple thought.
"You can stay forever," he said, using his smooth, Dom Juan voice on her, as if it had any effect on her. Mara was immune to his tricks, he knew that, but it didn't hurt to test her once in a while.
"Do girls really fall for that?" She couldn't help but laugh.
"Usually."
He shrugged and shot her an innocent smile - though innocent had a whole new meaning when you associate the word with Christoffer. Here it has nothing to do with being pure, Mara merely uses it as an antonym to guilty.
"No but seriously-" His smile dropped. "You can stay with me as long as you want. You could probably move in and my parents still wouldn't notice until their next visit."
She knew it wasn't an actual invitation to move in with him – they weren't there yet. The bitterness of his tone perfectly conveyed how upset it made him to have absent parents. It was a double edged feeling really, because on the one hand he had grown so used to living alone that he would probably quickly get tired of them if they suddenly swirled back into his life from one day to the next, but on the other, there were times when the loneliness was unbearable. The silence reigning in the house, the unused rooms getting dusty... If it weren't for the maid that came once a week, this house would look like a haunted mansion, with spider webs in each corner and a centimetre of dust on the furniture. Everything looked like the front page of a furniture magazine, it was pristine – or in Chris' words, lifeless.
"When was the last time you saw them?"
It was a risky question – the chances that Chris would simply refuse to answer and go brood in a corner were as high as those of getting an honest answer.
"Honestly?" Well, Mara was in luck today. "I can't remember. One day I came home after school, and there was a Christmas tree in the middle of the living room, and there were presents under it, and a note attached to the biggest one. It said 'Merry Christmas, sorry we couldn't stay, work stuff'," Chris laughed, but only because it was the kind of painful story that needed to be laughed about or it would be too sad. "That's the last time I heard anything from my parents. Before that... I have no idea when I saw them last."
"What did you do?" She frowned. Chris had been invited to the Magnussons' modest Christmas dinner – with just Will and Mara in front of The Grinch – but he had declined. He had told them he had dinner with his parents.
"I brought the tree to the old lady who lives down the road and gave the presents to charity," he said with a shrug. "On Christmas Eve I got drunk like never before and the next day I nursed a massive hangover. Merry Christmas me."
It's sad to say but it isn't the first time Mara hears this. Ever since his mum had to go in rehab for her alcohol problem, it went a little more downhill every year. She was always a rather mentally fragile woman, but now all she did was spent her time in rehab, in spiritual retreats somewhere across the world, or doing shopping in Paris and Milan. Where she stored her insane amount of shoes, that Chris didn't know. And his mom's sudden departure from 'home' caused his dad to take refuge in his work, at first barely seeing Chris before he left in the morning, then one day, he simply moved out in an apartment down town, next to the building he worked at, for 'practical reasons'. Ever since, this was basically Chris' house.
"Sometimes I really wish I could knock some sense into your parents," Mara replied with a groan of frustration. "You should have come when we invited you. You know you're always welcom-"
"Not anymore," he cut her off. "And I don't care if I have to spend Christmas alone. It's just another day of the year."
"It shouldn't be! And don't say that... You said it yourself, Will will come back to his senses and apologize for being a dick. He considers you his brother."
"This is taking an incestuous turn," he chuckled to change to subject.
"Chris." Mara said in a stern tone though she rolled her eyes at his remark. "Your parents are assholes. If they don't want to get to know you, it's their loss believe me."
"Don't say that. You can't understand, you and Will willingly spent the holidays without them."
"They're blood, but they're not family – in a sense," she explained rather simply. "Us rich kids don't always have it nice and easy when it comes to our relatives. But this doesn't mean we can't make a family of our own. Whether you want it or not, you're part of mine, and next Christmas, there'll be a plate for you at our table."
"What if we break up?" He asked, trying to find a loophole in her beautiful theory about making a family of their own.
"Well, you'll have to sit next to the second cutest Magnusson sibling, and I won't share my dessert with you, but you'll still be invited."
A low chuckle fell from his mouth, and Mara could see by the small crinkles at the corner of his eyes that he was convinced by her arguments at this point. It was still early in the morning, they didn't get nearly as much sleep as they would have liked to, but they still crawled out of bed because they were hungry. After a few attempts at making an omelet that wasn't burnt, they finally sat down at the kitchen counter and dug in, one hand holding the fork, the other one the coffee mug that would fuel them for the day – or the morning, at the very least. Caffeine and the knowledge of having each other to lean on if things became too much were the only things that helped them hold it together.
"That's peachy," he eventually said, gulping down more of his coffee, as though he was a thirsty man in the middle of a desert. "I guess now that you have some coffee in you I can tell you that you have a monstrous black eye."
"I what?!" Mara practically shrieked.
The girl nearly fell off her chair when she grabbed her spoon to look at herself. The deformed reflection gave her a vague idea of the severity of the bruise, but it was clear that it was very purple and very noticeable. She whipped her head toward Chris who ate his breakfast with a little satisfied smirk on his face, as though he had been waiting the right moment to drop the news during their whole conversation.
"Right back at you, Schistad! You're in no better shape than me!"
Mara held the spoon at Chris' eye level to show him his bruise but he seemed thoroughly unimpressed. Of course he was expecting it.
"We're like those lame couples who wear matching sweaters, but on, like, a whole new level!" She wailed, raising both her hands.
"Yet another proof that we're the best. Even in our lameness," he declared proudly, grinning as he picked Mara up from her seat and sat her on his lap to nuzzle her neck, placing light kisses here and there.
And forgotten was William, forgotten were Christoffer's disappointing parents or the pile of burnt omelets set on the counter. Nothing mattered in this moment, expect that they were together. Alone together, and free to do whatever they pleased, including – and that was the best part – leaving the house and showing themselves.
Which they absolutely didn't do from the entire week-end.