“You’re like an open book, Jeppe. You always have been. To tell the truth, we laughed a little behind your back. You were so… shy. It was cute.”

Cute? His heart had been near bursting every day at the sight of this girl he barely dared to even talk to.

“Sometimes I feel like I haven’t gotten the least bit wiser since then.”

“You haven’t, my friend. None of us have.” Johannes rolled over onto his side with his back to Jeppe. “But at least you have the guts to love. Not everyone does, you know.”

“Is that, like, a quality in itself?”

“Yep.” Johannes yawned heartily. “Either you can or you can’t. You can. It’s a gift. Good night.”

Jeppe smiled at his friend’s back on the sofa. “Sleep well!”

He turned off the light and went into the bathroom to brush his teeth with a stiff, new toothbrush, then made his way through the dark to his bedroom and lay down on a mattress that had not yet shaped itself to his body.

From his bed he could see the city’s roofs, like dim shadows against the night sky. He knew that all the thoughts he had ever had would be dancing in a conga line through his head that night. Jeppe closed his eyes to the darkness and tried to find sleep.

So take this down in black and white

When love goes wrong, nothing goes right.

THURSDAY, APRIL 18