She tried to pull the door shut, but Mari caught it. “I promise,” he said. “I won’t do anything you don’t want, if you’ll just tell me what’s going on. I swear it, Lovisa. Please? You can’t even sleep! I’ve never seen you like this!”

Lovisa was wiping sudden, infuriating tears from her cheeks. She knew Mari kept his promises, but it didn’t matter. “I can’t,” she said. “If I did, it would endanger us both. And I wish I could, so it kills me when you ask. So will you please, please stop badgering me about it, and just let me be stressed out, and help distract me?”

“Are you protecting me from something?” he asked, incredulously.

“Shut up!”

He pulled her into the room, shut the door, and put his arms around her.

“What are you doing?” she cried, startled.

“I’m hugging you!” he said. “You’re scaring me!”

“Are you seducing me? For sex?”

“Oh, for the love of the Keeper, Lovisa,” he said, beginning to laugh. “No. I’m hugging you for comfort. Only you would ask that.”

“Why shouldn’t I ask about it directly?” she said. “Would it be so terrible for everyone to say what they mean when they do things, and what they want, and why? Wouldn’t it make things simpler, and create fewer disasters?”

“Lovisa,” he said, “now what’s going on?”

“I hate everyone who’s normal,” she said, humiliated by the tears that were soaking into his shirt.

Mari began to rock her back and forth with his hug. She buried her face in his chest, heard his heart beating. When was the last time anyone had hugged her? When did anyone ever hug anybody? Her arms reached up to hug him back and his grip on her tightened.

“What a relief I’m not normal,” he said, which made her snort with sudden laughter. No one was more normal than Mari, but it was true that she didn’t hate him. And she told herself it was a friendly hug, fond, not sexual. But her body was telling her something else too, wanting to press against him, wanting to make his body respond, because that would feel different.

“Mari?” she said.

“Yes?”

She lifted her face to his, her mouth very close. “What if we reconsidered?”

He hesitated, understanding. Then he kissed her, once, tentatively. Yes, that was better. She kissed him back.

He pulled away. “Wait. We’ve talked about this. We’re not thinking.”

But Lovisa was thinking. “I know you’re not in love with me,” she said. “You know I’m not in love with you. We’ve been through it a hundred times. There’s no confusion here. And I’m dying for a distraction.”

He let out a big sigh. “Okay.”

She took him to his bed.

—