Page 76 of Deep End

“He is,” Jan says. We stop at the top of the hill and turn around. The Dish is there, ready to be plucked. “Decent and caring. None of us will ever measure up.”

“Might as well not even try,” Lukas adds, wiping his brow with the side of his T-shirt. When he drops it, it’s wet and nearly see-through.

“Sorry the weather is so unseasonably warm while you visit,” I tell Jan. “The heat is rough.”

“Oh, not at all. We’re Swedish. There’s no such thing as bad weather—”

“—just bad clothes,” he and Lukas finish together.

They exchange a grin above my head.

After, Jan insists on buying us food.

“We can have dinner for free at the cafeteria later,” I point out, but he waves me off and leads us to a quaint coffee shop.

“Let him pay,” Lukas tells me. “He still owes me six thousand kronor from when he broke my Xbox in a fit of rage.”

“That was, like, eight years ago.”

“Good point.” Lukas pulls back a chair, and waits patiently until I lower myself into it. “I’ll calculate the accrued interests while you buy us coffee.”

Lukas and I are briefly left alone. I take my phone out of my pocket and pretend to check my messages as I brainstorm a topic of conversation with a low land mine density. Jan returns with three coffees and an assortment of pastries.

“Are you divers the kind of athletes who need tens of thousands of calories per day?” he asks.

I laugh. “I’m not sure anyone is?”

“This one eats as much as all of Luxembourg.” He points at Lukas with his thumb. “We have this tradition, in Sweden. Every afternoon we sit down for coffee and snacks. We relax.”

“Oh, yes.Fika, right?” I flush the instant the words are out. Because I’m probably butchering the pronunciation, and because . . .

Jan turns to his brother. “Did you teach her?”

“I don’t believe so.” Lukas sits back in his chair and casually drapes a long arm around the back of mine, somehow managing not to touch me. He stares over the rim of his cup, like he caught me with a hand in the stalking jar. “She must have learned about it all by herself.”

I lower my gaze to my lap, trying to look less mortified than I feel. But—why? Why shouldIbe mortified? Maybe I did open up Google and look up Swedish customs. Maybe I turned on the close captions and watched a couple of YouTube videos while brushing my teeth. Maybe I discovered that Swedish people have real ice hotels, and their cheesecake is completely different from ours.

I lift my chin and meet Lukas’s eyes, a little combative.Maybe I thought about you after what we did. Maybe I find you interesting. Maybe I like you without being liked back. I refuse to be ashamed.

“Fikais usually with sweet things,” Jan says, oblivious to the two-sided argument inside my head. “But Lukas”—so Scandinavian—“refuses to eat sweets, so . . .” He gestures toward a pretzel.

“I don’t refuse to eat them,” Lukas counters, tearing off a piece. “I don’t like them.”

Jan’spshhhis very older-brotherly. “Hedoeslike them. He just lies to himself about it.”

Lukas rolls his eyes. “Not this again.”

“Please, Jan.” I prop my chin over my palm. “Tell me everything about his self-deception.”

“Well, I’m sure you already know how good he is at denying himself. The more he wants something, the less he’ll let himself have it.” My curiosity must come through, because he continues, “Like when he was twelve, and he slept on the wooden floor for three months.”

I glance at Lukas, who’s drinking his coffee with a put-upon air. “Why?”

“No reason whatsoever.” Jan throws a hand up. “He’d gotten a new bed, and it was really comfortable, and he liked sleeping in it, and he needed toprove to himselfthat he could do without it. When he was eleven? Only cold showers. For a whole year.”

Lukas sighs. “Jan, could you tone it down with the whole ‘grandma pulling out a photo album’ bit? I doubt Scarlett cares.”

“Oh, Scarlettcares,” I counter.

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