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I feel his shoulders tense against my leg. “Calm down, stallion. Jakob is my other housemate.”
“You have a man as a housemate?”
I roll my eyes. “Please tell me you’re not jealous.”
“Not jealous,” he says, though I don’t believe it.
“Don’t worry, baby. Jakob is utterly devoted to some mystery woman.”
“Huh?”
“He’s a total recluse, and all he does is write letters to some childhood friend with whom he says he has a marriage pact. It’s weird, though; I never see any letters show up at the house from her, though. So, I think he might be slightly touched in the head. Maybe he lost somebody, and these letters are his delusion that she’s still around. Or maybe they’re real, and there actually is some untold love story there. All I know is he spends all his time writing these letters and making art from found objects on the street.”
“Hm,” Sigurd grunts, and it reminds me oddly enough of Jakob. “You’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this Jakob.”
Oh, brother.
“You two have the same kind of grunt, as a matter of fact. It’s pretty adorable,” I say.
“He’s adorable? How adorable?”
“In a brotherly way,” I say, lovingly slapping his shoulder.
“Well, if he loves this mystery woman, he should go and get her instead of writing her letters; that’s my opinion,” Sigurd said.
“You might be right about that.”
“I’m also right about your photography,” he said. “If you won’t listen to Suzanna, you should listen to me. You’re that good.”
For some reason, this makes me shut down a bit. “Baby, I can only take so many compliments at once. Give me time to get used to you…used to us…being a thing.”
Sigurd sits up straight. “One thing to understand about me is if you let me love you, then you let me love you all the way. If I’m trying to be your cheerleader, it’s no bullshit.”
“Okay, but you don’t understand. It feels a little bossy. You don’t get to dictate my life.”
“I’m just trying to help.”
I think I get it. He doesn’t mean harm, but the words hit the wrong way.
Patience, Stasi. He’s never been in a real relationship.
“Let’s circle back to that later,” I say, unlocking my phone and seeing my first news alert in days: “Prince Etienne is set to marry in ten days.”
I take a deep breath because I can see this conversation is not going to go well.
“Perhaps we can discuss photography more after you return from your brother’s wedding.”
Sigurd fixes me with a curious gaze. “What?”
I flip my phone around and flash the screen at him. “Look.”
He takes the phone and leans forward, reading the story. After a few seconds of scrolling, he sighs. “Wow. He’s really still doing it.”
“Yep.”
“I’m not going to the wedding.” He hands me my phone and then sits up straight, swinging his legs over the side of the dock.
“Why not?”
