Page 95 of Top Shelf

Ebba is still looking at the ring. Then at Heidi, then over to me. I know that look.

“You bought this yourself, Viktorliko?”

“Yes.”

“And she chose it?”

“No.”

Ebba tuts, then mutters in Swedish under her breath.

Heidi glances between us. “What?”

I sigh. “She says a ring should suit the woman wearing it.”

“Well.” Heidi looks down at the diamond again, her mouth curving as she turns it beneath the light. “This one definitely says I married a professional hockey player with poor impulse control.”

“I do not have poor impulse control.”

“You bought me a diamond that can be seen from Wyoming.”

Ebba only smiles and watches Heidi’s hand as she lowers it back to her lap, but Freja laughs gleefully and nods through the screen. “I like her.”

“You have known her for six minutes,” I say.

“Yes,” Freja says. “That is enough to know.”

Heidi’s hand slides into mine under the throw blanket. She seems relaxed enough, but even more so since she’s realized my family’s noise is more excited chaos than judgement. They interrupt, argue, and are unabashedly themselves, and my grandmother tells Heidi she must come for Midsommar because flowers are better in June.

When we finally say goodbye, Heidi has agreed to Sweden. And when the laptop closes, she looks at me for a long moment.

“What?”

“Your version of terrifying is very different from mine,” she says.

I know what she means, and I also know better than to put words around the difference when she has only just started letting me see it. So I say nothing as her pink-socked foot nudges my thigh beneath the blanket, and close my hand around hers instead.

Before bed, my phone buzzes against the coffee table.

Chase: END OF SEASON KARAOKE NIGHT!!!!!!

Chase: Friday

Chase: Mandatory morale

Chase: Partners invited

Chase: No cowards

Reid Hutchison: You’ve used the word mandatory incorrectly.

Jake: Again.

Chase: I know what it means

Eli: Based on available evidence, no you don’t.

Chase: Hutchy is singing Backstreet Boys.