I should have been happy as I took the elevator down and turned onto Lilla Fiskaregatan. The problem was, all these feelings. I didn’t want to have them. There was no way I could go to Asia on the trip of my life in the company of a thirty-two-year-old man. It was unthinkable. And yet it was like something in my chest was aglow, telling me to stop analyzing everything so much and just let stuff happen.
As I crossed the town square with two minutes max until the start of my shift, the heavens opened and rain poured down. It was the first time in weeks.
* * *
It was still raining when I left the store that evening. My plan was to slip around the corner and get the bus at Botulfsplatsen. I had timed it so I wouldn’t end up soaking wet.
But I only made it a few meters.
At the edge of my field of vision, which was limited thanks to my hood, I caught sight of two people under a big umbrella.
“Stella!”
Amina took my arm.
“Come here, you have to hear this.”
Her hair was wet and her eyes were wild.
“What’s going on?”
“Let’s get out of the rain,” she said, tugging at me.
Beside her was Linda Lokind, holding the umbrella in one hand and trying to keep the neckline of her shirt closed with the other.
“What the hell, Amina?”
My fury was all systems go. Had she and Linda Lokind been waiting to ambush me? Were they ganging up on me? I pulled away and stared at her.
“Please, you have to listen to what Linda has to say.”
The rain was streaming down her face. There was something desperate about the whole situation.
“Okay,” I said, looking at Linda. “Make it quick.”
We huddled under the bus stop shelter and Amina swept wet tendrils of hair from her cheeks and urged Linda to tell me what she’d apparently told Amina.
“I was with Chris for three years,” said Linda Lokind. “I thought I had the perfect life. I didn’t even notice that things had started to change.”
She looked at me, her eyes shifty.
“Keep going,” said Amina.
“It happened gradually. A few tiny things at a time. I told myself it wouldn’t keep happening, wouldn’t get worse. I wanted so badly for everything to be okay.”
The rain pattered against the roof of the shelter. A few boys ran to catch a bus, hanging on the door until the driver let them in.
“The first thing I noticed was his jealousy,” said Linda. “At first I thought it was sort of cute, like it proved he really loved me. But it just got stronger and stronger. Once he was about to punch a guy in the face because he thought I’d been flirting with him.”
I looked her straight in the eye. Most people suck at lying, but there was no sign that Linda wasn’t telling the truth.
“I was a student when we met, but he convinced me to drop out. He said it would be better for me to work at his company. I didn’t need an education. That’s about when my parents started to worry, and he got me to break off contact with them. After a while we stopped spending time with my friends too. There was always some excuse. Like if I said someone had invited us over, Chris had just been planning to surprise me with a weekend in Prague. And it kept on like that. In the end I hardly had anyone left. Just Chris.”
I thought of the picture on his Facebook. They’d looked happy. Was this all just rationalization? A grim way to plot her revenge?
“I shrank my whole life until it was all about Chris,” said Linda. “Exactly as he wanted me to. He was slowly breaking me down.”
A bus turned onto the street, water splashing high around its tires. I turned to Amina. I knew she was doing this out of concern, but it was still difficult to accept. What was she thinking? Just showing up out of nowhere, with Linda Lokind in tow. Did Amina trust this woman?
“He’s going to do the same thing to you too,” Linda said, shaking off her umbrella. “He was pathologically suspicious. I didn’t understand at first, but after a few months he showed his jealousy. He wanted to know every detail about what I did, and where, and who with. And in the end, he was still the one who cheated.”
I thought of what Chris had said. I cheated emotionally, but nothing happened.
“I found a text on his phone. From a girl both of us know. Someone I thought was my friend. It was super obvious what was going on between them, but when I confronted Chris, he shoved me up against a wall.”
She closed her umbrella and gazed out at the street.
“He ruptured my spleen. At the hospital we made up a story about how I fell off my bike.”