Page 91 of The Winter Princess
I breathe, turning the car off.
“I’ll get the box,” she says. “Do you need help with the tree?”
I grunt a negative, undoing the twine. Pulling the tree from the roof of the car, I tap the trunk against the pavement to rid it of misty droplets and fir needles insufficiently committed to making the trek to my flat.
As we climb the stairs, her phone pings and vibrates.
“How can you put up with that?” I ask, unlocking the door, and leading her down the hall. I’ve examined the question from every angle, deeming it safe before I allow it into the wild to pollinate Freja’s possible answers.
“Oh, sorry,” she breathes, unwrapping herself from the coat and scarf, folding them over a chair, and pushing the sleeves of a soft white sweater to her elbows. “It’s my sister.”
“Alma?” I ask. Alma is the one in the news, with the fiancé who hasn’t returned from Lijuela. The one asking parliament for permission to marry a man everyone knows her mother picked out for her. The one whose wedding is spoken of endlessly.
Freja shakes her head.
I will never tire of the way her hair picks up the light. I frown at the thought. My plan to disguise my feelings is off to a poor start.
“It’s Ella. She keeps me up on things.” Holding her phone out, she bounces it lightly in her fingers.Take it. See.
I do, scrolling down the list of messages.
@Morrissey_is_Murder: Freja is the new Clara. #ThinkAboutIt #TabloidFodder #TeamFrejaGetsSome
@JelloBlogger/GovWatcher: FYI, Torbald’s policy would push Oskar Velasquez out of the country. #NationalTreasure #ReformImmigrationNow #HotPaviansofSondmark
@SamuraiMamacita: What do we think, fam? Is this a staged romance or an innocent fall? Why was it off-screen when the whole snowball thing was front and center? Why are they teasing us? Why is the Queen allowing it? #questions #ReformImmigrationNow
@trashpandaprincess: If our skies were full of drones, we would have that out-of-frame footage already. #TheCaseforUniversalSurveillance #ReformImmigrationNow
The last has a screenshot of the toppled tree, an expanse of snow, and our boots tangled together. It’s a suggestive image, and I lift my head to see Freja regarding me closely. Disguise. It’s best to set her back on her feet and me on mine.
I hand the phone over. “Is this a problem?”
Freja laughs. “All publicity is good publicity, right?”
We’ve both been playing games, dancing right on the edge of outright flirtation, knowing in the back of our minds that it increases our visitors. I don’t know what she means anymore. Worse, I know exactly what I mean.
“Mm. We should get started.”
Soon, we are at our self-designated tasks, taking a few still pictures and short video clips as we set the scene up.
“Paige, play Christmas carols,” she says, making herself at home. She peels off her boots and pads around the flat in wool socks, moving to and from the kitchen with a charcuterie board and mugs ofGlogg.
“You look like you know what you’re doing,” she says, assessing my progress.
“My father didn’t want to be the expert,” I reply, wrestling the tree into a stand.
Freja is untangling a string of lights. She doesn’t answer or indicate that she’s waiting for me to finish the thought. Nevertheless, she’s listening with her whole body.
Unexpected emotion lodges in my throat. “When I cleared Christmas away, just after he passed, I dumped everything into boxes and shoved them in a closet. I’m sure things are broken.”
I nod, returning my attention to the tree—to get it as level as my father would have liked. I turn the tree so a snapped branch is to the back.
“Our trees have always been big,” she says, plugging a string of lights into an outlet, testing them. “I’d get tired before we finished trimming it and run away to read.”
I like imagining Freja as a young girl, with two bright braids running down her back, resisting group activities.
“Help?” she says, and we pass the bundle of lights around the tree, our hands brushing as it goes back and forth. There’s no witty banter. We’re not even flirting. But the simple rhythm of our work makes me finely attuned to her.
