They Thought I Was Asleep, So I Let Them novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Breakfast

Morning is polite until Clemens and Pia ring the bell, and Clemens tells Marit to ask the two men how long they have known.

At seven the next morning I woke on the sofa and kept my eyes shut for a full minute.

The blanket was tucked behind my knees, the way Nils had left it.

I could still feel Florian's hand between my legs.

I could still feel the exact place where he had stopped.

In the kitchen a coffee machine hissed, and a spoon clinked against a cup.

I sat up, pushed my hair back and walked into the kitchen.

"Morning," Nils said.

He stood at the counter in a grey t-shirt, with a tea towel over his shoulder.

He looked at my face and nowhere else, which was kind of him, and I hated it.

"There's coffee," Florian said from the table.

He was reading something on his tablet, and he didn't look up.

His sleeves were pushed to his elbows.

I stared at his hands until I remembered where I was.

"Thank you," I said. "For the sofa."

"You slept?" Nils asked.

"Like the dead."

Nobody smiled.

Florian turned a page on the tablet.

"Good," he said. "You needed it."

I sat down and drank the coffee.

I did not taste any of it.

Nils put a plate in front of me, two fried eggs and a thick slice of dark bread.

"Eat," he said. "You didn't touch the cake."

"I made the cake."

"That's why you didn't touch it."

I laughed, and it came out wrong, and I covered my mouth.

Florian looked up then, for the first time.

His eyes were dark and steady.

For one moment I was sure he could see the whole night on my face.

Then he looked at his tablet again.

I ate the eggs. I ate all of them.

Something in my chest unclenched around the third bite, and I was horrified to find that it was gratitude.

The doorbell rang.

It rang again, in short pushes, a ring I knew.

Nils's face changed. He wiped his hands very slowly on the towel.

"Don't," he said to me. "Stay there."

"It's him."

"I know who it is."

Florian was already on his feet.

I got up anyway.

They went down the hall ahead of me, and I followed in my crumpled dress and bare feet.

Nils opened the door.

Clemens stood on the landing in yesterday's suit, unshaven, with his hair pushed back and his eyes red.

Pia stood half a step behind him in a grey coat, holding her phone against her chest.

"Marit," Clemens said, in the soft wounded voice he used on waiters who had made a mistake.

"Thank God. I've been calling you since midnight."

"My phone was off."

"I wanted to talk. Properly. Without sixty people."

"You didn't mind sixty people yesterday."

His jaw tightened, and then it smoothed.

"That was a mistake. A terrible, panicked mistake.

"Pia and I should have told you privately. I'm sorry."

Pia stepped forward and put her hand on his arm.

"Marit, please," she said, with tears in her eyes.

"I didn't know how to say it. I've been sick about it for weeks."

"Weeks," I said.

"I never wanted you to find out like that."

I looked at the small hand curled over the sleeve of the man I had planned to marry.

She had straightened my neckline. She had held my hands.

She had told me to say I was sure.

"You told me to say I was sure," I said, "and I did it for you."

"I know." Her voice cracked. "I know. I'm so sorry."

I opened my mouth to say something terrible, and found I had nothing in it.

Nils stood at my left shoulder and Florian at my right.

I could feel the warmth of both of them through my dress.

Neither one said a word, and neither one touched me.

Clemens saw it.

His eyes went from Nils to Florian and back, and something cold came into his face under the tears.

"You took her in," he said slowly. "Last night. The two of you."

"She needed a bed," Florian said.

"Of course she did." Clemens smiled a little. "And how was the sofa?"

Nobody answered.

He looked at me, and his voice dropped, intimate and bitter.

"You should ask them something, Marit, before you decide who's the villain here."

"Clemens," Nils said. "Go home."

"Ask them," Clemens said, "how long they've known."

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