Chapter Fourteen

Fourteen

T he autumn weather in Denmark can be truly awful. Especially if biking is your means of transportation.

I love my new light blue bike with a charming basket decorated with fake flowers, but I don't love pedaling her up the bridges when it's raining and so cold and windy my face and fingers freeze to ice. I love my scarlet raincoat, but I don't love dripping half the water pouring from the sky onto the floor whenever I get inside and take it off.

Erik is ready with a cloth for me to clean the floor when I get home soaked on the last Friday of October, the day before the cooking contest. I went to the office earlier than usual so I could be home early to work on Erik's project.

It hasn't been easy to handle both a full-time job and a side project as complex as Erik's app, but I've been managing it. I don't care that I get too tired and there is no time for anything else in my routine. I'm excited about what we've been doing, and I can't wait to shove our wonderful app in Martin's face. Number one most downloaded in app stores. It will happen, I'm sure.

Erik has done a lot already, so I'm jumping in on a half-finished product. He has coded the basic features, and the core structure is there. I should be focusing on UI and UX, on making all the art and animation we'll need. In reality, though, there's so much more he'll need help with. There are advanced features to design, game mechanics to plan and improve, user tests to perform, bugs to find... It will be challenging, but he's well aware of that.

Erik gave me access to the project files, I tested what is playable, then suggested a few things to improve what he's made. He's been listening to me, and when he disagrees, he has strong reasons for it. Most of the time, I end up agreeing with his point of view. I keep in mind all the time that it is his project, but he has been so welcoming and open to feedback that it doesn't feel like that.

It feels like something we are building together.

Erik helps me wipe the floor, takes my raincoat to hang in the shower, and hands me a towel so I can dry myself.

"Terrible weather," I complain.

"I'm making tea to warm you up." Erik goes to the kitchen and fetches a teapot and two cups. He puts it all on the table next to our computers, sketches, and notes.

This is what our dining room has looked like for the last two weeks. When we eat, we move things aside to make space for our plates, and often we don't even close the laptops and keep discussing our work between bites.

Erik has also not been cooking to save time. Either he makes a large amount of food when I'm not home to freeze so we can reheat the portions in the microwave another evening, or we make a quick sm?rrebr?d with whatever is in the fridge, or we order takeout.

After a quick hot shower, I jump into my cozy pants and favorite home sweater. When I approach Erik from behind to look at the progress he's made when I was away, he says, "You need to change your shampoo."

I smell my hair, frowning. My wavy locks are a little below the shoulders now, a tone of dark brown as close to my original color as possible. When Erik saw me arrive from the hairdresser last week, he gave me a genuine smile and said "perfect" after I asked what he thought.

"What's wrong with my shampoo?" I keep sniffing the ends of my hair, detecting nothing but a lovely fruity and floral scent. The corners of Erik's lips stretch up.

"It distracts me too much."

The butterflies in my stomach awaken, and I smile. He can't see it, his eyes on the computer screen.

Sometimes Erik lets these little comments slip. At first, it seemed he was a bit embarrassed, as if he'd found out too late he'd said the thought out loud. But he doesn't seem to mind anymore.

A lot of bridges have been burned and many boundaries have been crossed since we started working on the project.

In our busy new routine, we don't pay attention to what we wear, which means I often catch him walking around in boxer briefs and a worn T-shirt full of holes, and I might sit at the table for a combo of breakfast and work while wearing pajamas.

We end up in the bathroom together sometimes when I'm late, and he is there with the door open, brushing his teeth or his hair, and I need the sink, the hairdryer, or the mirror. We share the drying rack too, our socks and underwear hanging side by side.

We also started to share expenses. He uses the things I buy just as I use his whenever we okay it for each other—an act that is becoming less regulated the more time passes.

We agreed to clean the apartment together once per week, and on the two Wednesdays we tried it, we listened to music through his powerful speakers, brainstorming for the project while teaming up to dust the shelves and clean the bathroom and the kitchen.

We mock each other's habits now. We say crap and laugh at stupid things when we are both tired and working late at night.

And sometimes he says things that could be flirtatious, but we just laugh at it because our new intimacy allows for it.

It's incredible what ten days of intense work in our living quarters has done for our friendship.

"I need to show you this," Erik says, looking at me. "Took me the whole day."

I take a seat by his side and let him present his work.

We sit shoulder to shoulder many hours per day, but whenever I'm leaning in to look at something on his computer—or he is putting his head next to mine to see what I'm doing—I must force myself to focus. My mind drifts away to dangerous places as my body reacts to his overwhelming presence.

And it's addicting.

I tell myself all the time that it's the project that thrills me. It's the pleasure I feel working on something exciting that makes me impatient to arrive home in the evening.

But it's hard to convince myself of that when the feels come.

Sometimes, it takes a while. I can sit at this table for many minutes, or hours, totally immersed in the work before they hit me.

The shivers. The butterflies. The fireworks. The whole darn circus.

It's usually triggered when he leans too close, his breath tickling my skin. When his laugh chimes like Christmas bells next to my ear. When his smile grows until he shows his white teeth, and a little dimple appears on his cheek. When he is freshly showered and his delicious cologne kills a few of my neurons.

Right now, it might have started so quickly because of what he said about my shampoo. I distract him. Could it be in the same way that he distracts me ?

I don't dare let my thoughts go in this direction. Things are going too well. What we have, this new friendship, is uncomplicated. So long as we keep it as is.

He is ridiculously hot, and my body reacts. So what? I can still work with him and silently enjoy the effects. I try not to be greedy. I try never to think that if touching his shoulder with mine feels good, imagine what it would feel like to have his hands on me.

Oh boy. No. Stop.

That's how it goes. Every day. It's tiring, good, scary, and thrilling. I let my heart leap and warm up in his presence. Sometimes I steal a harmless touch with a silly or "accidental" excuse. I allow my eyes to feast on his beauty and my ears to celebrate at the sound of his voice. And it's all good in those hours when I have him all to myself.

"It's great, Erik," I tell him, meaning it.

Unlike how it is at my work, here I'm not afraid to be honest. I don't have a reputation to keep, a status to maintain, or people to please. When something is trash, I tell Erik—in a joking way so it won't hurt, but he doesn't mind. He's learned to expect my truthful statements and even laughs in anticipation, imagining what I will say.

"What's the catch?" He raises an eyebrow, smiling.

"Nothing. I like it. Let's go for it."

He pours tea for us, a smile of satisfaction brightening his face. "We're getting there then."

"We are," I say proudly, and we tea-toast. "It's funny to think that the day I matched with you on Cinder, I thought it'd be cool if there was a dating app in which looks mattered less and it would be more about finding like-minded people."

"That's what Love Birds is about, and now you're helping me fulfill this vision. Our vision."

He looks at me with the cup of tea in his hands, steam spiraling in front of him. He is staring, and I stare back, both of us sipping at the same time, spying on each other over the rims of our identical cups. There is almost no distance between our bodies, and something about the way he is looking at me makes my butterflies go wild.

"I think we can make the mini games better though," I say, trying to keep my mind on the project, not on its creator.

"Agreed. Let's try to come up with some new ideas."

Essentially, the app is a game. You are a bird trying to meet another bird, but you don't get other people's profile information right away. You slowly discover who the real person is behind each bird avatar. By interacting with others, you gradually give information about yourself and learn something about the other players. You join matches and tournaments based on your location and interests, so you are more likely to meet a person who will be a good match for you. You then invite another player for private mini games, which might lead to an individual chat room, which might lead to a date.

We still have a lot to figure out, like how to monetize the app. Many of our ideas are good but too ambitious, and we must often take a step back and rethink things we believed were indispensable.

What is essential to us is that people have fun together before talking about themselves. We want gaming pals to fall in love and meet in the real world.

"What really motivated you to create Love Birds, Erik?"

He looks at me, surprised by my question.

"I know you didn't like Cinder and other similar apps," I continue. "But I want to know, why dating apps? Out of all the things you could make."

He rests his chin on his hand, thoughtful. "I don't know, I just..." He pauses, and I wait. "My sister, Frida, was very into those apps some years ago. She was only seventeen back then, and I was twenty-four and living with my parents for a period while I was writing my bachelor's thesis. I ended up, you know, trying to see how the apps worked so I could be a good big brother and protect her."

I mirror his smile.

"Frida told her friends in high school that I'd made a profile on Cinder. She set it up and took my picture, and I let her do it for fun. One day, she made me give glass shoes to a few girls, and later, when I started getting bombarded with matches, I found out that some of the girls knew my sister from school and were lying about their age in the app to get college-age guys interested in them."

He snorts like an old man who lightly reproaches young people.

"After this, a number of Frida's friends I'd never met before started coming to our house all the time. They kept whispering about me, giving me looks..." He shakes his head, uncomfortable. "I hated that kind of popularity. And I hated how my sister's friends were falling in love with me, or being plain obsessed, because I'd made that stupid profile."

"How sad for you, chased by a bunch of girls," I mock, and he makes a dismissive motion with his hand, smiling shyly.

"They were my little sister's friends. Underage teens."

"You can't blame them," I say, shrugging. "You are..." illegally attractive "...a well-built guy with a cool degree." I look down, feeling hot in my cheeks.

Erik smirks, shaking his head. "The Erik Storm on Cinder was not me ," he says. "It was just an enticing bio and a nice picture. Well, at least for them, because I hated it." He laughs, and I follow. "That's when it dawned on me how unlikely you are to meet a partner for life in such a shallow environment, where people are creating fake images of themselves, and we are making decisions on who to meet based on that."

"I once met with a guy who looked like Gaston in his picture, and in reality was more like LeFou. Not that I missed a lot because he was a Gaston in the end, personality wise. And that was a no-no for me."

Erik laughs.

"And there was also that time when I matched with a guy who looked like a surfer dude and turned out to be a grumpy Viking."

Erik laughs even more. "Is that me?"

"What do you think?" I support my face in my hand too, each of us facing the other. I blink at him, he blinks at me, and time stands still. "So, you changed your picture into one where people can barely see it's you to check who wouldn't be scared away by an unattractive backpacking surfer?"

"Unattractive?" He narrows his eyes, falsely offended.

I feel myself blushing, but I stand my ground. "Well, there might obviously be people who are into that stuff." I shrug.

"That stuff ?" He arches one eyebrow now. "You mean backpacking surfer dudes or grumpy Vikings?" There is a glint of amusement in his eyes as he teases me. "You seem to have put a lot of thought into those descriptions."

"And what are you implying with that?" I say, our eyes attracted to each other like magnets. "That I give you too much thought?"

Erik is the one to shrug this time. "That's why I need to make Love Birds. Cinder is all about how you evaluate a picture."

He breaks eye contact at last. I wonder if I escalated our flirting too abruptly and made a pleasant moment turn awkward. You weren't flirting, Sol , I tell myself. And it's more likely that you hurt his feelings than enticed him.

"I need the birds animated as soon as possible, Sol," Erik says, returning to our work.

I straighten in my chair, taking a deep breath. My mind is not ready to focus on the project yet. It's still full of Erik—his smell, his voice, his translucent blue eyes, his teasing smile...

I pull my laptop closer and fill my cup with tea. I fight against my inappropriate thoughts.

And eventually, I win.