Confessions Between Us

by Tina T. Kove

  Confessions Between Us

  Between Us #2

  Tina T. Kove

  Confessions Between Us © 2020 by Tina T. Kove

  2020 Edition.

  Published by Arctic Circle Press

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission, except for in the purpose of reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction and as such all characters and situations are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual people, place, or events is coincidental.

  Confessions Between Us is set in Norway, and as such uses British English throughout.

  Contents

  About

  1. Sunday, February 17th

  2. Monday, February 18th

  3. Tuesday, February 19th

  4. Wednesday, February 20th

  5. Thursday, February 21st

  6. Friday, February 22nd

  7. Saturday, February 23rd

  8. Sunday, February 24th

  9. Tuesday, February 26th

  10. Wednesday, February 27th

  11. Friday, March 1st

  12. Saturday, March 2nd

  A note from the author

  Also by Tina T. Kove

  About the Author

  Want more?

  About

  I have a confession to make.

  My name is Alexander Eknes, but everyone just calls me Alex.

  I have a new boyfriend and life’s never been brighter. If only I could figure out what to do with my life, I’d be all good.

  Then a trip away for the winter holiday turns everything upside down. New friendships are always good, but another startling discovery is not quite as welcome. What I thought to be true turns out to maybe be untrue?

  It’s time to come clean, but I don’t know how. I don’t know how to tell my boyfriend I slept with his best friend way before I even met him. Andreas is a chill guy, but even he’s got to have issues with this, right?

  Sunday, February 17th

  I had no idea what to do with my life.

  Everyone else seemed to be so sure, my boyfriend most of all, while I just flitted around. The application for higher education had officially opened. Andreas had already put in the Police Academy, as well as some other choices just in case he didn’t get in.

  And me? Well, I had no idea what to put on mine. Not one single thing.

  I hadn’t planned on this. On being here long enough to worry about further education. And now that I was… I was panicking a little.

  Andreas would be in the army for one year, so I could technically apply for school wherever I wanted. I didn’t want to move to a big city all on my own though, like Oslo where he’d applied for next year.

  Leo’s university college was a good one though. It wasn’t the biggest one in the country, but they had a lot of choices in a lot of different fields. Everything related to drama, theatre, and music were out of the question.

  There were history and religion, the first of which could be an option. I opened it in a new tab as I continued scrolling down the page. Outdoor life and physical education… That was more Andreas’s thing than mine. The last thing of interest was the year courses in languages. English or Norwegian.

  So, three courses that could be of interest. Too bad I didn’t have a clue which one to choose. I could apply for all, but I would still have to choose which one I wanted at the top of the list.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ Ben came wandering through the open door. He plopped down on the bed and lay there staring up at me.

  ‘Looking at courses.’ I opened a tab for both the language alternatives. ‘What do you think fit me best; history, English, or Norwegian?’

  Ben’s eyebrows rose. ‘I don’t know, Alex. What do you want to do?’

  ‘That’s just it. I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you want to work with later?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Ben sighed. ‘Do you know anything at all?’

  ‘Not really.’ Getting through the days on my own and navigating the difficult home life living with my parents had been more than enough to deal with. College or university hadn’t even been on the horizon. ‘What’re you going to do when you graduate?’

  ‘Fuck if I know.’ Ben threw his arms in the air. He was in a T-shirt, so his tattoos were on full display. ‘Still have two months until the application has to be in. That’s plenty of time.’

  ‘That’s rather optimistic of you.’ I tapped a finger nervously on the side of the laptop. ‘What if I pick wrong? Then I’ll waste a whole year and still have to pay back the student loans that come with it.’

  ‘You could work for a year,’ Ben suggested lightly. ‘That’s probably what I’ll do. I don’t want to study anymore. At least not right away. Fourteen years of school is more than enough for me for a while.’

  Wait… what?

  ‘Fourteen?’ I asked, sure he must be wrong. ‘Primary schooling is thirteen years.’

  ‘Not when you have to take the first year of high school over two years.’ He glowered up at the ceiling. ‘All thanks to dyslexia and depression.’

  ‘So you’re one year older than me?’ I was flabbergasted. I’d just assumed Ben was the same age as I was.

  ‘Yep.’ He clicked his tongue. ‘Hence why I’m still stuck here, while my best friend is down in Oslo pursuing his dream.’

  Huh. I had not expected that.

  ‘Do you plan on trying to live off of music?’ He was on the music, dance and drama programme in school. Though he had general studies courses too, so he’d get his general university admissions certification and could pursue higher education if he wanted.

  ‘No.’ Ben snorted. ‘That is so hard. I can’t be arsed with that. I like making music all on my own, and I suppose I enjoy singing, but I don’t want to constantly be out and about promoting and holding concerts all the damn time. So I guess I’m stuck here until I figure out what I do want to do.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong about staying here, is there?’ His tone of voice had taken a bitter turn at the end here.

  ‘Everyone else is moving away. Or has already moved away.’ He pursed his lips. ‘I’ll be the only one stuck here since all of you are off to pursue higher education.’

  ‘But we’ll be back,’ I offered. ‘Holidays and all that.’

  ‘Yeah, right. Because those come around often.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘I have one good friend. He’s been my best friend for years. But he’s off in Oslo pursuing a degree in dance. It’s all he ever talks about. He’s not coming back here often, because there’s so much going on down there even during the holidays. And Andreas is spending a year in the military and they don’t exactly get lots of time off during that time.’

  I didn’t want to think about Andreas being gone for an entire year, but Ben was right.

  ‘He’ll come back when he can. And I’m not going to Oslo—I’m considering Aarvik.’

  ‘You’ll go to Oslo next year when Andreas gets into the Police Academy.’ Ben rolled over now so he was on his stomach. His elbows braced on the bed and he stared down at his hands. ‘That’s, what, nine-ten hours away? That’s a long trip for a weekend.’

  ‘Maybe you’ll have figured out what you want to do by next year,’ I said softly. ‘I’m not planning on going far this year.’

  ‘Aarvik is still five hours away too.’

  ‘But there are busses that go hourly. That’s a trip that can be done for a weekend.’ I tried to sound positive, to lift his mood a little. It wasn’t something I was used to—I was usually the one who had to have his mood lifted.

  Andreas was good at that. Where was he when I needed him?

  ‘Everything’s changing,’ B
en said then, voice low. ‘And I don’t like change.’

  ‘Maria’s still here.’ I tried to come up with positive things but that wasn’t exactly something I was good at either, having a generally negative outlook on things. At the start of last month, I’d planned on ending my life, after all. ‘And you’ve got that guy you’re sleeping with, right?’

  ‘What, Tarjei?’ Ben threw me a narrowed look.

  ‘Yeah.’ Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned him.

  ‘Andreas tells you everything, doesn’t he,’ he muttered.

  ‘Actually, it was Yvonne. She was drunk.’ Kristina and her friend had been very drunk and very talkative and very forthcoming with information.

  He glanced at me again now. ‘Tarjei cheated on her. With me.’

  ‘I know. I don’t think she could quite make up her mind if she should be angry about that or not.’ It’d been a little funny.

  ‘It’s just sex.’ Ben shrugged. ‘Nothing more.’

  ‘He cheated on his girlfriend with you,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Yeah, because I’m great in bed.’ He grinned wryly but quickly turned his head down again, smile fading. ‘He’s Nik’s older brother.’

  ‘And Nik’s your best friend?’ I still hadn’t met him. I’d always assumed he was busy since he hadn’t been around to visit Ben in the month I’d lived here—but now it turned out he didn’t even live in town. That explained why I also hadn’t seen him with Ben at school.

  ‘Yeah.’ Ben’s answer was quick and short. ‘I like Nik. And it doesn’t ever fucking go away.’

  That admission surprised me. ‘You’re in love with your best friend, yet you sleep with his brother?’

  ‘Don’t judge me,’ he snapped, then he sighed. ‘Sorry, I just—it just turned out that way. I lost my virginity to Tarjei on my sixteenth birthday.’

  ‘You’ve been sleeping with him for three years?’ That was a long time. ‘No, wait—’ He was a year older than me. ‘Four years?’

  ‘Yeah, pretty much.’ He put his chin in his palm, gaze flickering. ‘Almost four years, if you want to get technical. My birthday isn’t until March.’

  ‘Your birthday’s in March?’ I didn’t know why it surprised me. ‘Mine’s the third.’

  ‘Damn.’ He cast me a wry look. ‘You’re seven days before me.’

  ‘Now I feel really young,’ I teased.

  It brought a grin to his face, as I’d hoped it would.

  ‘Why are you sleeping with him if you don’t like him though?’ I couldn’t quite let the subject of his sex-life go. I should let it go, it wasn’t any of my business, but he was sharing, so…

  ‘Because he’s good in bed.’ Ben shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘If you want to get with Nik, already having been with his brother isn’t such a good idea.’

  ‘I’m never going to get with Nik.’ Ben shook his head. ‘I’m not Nik’s type.’

  ‘What’s his type?’

  ‘More masculine guys. Andreas, for example, is Nik’s type.’

  I blinked and for the briefest second, I worried if he’d ever been with Andreas… but then I remembered I was the first guy Andreas had ever been with and I calmed immediately down again.

  It was stupid of me to get upset about it anyway. I knew Andreas had been with girls before. Hell, we even talked about it. The differences between girls and, well, me.

  ‘If I stop sleeping with Tarjei though,’ Ben continued, ‘I won’t get laid, ever. There’s, like, no gay guys in this bloody town.’

  ‘I’m gay.’ I jabbed my thumb against my chest.

  ‘And taken.’ He turned his head to look at me now. ‘How did you find guys to sleep with? I only know about me and Nik who’s openly gay at school. Or did you go for older guys?’

  ‘Uhh.’ Well. ‘At work, I guess.’

  He lifted his eyebrows in wonder. ‘You shag your coworkers?’

  ‘I’ve shagged two coworkers. But regularly.’ And Glenn, but I didn’t mention that.

  ‘Why’d you stop shagging them?’ Ben turned over on his side, giving me his full attention.

  ‘They stopped shagging me, was more like it,’ I muttered, not wanting to talk about this. ‘One moved off to university early last summer and I haven’t seen him since. And the other one decided he was straight.’

  ‘Ugh.’ Ben rolled his eyes. ‘Arseholes who think it’s fun to step over to the gay side only to chicken out and go back to their safe straight life like nothing’s happened disgust me.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I couldn’t agree more.

  ‘Like you can decide to be straight.’ Ben frowned now. ‘It’s not a choice. You’re gay or you’re straight. Or bi, I suppose. But you can’t just have sex with someone of the same gender, then suddenly decide you don’t want to like that anymore. That’s the road to misery if you ask me. That arsehole probably still likes to be fucked up the arse but is too scared to admit it. So he deserves his misery, I guess.’

  I refrained from telling him that I was the one taking it up the arse. I’d never been allowed near his, that was for sure.

  ‘Change doesn’t have to be bad,’ I said then, bringing the conversation back to what it had originally been about. My sex-life was a minefield. I didn’t want to slip up and out Glenn. Although Ben had already done that, seeing as he had slept with him too.

  That had only been once though, and Glenn and I had had a thing for fourteen days. So if I came out and said that, he’d be outed for sure. A one-time thing… he could still be straight then. My coworker apparently was, so there was that.

  ‘What?’ Ben seemed to have forgotten all about our previous subject.

  ‘Change. Higher education. Even though things are changing in a few months doesn’t mean that change has to be bad.’ I might be trying to convince myself as much as him. ‘Aarvik University College has courses in music. You could go there too. Get away from here. Meet new people. I bet there are loads of gay people in Aarvik. It has over six-thousand students every year. Statistically, not all of those are straight.’

  Ben’s frown deepened, but he wasn’t angry about bi-curious people deciding to go back to being straight. Now it was more of a contemplative frown.

  ‘I hate studying.’ He sighed. ‘But I hate it here too. I don’t know which is worse.’

  ‘You can at least apply,’ I pressed gently. ‘It doesn’t mean you have to say yes if you get an offer. You can always say no if you change your mind. But it would suck to realise in the summer you do want to move away and study, and then not being able to because you didn’t apply anywhere.’

  ‘That is true.’ He still didn’t sound particularly enthused, but he seemed thoughtful. ‘But studying is hard for me. I get shitty grades no matter how hard I try. I can’t even write without it being riddled with spelling mistakes. It sucks and I hate it and I don’t want to subject myself to it anymore.’

  I didn’t know what it was like to be dyslexic, but I could imagine it would be frustrating.

  ‘I can’t say I know what that feels like,’ I said in a low voice. ‘The only class I’m not good at is PE and that’s because I skip it. I’ll be lucky to get a passing grade.’

  ‘If you fail, you won’t get your general university admissions certification,’ he reminded me.

  ‘I know. I have to do something about that. I can’t fail and have to repeat a whole year just for PE.’ Maybe I should have an actual chat with my PE teacher instead of avoiding him.

  ‘That would suck.’ He gave me a furtive glance. ‘However, it would mean you having to stay here for another year.’

  ‘Are you hoping I fail?’ I shoved him gently.

  ‘A tiny little bit, maybe.’ He laughed. ‘No, but for real. I don’t want anyone to ever fail. It sucks.’

  I failed at life, and my plans last month could attest to that, but I had never failed in school.

  ‘If you need a study partner, I’m here.’

  ‘How sweet of you.’ He didn’t seem to take the of
fer to heart though.

  ‘I mean it. I’m only good at two things in life, and I can help you with one of them.’

  He looked up at me with narrowed eyes. ‘What’s the second thing? No, wait, I can guess. You don’t have to say it.’

  I wasn’t going to say it either. But my suddenly red face probably spoke for me.

  ‘You’re too sweet, Alex.’ He shook his head as he pushed himself up into a sitting position. ‘Talking about sex embarrasses you? Or is it just when it’s your own sex-life?’

  It was mostly my own. It was more interesting and less embarrassing to talk about him.

  ‘Speaking of your sex-life. Where is your other half?’ Ben looked around curiously as if Andreas would suddenly pop up out of nowhere.

  ‘He’s out with Glenn and Peter.’

  ‘And you didn’t want to go?’ He looked at me now, all intense without blinking. ‘You can’t keep avoiding Glenn. You need to kiss and make up.’

  I snorted at that. ‘As if Glenn and I will ever kiss.’ Except we had. A lot. Until he broke it off.

  ‘It’s a saying.’ Ben rolled his eyes. ‘Although, if someone does decide to kiss him, maybe it’ll loosen him up. God knows he needs it, that angry twat.’

  ‘I know it’s a saying,’ I mumbled. ‘But Glenn can hardly look at me, much less kiss me.’ Us not speaking to each other was probably as good as it got now. Even becoming friends was likely too much to hope for.

  I wouldn’t mind being friends—but Glenn had made it clear he didn’t like me anymore. And I didn’t go where I wasn’t wanted, hence why I was at home panicking over studies while Andreas was out doing… whatever he did with his friends.

  ‘Glenn’s an arse. It’s just how it is. Ignore him.’ Ben waved his hand.