The Pacifist

by Elin Peer

“I’m not going to tell you anything. Read it, and then we can compare notes later.”

  She was on her way to my bedroom, when I called out, “But Mila.”

  “Yes?” She turned in the doorway.

  “It’s our secret, okay?”

  Her smile just about blew me over. Anyone could see that Mila had beautiful and symmetrical features, but not many got to see the special smile she shared with the few selected people that she loved. It was an open window into the sweetness that was Mila. The warmth that radiated from her along with the pure excitement in her eyes gave her a special glow. When she smiled like this, I forgot to breathe. “Don’t worry, Jonah, you can trust me.”

  And then she was gone.

  I blinked my eyes, bringing myself out of the temporary trance I was in and shaking my head to get my brain going again.

  Cole called once more, asking if I had contacted the traffic registry.

  “Yes, they promised to send over what they had on the drone that the fire fighters saw.”

  “Well, did they?” His tone was impatient.

  “Sorry, let me check. Yes, I’ve got it… umm, okay, the drone was used by a person called Enna Johnson, but it says the information has been edited.”

  “What do you mean it’s been edited?”

  “I don’t know. There’s no log of previous information. Only the name Enna Johnson.”

  “So not Anne?”

  “No.” I narrowed my eyes. “Wait a minute.”

  “What is it, do you know her?”

  “Enna is a peculiar name, isn’t it?”

  “So?”

  “It’s also Anne spelled backward.”

  Cole was quiet.

  “What if Anne changed her name?”

  He groaned. “At this point I wouldn’t put it past her. Is there at least a detailed itinerary so we can see where the drone went exactly and what stops it made?”

  I scrolled down the report. Yes, there’s an address and a travel log.”

  “What does it say?”

  “That the drone had a stop at Nostalgia Park at ten past two a.m. It took off again seventeen minutes later.”

  Cole spoke fast, “What about a picture from the drone? They all have cameras. Do you see anything on the report?”

  Scrolling all the way down, I frowned. “Sorry, it says the camera was malfunctioning.”

  “Huh. That’s convenient for the arsonist. If Anne is behind the fire, then we’ll need some kind of proof to show people how unstable she is. I just saw her give another interview and her stories get more bizarre and disturbing every minute she’s in the spotlight. She talked about the sex club and made it sound like we’re a bunch of perverts.”

  I leaned back in my chair. “She must be talking about you then.” It was an attempt at lifting the mood, but my joke didn’t make Cole laugh.

  “Let’s keep digging to get to the bottom of this. I’m going to call the staff at Happy Souls. Anne lived there, remember?”

  “But that was years ago, Cole. She was a teenager then.”

  “I know, but maybe they can tell us something we don’t know.”

  “Okay, let me dig around and see if I can find some pictures of the passenger of that drone. If it’s Anne, we’ll need to confront her about it.”

  Cole’s growl expressed how I felt about that possibility. Anne was three years younger than me. As a child I had adored her, but she and Cole never got along. She was as headstrong as him and would always challenge his authority in our family. I had loved Anne but never the drama she created. A memory of my asking her to pass me the salad came back to me. We had all been confused when she broke down crying, claiming we were all yelling at her. Confronting her with arson would no doubt be a dramatic affair.

  CHAPTER 10

  Passion

  Jonah

  I spent my evening calling around and digging through Community Cams, a website that offered access to surveillance cameras in public spaces. The more I watched people go about their lives, Mila’s words about privacy stirred something in me and I was beginning to find it slightly disturbing that we never asserted our right to privacy.

  Our whole society was based on the expectation that every citizen conformed and followed the law, and now that my family had been caught breaking the law, I was resenting the level of control that the system had.

  The only positive thing was that it came in handy now that I was looking for the arsonist. The address from the traffic registry provided me with a starting point and two hours into my investigation, Cole and I had talked four more times, and we had confirmed three things.

  1: Anne hadn’t lived in Happy Souls, a well-known place of reflection, since she was a teenager. Despite the helpful staff and the tranquil surroundings of the place, she had chosen to check out and had never returned.

  2: Anne had been the passenger in that drone. We had a picture of her getting into it to prove it.

  3: Anne had edited her name in the original booking the morning after the fire.

  It was a bit past midnight when I went to bed. “You still reading? I thought you would be asleep by now.”

  “It’s this book. I can’t put it down, Jonah.”

  Popping a tooth cleaner in my mouth, I undressed down to my briefs, and smiled as I got into my side of the bed. “How far did you get?”

  “Chapter seven.”

  “Did they kiss yet?”

  Mila put down the book and turned to face me. “Yes. And it made my heart speed up, just reading about the way his tongue touched hers.”

  “I thought you would be disgusted by that.”

  Mila shook her head. “No. I’ve read about it in other books and lately I’ve been thinking about what it would feel like.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find out when you marry. After all, passion means everything to you.” Her comment from yesterday about not wanting to marry me because there was no passion between us still stung and made my answer come out in a dry tone.

  Her face fell and she pulled her comforter higher. “I’m not going to apologize for that.”

  Rolling onto my back, I rubbed my face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I gave a long exhalation before answering, “Cole and I found out that it was Anne who set the building on fire.”

  “Shut up. You sure?”

  “Yes. And it makes me angry. What did we ever do to her?” My voice rose a little. “What if that fire had jumped from the storage building to the house we slept in? Why does she want to destroy us like that?”

  Mila didn’t interrupt me but just listened as I continued.

  “Remember when we talked about emotions and I said that I don’t agree with how we’re taught to suppress our feelings? This is exactly what I was referring to.”

  “Okay.”

  “We have every right to be angry. I’m tired of people telling us that anger serves no purpose.”

  “You mean teachers?”

  “Yes. Every child in this country is told that anger doesn’t solve anything. All we learn is how to suppress it and not to engage in negative emotions.”

  “But what’s wrong with changing your state of mind and focusing on things that make you happy?”

  I was boiling over with frustration and that made my hands swing around as I spoke. “There’s nothing wrong with being happy, if you are happy. But if someone sets fire to your house, shouldn’t you be allowed to be angry? I think we’ve been lied to. I think anger serves a purpose. Your dad told me this before his accident; he said that anger is his fuel to fight injustice.”

  “But he’s talking about people who plot to kill our family.”

  “What’s the difference? Anne is trying to destroy my family. The Council is upholding outdated laws that prohibit our free speech and freedom to live the lives we wish to. None of that is right and just thinking about it makes me angry.”

  Mila lifted her head. “Do you want me to give you a massage? Maybe that would help.”

&
nbsp; “Why? Does my anger make you feel uncomfortable? You of all people should be able to handle it, Mila.

  She lifted her shoulders in a small shrug. “It’s what I do at home too. I’m the peacekeeper in our family. You just seem very tense, Jonah.”

  “That’s because I am tense.” My voice was louder than intended and it made Mila pull back. She had never seen me like this because I’d never been under this much pressure.

  The fact that Anne had turned on our family like this was shocking. It was likely that Emanuela would need to leave the country to be with Hunter, and that Cole would have to spend months in a place of reflection. Nostalgia Park could be lost and then there was the ominous likelihood that my time as a Councilman might be cut short. It was depressing to think that all my ambitious dreams of changing the world into a better place would go up in smoke. I sighed as another huge point of stress made my lungs feel like a hand was squeezing them tight. In thirty-eight days, I would lose Mila. The woman I loved would marry a large warrior who would be as protective and possessive as all other Nmen. It was a given that there would be no more alone time between us. No more hugs or kisses. Of all the things that stressed me out, losing Mila was soul-wrecking to me.

  “I’m sorry about Anne, Jonah. You don’t deserve any of it.”

  My chest weighed a hundred kilos and it made it hard to breathe, but I forced my words out. “If I’m completely honest, it’s not just because of Anne.” I met Mila’s large blue eyes that shone with concern for me. “You telling me that you’re thinking about kissing… well, it brought back part of our conversation from last night. You know, the part where you said you need passion in a marriage.”

  “Yes?”

  “It felt like a rejection and this is what happens, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The subtle passive-aggressiveness that we Motlanders do so well. I was hurt by your rejection and then when you brought it up, I felt frustrated. Not enough to confront you, because that’s not our style, is it? But enough to take some small punch at you verbally. And now I feel bad about that.”

  She almost had a unibrow from the concern on her face. “Don’t feel bad. I’m not mad at you, Jonah.”

  “No, of course you aren’t, because that would be a first for you, wouldn’t it?” I instantly regretted the sharpness of my tone and covered my face with both hands. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”

  Mila pulled at my hands. “At least we can talk about it. At home people smash things against the wall or shout when they get angry.”

  I calmed myself. “Yeah, I’ve noticed. They act out while we look in.”

  Mila tilted her head. “I never thought about it like that. You’re right. Maybe instead of acting out I could teach them to look in and reflect more.”

  “Looking in and reflecting is never a bad idea, but neither is speaking up when your boundaries are broken.” I shook my head. “There has to be a middle ground somewhere.”

  For a while none of us spoke.

  Lying on her side, using her right arm as a pillow, Mila was still holding on to my hand with her left. “What’s your favorite scene in the book?”

  I recognized Mila’s signature move to diffuse any situation by changing the subject, but I didn’t mind.

  “Hmm… there are many. From the first letters to their first kiss.”

  “That kissing scene was amazing.” Mila reached for the book and began searching for the right place.

  “You should read it aloud?”

  She shook her head. “No, I want you to read it. I love listening to your voice.”

  I complied and began reading aloud.

  “You promised you’d be open to our culture.”

  She smiled up at me, her cheeks red from the cold, and her eyes clear with curious intelligence. “Okay, then teach me.”

  “If I kiss my little sister or my mother, I do it like this.” I leaned in and gave her a quick peck on the cheek.

  “We do that here too.”

  “Good. But there’s another type of kissing that’s only shared between a man and his woman.”

  “Ahh, you mean a romantic kind of kiss. I’ve seen them in movies and read about them in books.”

  “Have you?”

  “Yes, but it seems very fabricated. I’ve never met a man who made me want to act that foolish. No woman would behave like that in real life.”

  “But will you let me show you?”

  She hesitated.

  “It’s an important part of our culture, Deidra.”

  “Okay, one kiss then.”

  With a small smile of satisfaction, I let my finger trail down from her temple to her jawline. From the way her collarbone rose and sank, I could tell she was nervous.

  “Relax,” I whispered and used my thumb to trail across her lips. We both had our eyes closed when I leaned in and kissed her. At first it was soft and my hand slid around her neck while I took in the exhilarating sensation of kissing Deidra after all this time dreaming of her.

  She was quiet and alert as I slid my tongue against hers like a knock on a door to a house no one had ever been granted access to before. The rush that went through me when Deidra opened up and let me enter her divine mouth made me moan out loud.

  I read the rest of the chapter and when I stopped, Mila looked over with a cute smile. “Hearing you read it just made that scene even better.”

  “Does it make you feel disappointed with the kiss we had? You know, because we didn’t use tongue.” My voice was roughened from the effects of reading in the book.

  Mila was slow to answer, “No, but it leaves me with unanswered questions.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  We were quiet for a moment and then she asked in a low voice. “Are you going to kiss someone like that one day?”

  “Probably not." I closed my eyes and turned on my back feeling ashamed of my passive-aggressive comment. It was just that reading that scene had made me long for Mila even more. Another long moment of silence between us was followed by her speaking first.

  “Jonah, I’m a bit confused about why you felt rejected last night when I talked about passion in a marriage.”

  “Because despite what Northlanders think, we Motlander men have pride too.”

  “But I never rejected you.”

  “Yes you did! I said I’d fight for you in a comedy battle if it meant keeping my friend and you said that you needed more than friendship in a marriage. You needed passion. You made it very clear that you don’t have those sorts of feelings for me.”

  “I made that clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sure we were having the same conversation.”

  I widened my eyes. “Are you denying that you said it?”

  “No. But I never said that I couldn’t be passionate with you.”

  “It was implied.”

  Mila gave a snort of disbelief. “Not from my side.”

  Full of skepticism, I looked deep into her eyes. “You’re being the peacekeeper again, trying to make me feel better, but we both know that you’re not sexually attracted to me.”

  Mila angled her head. “That’s not true.”

  It would have been easy to buy into her words, but I wouldn’t allow myself that kind of hope. With a sigh, I confronted her. “Mila, stop being polite. You’ve said it before; you’re into big well-muscled men. I’m six-foot-tall and fit, but I’m no seven-foot mountain of a Huntsman.”

  “All I’ve said is that I don’t judge people on how they look.”

  “Come on. You have eyes in your head, and physical attraction plays a big part in how passionate you want to be with that person. You can’t deny that.”

  Mila looked down. “You’re right. Does that make me shallow?”

  I intertwined our fingers. “No, Mila, it makes you human.”

  We were close when she met my eyes again. “What if I’m not attracted to any of the champions that I can choose from?”
<
br />   My eyes closed for a second as I squeezed her hand. “I’m not going to repeat what I’ve already told you a million times, Mila.”

  “That I don’t have to do it,” she said for me.

  “Yeah.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “Is it childish of me that I wanted to practice kissing with you?”

  “No. It makes sense to try new things with someone you feel safe with.”

  Her brow lowered. “You know I wouldn’t do it if I weren’t attracted to you, right?”

  The hand squeezing my lungs eased a bit.

  “Would you…” Her cheeks flamed up. “I mean you don’t have to of course, but that kiss in the book made me curious. I’m always impeccable with my oral hygiene and I used a tooth cleaner, but if you think it’s gross…”

  A smile grew on my lips. “You want to kiss again?”

  “Yes, but like they did in the book.”

  “With tongue?”

  She was holding her breath and was flushed with embarrassment. “Maybe it’s a bad idea to…”

  I didn’t let her finish before I leaned in and pressed my lips to hers. She made a sound of surprise from my sudden movement but I was determined to show her that I could offer her passion.

  All my life I’d been raised to be altruistic and always put others first, but in that moment none of that mattered. Maybe making out with me would only complicate things for Mila. Maybe the right thing to do would be to discuss it with her some more. But I did none of that. For once in my life, I gave in to my own desires and poured all my fear of losing her into my kiss.

  When Mila’s hand nuzzled my neck and her lips parted a little, I ran my tongue over her upper lip as an invitation for her to come play. The feeling of her tongue meeting mine sent an electric current from the top of my scalp all the way down to my toes. We circled our tongues and explored like travelers finding new territory.

  Her sweet little sounds of pleasure made my hard erection twitch in my briefs.

  Mila asked for this. The thought gave me the courage to lift the comforter and roll on top of her – my kissing growing bolder and more demanding, my fingers weaving into her long hair and my belly button pressing down on her pelvis.