Chapter 12: The Hostel Owner's Last Song
The car died somewhere north of Voss, on a road that wound through mountains like a snake trying to swallow its own tail.
Jordan had been driving for six hours, watching the landscape shift from fjords to forests to something that looked like the surface of the moon. The rental car—a compact Volvo that had seen better decades—had been making strange noises since Bergen. A rattle in the engine. A whine in the transmission. A general sense of mechanical despair.
He'd ignored it. He was good at ignoring things.
But when the engine sputtered and died and the dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree, he couldn't ignore it anymore. He coasted to the side of the road, hazard lights blinking, and sat there for a long moment with his hands on the wheel.
"Fuck," he said.
The word hung in the silence of the car, which was more silence than he was used to. No radio. No phone signal. Just the wind and the distant sound of water falling over rocks.
He got out and popped the hood. The engine was still warm, ticking as it cooled, and he stared at it with the helplessness of someone who'd never learned how to fix anything more complicated than a paper jam.
"Fuck," he said again, with feeling.
The road stretched in both directions, empty and gray. No houses. No farms. No signs of life. Just mountains and sky and the kind of vast, indifferent silence that made Jordan feel very small.
He dug his phone out of his pocket. No service. He dug out the paper map he'd picked up at a gas station outside Bergen. The nearest town—if you could call it that—was a speck called Undredal, population eighty-four. It was five kilometers back, according to the map. Five kilometers of winding mountain road with no shoulder and no guardrail.
He grabbed his backpack, locked the car, and started walking.
---
It took him an hour to reach the village.
The sun was low by the time he crested the final hill, painting the wooden houses in shades of gold and amber. Smoke rose from chimneys. A dog barked somewhere in the distance. And perched on the hill above the village, its weathered wooden beams groaning under the weight of centuries, was a building that looked like it had been built by Vikings and maintained by stubbornness.
A sign above the door, hand-painted in faded blue, read: FRITZ'S HOSTEL. VELKOMMEN.
Jordan pushed open the door.
The smell hit him first—peat smoke and old books, something warm and earthy that reminded him of his grandmother's attic. The walls were lined with maps, some so old they were yellow with age, others covered in handwritten notes in a dozen languages. A fire crackled in a stone hearth. And sitting at an upright piano in the corner, his fingers moving over the keys with practiced ease, was an old man with a white beard and eyes the color of winter ice.
He stopped playing when Jordan walked in.
"You look like shit," the man said.
"Thanks."
"Car trouble?"
"How did you—"
"Everyone who walks through that door has car trouble." The man stood, his joints popping like firecrackers. "Eirik. I run this place."
"Jordan."
They shook hands. Eirik's grip was firm despite his age—seventy, maybe seventy-five—and his eyes were sharp, assessing.
"You're American," Eirik said.
"Is it that obvious?"
"You have that look. Like you're lost but trying not to show it." He gestured toward the fireplace. "Sit. I'll get you some aquavit."
Jordan sat. The fire was warm, and his legs ached from the walk, and the chair was so soft he thought he might never stand again.
Eirik returned with two glasses and a bottle of clear liquid. He poured generously.
"Skål," he said.
"Skål."
They drank. The aquavit burned going down, a fire that spread from Jordan's throat to his chest.
"So," Eirik said. "What brings you to the middle of nowhere?"
"Trying to get to Oslo."
"You're going the wrong way."
"I know." Jordan took another sip. "My car broke down."
"So you said." Eirik settled into the chair opposite him, cradling his glass. "But that's not what I asked. What brings you to Norway? To this hostel? To this exact moment in your life?"
Jordan stared at him. The question was too direct, too probing. He wasn't used to strangers asking him things like that.
"I'm on a trip," he said finally. "Trying to figure some things out."
"Ah." Eirik nodded like this made perfect sense. "The classic. Young man, broken heart, looking for meaning in the fjords."
"I don't have a broken heart."
"Then what's broken?"
Jordan didn't answer. He didn't know how.
Eirik didn't push. He just sat there, sipping his aquavit, watching the fire. And after a while, he started talking—not about Jordan, but about himself.
"I was a musician once," he said. "Piano. Toured all over Europe. Played with orchestras, jazz bands, anyone who would have me."
"What happened?"
"I went deaf." He tapped his left ear. "Not all the way. Just this one. But it was enough. I couldn't hear the music the way I used to. Couldn't feel it. So I stopped."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. It was the best thing that ever happened to me." Eirik smiled, a wistful expression that made him look younger. "I came here. Bought this place. Started teaching music to the village children. And I learned something."
"What?"
"The only people who find themselves are the ones who stop looking."
Jordan frowned. "That doesn't make sense."
"It doesn't have to. It's true anyway." Eirik stood and walked back to the piano. "You're looking for something, Jordan. I can see it in your face. But you won't find it by chasing it. You'll find it by sitting still and letting it find you."
He sat down and began to play. Satie. Gymnopédie No. The notes floated through the room like snow, soft and melancholy and impossibly beautiful.
Jordan closed his eyes and listened.
---
She arrived two hours later.
Jordan was in the common room, journaling by the fire, when the door opened and a gust of cold air swept through the hostel. He looked up.
She was young—maybe twenty-five, maybe younger—with dark hair pulled back in a braid and eyes that looked like they'd seen too much. She carried a backpack that was almost as big as she was, and she moved like someone who was used to being alone.
German, he guessed. Or Austrian. Something about the way she held herself—straight-backed, self-contained.
She walked to the front desk, where Eirik was doing a crossword puzzle, and said something in quiet German. He responded in kind, gesturing toward the stairs.
"Last bed's in the attic," he said, switching to English. "Shared with the American."
She glanced at Jordan. He glanced at her.
"Fine," she said.
"I'm Lena," she said later, when they were both standing in the attic room, staring at the single bunk bed that was available.
"Jordan."
"I know. Eirik told me."
The room was small and slanted, the ceiling so low that Jordan had to duck to avoid hitting his head. There was one window, one chair, one tiny lamp, and one bunk bed with two mattresses stacked on top of each other.
"I can take the floor," Jordan offered.
"Don't be stupid. It's freezing." Lena dropped her backpack on the floor and began pulling off her coat. "We'll share. I've shared with worse."
"Okay."
They didn't talk much as they got ready for bed. Jordan changed into a t-shirt and boxers, trying not to look at Lena as she peeled off her sweater and jeans. She was thin—too thin, he thought—with sharp shoulder blades and a tattoo of a bird on her left hip.
She caught him looking.
"It's a sparrow," she said. "For my grandmother."
"It's nice."
"Thanks."
She climbed into the bottom bunk and pulled the blanket up to her chin. Jordan took the top, staring at the ceiling and listening to the wind outside.
For a long time, neither of them spoke.
Then, in the dark, Lena's voice floated up to him.
"I haven't slept beside anyone in months."
Jordan didn't respond right away. He was thinking about the bet, about Tessa, about the game he'd been playing for weeks. He was thinking about Claire, and the way she'd looked at him like he was a person instead of a conquest.
"Why not?" he asked.
"I was engaged." A pause. "I am engaged. I don't know."
"What happened?"
"Nothing happened. That's the problem." She shifted in the bunk, and he felt the mattress move beneath him. "He's perfect. Good job. Good family. Good everything. And I hate him."
"You hate him?"
"I hate the idea of him. I hate the life he wants me to have. I hate the house we bought. I hate the wedding we're planning. I hate all of it." Her voice cracked. "And I can't tell anyone because they'll think I'm ungrateful. They'll think I'm crazy."
Jordan stared at the ceiling. The wooden beams were rough and old, and he could see the grain in the faint moonlight.
"You're not crazy," he said.
"How do you know?"
"Because I feel the same way."
More silence. The wind howled. The fire downstairs had burned down to embers, and the hostel was quiet except for the creaking of old wood and the distant sound of Eirik's piano—he was playing something new now, something soft and slow.
"I don't want to marry him," Lena whispered. "I don't want to go home. I don't want any of it."
"What do you want?"
"I don't know." She laughed, a small, broken sound. "That's the worst part. I don't know what I want. I just know it's not this."
Jordan rolled onto his side and looked down at her. Her face was pale in the darkness, her eyes wide and wet.
"I'm not going to fix you," he said.
"I didn't ask you to."
"I know. I'm just saying." He reached down, and his fingers found her hand. She didn't pull away. "I'm not looking for anything. I'm just... here."
She stared at him for a long moment. Then she squeezed his fingers.
"That's enough," she said.
He climbed down from the top bunk.
It was awkward and cramped—the bed was too small, the ceiling too low, and they kept bumping elbows and knees as they rearranged themselves. But eventually they found a position that worked: Lena on her back, Jordan on his side, his hand on her stomach, his mouth on her neck.
She shivered when he kissed her. Not from cold.
"I haven't done this in a long time," she said.
"We don't have to—"
"Shut up." She turned her head and kissed him, hard, and her hands went to his hair. "I want to. I want to feel something that isn't dread."
He undressed her slowly, pulling her t-shirt over her head, sliding her underwear down her thighs. She was pale and thin, ribs showing, hip bones sharp enough to cut. Her nipples were small and pink, and when he touched them, she gasped.
"Sensitive," she said.
"Sorry."
"Don't be sorry. Just... be careful."
He was careful. He kissed every inch of her—her collarbone, her breasts, her stomach, the tattoo on her hip. He ran his tongue along the scar on her knee, the callus on her foot, the soft skin inside her thigh. And when he finally reached the place she wanted him most, she was already wet.
"Oh," she said, when he touched her. "Oh, fuck."
He slid a finger inside her—slow, gentle—and she arched off the bed, her mouth open, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps.
"More," she said.
He added another finger, curling them just so, and she moaned—a quiet, desperate sound that she tried to muffle with her hand.
"Don't," he said. "Eirik's deaf in one ear. And he's playing piano."
"He's not deaf in the other."
"Then be quiet if you want."
She laughed, breathless. "I don't want."
He moved faster.
She came with a cry she couldn't quite swallow, her body shaking, her hands fisting the sheets. He watched her face—the way her eyes squeezed shut, the way her mouth fell open, the way she looked like she was feeling something for the first time in years.
"Okay," she said, when she could speak again. "Okay. Your turn."
"I don't need—"
"I want you inside me." She reached for him, pulled him up her body. "Please. I need to feel close to someone."
He didn't have to be asked twice.
He grabbed a condom from his backpack—Tessa's stash, again—and rolled it on. Then he positioned himself between her legs, and slowly, carefully, slid inside her.
She was tight. So tight it made him gasp.
"Fuck," he whispered.
"I know." She wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him deeper. "It's been a while."
"Tell me if it hurts."
"It doesn't hurt. It feels..." She closed her eyes. "It feels like being real."
He started to move—slow, gentle strokes that made her whimper. The bed creaked beneath them, a rhythmic squeak that matched the rhythm of their bodies. Downstairs, Eirik was playing something by Debussy now, something soft and dreamlike.
"Harder," Lena whispered.
He went harder.
She hooked her leg over his hip, changing the angle, and he hit something that made her gasp.
"There," she said. "Right there. Don't stop."
He didn't.
The bed squeaked. The piano played. Lena's breath came faster and faster, and Jordan felt his own climax building, a pressure at the base of his spine that threatened to overwhelm him.
"I'm close," he said.
"Me too." She reached down and touched her clit, her fingers moving fast. "Come with me. Please. I don't want to be alone."
He kissed her—hard, desperate—and she came. He felt her walls clench around him, felt her body shudder, felt the wetness that spread between them. And then he was coming too, a rush of heat that made him groan into her mouth.
They stayed like that for a long moment—connected, breathless, tangled.
Then Lena started to cry.
It wasn't loud. Just a few tears, slipping down her cheeks. She turned her face away, wiping them with the back of her hand.
"Sorry," she said.
"Don't be."
"I don't know why I'm crying."
"Yes, you do."
She laughed—wet, sad, beautiful. "Maybe."
They untangled themselves and lay side by side in the narrow bunk, staring at the ceiling. Eirik had stopped playing. The hostel was quiet.
"I have to go back," Lena said. "Eventually. To Germany. To him."
"You don't have to do anything."
"I know. But I will." She turned to look at him. "I'm not brave like you."
"I'm not brave."
"You're here. You left. That's brave."
Jordan thought about his life—the careful plans, the safe choices, the path he'd been following since he was twelve years old. He didn't feel brave. He felt like a fraud.
"I'm running," he said. "That's different."
"Is it?"
He didn't have an answer.
They fell asleep like that, wrapped in each other, and when Jordan woke in the morning, Lena was already dressed, her backpack on her shoulders.
"My bus leaves in an hour," she said.
"Okay."
She looked at him for a long moment. Then she leaned down and kissed his forehead.
"Thank you," she said.
"For what?"
"For making me feel like a person."
She walked out the door, and Jordan lay in the narrow bunk, listening to her footsteps fade.
---
Eirik fixed the car.
Jordan didn't ask how. He just walked down the hill to find the old man under the hood, his hands black with grease and a cigarette dangling from his lips.
"Water pump," Eirik said. "Common problem. I patched it."
"How much do I owe you?"
"Nothing."
"I have to pay you something."
"No, you don't." Eirik straightened, wiping his hands on a rag. "But I do have something for you."
He walked into the hostel and came back with a sheet of paper—handwritten music, the notes small and precise.
"For the road," he said. "You'll know when to play it."
"I don't play piano."
"You did. Once. I saw your fingers twitching when I played last night." Eirik smiled. "You'll remember."
Jordan took the sheet. He didn't know what else to say.
"Drive safe," Eirik said. "And stop looking."
"I'll try."
He got in the car and started the engine. It purred like a cat.
As he drove away, the fjords shrinking in the rearview mirror, he thought about Lena, and Claire, and everyone else he'd touched on this trip. He thought about the bet, and the game, and the hollow feeling that had been growing in his chest since Dublin.
He thought about the sheet of music on the passenger seat.
And he realized, somewhere between Undredal and Oslo, that the bet had never been about the women at all.
He drove through the night, stopping only once for gas and coffee that tasted like burnt regret.
The road to Oslo was a long gray ribbon, unwinding between mountains and fjords and forests so dark they looked like they'd been painted in ink. Jordan kept the radio off and the windows cracked, letting the cold air keep him awake, letting the silence fill the spaces where his thoughts usually lived.
He thought about Lena's face when she came—that mix of relief and grief that he was starting to recognize in the women he met. He thought about Claire's hands shaking as she zipped her sundress. He thought about Tessa's text messages, casual and cold, keeping score like a banker counting coins.
And he thought about Margaret, who had called him a hunter and walked away before he could prove her right or wrong.
The music sheet sat on the passenger seat, blank and patient.
---
Oslo appeared at dawn, spread out along the water like a city that had grown tired of hiding.
Jordan found a parking garage, abandoned the rental car in a spot that cost more than his monthly food budget, and walked until he found a café that was open. He ordered coffee and a pastry he couldn't pronounce and sat by the window, watching the city wake up.
He didn't know anyone here. That was the point.
He found a rental apartment through an app—a small studio in Grunerløkka, furnished with IKEA furniture and a view of a courtyard where children played and old men smoked pipes. The landlord was a woman named Sigrid who handed him the keys and told him not to burn the place down.
"The deposit is non-refundable," she said. "So don't break anything."
"I'll try."
He unpacked his backpack—the same backpack he'd been carrying since Dublin—and laid his clothes in neat rows in the dresser drawer. He hung his toiletries in the bathroom. He put the music sheet on the kitchen table, where it sat like a question he didn't know how to answer.
Then he sat on the couch and did nothing.
For two days, he did nothing.
He walked through Vigeland Park and watched the sculptures of naked people contorted into shapes of love and anger and despair. He ate salmon and potatoes at a restaurant where the waitress called him love and didn't ask any questions. He sat on a bench by the harbor and watched the ferries chug across the water, their lights blinking in the gathering dusk.
He didn't open Tinder. He didn't text Tessa. He didn't think about the bet.
He just existed, minute by minute, breath by breath.
And it was the hardest thing he'd ever done.
---
On the third day, he called Tessa.
She answered on the second ring.
"Hello, stranger."
"Hi."
"Where are you?"
"Oslo."
"Oslo?" She laughed, tinny and distant. "What the fuck are you doing in Oslo?"
"Nothing. That's the point."
"What's the point?"
"Nothing is the point." He paused. "I'm not playing anymore."
The silence stretched between them—long, tangled, full of things unsaid.
"What does that mean?" she asked finally.
"It means I'm out. The bet, the game, whatever we want to call it. I'm done."
"Because of the mom?"
"Because of a lot of things." Jordan stared out the window at the children in the courtyard, their voices rising and falling like music. "I'm not who I was when we started this. I don't want to be who I was."
"So you're just—what? Quitting?"
"Retiring." He smiled, even though she couldn't see it. "Trading in my jersey."
"That's not how this works, Jordan."
"Then tell me how it works." His voice was harder now. "Tell me what I'm supposed to win. Tell me what the prize is at the end of this."
She didn't answer.
"That's what I thought."
"I have him, by the way," Tessa said, her voice tight. "Or I will, tomorrow. The financier. He's in Paris. I'm flying in tonight."
"Congratulations."
"Don't be like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you're better than me." She laughed again, but it was brittle. "You started this. You wanted to prove something. Don't pretend you're above it now."
"I'm not above anything. I'm just done." He closed his eyes. "I hope you win, Tessa. I really do. I hope whatever you're looking for is at the end of this."
"And what about what you're looking for?"
"I stopped looking."
He hung up before she could respond.
---
He spent the afternoon walking Aker Brygge, the harborfront where tourists took selfies and locals ignored them.
The sun was out, rare for Oslo in autumn, and the water glittered like crushed glass. Jordan bought a hot dog from a stand—he'd heard it was a Norwegian thing—and ate it sitting on the edge of the pier, his feet dangling over the side.
He watched a man teach his daughter how to fish. He watched a couple argue in Norwegian, their hands moving faster than their words. He watched a woman in a business suit eat an ice cream cone while scrolling through her phone, her face frozen in a permanent frown.
All of them looking for something. None of them finding it.
Or maybe they were just living. Maybe that was the difference.
---
That night, he couldn't sleep.
He lay on the IKEA bed in the IKEA furniture apartment and stared at the IKEA ceiling, and he thought about Eirik's words. The only people who find themselves are the ones who stop looking. It sounded like fortune cookie wisdom. The kind of thing you put on a poster and forget about by Tuesday.
But maybe that was the point.
Maybe he'd been looking for so long he'd forgotten how to just be. Maybe the act of searching had become the thing itself—a treadmill he couldn't step off, a loop that kept him running in place.
He thought about the women. Claire. Lena. All the others whose names he'd already started to forget. He hadn't been looking for connection. He'd been looking for proof—proof that he was desirable, that he mattered, that he existed outside the safe little box of his plans.
And the proof was always hollow the morning after.
He got up at 3 a.m. and opened his laptop.
The airline website was bright and cheerful, promising adventure in every pixel. He typed in his destination, watched the price populate, and clicked Buy before he could change his mind.
One-way ticket. Oslo to Prague. Departing at 6 p.m. tomorrow.
He closed the laptop and stared at the music sheet on the table.
"You'll know when to play it," Eirik had said.
Jordan still didn't know how to play. But he knew what he was supposed to hear.
---
The next morning, he packed.
It didn't take long. His backpack was already a tomb for everything he'd accumulated and discarded on this trip: a map of Dublin, a receipt from a bar in Paris, a shell from a beach in Portugal, the sheet music from a one-eared musician in a village so small it wasn't on any map.
He held the sheet music for a long moment, his fingers tracing the handwritten notes.
Then he folded it carefully, slid it into the front pocket of his backpack, and zipped it closed.
He walked to the airport. The train was crowded, full of commuters and tourists and people who knew exactly where they were going. Jordan stood by the door, his backpack between his feet, watching the city slide past—the fjord, the opera house, the dense green forests that surrounded everything like a hug you couldn't escape.
He checked his bag. He went through security. He found his gate, bought a coffee, and sat down to wait.
He didn't text anyone. He didn't post anything. He didn't check to see if Tessa had replied.
He just sat, holding his boarding pass like a ticket to somewhere he'd never been.
The announcement came over the loudspeaker: boarding for Prague.
Jordan stood up. He walked to the gate. He handed his boarding pass to the woman at the desk, and she smiled and said, "Have a nice flight."
He found his seat. He buckled his belt. He watched Oslo disappear beneath the clouds, the fjords shrinking to puddles, the mountains fading to nothing.
And for the first time in months, he felt like he was exactly where he was supposed to be.
Not someone else's game.
Not someone else's story.
Just his own.
The plane banked right, and the sun broke through the window, warm against his face. Jordan closed his eyes and let it wash over him, this unfamiliar feeling of motion without direction.
He didn't know what waited in Prague. He didn't know if he'd stay a day or a month. He didn't know anything, and for once, that was okay.
Eirik was right. He knew that now. The only people who find themselves are the ones who stop looking.
The plane climbed higher, the clouds thickened, and Jordan felt something loosen in his chest—a knot he'd been carrying so long he'd forgotten it was there. He wasn't fixed. He wasn't healed. He wasn't anything other than what he was: a twenty-one-year-old kid with a backpack and a sheet of music he couldn't read.
But he was moving. And that was enough.
For now, that was enough.