VALENTINES WEEK 2025
Second-place Winner
BY MARIA BREKKE
Copyright is held by the author.
“SEVEN,” AKSEL announces when the dice land. He slams the robber into my high-production pasture. “Give up one of those sheep, Jesse.”
The man already stole the gold medal from me, and I’ll be damned if I let him take my wool too. I rearrange my cards, trying to place my lumber in an enticing position, but Aksel finds my sheep hiding on the far left. He barely even glances at the card before using it to build his next settlement, cutting off my road and moving to eight points.
My best friend and fellow Team USA skier Ronald groans. “Isn’t being the best cross-country skier in the world enough? Do you have to destroy us in Settlers of Catan after every race?”
“Ja, apparently,” Aksel says, laying down his development cards to show a library and a university. Points nine and 10 — game. Ronald throws a die at him. Aksel catches it and twirls it between his fingers. It shouldn’t be mesmerizing, but it is.
The pit in my stomach, the one that’s been there since Aksel came out of nowhere in the last kilometer of the 15-km classic this morning, intensifies. I chucked my silver medal into my duffel the first chance I got, but my neck still itches where it hung.
“Rematch?” Aksel asks. I look around the Olympic Village lounge. A few athletes are lingering in armchairs, but the room’s mostly empty. Coach would accuse Aksel of sabotage if he knew I was up playing games. Yeah, right—if there’s anyone who doesn’t need to resort to petty tricks, it’s the Norwegian all-star who’s already won six medals this Olympics.
Sabotage. I look at Ronald, who’s scowling at his one measly city.
“I don’t think I can take another ass-kicking today,” I say, trying to sound casual, like I don’t reallycare that he beat me at Catan, again. “But tomorrow? Your Settlers better watch their backs.”
Aksel smirks and tips his chair onto two legs. “Do your worst.”
I feel like I’m the one teetering on the edge of my balance.
***
Conditions are miserable for the 50-km freestyle. It’s damn cold, and windy to boot. The snow is like sandpaper. I struggle into tenth. Aksel takes first, of course. He looks glorious and windswept at the podium, rather than half-dead like the rest of us. But one figure is notably missing from the dais — Number 9 in a USA uniform.
I find him in the medic tent, icing his knee and throwing up into a bucket.
“I didn’t finish,” Ronald says. “Collision at kilometer 37.”
That’s all he says, but I can see the heartbreak in the icy fog of his breaths. The 50-km was supposed to be Ronald’s race. He was our best chance at beating Norway, and he didn’t even get to the finish line. My spark of an idea after Aksel routed us at Catan starts to take shape.Ronald needs a victory. And Aksel has had enough of them already.
***
As soon as I thaw out, I get a cab into the city. I purchase a small drill, a pack of mini-nails, glue, and small containers of red and yellow acrylic paint at a hardware store. The next stop — the game shop — is trickier. I find the row of Settlers of Catan games and expansions, and I scour the titles. There — in the bottom corner — a single German edition of the game. The same edition Aksel has used since we were teenagers, awkward around everyone, but especially each other.
Back at the Village, Ronald is nursing a beer.
“Jesse,” he shouts, waving me over.
“Sorry, man — I gotta call my mom and tell her you tripped over your own ski today.”
He throws his bottle cap at me. “A Swede tripped over me!”
I duck his throw and head upstairs. The collision will be the last thing on Ronald’s mind if he pulls a win tonight.
After locking my door, I pull the dice out of the Catan box. I drill careful holes in the two-pip side of one die and the three-pip side of the other. I insert tiny nails into the holes, heads down, to add extra weight to the five- and four-pip sides, then glue the holes shut and paint over them, picturing that lucky number 9 on Ronald’s uniform. Finally, I pull out a few of the victory point cards from the Catan box and slide them into my pocket.
The next step’s going to be tricky: I need to break into Aksel’s hotel room, the mere thought of which makes my heart beat faster. Luckily, I’ve been stuck in hotels with the guy since we were in the Juniors. After every race, he goes to the sauna. And since he only wears a towel—something I try not to think about too hard—there’s no place for his hotel key.
I head to the locker room and find the locker Aksel’s used all week. It’s locked, but I have a couple of ideas. I type in “1103,” and the keypad lights up green. “Ha!” I say under my breath. Of course Aksel uses his first world record time. It was the 100-meter sprint back in 2017, the first time I came in second to him. I grab his key and close the locker, then the door to the sauna opens. I crouch along the bench and dart out of the room.
I run up the stairs to Aksel’s room and swipe the card. Aksel’s bed is messy, comforter dangling. I half-want to climb in, and I wonder what he would think. Shaking myself free of the intrusive thought, I quickly replace his dice with my own, then dart back to the lobby. Aksel’s at the front desk, requesting a replacement key card.
“We on for tonight?” I ask him when he’s done.
He grins. “Do not get too attached to your sheep.”
***
I pull up an extra chair for Ronald to prop his leg and place the cards at the far end of the table.
“I can grab cards for you,” I offer.
Aksel is positioning his settlements and roads into a perfect line. Mine are a jumbled pile teetering at the edge of the table. Ronald stacks his into a tower while I shuffle.
Ronald plays first. He positions his first settlement between two number-nine tiles, his go-to spot. Aksel is next, and he predictably goes for bricks and lumber. I don’t pay much attention to where my settlements end up, and Ronald scoffs. “You realize you just put a settlement by the desert, right?”
“I’m trying something new,” I say.
Aksel is staring at me, head tilted. It feels way too warm in here.
“You’re up, Ronald.” I hand him the dice.
He rolls a five and a four. “Nine, losers! Gimme that lumber and wheat.”
From there, we roll nines three of the next five turns. Ronald is ecstatic. “The gods of Olympus favour me,” he riffs, raising his arms to the ceiling.
When Ronald plays the resources for a development card, I pretend to pull one from the pile, but palm a victory point card from my sleeve. I do the same the next time, by which point he has three cities and the longest road. By my count —
“Ah! I won! Take that, you sheep thief!” Ronald whoops and slaps his knee, then groans in pain.
“Good game, bror,” Aksel says, clapping Ronald on the back. “And god natt, Jesse,” he says with a wink. I can feel my face redden. He can’t know, or he would have called me out. Right?
***
I wait until I hear the running of the shower, then sneak back into Aksel’s room to destroy the evidence of my crime. After swapping out my crooked dice, I pick up the robber and smile at it, feeling a sense of camaraderie with the little guy. It’s only when I hear a creak from across the room that I realize the water isn’t running anymore.
“You know,” Aksel drawls, “if you wanted to spend more time with me, you could have asked.”
I whip around, clenching my fists. “I wasn’t —”
Aksel is closer than I expected, just like during the 15-km classic. My breath catches. He raises an eyebrow and reaches for my hand, prying my fingers open. He takes the robber with a smirk, twirling it between his fingers.
“Can I kiss you?” he asks, his voice gravelly.
“What the hell are you waiting for,” I mumble back, raising my chin to glare at him.
He cups my face, the robber pressed against my cheek. When he kisses me, my lips tingle like they’re being revived in warm air after a long day of skiing. My heart beats like I just crested the final climb and it’s all downhill to the finish line.
When Aksel pulls away, that familiar smug smile shines across his face. I want to wipe it off more than ever. So I lean in.
***
Maria Brekke is a writer of short fiction whose work has been published in Miniskirt Magazine and PodCastle, among others. She has participated in workshops with the Loft Literary Center and Sackett Street Writers, and she is an editor for Luna Station Quarterly. Maria lives in Minnesota with her husband, daughters, and dog.
