Bright Midnight: A Second-Chance Romance Page 5

  I’d rather not. I feel more comfortable standing at the end of the table, staring down at him. It’s like I have one foot out the door, ready to run. I still don’t know what to say or how to act. None of this seems real.

  “Please,” Anders says, his brows pinching together. There’s a gravity to his voice. Sincerity. Maybe I’m fucking crazy for still holding a grudge against him. I mean, most people wouldn’t care. Everly wouldn’t even bat an eye. Let bygones be bygones. The past is the past. And what some seventeen-year-old kid did to your heart shouldn’t matter when you’re twenty-four.

  So I sit down.

  I think I breathe for the first time since I left the train station.

  “So,” he says to me, and he takes off his rain jacket, folding it and hanging it along the smooth edge of the wood booth. “I’m finding this very interesting.”

  I raise my brow. “Well, yeah.”

  Interesting. And a lot of awkward.

  “You’re probably the last person I imagined running into,” he says carefully, picking up a coaster and staring at it while he flips it over. “Have to say, I still can’t quite believe it.” He eyes me quickly. “How have you been?”

  How have I been? Where do I even start?

  “Still in New York?” he asks, prompting me.

  “Yeah,” I say, adjusting myself on the seat. I’m still a bit cold from all the rain—and all the shock—so I pull one of the blankets over my lap. “Well, that’s where I’ll be going when this is all over. Back to Brooklyn. Though I left when I went to college. Got my degree.”

  “In what?”

  “Bullshit,” I tell him, offering half a smile. “A B.A. in art history.”

  “Really?” he asks. He almost sounds impressed. “And what do you do with that?”

  I shrug. “Nothing. Except go to Europe and visit every museum and art gallery you can, because for once you know the history behind every painting. Outside of that though, I’m stumped.”

  “You never seemed all that interested in painting back in art class,” he says to me, and I immediately feel myself freeze up inside, that summoning of the past. “It was more photography, wasn’t it? You know, I still have some of the black-and-white photos we developed.”

  “Oh?” Should I be flattered here that he held on to them? “Well, I still love photography, I’ve just gotten lazy with my iPhone, you know.”

  “Norway is too beautiful to waste on a phone,” he tells me, pressing his fingers into the table for emphasis. “You need to do it justice with a proper camera. Did you bring one with you?”

  I shake my head. I had one, a Nikon, but it was Danny’s. Or, in other words, it was ours but when he left, he took it. At the time I was fine with it. Some people believe the camera captures your soul. I believed that one captured our mediocre relationship.

  Now though, I wish I’d held onto it. An iPhone only does so much.

  “I have one you can have,” Anders says. “Actually, I have quite a few.”

  “You have quite a few cameras?” I ask. I don’t know why I sound so surprised though. Anders always had quite a few cameras. Back in high school he would go to the pawn shop and pick up anything that interested him, even if he had a bunch of them already, even if he had no intention of ever using it. He used to say that he was “rescuing” the item, as if it had a soul and his home would bring it alive. I remember he had a whole box full of Zippos and other silver lighters that didn’t have fuel or didn’t work, but it didn’t matter. He kept on acquiring them and they kept on piling up.

  I’m tempted to bring this up with him, in the vein of “Remember that thing you used to do?” but I don’t dare. That’s what old friends do over beer and pizza.

  We aren’t that.

  “Yes,” he goes on. “I collect them. But I know you remember that about me. You should really come to Todalen with us. Since you have no plans.”

  I give him a look. “First you were eager to drop me off at my hotel, now you want to bring me to your village?” I always remembered the name of the town he grew up in. He’d always made it sound so breathtaking, as I’m sure any amateur poet would.

  He looks away and shrugs. “I thought I was making it easier on you. To be honest, I’m still not sure if you’re going to hit me again or not.” His features soften, the lines on his brow smoothing out. “Shay, look…”

  “Here we go,” Astrid announces loudly, making me jump in my seat. She and Lise plunk my cider and their beers down on the table, the foamy head spilling over, while I see Roar slip outside with a cigarette.

  Astrid slides into the spot beside me and I barely have time to get out of the way. She raises her glass. “To Shay, whom I already feel sorry for, coming across a strange lot like us.”

  The rest of us raise our glasses.

  And then the girls get to talking.

  Well, really Astrid gets to talking, though Lise chimes in every now and then. Anders remains mostly silent, his deep eyes on me the whole time. I can only hope the flush on my cheeks is from the strong cider and nothing else.

  I learn that Astrid is a world traveler, perpetually single, and working as a burlesque dancer in Paris. Not quite the Moulin Rouge, she says, but good enough. Though her face, with the smattering of freckles across her ski-jump nose and her gap-toothed grin, makes her look younger than she is, her attitude and banging body (seriously, Christina Hendricks has nothing on her), certainly fit the part.

  “So what is it that you like to do?” Astrid asks me. “I mean, what kind of work? Or what kind of hobby would a job support?”

  “In the ideal world, I’d love to do more photography,” I tell her. “In high school I took a bunch of classes and really liked it.” I feel Anders’ eyes on me. “I haven’t had any professional training since then, but I’ve been doing a lot of online tutorials throughout the years, getting the best equipment I could afford. Since I’ve been traveling I think I’ve found my calling. I take a lot of photos for my Instagram account, and I know it sounds dumb, but I’ve seen similar accounts get really big, especially if the person is easy on the eyes. They get flown all over the world just to take pictures and post them. That’s my ideal job.”

  “That sounds like my ideal job too,” Astrid says.

  “Yup,” Lise. “You know, it sounds like a dream but it’s also what’s happening to you right now. It’s not so out of reach. If you build it, it will come.”

  “Right, well, a lot of people right now have the same idea. Have you seen the number of travel accounts on Instagram?”

  “Yeah, but that shouldn’t stop you,” Astrid tells me. “It’s better to keep doing what you’re doing here and try, than it is to go back to the States and have to get a job you don’t like.”

  “If I can even get a job,” I admit with a sigh, my shoulders slumping slightly with figurative weight. “All the education in the world doesn’t seem to matter right now. Whether you work at Target or in the field of your degree, all employers want three-year’s experience for an entry level job, and even then you’re getting minimum wage.”

  Astrid gives me a sympathetic smile and I have to wonder how much she pulls in for her dancing movies in Paris. I’m guessing a lot. “Well then, your solution is to never return home. Maybe you can stay here and marry a Norwegian.” And at that she smirks at Anders.

  I feel my face flush.

  Anders just laughs. “I’m afraid most Norwegian men aren’t civilized enough for Shay.”

  I instinctively slap his arm. “You trying to say I’m high maintenance?”

  He bites back a smile. “Not at all.”

  “I definitely don’t advise it,” Lise says, taking a sip of her drink. “We saw how Tove turned out.”

  Lise then tells us that her twin sister, Tove, is a divorcee and a single mom who lives in the Arctic Circle. When I mention I want to go up there, Lise tells me I must get in contact with her, though Astrid throws in that Tove’s son Harry is a six-year-old terror of a boy and I’d be in
for a hell of a time.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” Astrid asks Anders. He’s frowning, deep in thought, and pulls his eyes away from a blank spot on the table to look at her. “Contribute to the conversation?”

  “About what? How nuts Tove is?” he asks, palming his beer with his large hands. I always had a thing for his hands, and I wish that sparrow wasn’t looking at me. My eyes trail over the other tattoos on his knuckles—the fish, the spade, the eye, the hourglass, the anchor, the captain’s wheel, and the arrow. Only the anchor and the spade were there when I first met him. He added the sparrow for me, but I never did know what the other two meant. He would only shrug when asked. Said they didn’t mean anything to him, which I always thought was a strange way of phrasing it.

  “Add anything about yourself. You know, to your friend you haven’t seen in years,” Astrid says, shuffling out of the booth. “I’m going to go see Roar, does anyone else want anything?”

  I shake my head. I’m already pretty buzzed from the two ciders, which is putting me into a warm and cozy state. And I can’t have that, not when Anders is sitting across from me, his eyes occasionally meeting mine and holding them hostage.

  I hated how gorgeous he was back then, and I’m hating how much more gorgeous he is now. It makes it hard to think.

  “There’s not much to add,” Anders says, as Astrid leaves. “I took over my father’s fishing boat after he died. I man the ship when I can to support the farm, and I help my uncle with labor the rest of the time. I don’t exactly have an exciting life.”

  My heart pangs at his admission. I know he’s trying to be self-deprecating when he says that, but I can’t miss the look of defeat in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry about your father,” I tell him. I remember that his father and him had a rough relationship. It’s why he moved to America to be with his mother, even though their relationship got too rocky too. Anders was expelled from school a month before we were supposed to graduate and sent back to Norway—his mother couldn’t handle him anymore. Which was just as well at the time, since we broke up a few weeks earlier. In one instant, Anders went from being everything to me to being out of my life for good.

  Forget it, I have to remind myself. Focus on the now.

  “How did he die?” I ask, even though I know the question can be a bit rude.

  “He was lost at sea,” Lise says quietly, looking down at her hands. “Four years ago.”

  “Bad storm,” Anders says. He leans back in his seat, his eyes absently searching the bar as his lower jaw wiggles. “They found the boat, but he’d been swept over. He was trying to save a deckhand when it happened. He had a survival suit on at the time but…it didn’t matter.”

  “Oh my god.” My hand goes to my chest, my heart sinking. “I’m so sorry. And that’s the boat you have right now?”

  “Midnattsol,” he says. “The Midnight Sun. He used to call my mother the midnight sun, so I guess it was cursed to begin with.”

  So you’re working on a cursed boat? I want to ask. But I don’t. The subject seems understandably touchy. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a parent die like that, in such a vague, helpless way, with no body to bury, and then to inherit the very ship, the very job, that killed them. I can’t fathom how Anders does it, but I’m starting to understand that haunted look in his eyes. When he was younger, there was at least a cover of jovial teenage rebellion masking the darkness. But now, especially in the dim light of this bar, he looks war-torn and weary.

  “But,” Lise says, pasting on a smile and looking over at Anders, “our father knew what he was doing. He was very good at his job and he knew the risks. We all did. It happens a lot out there and it was just God’s plan for him.”

  Anders snorts and gives her a derisive plan. “You keep saying God’s plan, Lise, but I’m not sure you know what that means.”

  She raises her chin. “I know what God means to me. What is he to you?”

  “A poet,” Anders says after a moment, smirking at no one in particular. “A nasty one.”

  Oh boy. I hope I’m not about to get caught in a sibling theological debate.

  “So how long are you at sea for?” I ask him, trying to get the conversation on a smoother path.

  He eyes me carefully and gives an almost unperceivable nod, as if he knows what I’m trying to do. “Usually three weeks, sometimes a month. Sometimes longer. It depends on the season. The shortest I’ve been out was two weeks. It was a disaster, couldn’t find the fish anywhere—but that’s what I got for trying new grounds. The longest was six weeks. The fishing was fucking fantastic and when you have a chance to make more money, you take it.”

  “But when you do that,” Lise says, “and work sixteen-hour shifts, you’ll burn out sooner than you know.”

  Anders shrugs. “I’m young. I’m not burnt out yet. And it makes working on the farm feel like a vacation.”

  “And how long do you work on the farm for?” I ask, totally intrigued over how his life has turned out. Makes me feel like I’ve literally done shit-all. Yes, I got my degree and held down a few jobs. But none of them were particularly challenging.

  None of them meant anything.

  “It depends on the season, on the cod, on the prices,” he says. “I’ll be here for a month unless something changes.”

  One month. The same amount of time I told myself I would probably stay in the country.

  I’m fooling myself if I think it means something.

  “Are we behaving ourselves?” Astrid says as she puts a glass of water down, Roar at her side, drinking a beer.

  “Only you are,” Lise says.

  “Well, I am driving us back to Todalen tonight,” Astrid says. “Someone has to be sober.” Her lips twitch as she looks between me and Anders. “Hey Lise,” she says, eying her sister wryly. “Come with me to 7-11.”

  Lise frowns. “Now?”

  “Yeah, I want the company.”

  “But it’s right next door,” Lise says, and now Astrid is yanking her eyebrows in Anders’ direction, in an overly dramatic fashion. Lise’s lips form an “O” and then nods. She says something in Norwegian, under her breath, and gets up. “If you’ll excuse me,” she says to us, before they scurry off down the bar and out the door.

  I look up at Roar to see what he’s going to do, but he just raises his beer in a ‘cheers’ and then heads to the bar, talking with the bartender, whom he obviously knows well.

  And we’re alone again.

  I slowly look back at Anders and clear my throat.

  He’s looking at me, head low, brow furrowed. “Are you going to stay in Trondheim?” he asks carefully.

  “Just for a night or two,” I tell him. “Then maybe make my way up north.”

  “You have to go south too,” he says.

  “I will. I have a plan.”

  Finally.

  “You have to come to Todalen.”

  Totally not part of the plan.

  “We’ll see,” is the only thing I can offer him. When I say that, it always means no.

  “Tonight,” he adds.

  Now this catches me by surprise.

  I tilt my head, wide-eyed. “Tonight?”

  “Yes,” he says with a nod, not even smiling. “Tonight. We can take you back to your hotel and you can cancel your stay.”

  I shake my head. “I’ll be charged for the night for doing that.”

  “I’ll talk to them, I promise you won’t,” he says, adding, “I can be very persuasive.”

  “I know that,” I can’t help but say. “But no.”

  No. No. Because Todalen is not part of the plan, and neither is Anders.

  “Why not?” he asks, and he’s completely genuine.

  “Because,” I say, fumbling for words. “It’s not…I have plans.”

  “So change your plans. You said yourself earlier that you have no idea what you’re doing next.”

  “I meant in life.”

  “Isn’t knowing what yo
u’re doing tonight a good start?”

  “I did know I was going to spend a night in Trondheim,” I point out. I need my resolve to stay ice cold and razor sharp.

  “You can spend a night here anytime. When am I at home? When are you in Norway? What are the odds that we met each other like this? Come on…don’t you think you should at least see the village I grew up in, the one I always talked to you about?”

  And I do, I do, damnit. I want to experience this country the real way, off the beaten path, in the villages, with the locals.

  With my ex-boyfriend.

  Who now happens to be a Nordic god.

  I just can’t decide if he’s Thor or Loki.

  “It’s fate,” he offers, and his eyes are so sincere, I almost believe him.

  “Fate?”

  He shrugs. “Sure, why not? I’m here. My sisters are here. We have a car. We’re heading back there after this. The farmhouse has plenty of room.”

  I eye him suspiciously. “Are you trying to bring me on as an extra farmhand?”

  Finally he smiles, just a twitch of his lips. “Maybe.”

  It’s tempting. Really tempting. But it doesn’t feel right. It shouldn’t be this way, so easy. Pathetic or not, I’m still mad at the guy, and I know we’re not the same people anymore but I’m stubborn as shit and besides, who says I even want to hang around him.

  Just because he keeps staring at me the way he does, the way he’s biting his lower lip waiting for my response, which makes me remember the way his lips felt on mine, felt on my body, how his whole being awakened me into pleasures I never thought possible. We were so young and yet he left his mark, deep and hard, inside me, and I can still feel it, feel him, feel how beautiful he made me become.

  No, I tell myself sharply, nearly giving myself whiplash. Stop looking at the gorgeous Viking before it gets messy. You’re recalling old feelings that mean nothing anymore.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him, even though something in my heart squeezes as I say it. “Thanks for the offer, but I think it’s best if I stay here. This whole trip was meant to be for me, on my own, you know. Discovering myself and all that.”