Bright Midnight: A Second-Chance Romance

by Karina Halle

  The steel walls I tried to put up inside me bend, just a little.

  I sit down next to him and put my hand on top of his. The feel of his skin against mine both calms me and makes me sad, because I’m worried that we won’t have any of these moments left anymore. “As I said, what’s done is done. Those people that we were? They’re done too. They’ve moved on. They’ve moved on and they’ve become us. This us.” I gesture at us with my other hand.

  “And then what does this mean for this us?”

  “It means the same as you said,” I say, tears starting to burn hot behind my eyes. “It means that soon I’ll get on a ferry heading south, and you’ll go back to the farm, and we can both say that we were able to make amends. That we finally got the closure we both needed.”

  “If this is closure, then how come it feels like we’re leaving a door wide open?”

  I give him an incredulous look. He’s the one who already said that he wasn’t going to be enough for me, that I was only going to get scraps, that I didn’t deserve a life with him, regardless of what I actually want. He’s already started the process of closing that opened door.

  So maybe this proves it, I think. Maybe this proves he doesn’t know what the hell he wants.

  “Maybe this is for the best,” I tell him with a sigh, my heart breaking in my chest. “Maybe we were just kidding ourselves. Maybe every first love is meant to stay there, as a first love. We should have left it where it was. In the past. In the garbage.”

  His face pales slightly, like I just slapped him across the face, like he’s remembering the time I did. Okay, so my words had bite. So that might have hurt, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. We should have just left this new relationship at what it was, a few rolls in the hay to dissipate the sexual tension between us, plus some sightseeing thrown in. Why the hell did we have to go and bring all our feelings into it? Why did we have to make this into such a fucking mess?

  Because your feelings were there, from the very start, and so was the mess.

  I ignore that.

  I get to my feet. “I’m going to take a shower. I need some time alone.”

  I grab my bag and head to the washroom.

  I make the mistake of looking at Anders before I close the door.

  If I thought my heart was slowly cracking open inside my chest, I feel like I’m watching it happen to him in real time.

  His eyes tell me everything hurts.

  The next morning, I wake up to rain hitting the window pane.

  Anders is snoring lightly beside me, a sound that annoyed me before in a playful way, but now the sound cuts like a knife.

  This will be our last morning together.

  Last night was the last time I’d ever sleep with him. Not that we had sex—we were both too emotionally exhausted and numb for that—but I already can’t imagine not waking up with him beside me.

  Let me tell you, there is nothing worse than already mourning the person you’re lying next to. I have first-hand experience with that from Danny, which is why breaking up while you’re on vacation is a thing to be avoided.

  Not that we’re breaking up, per se. Anders and I were never really together this time around. We both knew what we were getting into, knowing that we would have fun for a bit on a road trip, and after that, we’d part. But it sure fucking feels like we’re breaking up, especially after last night.

  Which is why after we were done letting it all out, I went and made a reservation for a ferry out of Trondheim tomorrow. Better to cut the trip short instead of prolonging the inevitable. Today, Anders will drive us to up to Trondheim, this time going inland by the way of the famous Trollstiggen switchbacks, before dropping me off in the city. I’ll get a hotel room, he’ll head back to Todalen. Then I’ll get on the ferry and go check out Bergen and the destinations south of here. Wanderlust activated.

  It should sound exciting. It should put some pep in my step to get back out there, traveling by myself again, but I don’t feel anything at all.

  There’s just…nothing.

  I don’t want to go. I really don’t. I feel like it’s a big mistake, even though I know this is a two-way street and my feelings aren’t the only ones that matter. Anders seems to have made up his mind, and though he’s being kind and sweet, and though his eyes are sad, there’s also this glacial coolness coming off of him, that defensive mechanism of his that stops him from feeling too much.

  Well, I guess it’s time for me to wear that same mask. I don’t want to turn into the lovestruck girl begging for another chance. I was already that girl once, I won’t be her anymore. If Anders has decided that things won’t work between us with our lives, then I guess that’s that. I can’t do or say anything to change his mind. And anyway, who is to say he’s wrong about it? Perhaps it would be a colossal mistake to just drop all my plans and build my life around his. After all, we’re still in the process of getting to know each other all over again. It’s too soon to even think like that.

  I sigh softly and roll over, hoping I don’t wake Anders up. He’s usually awake at the crack of dawn, his lifestyle ingrained into him, so to see him sleeping tells me he needs it.

  Me, though, I barely slept through the night. I kept dreaming about a sinking ship, watching Anders go down in the waves, out of my life forever. Then I’d wake up and realize what was really happening. That the end was here and I was the one drowning.

  And I know, I know I should be handling this better. There’s a lot of I told you so’s directed at myself, because I knew that getting physically and emotionally involved with Anders again would making my feelings spiral out of control, easily overpowering me. I mean I knew it. I shouldn’t have slept with him, should have just left it at that kiss in the barn. Definitely shouldn’t have gone on a romantic road trip with the very person I was struggling to keep from falling for.

  But what’s done is done. I’m here now. I let myself fall for him all over again, and now I’m watching our relationship reach the very same conclusion. Maybe we really aren’t meant to be together. Maybe anything based on your first love is supposed to be doomed, the nature of the game.

  The rain starts picking up harder and I carefully get out of bed, staring out of the streaked windowpanes. The sky is growing lighter, but there doesn’t seem to be an east or a west. It’s all this dark shadowed grey as heavy black clouds rush in from along the fjord, the wind whipping up. I hope the drive back to Trondheim won’t be a total loss in this weather, since I’m counting on the scenery to distract me from what is sure to be one hell of an awkward car ride.

  I don’t know how long I stand there for, watching the storm roll in. The morning doesn’t seem to get any brighter.

  Eventually Anders wakes up, gets out of bed. We exchange quiet good mornings and small talk about the weather and then he goes about making us coffee from the in-room Nespresso machine. I think both of us want to turn back time, but we aren’t sure how.

  Maybe that was our problem from the beginning.

  But we have places to go. We get dressed, get packed, and it’s not long before we’re taking some stale croissants and cold cuts from the breakfast table in the lobby and heading to the car. The storm has quieted a little, the clouds providing a dramatic backdrop as we zip along the edge of the fjord, hundreds of meters high in the air, with only a guardrail between us and certain death. At least that takes my mind off of things for a bit.

  Eventually, we head inland and the weather clears just enough for me to get more photos. I don’t ask Anders to pull over this time, even though he offers, though eventually he makes the call when he finds a photogenic patch of sheep and a stretch of empty road. I get out and walk down the middle of the road, arms out, posing for the camera, grateful that Anders is far enough away that it’s hiding the tears in my eyes. Out here in this beautiful land, on top of the endless, undulating mountain tops of bare rock and moss, a prehistoric landscape that strikes at some primal part of me, I feel both free and trapped, like my old l
ife, the one in which I had no real direction, will suck me back under and there’ll be no escape.

  When I walk back to the car, there’s no hiding that I was crying through the photoshoot.

  Anders see this too, but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.

  We get back in the car and continue on our way, past desolate lakes, more sheep, then finally the famous snaking switchbacks, making a brief stop for coffee at the shiny glass cafeteria overlooking it all. We drink our coffees beside each other in silence, watching the cars, tour buses, and motorcycles making the twists and turns before we go down the infamous road ourselves.

  I have to say, the drive back to Trondheim is just as gorgeous as the road along the Atlantic, and we’re driving along side an aquamarine river, me snapping photo after photo (I’ve become a pro at taking them from a moving car), when Anders’ phone starts to ring.

  He answers it, even though he shouldn’t when he’s driving.

  “Ja?” he says in Norwegian, already sounding worried. Then he says something so sharp, it can only be a swear word.

  I look over at him, at the look of horror coming over his face, and my heart immediately sinks.

  Something horrible has happened.

  Anders is nodding, talking fast in Norwegian, and then he quickly pulls the car over at the first available spot along the river. He says a few more words and then hangs up, body completely tense.

  “What?” I ask, trying not to panic and think ahead. “What happened? Who was that?”

  He stares straight ahead for a moment, pain wrestling his features.

  Then he turns to look at me.

  Opens his mouth for a moment before the words come out.

  “The boat,” he says. “The boat was lost at sea.”

  19

  Anders

  Numb.

  I’ve gone completely numb.

  I stare down at the phone in my hands, wondering if this all could be a bad dream. It certainly felt like a bad dream when I woke up, a bad dream in which Shay and I were to part, never to see each other again.

  But she’s still here for now, sitting beside me in the passenger seat as rain starts to patter on the roof, and this bad dream has swiftly turned into a nightmare.

  The boat is lost at sea.

  My boat.

  My boat with Epsen and Dag on board.

  It can’t be real.

  This can’t be happening.

  “Please, Anders, talk to me,” Shay says softly, though I can hear the panic brimming in her voice.

  But I don’t even know what to say.

  “What do you mean it’s lost at sea? What does that mean?” she asks, reaching over and pressing her hand on top of my thigh. I stare down at her hand, at how small it is, delicate. A hand I know as intimately as my own. Soon, I’ll lose her. Soon, I’ll have lost everything. I’ve barely even processed what she told me last night, that I had gotten her pregnant, that for a brief period of time we had a fucking baby, something that felt like a boot to my ribs. And now…this?

  I shake my head, trying to swallow, to speak. It feels impossible.

  “The storm,” I manage to say. “There’s a storm out there. On the sea. On the bank. The other vessels started heading in but…they stayed. Tried to get more fish. They were heading back when things got bad and one of the vessels lost radio contact with them. Said they were taking on water. Then…that was it. Now no one knows. Now it’s search and rescue, hoping to find Dag and Epsen and the crew alive and…”

  I can’t finish my sentence.

  I’m suddenly choking, unable to breathe.

  I can’t lose them.

  I can’t lose them like I lost my father.

  “It’s my fault,” I cry out, my voice breaking and I’m so close to breaking myself. Shattering into a million pieces and there’s no glue that will ever hold me back together.

  “Shhh,” she says, running her hand over my cheek. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I sent them out there!”

  “They wanted to go, Anders. They were more than happy to. You said you were helping them, and you did. They are the ones that went, that was their choice. You didn’t give them an order.”

  I barely hear her. All I hear is this sick thud of my heartbeat, all I feel is my chest closing up, tighter and tighter.

  “Look, what can we do? We have to be able to do something,” she says. “Where abouts are the rescue boats leaving from? What’s the closest port?”

  I try to think back to what the dispatcher told me over the phone. “Bessaker. I think it’s a small fishing village. North of Trondheim.”

  “Then we go there,” she says. She puts her fingers at my jaw and makes me look at her. Inside, I’m completely lost, but in her eyes I see she’s in control. I surrender myself to her. “We go there. We help out. We do what we can. We don’t sit here, okay?”

  I nod slowly, licking my parched lips, the world feeling like it’s at the bottom of a fishbowl. “Okay.”

  “Do you want me to drive?”

  I blink, her question snapping me out of it. “You? Drive? This car?”

  She gives me a quick smile. I don’t think she meant it. Maybe. “Okay. Then if you can drive, let’s get going. I’ll plug in the location on my GPS.” She brings out her phone and asks me to spell the name of the town for her. Then she plugs it in, frowns. Shows me the screen.

  We’re about two hours south of Trondheim right now, but close to the highway that bisects the country in half, the E-6. It will take us five hours, and hopefully the ferry we have to use is running on time.

  “Let’s go,” I tell her, shoving my heartache and anxiety and doom somewhere deep down until I have to deal with it later. Until then, I need to concentrate on driving, on getting me and Shay there in one piece, especially with the weather being the way it is.

  I bring the Datsun back on the road, zipping along the river and heading further inland. I glance at her quickly, my heart waterlogged. “You don’t have to come. I’ll have to drive through Trondheim anyway. I’ll drop you off at your hotel.”

  She turns her head and gives me a steady look. “If you think you’re getting rid of me that easily now…”

  “I was never trying to get rid of you,” I tell her, my hands gripping the steering wheel as our fight from yesterday settles over us. I don’t want to bring it up, I don’t want to rehash it, but I also don’t want her to think that I don’t want her. “Shay.”

  “It’s fine,” she says, looking out the window. “Just drive. We need to concentrate on Epsen and Dag.”

  And the boat, I finish in my head. Because the boat is as alive as they are. The boat is my father, my duty, my legacy, personified.

  “We’ve got five hours,” I tell her. “That’s a long time to not discuss what happened yesterday. And I know we should be thinking about them right now, I know it, but I also know that if I do, if I let my imagination run away on me, that I might sink so deep I’ll never come back up. Okay?”

  She doesn’t say anything to that.

  “And so, I’m going to talk,” I go on. “We’re going to talk about what happened.”

  “Nothing has changed,” she grumbles.

  I sigh heavily. “I don’t…I don’t want you to think that I don’t want to be with you. That you don’t make me happy. Shay, you make me so unbelievably happy that it’s like, when I’m with you, I’m not even myself anymore. I’m someone better. Someone with a new purpose and that purpose is you and—”

  “Stop,” she whispers, and when she looks at me, her eyes are wet with tears. “I don’t want to hear this. It doesn’t help. Why tell me all that if it’s not going to change anything? Because it feels good to say? Anders, it kills me to hear it. So please. Just please, stop talking. We said all there is to say yesterday, and you made it more than clear why this won’t work between us, and I get it. I get it now.” She pauses, pressing her lips together for a moment. “You’re right.”

  “But I do
n’t want to be right,” I tell her.

  She doesn’t say anything. Turns her body away from mine, resting her head against the window, closing her eyes. Shutting me out, just as I’ve shut her out.

  So much for distracting me during our five-hour drive.

  In fact, Shay ends up falling asleep until we get to Trondheim, when I reach over and purposefully wake her up. I guess with all this traveling, she’s become a pro at falling asleep in cars, planes, and trains.

  My mind goes back to when she first got off that train in Trondheim, at the station, when I first saw her in the flesh after so many years. I had no idea what I was getting myself into with her, but I knew I had to do everything in my power to keep her in my life again. That I wouldn’t make the same mistakes I did before.

  And what am I doing now?

  Making the exact same fucking mistakes.

  When I was a young fuck-up, I hated myself so much. It was hard not to hate myself. I had a father I didn’t see eye-to-eye with, who became a shell of a man after my mother left him. Maybe I reminded him of her too much, but he pushed me away, closed himself off to me, and I rebelled. I rebelled against everything, becoming the very thing I hated. I was tired of being the good son, the dutiful son, when I didn’t get any love in return. If he wanted to treat me like a bad seed, then that’s what I was going to be.

  I played a role until it became the threads that held me together.

  I lashed out.

  I did drugs.

  I made my father make the hard decisions.

  And then I pretended it didn’t kill me when he made them.

  My father sent me away because he couldn’t handle me, because I became the bad son, the fuck-up. He was starting to resent me anyway, why not take it all the way and give him a good reason?

  So I went to America.

  To my mother, who hated me so much that she left her whole family behind and chased after some guy who barely knew her. I knew my mother didn’t want a family to begin with, I knew she treated me, Astrid, Tove, Lise, like we were unwanted pets running around her house. But knowing that didn’t make it easier, didn’t ease the pain when she suddenly up and left us, breaking our family in half.