by Petrova, Em
She wanted to say whatever it took to make the sadness in his voice go away. And she knew what it was that she could say to make it better for him. But she couldn’t do it, not a second time. At some point, she would end up right where she had started at the beginning of the trip, angry at herself for sacrificing her own career, her own wants, for a man. That wasn’t the foundation of any good relationship.
“I’m sorry,” he said, brushing his lips against hers. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Her fingers grasped at his hair, holding him close.
“Niklas, would you have told me that story about what happened in Detroit if I hadn’t said I was leaving? Would you still have sat for my photographs or comforted me so thoroughly just now, if I were staying?”
Niklas lifted his head and looked carefully at her. Her vision was a little blurry with tears again, but she could still see the intense blue of his eyes. He seemed to struggle with his answer.
“I don’t know,” he said, “But does it matter? Does it make what happens between us any less real or true?”
He didn’t take his eyes off her as she took in his answer. She had been struggling with this idea for days, though this was the first time she had formulated it so clearly. As the days and, now, the hours melted down to the end, she felt herself drawn closer, further into him. Was this simply the force of the moment? Would this feeling quickly fade away, or was Niklas reaching something deeper inside her, something that would never leave her alone?
She would never know unless she left. But while part of her wanted to know the answer to these questions, she had a nagging feeling that Niklas was right. She wanted him to be right.
Caroline met his gaze again. He was waiting for her answer.
“I don’t know if it matters,” she said honestly. “I don’t know.”
STEAM FILLED THE bathroom, but Caroline wasn’t ready to get out any time soon. Niklas’s arms were around her as the hot water came down, pooling between their bodies. It was impossible to tell where she ended and he began.
“Do you want some sleep?” she asked.
Niklas shook his head. “I’ll sleep when you leave,” he murmured.
Instead, Caroline took the soap in her hand and stepped back from him. Then, slowly, she began to wash his body. She took her time with the same, aching sadness as before, wanting to remember each part of him.
“What else will you do when I leave?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t want to think about that.”
He twitched and flexed as she explored the curve of each arm, the length of each finger, the slope of his back and the scar on his knee. She watched the water bead and run down his skin as she moved lower down his stomach. She heard a low groan over the sound of the water, but he stayed still, letting her explore, this time without stopping her.
Caroline knelt down in front of him, moving the bar of soap up one leg, then the other. Finally, she put the bar down and washed the rest of him. His thigh muscles were rigid, and when she looked up at his face, his lips were parted in unuttered words. Then she opened her mouth to take him in.
Niklas let out a low cry and grabbed the wall to hold himself up.
THEY LAY, SOMEWHERE between waking and sleeping, as the light of the morning crept back into the bedroom. Niklas had gathered her into him, his chest along her back, his arms and legs tangled with hers. Their bodies fit together.
Caroline lifted her head slightly and looked at the clock. Twelve more minutes, and then it was time to go. She had tried to resist these glances, counting down the hours, then minutes, but as the end crept nearer, she found she couldn’t stop herself.
Niklas reached up and gently guided her head back down to the pillow.
“Not yet,” he whispered, laying his cheek onto hers. “Just lie here and let me forget you’re leaving for a few more minutes. Remember, my way tonight.”
Caroline closed her eyes and tried as hard as she could, but the knot in her stomach wouldn’t go away. Everything was a last of something. The last time the bristle of his unshaven cheek would rub against hers, the last time his hand would hold the curve of her hip against him. She bit her lip to stifle the emotions that threatened to swell again. Because this was her decision, wasn’t it? And it was what she wanted, right?
Caroline listened to his breath and felt the slow beat of his heart on her back, though at times it was hard to tell the difference between his and hers.
The alarm finally rang, and Niklas rolled onto his back when she reached over him to turn it off. He pulled her onto his chest and squeezed her hard. He took her face in both his hands and kissed her cheeks, her eyelids, her forehead, her mouth. He stroked her hair and held her tightly, and she buried her tears in his neck, unable to pull herself away.
ACROSS THE EMPTY street was Vasaparken, unchanged in the last month, despite the complete upheaval of Caroline’s life. Not so long ago, she had imagined a mystical world with only her and Niklas right here in front of her, but now she was willingly leaving it.
Caroline stepped into the taxi cab, filled with the stale cold of morning air. She looked up one more time into the windows above, but all she saw was the reflection of the gray sky. She swallowed hard and slammed the door shut.
Her plan was to take the airport shuttle bus, but Niklas had insisted on the cab. It wasn’t safe to take the bus that early, he argued, and leaving by cab from this side of town meant an extra hour together. She didn’t want to tell him the reason she had chosen the bus: A cab cost double the bus ride or more, and without many clear opportunities to make money in the near future, she was on a tight budget. But he had insisted.
“Okay,” she finally said, and he made the online reservation before she could change her mind. And when that last hour came, she was glad for it. At that moment, it was worth much more than the taxi fare.
The ride was long. The office buildings and shopping centers changed to forest, then to suburban houses, then back again to shopping centers as they headed to Arlanda airport. Thick gray clouds threatened rain but somehow brightened the green in the pastures and fields. She would miss this quiet beauty of Stockholm.
Her taxi turned off the highway and finally delivered her in front of the airport. She handed her credit card to the driver, but he waved her off.
“Paid when you made the reservation, remember?”
She managed to nod as her eyes filled up. Niklas had paid for her cab. He must have known why she had resisted.
The airport was empty when she arrived, too early for the morning rush. Only one agent stood behind the long row of desks. Caroline walked across the enormous room, the wheels of her luggage echoing in the silence of the hall. The man looked up.
“Are there still standby seats on the 6:30 flight to Brindisi?”
Caroline showed the agent her ticket.
“Not many of these kinds of tickets come through here,” he said, smiling. He spoke with a perfect British accent. “Looks like a lot of fun.”
Caroline tried to smile. The agent typed something into his computer and then looked up.
“There’s one seat left in economy class, but I’m sure you’ll be fine. Not many last-minute purchases on early morning flights like these,” he said, “but I can’t issue the boarding pass until two hours before the flight departs. You can wait over there.”
He pointed to an alcove along the window.
Slowly, she walked over to the sleek, black benches lined up next to the entrance way, the wheels of her suitcase echoing through the hall again. What would happen if the flight filled up? Should she take it as a sign that she should stay? The thought was tempting. She could go back to Niklas’s apartment and curl up into his bed, against the warmth of his body.
Or would Niklas see her return in another light? When her first choice didn’t work out, she came back, dragging out the goodbyes one more time until the next flight. No, Caroline decided, she couldn’t go back. Besides, the agent was right. No one booked
6:30 am flights to Italy at the last minute. Reality was much more mundane. Soon, she would pick up the ticket from the counter and say goodbye to Sweden.
Caroline leaned back on the bench and looked at the clock. 45 minutes. In 45 minutes, the last seat would be released and the rest of her life would begin. She tried to conjure up the pictures of the southern Italian farms and hills that she had poured over so many times, but the excitement she had felt even up to last week was gone.
With a sigh, Caroline instead unzipped her handbag and dug out her camera bag. She pulled out the camera and turned it on. Then she began to scroll through the photos she had taken the night before. Niklas. She traced the width of his shoulders with her eyes. His blond hair was messy, and in one photo, he was running his hand through it. She scrolled further, taking in each image, as if replaying a movie in slow motion, until the last one. She had caught him just as he was turning around to her, just as she had started to cry. She zoomed in. His eyes looked right at the camera, questioning her, his whole face lined with worry.
This time, Caroline didn’t try to hold back her tears. There was no one around. She just let them fall as she stared at the image on her tiny camera screen.
She wasn’t sure how long she had been sitting there, looking at the photo, but gradually she became aware that other people had begun to trickle in. The airport was coming to life. Caroline looked up at the clock. 4:25 am. In five minutes, she would pick up her boarding pass and walk through security, over to her gate.
She turned off her camera and stuffed it back into her bag. Then, slowly, she stood up and crossed the departures hall once more. When she came to the front of the line, the agent looked up at her, and his face fell.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was wrong. That last economy seat sold. It almost never happens, but it did this time.”
The nauseous combination of sleeplessness and her uncomfortable decision that had hovered around her all morning now took over her body. She was stuck. Everything felt numb. Her face must have shown her distress because the agent’s eyes widened.
“Let me just check the next flight… no, nothing…” He kept typing for another minute. Then he said in a gentle voice, “You have two options. You can either come back tomorrow morning and try again. There are six seats still available on that flight. Or you can pay an extra 400 Euros to buy an upgrade for one of the first class tickets. There are a few of those left.”
400 Euros. 400 Euros meant eight nights in the little pensione she had wanted to stay in. 400 Euros was 20 evening-long meals while watching the sun set over the water. She didn’t have that kind of money to spend. But she couldn’t go back and stay another night in Stockholm, either. Even if it didn’t push Niklas over the edge, it would certainly wring the last of her heart dry.
“Let me think about it for a moment,” she whispered and stepped aside to let the next customer by. Her mind was blank.
She was aware of someone standing close behind her.
“You can go—” she started to say. But as she turned around, she stopped mid-sentence, her mouth hanging wide open.
“Niklas,” she finally managed to say.
Her voice came out hoarse and scratchy, and the tears that had ebbed on the bench flowed back out.
He was standing close to her in jeans and a dark t-shirt, with a baseball cap pulled low over his face. He took off his sunglasses, and his eyes shone into hers.
“There are no more seats left,” she blurted out. “I can’t get on the plane.”
He brushed a stray lock of hair off her face and then put his hand on her shoulder, gently caressing her.
“There are still tickets,” he said quietly. “He just told you that.”
“First class,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t afford that.”
He bent down and whispered in her ear, “I can.”
For the first time she noticed the duffel bag in his other hand. She looked up at him, back down at the bag and then up into his eyes again, trying to register what was happening.
“I want to go with you. If you’ll let me,” he said with a hint of a smile.
Caroline opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
When she didn’t answer, he continued a little faster, “You can spend your days alone if you want. I won’t get in your way. I just want to be with you—”
She shook her head, and her voice came back.
“No, Niklas, I don’t want to spend my days alone,” she said. “I want to spend them with you. God, I want that.”
She put her hands along the sides of his face, running her fingertips along the stubble of his cheeks as if to make sure this was real. Then she brought his face down to hers for a long kiss. She pulled him into her, closing the last inches of space between their bodies, pressing herself into the warmth of his embrace. She felt the first evidence of his arousal against her.
“Careful,” he chuckled when she released him. “The hotel is a long way away.”
She straightened herself back up and looked around. The other people in line were staring at them. Some of them were grinning.
“Niklas,” she said softly, “I can’t just let you buy me a plane ticket.”
She brushed her hair out of her face, trying to pull herself back together.
“Why not?”
“Because I just can’t. Because—”
She paused, trying to get her thoughts in order.
“Caroline, there’s nothing I’d rather spend my money on,” he said. “Please let me do this. We can discuss it more if you want to later, but right now let’s get ourselves onto this plane before the first class tickets run out, too.”
He squeezed her hand and smiled at her.
“I just want to be with you,” he said, looking carefully into her eyes. “Please can I buy this ticket so we can go to Italy together?”
Everything in her wanted this, and she couldn’t bring herself to protest anymore. She couldn’t do that to herself, and she couldn’t do that to him, either.
“Okay,” she said. “I mean, thank you.”
He let his lips brush against hers once more, and then he took her hand and stepped up to the ticketing counter. The agent looked at Niklas’s passport, then at him, and then back at his passport, the spark of recognition in his eyes. And she watched as the hockey player Niklas Almquist appeared, the man she had first seen at the press conference, good-humored, talkative, and in control. And she saw what he was doing. He kept his voice low, engaging the agent in Swedish, and deflecting the attention from her. He did it instinctually, and she still wasn’t sure what to make of this side of him or her own willingness to go along with it.
The agent handed over two boarding passes and grabbed her bag, and then, suddenly they were free. They were going to Italy together. Niklas’s hand found hers, and he squeezed it. Slowly, they walked towards security as Caroline tried to sort out the course of events that had changed so quickly, leaving a chaotic tumble of thoughts running through her mind. She drew in a deep breath, but it didn’t take the shakiness out of her voice.
“You know, I’m going to want to eat out. At restaurants,” she said.
He stopped and put his arms around her.
“This is your trip, your way,” he said. Then he grinned. “Besides, no one in Italy cares about hockey.”
“And I don’t even know where I’m staying yet or what I’m doing,” she said, her words coming faster now. “None of this trip is planned. I was just going to wait and see what happened.”
He nodded and ran his hand over her hair. The warmth made her shoulders relax a little.
“That works for me,” he said softly.
“It’s in the middle of tourist season,” she continued, “and many of the hotels will be full by now. We’ll probably have to hunt for a place to stay for a while.”
His hand continued to follow the path of her hair, along her face, over her shoulders and down her back.
“I don’t mind,” he said evenly, �
��though if you’re worried, we can always stay in the pensione I booked for the next few nights.”
“You already have a place to stay?”
“In case you decided you wanted to go alone,” he said. Then he added, “You can still decide that, you know.”
“Why would you think I would want to go alone?”
“You didn’t ask me to come with you,” he said gently. “I just showed up. I had to consider that you might not want me there.”
Caroline stared up at him, her mouth open.
“I didn’t think to ask you, but not because I didn’t want you to come,” she said finally. “I just didn’t think—”
She stopped. There wasn’t any way to make this sound good.
He waited and then, when she still didn’t speak, he said, “You didn’t think a bad-tempered hockey player like me would follow the woman he was falling in love with?”
Caroline closed her eyes. She could feel her heart pound at his words. This was almost too much to register.
“Something like that,” she said. “But not the bad-tempered part. Replace that with ‘incredibly hot.’”
Niklas chuckled and bent down for a long, soft kiss.
“Did it occur to you that I might be asking the same thing? Could this incredible, sexy woman want some brute like me crashing in on her adventure?” He looked at her carefully, searching for signs of doubt. His face was serious now, and she was close enough to feel his heart pounding as hard as hers was. “You can tell me if you don’t want me there, you know.”
At last she saw that he was just as nervous as she was. Niklas had stated so simply that he wanted her the night before, and she didn’t stay. And he still came for her. She shook her head decidedly.
“No. I mean, yes,” she said, flustered. She swallowed. “What I mean is that I do want you there. I really, really do. There’s nothing that I want more on this trip. Or anywhere, for that matter.”