Kelsey Messner
“I still don’t understand why you pick Reykjavik for summer internship, Stella.” Bjӧrn grins, his ice-blue eyes flicking up at me beneath clear-rimmed glasses.
That accent.
That smile. Us crazed Americans with our orthodontic obsession. Haven’t we realized how attractive a smile with slightly protruding cuspids can be?
Very. The answer is very, very attractive.
I brush my braid over my shoulder and accept the steaming cortado.
“Y’all certainly put the Ice in Iceland,” I laugh, and wince.
Which is worse? The southern accent that is so thick it’s practically bathed in barbeque sauce or the pathetic joke?
Answer? Both.
Bjӧrn offers a wide grin, his cheeks slightly pink with cold.
I hold his gaze.
I want to say how much the past eight weeks have meant to me. I want to ask if there’s more between us than just the novelty of hobnobbing with a foreigner. I want to know if he thinks about what we could be beyond the summer like I do.
“I’ll bring out your skyr in a minute.”
At least this isn’t goodbye. Yet.
I ease through the dining area, a mosaic of marble-top tables, rustic wood, and brightly lacquered stools, remembering the first time I wandered into the coffee shop with my Icelandic/English translation book.
Despite the forty-degree weather that sunny June morning, my fingers were sweating on the pages until I finally croaked, “Kaffi takk?”
Bjӧrn had reached over the counter, grabbed the book from my hands, and dropped it on the counter. “You can speak English here. Is okay. Where are you from?”
“South Carolina. I mean, the United States.”
He smirked. “I had hunch you were American. What brings you here?”
The way he rolled his R’s swirled my thoughts like the milk in my cortado.
I told him about my photography internship, and before I left the shop, he had given me a list of places to visit and made me promise to come back with my pictures.
Now, I sit down in my spot that looks over the harbor on the North Atlantic Ocean. How could Reykjavík Rost feel so familiar? My view of the ocean, a perfect mirror of ombre waters and sky, split with snow-capped mountains and marine vessels. My green velvet chair where I’d sat across from Bjӧrn’s exuberant face as he gushed about his ancient city.
“Yes, see the puffins.” He said one day, sitting across from me after delivering my food. “They are cute, but don’t limit yourself to the tourist attractions. Go to Sky Lagoon in Kópavogur, they have thermal baths, is beautiful. See the swans at The Unknown Bureaucrat.”
“The what?”
Bjӧrn waved a dismissive hand. “A pond teeming with swans and ducks. Let me take you there.”
“Sounds swan-derful!”
Bjӧrn snorted.
How easy it was to follow Bjӧrn all over the city on Strætȯ bus, his corduroy shirt with elbow patches, his cologne that smelled like pine and sea. How I marveled at the feeling of his cool hand wrapping around mine and the miracle of heat that radiated from his touch.
Two months goes by too fast.
At least for me.
Bjӧrn strolls over, delivering my skyr with a bow and sitting across from me.
“You have new pictures?”
My heart squeezes in my chest. How can he not realize that his interest in my photography makes me hope he could be interested in something more?
For all the times he has taken me out around the city, all the evenings he has taken me to my bus stop and said, “Bless bless,” the Icelandic goodbye that makes my insides melt, never once has he hinted at more.
Maybe it’s all one-sided?
“No,” I say, croaking over the word.
His eyebrows lift. “Is something wrong?”
This is it. I may never get another chance to ask if he thinks of me as more than just the American girl who follows him around with her camera and her stupid jokes.
I release a shaky breath, my insides rattling as my heart gallops.
“You know I’m leaving tomorrow. Don’t you . . . care?”
Bjӧrn fans out his hands. “You mistake me, Stella.”
I drop my gaze, the breath unfurling from my lips.
So I was right. I misunderstood how he felt.
Bjӧrn pushes aside my yogurt cup and holds out his hands, and without a thought, I slip my palms against his and heat zings up my arms.
My eyes lock with his.
“I care very much. In fact, I felt like it was fate meeting you that day, because I’m studying abroad at USC this fall.”
I bolt upright in my seat. “University of South Carolina?”
He nods. “Not far from you, yes?”
I laugh, my hands fluttering in his. “Yes, yes, very close! Why didn’t you tell me?”
He brushes my knuckles with his thumb. “I didn’t want you to think I was lying to get your attention. It was such a coincidence. But as time went on, I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“But how will I see you? USC is still four hours away.”
Bjӧrn lifts his shoulders. “Petta reddast.”
He rolls over the R in that delicious way that pulls my lips into a stupid grin.
“What does that mean?”
He rubs his thumbs inside my palms. “There’s no . . . equal phrase. It means, ‘things will work out all right.’” Bjӧrn pulls my hands over to him and presses a warm kiss to my knuckles. “I don’t know how, but for you and me, things will work out all right.”
The warmth of his kiss sends a shiver over my arms as I try to pull together a coherent response.
I sink into his ice-blue gaze as he flashes me that perfectly imperfect smile, warm sunlight swelling over us through the window. I lift my cup and toast. “Petta reddast.”
Somehow, whether here or home or somewhere in between, it will work out alright.
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