Bright Midnight

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.