“After you finish, did you want to go back to that waterfall you didn’t get to see?” Luke asks me.
“Oh, but there’s another, bigger waterfall down the street that we should check out!” Cassie looks at Luke, then at me, challenging.
“I can meet you guys there,” I say, trying to give Cassie the alone time she apparently so desperately needs with Luke.
“No, we can wait,” Luke says.
“She says it’s fine,” Cassie says quickly.
I almost laugh. Is she really that desperate?
Luke looks at me now.
I shrug. “You guys can hang out at the next place until I get there. No big deal. Start making lunch and we’ll eat when I get there.” At this point, I just want them to leave so I can get some space from Cassie.
“What’s the name of the next place?” Luke asks, turning to Cassie.
“Skógafoss?” she says, struggling to say the name. I nod, because I already know this waterfall. It was the next place we were going to go anyways, so it works out.
“Go ahead,” I tell Luke. “Just give me the keys to the rental. You can take Cassie’s van.”
He gives me the keys, and Cassie lets out an excited squeal that I thought only girls in movies did.
“Come on, let’s go!”
Luke gives me a second glance as he walks away, as if he isn’t sure he should be leaving me behind, but I give him a wave.
My trip to Iceland is feeling a lot more like a solo trip.
Chapter 20
Luke
Never will I ever flirt with a girl in a foreign country again.
Iwantto have a good time with Cassie, but she keeps trying to ditch Harper. And I get it, Harper has turned into a third wheel, but this isHarper’strip. If anyone should be the third wheel, it should be me. Or maybe the issue is that Cassie shouldn’t be here in the first place.
Cassie talks the entire drive to the waterfall, telling me about everything she’s seen in Iceland so far. Eventually she also dives into a rant about how she’s a kindergarten teacher and that she’s trying to find something fun about Iceland to work into a lesson plan or craft.
“I’m leaning toward something volcano related. Maybe we’ll just do some volcano painting, but I feel like I could probably come up with something better. Of course, we can alwaysmakea volcano, but that’s more of an older kid thing.”
Eventually, we pull up to the next parking lot. Another massive waterfall sits in front of us. She puts the van into park and hops out.
This waterfall is just as tall as the last one, but it’s muchwider—the volume of water coming down is at least five times as much. Where the last waterfall was tall and elegant, this one is large and regal.
There are birds flying around the rocks surrounding the waterfall, looking like tiny specks in comparison.
Plenty of tourists are at the base of the waterfall taking photos, but a few scatter along the long set of wooden steps that bring you right up to the very top where the water cascades off the face of the cliff.
“Coming?” Cassie says when I linger at the van.
“We told Harper we’d start making lunch.”
“I figured we’d just do PB and J. And we can make that super quick once she gets here. We’ll just check it out while we wait for her.”
She comes and takes my hand, pulling me toward her.
PB and J was all we packed for lunch, but when Harper told us to make lunch, I assumed that was code for “Wait for me to get there before you do anything fun.”
