AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She insisted that clothes shopping would be too boring for me, and that she’d meet me at this bar for dinner and drinks. Who knows, maybe she needs some time to be alone. Maybe I’m crowding her a little. Maybe I’m being too much. She seemed to like that aspect of me back in the day, but I have to stop thinking in the past. I have to start thinking of our present, and our future.
And what future is that? I ask myself. The one in which she stays on the farm, helping Per, having no life of her own while you’re out at sea for most of the month? That future?
I hate how it is. How it will be. I wish I could let go of the rusted shackles keeping me in place, keeping me stuck in a life I don’t want to be stuck in. My duty. My destiny. I’m bound for it and yet I want to be bound to her.
Ease up, I remind myself. You’re coming on too strong. Don’t ruin what little time you have.
And there she is.
Shay opens the door to the bar, stepping inside. She must have gone back to the hotel room to change because her jean jacket and scarf are draped over one arm and she’s wearing a new dress, white with tiny pink flowers, the kind that hugs her tits, putting them on display, making her skin glow. I know people are looking at her as she walks toward me, giving me a shy smile as she brushes her bangs off her face, and I can’t blame them.
I’m the luckiest guy here.
She’s turning all the heads but I’m the one she’s chosen.
“Hey,” she says, taking the seat across from me.
I can only stare dumbly for a moment.
“You look gorgeous,” I finally say. “Can I keep you?”
I add a smile to my words, so she’ll think I’m joking, but I’m also kind of not.
She laughs. “I’m all yours, Anders. And thank you. I wasn’t sure about the dress because it’s not quite dress season here, hence the boots.” She sticks her leg out, showing off her combat boots. “But I was so fucking sick of my clothes, you have no idea. I think I might just leave half of them behind at the hotel, maybe the housekeeper will want them. I bought so much stuff, found the best little store with all these cool Norwegian brands. At least I think they’re Norwegian brands.”
I can’t help but smile at her, hanging off her every word. “Good. You deserve it. I can’t imagine having to live out of a backpack for so long.”
She gives me a dry look. “Oh whatever, you’re a dude. A fisherdude! You probably wear the same damn thing every day when you’re out at sea.”
I give her a look that says, guilty.
“Anyway,” she says, “it kind of feels like my life has found a new chapter, you know? So I might as well dress appropriately.”
And what chapter is that? I want to ask. Is it a chapter that I’m in? Am I a part of this new narrative?
But fear has tempered my boldness. I’m afraid to ask certain things in the event that it will scare her off for good. I know we should both be free with each other right now, that I have nothing to lose, and yet…yet it feels like I could lose everything.
Like I said.
I’m screwed.
“So, should we get something to eat here?” she asks, her slender fingers pulling the menu toward her. For a moment I picture a diamond ring on her left hand, a ring that I would have given her. I imagine us in the future, here, living this life together, trying to make the best of it, make it work. Would it be so unfair to ask her to stay with me? To have her be with me…
Have her…love me?
Can I give her the life she wants, the one in which she finds herself, where she finds a home and stability and the family she’s always been yearning for?
Will she let me try?
The feeling has so much elation behind it that it feels like a bird about to take flight and soar above the seas, and with a heavy, sinking feeling in my heart, I know that it’s asking too much. Asking her to stay with me here in Norway, to be with me, would only stifle her life. We’re both young, but in some ways she’s so much younger. I’ve already settled down, in the same deep ruts that I’ll die in. She has her whole future ahead of hers. To ask her to stay with me is to deprive her of that. I’ve already fucked her life up once before, I won’t do it again.
“Klipfisk pizza?” Shay asks, glancing up at me from the menu. I give her a wary smile. “That can’t be good, can it? Fuck, I’m tempted to order it. That, and a whole bunch of that elderberry cider I had the other day.”
