Page 48 of Ignited in Iceland
‘And it’s two days too long,’ said Rachel.
‘Yes,’ he laughed.
‘Do you think if she was the one, there would be some way of being together? Like, Jonas and I, we made things work because we loved each other. That’s what makes you willing to compromise.’
‘You compromised, my love,’ Jonas said, pointing his screwdriver at Rachel, who shrugged and blew him a kiss.
‘My point is that Iris might not want to be travelling the world chasing volcanoes. She might want what she’s found here,’ she said.
‘Here. This spring was dislodged.’ Siggi couldn’t continue with this conversation. What if Rachel was right? What if Iris would be willing to stay? It seemed unlikely, based on less than a couple of weeks in Iceland. Whatever Jonas and Rachel said, it took longer for people to fall in love than that. Didn’t it?
‘Hey, Siggi.’ Jonas spoke in Icelandic and laid his hand on Siggi’s arm. ‘Don’t overthink it. It’s been a long time since you felt like this about someone. Don’t start thinking too far ahead about things that might not even be true. Iris might not want that. She might be like you and prefer globetrotting to what me and Rachel have.’
‘Takk.’He nodded at Jonas, grateful that his friend understood. It was hard to think about a different kind of life and far too soon to be thinking about something like that with Iris. They’d known each other a little over a week. That might have been all the time it took for Jonas and Rachel to fall in love, but it wasn’t often like that for anyone else.
‘Sorry, Siggi.’ Rachel didn’t speak Icelandic, but after three years in the country, she’d probably picked up enough to get the gist of what Jonas had said.
‘It’s okay.’ He grinned at her. ‘I am stuck in my ways. It is hard to imagine sharing my life with someone like you all do.’
‘I sometimes forget that what we have isn’t what everyone wants, anyway. Despite what Gudrun might think.’
They all laughed. Gudrun was the biggest romantic and was desperate for tales of love amongst her friends.
‘It is nice to share a few days with someone like Iris. Both of us are happy with it being only that.’ Anything else was too complicated.
‘You are out again tonight?’ Jonas asked him.
‘Yes. The aurora forecast looks good, but I think we may hit some cloud cover if I head back to where we were yesterday. I’ve been avoiding Reykjanes but that will be the best area tonight.’
‘Don’t you have an insider in the Met Office now? Iris would tell you if it was too dangerous, wouldn’t she?’
‘That’s true. She has mentioned there is more activity but I haven’t heard that it’s more than that. Maybe we should not worry yet.’ He looked at Jonas for confirmation.
‘I agree. We need to be careful, but until we hear something official, we should continue to go to that area if we need to. It will be difficult to keep the Northern Lights tours going if we can’t chase them to the best locations, as well as the weather being a problem for us.’
‘Have you started looking at your next trip, Siggi?’ Rachel asked. They all knew his routine and were always interested in where he was heading to next.
‘Not yet.’
‘Oh.’ Rachel sounded surprised and Siggi knew that she’d be reading too much into why he had made no plans. He wasn’t sure what was holding him back either, and he could only assume it was Iris. Because he was having such a great time with her, the urgency he usually felt to escape had left him. Temporarily, he assumed.
‘Do you know Iris was in Hawaii at the same time I was?’ he said, partly to divert Rachel from asking anything else about whether he was changing his usual plans because of Iris, and partly because he’d forgotten.
‘No way!’ Rachel said.
‘Yes, and she was going to the same beach where I was surfing.’
‘You could have been there at the same time and not known.’
‘We might have been.’
‘Oh my god, Siggi. It’s fate.’
‘Rachel,’ Jonas said, smiling at his wife but with a warning tone in his voice.
‘Well, that’s an enormous coincidence, if nothing else,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Siggi agreed. ‘And you are right. It felt like fate when we realised.’
