Page 38 of A Copenhagen Snowmance
“You do see, though, that not all things can be fixed, right?” she asks, carefully.
“I like a challenge,” he says with bravado, clearly in too good a mood for her to bait him with this. “Sometimes people just need to give things a try, even if they think they don’t want to.”
She’s not going to change his mind in this mood, she can see that. She’s about to let it drop when he then says, “Tell me why you chose to run from things.”
Bugged, Anna pauses to look at the Kongens Have café, closed now, the snow-topped tables and chairs empty. It buzzes with people in the summer. Right now, however, there’s only a couple of robins hopping around.
“Why do you keep saying I run from things?”
“Don’t you?”
“Not in the way I see it.”
“Ahh… a difference of perspective.”
“Precisely,” she says firmly.
Jamie simply presses his lips together and nods in a “well, you could put it like that if you really want to, but the rest of the world might not agree” kind of way. Rude.
Anna tries to stand taller than she is.
“Jamie, if you’re being burned by a fire, do you, a) stay put, or b) move away?”
“Obviously I would move away.”
“There,” she says, victorious.
“I might however return to douse the fire,” he says, “and stay around to examine how the fire got lit and find the answers. I might discuss with people what led to it, what can be salvaged, what lessons can be learned?”
Anna’s face pulls together, indignant, which makes him smirk. “Not the perspective you wanted?”
She starts walking again. “So maybe that was the wrong example. If someone punches you in the face, in front of all your friends and they all laugh at you, do you hang around?”
Jamie’s brow rises at that.
“OK,” Anna adjusts, “I’ll admit such a person would have to be very tall to do that to you, but imagine the pain and then the humiliation.That.Do you hang around to see what you can learn? No, you move aside, sensibly, to check your bruises, and administer some self-care, and try to forget about the person who punched you unexpectedly and without reason.”
“So, no lessons to be learned?”
Anna laughs wryly. “Of course. Don’t trust anyone ever again. Not with your heart, at least.”
Jamie’s smile drops at that. “That’s really what you’ve taken from this? To never venture your heart again?”
“Well, duh,” Anna says. “I’m not a complete idiot. You get burned once, you don’t stand near the fire again.” She’s back to the fire thing.
Jamie shakes his head, wraps an arm around her shoulder and propels her along. “Lundholm, that is so sad. You should still stand by the fire. It warms you.”
“No thanks. I’ll wear an extra jumper instead,” she says, distracted by that arm. They aren’t on show, so he needn’t. Not that she minds, actually.
“Not as exciting,” he says.
“It can be plenty exciting,” she insists. “I’ve removed myself from the danger and now I can navigate the world without fear of further pain.”
“Lonely.”
“No. I have friends.” Suddenly Anna feels the need to convince him. She doesn’t want him thinking of her as a saddo loner. Not that it really matters as she’ll be out of his life soon enough, but she’d still rather he didn’t think of her that way for some reason. “Jamie, I grew up in the same way. As soon as my mother became uncomfortable for whatever reason somewhere, we upped and left. She…wesaw it as a freedom. We just packed up and found somewhere new and exciting.”
Now, if Anna is being truly honest about this, then this description would be quite off centre. She had not, in fact, seen it as a freedom, more an annoyance every time Ida suddenly announced they were off. But the fact was that theycouldup and leave, which is what she’s trying to get across to him now. Nor was everywhere Ida took her exciting. Some places were godawful and she’d been pleased when they moved on again– butagain, they had, and had exercised, the option to move on. That was a privilege. And Ida could become uncomfortable at many things; a disagreeable neighbour, unreliable plumbing, a shoplifting accusation on the one occasion (Ida, not Anna), but often, in fact mostly, it was down to a man.
