Page 24 of Secret Nights and Northern Lights
It was hard to be upset amid her praise, and I always wanted to please her. So, I nodded my head and smiled, going along with it.
I’m so proud of you,she’d told me, her smile filling me with warmth as she stroked a hand over my hair.I never have to worry about you, Mona. You know that?
Even at four years old, it didn’t feel like a compliment. But my mom never noticed how quickly my smile faded, because she was already out the door.
“You ready, Mona?” Ben’s voice calls from behind me, and my eyes snap open to the lively city in Iceland once again.
With one last glance at Hallgrímskirkja, snapping the sight into my mind like another Polaroid added to the memory book, I tuck my notebook into my tote bag and stand. “Yeah. Let’s find some food. I’m fucking starving.” Then I do my best to forget the sudden, grossly vivid memory and the simmering pang underneath my rib cage it left behind.
Ben and I walk along Rainbow Street, filled with local shops and restaurants, as we scope out something to eat for dinner. As the name suggests, the bustling street is painted in stripes of color like a rainbow, originally done once a year as a symbol of diversity during Pride celebration until the city made it permanent in 2019. Pride is one of Iceland’s largest celebrations of theyear, attracting visitors from all around the globe, and this lively street will definitely make my article.
Ben maneuvers around me, searching for the best angle to take photos of Rainbow Street with Hallgrímskirkja looming in the background, and I pull out my iPhone and snap a few more selfies of my own, earning me another scowl of disapproval from Mr. World-Renowned Photographer.
Eventually, we find a seat at an outdoor table at a place named 101 Reykjavík Street Food and place identical orders of fish and chips, probably because it’s the first thing listed on the menu. Once our waitress is out of earshot, I audibly groan.
“I literally don’t remember the last time I ate,” I bemoan, resting my elbows on the wooden tabletop to support my famished body.
Across from me, Ben’s glazed eyes and slumped posture suggest he’s pretty depleted as well. “For me it was the pretzels on the plane. I’ve been hungry since the Blue Lagoon, but exhaustion won out over eating.”
I know what he means. Despite the nap I took after the whole beeping debacle, exhaustion is quickly setting in again.
“So,” Ben says, changing the subject, “what’ve you been up to for the past fourteen years?”
Anxiety hits me. Hard. “I told you I don’t want to talk about the past.”
His hands shoot up defensively. At the table beside us, a young couple animatedly laughs as a tiny bird lands near their table and struggles to steal an abandoned French fry. “I’m not asking aboutourpast,” he says, refocusing. “Just what you’ve been doing all these years since. That’s all.”
I clear my throat, prepared to keep my response casual and surface-level, easy and breezy. “Well, after you disappeared from our lives”—Shit! That isn’t surface level at all!—“I mean, uh, after we lasttalked, I finished my senior year, studied journalism in college, then was lucky enough to land an internship withAround the Globe. That about sums it up.”
He watches me quietly for a moment, those daunting green eyes searching my expression for any tells. “Mona, I never intended to—”
“It doesn’t matter now, no need to discuss it.”
Ben leans across the table onto his elbows. “I think wedoneed to discuss it.”
“No.” The hardened edge in my voice takes me by surprise. I know it catches Ben off guard, too, when he leans away from the table and blows out a long exhale. I let a heavy beat of silence pass then say, softer, “Why photography?”
“You first,” he volleys. “Tell me all the places you’ve traveled withAround the Globe.”
The waitress brings over cardboard baskets filled with fish and chips, providing me a needed reprieve from this conversation. I can’t bring myself to admit to someone who’s traveled the world multiple times over that, despite my job title, this is my first international trip. Especially when I used to tell that same someone how I couldn’t wait to get out of Hudson Springs and see the world. Late on those summer nights at the lake, we’d sit on the dock for hours with our feet dangling in the murky water below while I droned on and on about all the places I’d see first. Spain, Greece, South Africa, Argentina, Egypt, the Galápagos Islands, and (of course) Italy were all at the top of my extensive list.
Fourteen years later, I haven’t been to a single place I said I’d go.
Meanwhile Ben’s been out there livingmydream, while I’ve been busy visiting not one buttwodifferent glass-blowing expos. In Scranton.
After assuring our waitress there’s nothing else we need at the moment, she glides away from the table, and I give a vague, “Oh, you know, here and there,” response to Ben’s question.
Luckily, since we’re both famished, conversation comes to a natural halt as we dig into our food like two contestants onSurvivor. The first bite of fish is light and flaky, with a crisp batter that’s not at all greasy and feels like heaven in my mouth. 101 Reykjavík Street Food will be getting a glowing online review.
Within five minutes we’ve both shoveled the entirety of our dinner into our mouths, and I wipe my chin with a paper napkin as I say, “You didn’t answer. Why photography?”
Ben starts to reply, but a middle-aged man wearing a luminous smile and the same brightly colored T-shirt as our waitress approaches our table with a box of Icelandic chocolate bars and declares, “You finish your food, you get chocolate,” and hands us each a candy bar before moving on to the next table.
Chocolate for gluttony? I really do love this town.
I tear open the paper wrapper to indulge myself, but across from me Ben turns his chocolate bar over in his palm, expression fading to something vacant and far off. Deciding to hold off, I rewrap my chocolate and drop it in my bag. “Ben?” I prod.
Blinking up at my voice, he says, “You know my parents finally divorced senior year, right?”
