“In a list of things I’ll miss if I leave the U.S., I think good milkshakes are probably at the top.”
My hand froze, mid-stir.If he left. The idea sunk cold and deep in my gut before I had a chance to prepare for it. The moment I pushed our impending decisions out of my mind, he brought me straight back to them.
No. Today I was looking for a little respite. I searched for something to say to steer them back to friendlier territory.
“So while I was over here sipping milkshakes, what were you doing with your teenage years?”
Niklas shrugged. “Nothing exciting. Hockey, school…”
“… girls,” I added.
Niklas snorted. “Not as often as I’d have liked. I’m not always such a charmer. As you may have noticed.”
I laughed. “You mean when you slammed your door in my face back in Stockholm? More than once?”
“And I was interested as hell in you,” he said, smiling. “You can imagine just how smooth I was with the girls I wasn’t as interested in.”
I twirled my milkshake with my straw and took another sip. I knew so little about his past. What did he and his friends do on the weekends? What else had he dreamed of besides hockey? Was I really entertaining the idea of running away to Sweden with a man whose hometown I couldn’t even pronounce?
I tried for my best interview face. “Okay. Charming the ladies, getting into fights on the hockey rink… what else? What about school?”
“I went to a hockey high school.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Is that a joke? Do hockey high schools really exist?”
“Of course,” he said, mock offended. “They have to separate meat-heads like me from the rest of the teenagers to keep everyone out of trouble.”
“Did it work?”
The corners of Niklas’s mouth turned up, and he gestured down the length of his body. “I made it out in one piece. That’s something.”
I smiled. “But what else were you interested in? If you hadn’t made it onto that Swedish hockey team after college, what would you have done?”
Niklas’s smile grew wider. “Gotten into a hell of a lot more trouble. That’s for sure.”
I crossed my arms. “Come on. Give me a little insight.”
“All right,” he said quietly. “If I didn’t play hockey, I might have been a biologist.”
My eyes widened. “Really?”
“What?” he said, turning red. “I actually did really well in science and math back in school.”
I set my hand on his. “I was just surprised at the choice, that’s all. I’m sure you would have been great at stomping after wildlife in the Swedish tundra.”
He turned over his hand and threaded his fingers with mine. “Swedish tundra, huh? And then I’d come back to our log cabin in the evening, and you could warm me up the old-fashioned way—naked, by the fire, on top of reindeer pelts.”
“Hmm…interesting fantasy. But I have to admit the scene has its charms.” I giggled. “Would your mother have preferred a biologist?”
Niklas laughed and shook his head. “My mother was happy I reached my twenties without a record. High expectations, right?”
I smiled a little. “And your father?”
Niklas frowned. “My father lost his say in what I did when he left us.”
In all our time together over the last few months, Niklas had stayed away from the topic of his father, a wound in Niklas’s life that he showed little desire to uncover.
But today, we could be free of all these other pieces of our lives. He clearly didn’t want to discuss the hole his father’s abandonment had left, and I decided not to push it.
