When the Wind Blows, She Never Looks Back
For our graduation trip, the three of us traveled to Iceland to watch the aurora borealis. During the trek, my best friend Chloe Bennett’s scarf was swept away by the howling wind.
Without a second thought, my boyfriend Valen Vance stripped off his own heavy scarf and wrapped her up tight in it. Turning to me, he said, “Hurry up and help Chloe fetch it. You know that’s her favorite scarf.”
I braved the biting, freezing wind alone, chasing it for a long time. By the time I finally retrieved the scarf and turned around, the northern lights had already vanished from the sky—and Valen and Chloe were no longer where I left them.
My phone buzzed with a text from him: “You were taking too long. Chloe is afraid of the cold, so I brought her back to the hotel first.”
Stranded in a foreign country, I stood at the crossroad for six grueling hours, waving down over twenty passing cars. Finally, someone took pity on me and gave me a ride.
When I stumbled back into the hotel well past midnight, shivering and entirely frozen to the bone, I found them curled up under a thick blanket, huddled close together as they looked over the photos they had taken that day. They were laughing and chatting about photography and the northern lights—a conversation I was permanently locked out of.
Noticing me, Valen merely frowned. “What took you so long? I made a mug of hot tea for you over there. Go warm yourself up.”
I wrapped my numb fingers around the mug. The tea inside had gone ice-cold hours ago.
At that moment, an overwhelming wave of exhaustion settled deep into my chest. Fine, then.
I booked the earliest flight out, canceled the rest of our hotel reservations, and decided right then to leave.
The northern lights I spent a lifetime chasing were never meant for me. There was no need to chase them anymore.