Chapter 1

Liv 

“Are you sure about this?”, I asked hesitantly, not wanting to dampen her enthusiasm.

“Of course”

She smiled and patted my head before trying to fit her toolbox into the cramped storage that was definitely too small for it, then shook her head and accepted defeat.

“I guess it will need to go with us inside the camper”

I sighed.

“What?”

She looked at me with a smile as she placed the ladder onto the side of our camper.

“Aren’t you excited about our trip? You’ve nagged me for ages to do something together.”

“Yeah..”

Only, for me, that ‘something’ meant snuggling together on a sofa and watching anime, not going on a trip into the far North in the middle of the winter just to see the Northern Lights. But Astrid and I were different.… Very different.

I resigned myself to fate and watched her climb the ladder with a diesel can in her hand. I just hoped this trip wouldn’t turn into another “Crossing the Pyrenees with our Amarok” that we had made a few years earlier.

“Pass me another one…”

I handed her another can. It was heavy, and I wondered why we needed so much extra fuel, but I didn't voice my concerns. Having them on the roof rack rather than inside the camper was a major victory in itself, so I didn’t want to push my luck.

She jumped down from the ladder and hugged me, almost throwing me off balance.

“It will be fun, Liv. I still can’t believe you’ve never actually seen the Northern Lights…”

“I’ve seen it…”, I said quietly, but she just laughed.

“Yeah, on TV, it doesn’t count…”

“It does...”, I pouted before kissing her forehead.

Even though we were so different, over the years, we’d managed to accept our differences… for most of the time. She pulled back and brushed a strand of hair from my face, leaving a stain on my cheek that filled the air with a strong smell… Engine oil…. I sighed and looked down at my clothes… Yeah, we managed to accept our differences most of the time, but this wasn’t one of them.

“What?”

She looked at me, concerned.

“Have we forgotten something?”

I followed her gaze with rising panic as she scanned our garage. No… Her gaze landed on the chainsaw. No… I was sure that her baby was too big for the storage and too precious to ride on the roof, and the thought of our little cosy space being filled with the smell of petrol sent shivers down my spine. I still remembered The Pyrenees… Never again…

“D-do we really need it?”

She blinked.

“Of course we do, we can always use it to make a log cabin if we get stranded”

“But…”

My mind rushed, looking for any valid reason that would save me from sharing my living space with a chainsaw.

“Can’t we practice bushcraft on this trip instead?” I blurted out, not sure whether this really was the lesser evil or if I was, yet again, saying yes to something I would regret later.

“That would be fun!”

She smiled and picked an axe from the wall instead.

“Yeah... Shall we have some food before we go?”, I suggested.

I wasn’t really hungry. Knowing the limits of the camper, I’d already had my last meal twice. But I knew that the more time Astrid spent in the garage, the more stuff we definitely didn’t need would be loaded into our camper, so…

“We can eat as we drive. I got us…”

“No”, I interrupted.

I shook my head. Whatever it was, it didn’t count as food unless you were at the brink of starvation after a nuclear Armageddon. Most of her food preferences were designed for such situations and were absolutely inedible in any other circumstances.

“I will cook us something”, I said.

I took her hand and led her to the door. She gave me a disappointed look but followed me without a fuss. In my darkest hours, I wondered if she really liked that stuff or even worse, preferred it over what I used to cook, but I’d never actually dared to ask her about it. I still found some comfort in the possibility that it wasn’t the case.

Only when I closed the door behind us, and my gaze fell on our cosy living room full of green plants and soft cushions, did I take a deep breath and try to relax. But… The smell of the garage still lingered in the air… Why?

I looked around only to be faced with the horror of Astrid’s oil-stained cargo pants, almost making contact with the white sofa where we’d spent so many evenings snuggled together while I showed her my favourite movies.

“No!”

I rushed to stop her, but it was too late. To make the matter worse, she took my rush as an invitation to pull me into her embrace, and we sank into soft fabric together… My mind went blank.

“Shall we play our game?”, she whispered and playfully kissed my ear.

I blushed and rested my forehead on hers.

It had started as a part of the initiative “Bonding through shared hobbies”. An idea that sounded exactly like something we would need after we finally moved in together and our obvious differences became… more obvious, let’s say.

It was great in theory, but after the first week, I started to have my doubts. Morning “Run for Fun” didn’t feel like a fair exchange for evening’s “Cuddling Story”, but Astrid, being Astrid, refused to give up on it so easily, and in the end, I read her all the Adachi to Shimamura.

Sometimes I wondered why, out of all 12 volumes, she seemed to remember only this specific chapter, but I didn't mind it that much… Actually… Actually, I kinda liked it.

I looked into her soft eyes and kissed the tip of her nose before sitting up.

“What’s wrong?”, she asked.

“You smell of diesel”

“You too”

She chuckled and got up, offering me a hand.

“Let’s have a shower”

I shook my head.

“No way…”

“Why not? It will be fun…”

“We will be stuck with each other on four square meters for a week. I want to enjoy space while I can”

“A week…?”

She gave me a look.

“We can be in the North in two days”

“Yeah, if we drive like crazy”

“Why crazy? It makes sense… I drive, and you sleep in the seat, then we swap. We will arrive in no time”

“No”

I gave her a look.

“We got a camper so that I never ever again would need to sleep in the front seat”

“As I remember, we got it so we could take everything we needed with us…”

“Like a chainsaw”

“Yeah..”

“When was the last time…”

I sighed and dropped the topic, and instead got up and put my arm around her.

“Let’s have a shower and be on our way before it gets too late”, I said softly, and she wrapped her arms around me.

We had learned over time that, no matter how different we were, there were things we had in common, and one of them was our wish to stay together. Even if it meant we needed to compromise or find a way around our differences, it was a price both of us were willing to pay.