18
The Ivarssons were a hard fucking act to follow.
In hopes of delaying the inevitable, Peter had suggested flying into O’Hare and driving to his hometown instead of catching
a commuter flight from Chicago to the small Madison airport. But the trip couldn’t last forever, and with each mile of interstate
guiding them closer and closer to his childhood home and his sole remaining family member, his hands clenched a bit tighter
on the steering wheel. Even Maria’s cheerful, provoking conversation from the passenger seat of the rental could no longer
entirely distract him from the amorphous dread pounding at his temples.
“So you don’t think the Amerikansk section in ICA was a fair representation of your nation’s cuisine?” Reaching down for the
controls, she sent her seat sliding back even farther and stretched out her legs with a relieved sigh. “Because it seemed
pretty accurate to me.”
He slanted her a look, one that told her without words: He knew she was pulling his chain, and he was allowing it only out
of extreme benevolence. Or at least, that was what he meant to convey. Hopefully his growing anxiety hadn’t ruined his ability
to emote, because he was going to need that again when he—no, he was going to think positively; when they —booked new roles back in Hollywood.
His response was as dry as LA in August. “Maria, that wasteland of an aisle contained nothing but off-brand faux-maple syrup,
beef jerky, ramen, and shelf after shelf of candy, much of which I’d never actually seen before.”
“You forgot the Marshmallow Fluff.”
The traffic had grown heavier, so he couldn’t glance at her again. But a smile he couldn’t see warmed her voice. That too-innocent,
smug voice.
“As if that disproves my point,” he told her witheringly.
“You didn’t have a point, as far as I could tell.” She patted her mouth over a loud, fake little yawn, an annoyingly adorable
gesture he caught from the corner of his eye. “Merely a list of foodstuffs. One of which, despite all your patriotic protests,
you actually purchased.”
Gladly. Also repeatedly, because candy deprivation could happen to anyone at any time.
He sniffed, nose high in the air as he smothered his grin. “My duty as an American forces me to buy Reese’s Peanut Butter
Cups wherever I may find them. It’s a lesser-known part of the Pledge of Allegiance, and doesn’t invalidate my argument in
the slightest.”
“Fine, then. If the Amerikansk section was both inaccurate and inadequate, what would you add to it?” She sounded genuinely curious.
“Nonperishable items?” He thought for a moment. “Grits. Granola and cereal bars. Graham crackers. Cranberry sauce. Stuffing
mixes. Canned pumpkin. Not to mention pumpkin pie spice and—”
Her snort cracked his stone face, and he smiled at the windshield.
“Now you’re just naming Thanksgiving ingredients,” she told him.
“I didn’t hear you complaining about Fionn’s turkey feasts whenever we filmed on the island in late November.”
In fact, she’d pretty much licked the sweet potato casserole dish clean each time. One year, the crew briefly, hilariously
nicknamed her There’s Something About Maria because of the orange goop she’d unknowingly gotten in her hair and allowed to
harden.
“I had no choice but to eat a lot.” She poked his arm. “I didn’t want to insult either your culture or Fionn’s cooking.”
“Bullshit. More like you didn’t want to put down your herb-rubbed turkey drumstick, you Swedish ingrate.”
Her laughter filled the car, and he couldn’t help laughing too. When they quieted again, his knuckles no longer ached as they
gripped the wheel, and his shoulders had loosened.
After so many years, he still didn’t know whether she did that on purpose. At first, he’d thought not. He’d figured all that
charm, all that humor, had to be effortless, because why would she exert herself to make him, of all people, more comfortable?
But now...
He claimed her hand from the SUV’s console and brought it to his lips. Kissed her palm. Interlaced their fingers and placed
them on his thigh.
Everything would be okay. So what if the Reedtons weren’t exactly the Ivarssons? So what if Dad didn’t know how to talk to
him? So what if Peter had never figured out how to make himself understood to his father?
His awkwardness around his dad wouldn’t come as a shock to her, not after she’d had to work for months to bridge the gap between
him and their crew, him and their castmates. That awkwardness also wouldn’t tip the balance and drive her away if she was
still considering whether she should return to Sweden for good.
Or so he hoped.
He hadn’t raised the issue directly, especially not after she’d just spent quality time with her adoring parents and siblings.
Right now, if he told her she should stay with him, she could easily marshal so many arguments about why he was wrong, why she needed her family more than she needed him, and Maria’s arguments were always, always devastating and convincing.
She played to win. She played for keeps.
And once she made up her mind, she didn’t change it.
So no, he wasn’t asking whether she’d stay with him, because he was scared to find out what she might say, what she might
do, and she’d already left him once. He couldn’t fathom how he’d survive a repeat now that he actually knew her. Knew her and—
Well, that didn’t matter. What mattered was convincing her—without words—that she belonged with him . Wanted him . Couldn’t imagine a life without him .
Which was what made this hometown visit awkward and terrifying, right?
Because his dad—the man partially responsible for his very existence —had basically lived without him for a couple of decades now. And if Maria caught a glimpse of Peter through his father’s
eyes, she might find herself willing to do the same.
It would destroy him. Part of him, anyway.
The part that beat only for her, and had done for years now.
The part he’d never intended to risk again, but here he was. Here it was.
Entirely hers to break.
For a full two hours, butter wouldn’t have melted in Maria’s mouth.
Which reminded Peter: While she was in the area, he needed to get her to Culver’s for a butter burger, fried cheese curds, and a hot fudge sundae made with frozen custard, because otherwise he’d consider this a wasted visit, filmed interviews or no filmed interviews.
But in the meantime, it was bizarre to watch her be so... demure? Was that the right word? Cautious? Whatever it was, she
was letting his gregarious father do almost all the talking and uttering polite nothings in response as she watched them both
very, very carefully.
“Lovely to meet you, Daniel,” she’d murmured when Peter introduced his dad. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
A total fucking lie. He’d barely mentioned his father to her, ever, and she hadn’t pressed for more information, not even
on their drive to Madison.
“The restaurant you chose sounds perfect,” she’d said as they headed outside town to a converted nineteenth-century stable
for a traditional Wisconsin Friday night fish fry dinner. “I love fish.”
She didn’t even smirk at Peter or produce a jar of herring to shake in his face.
Weird.
“What a gorgeous lake!” she’d exclaimed when they rounded a curve in the SUV—because his father’s small Prius couldn’t comfortably
fit two people as tall as Peter and Maria—and Lake Mendota came into view, blue and sparkling and so familiar his throat prickled.
“How nice that you live close to the water, Daniel.”
So then his dad discussed what an isthmus was, promised to show her Lake Monona later in the visit, and gave her an engaging,
lighthearted, somewhat truncated history of Madison and the university all the way to the restaurant.
“It looks delicious,” she’d said to the server upon ordering the baked cod, fried cod, and fried whitefish combo platter. “Thank you.”
Which, of course, inspired his dad to explain the origins of the Wisconsin fish fry tradition, along with the state’s other
culinary idiosyncrasies. Beer brats. Cheese curds. Also the utter deliciousness known as kringle, even though Peter thought
those actually originated from Scandinavia. As had many early white settlers in Wisconsin, which likely accounted for the
region’s affection for—ugh—pickled herring.
Luckily, his father didn’t bring that up.
Maria had heard it all before. Earlier that very day, in fact, at a media event where she’d taste-tested various regional
specialties. She didn’t interrupt, though. She didn’t look bored. She just nodded attentively.
And now, as the three of them ate their final bites of dinner, she was listening to his father talk about his training regimen
for an upcoming triathlon with every evidence of pleasure and no attempt to change the topic, even though Peter knew for a
fact she enjoyed exercise but found discussion of other people’s fitness routines boring as fuck .
That was a direct quote.
“Fascinating.” With her fork, she dolloped some tartar sauce on her remaining whitefish and teased free a substantial bite.
“Do you run marathons too?”
His father nodded, a pleasant smile deepening the lines that bracketed his mouth. “Only half-marathons now. But I attended
UW-Madison on a track scholarship, and while Peter was growing up, I still did marathons with my buddy Len. Even now, Len
and I like to take the path around the lake and—”
Dad kept talking, and she didn’t interrupt. She also didn’t ask Peter whether he’d joined the track team as well, either in high school or college. She knew he hadn’t.
Instead of participating in varsity sports or student government—his father had served as class president too—Peter had joined
the drama club. Because he’d loved acting from the very beginning, but also because offstage, the other theater kids let him
be as taciturn and introverted as he wanted. They tolerated his silence without commentary, and without offering him mournful
bewilderment in response.