“You could have visited me at school.” Hallbjorn touched Aria’s hand.
“I didn’t know if you wanted me to.” In fact, she had visited Norway with Ella a few months after Hallbjorn had left for boarding school, even passing through the little village where the school was. Ella had urged Aria to inquire about Hallbjorn at the school’s front desk, but Aria had been too shy and scared. What if Hallbjorn showed up to meet her with a girlfriend in tow? What if he laughed in her face?
“Of course I would have wanted you to.” Hallbjorn scooted a little closer to her. “I thought about you a lot when I was away.”
When she looked up again, Hallbjorn was staring at her intently. It felt so natural for them to pick up where they’d left off.
Aria smiled to herself. She’d thought what she needed was a quiet break to herself to get over Ezra and all the A drama, but maybe what she really needed was a new romance.
Chapter 5
Sexy Straddle
On Christmas morning, while everyone else was opening presents—or, in Byron, Meredith, and Mike’s case, frolicking with deer—Hallbjorn cooked Aria organic pancakes and tofu sausage for a Christmas breakfast. Then he decorated the cactus in the family room with various red items from the house—a mitten, a plastic spoon, a long ribbon he’d found in a drawer. “How did you know I wanted a Christmas tree?” Aria gasped.
Hallbjorn just grinned. “I just had a hunch.”
After that Aria had texted Merry Christmas to Emily and Spencer—Hanna was Jewish—and she and Hallbjorn made their way to South Street in Philadelphia. Once there, they skirted around giant snowdrifts that were already yellow with dog pee. The air was biting and crisp, and there was hardly anyone out except for a couple of hard-core joggers and a bunch of tourists with expensive cameras around their necks. The only establishments that were open were a few sex shops and a Walgreens pharmacy, which was already advertising 50 percent off Rudolph and Santa decorations.
“Look, this place sells hemp outerwear!” Aria pointed at a shuttered boutique with a giant marijuana leaf decal in the window. “That’s eco, right?”
“As long as it’s not made in a sweatshop.” Hallbjorn twisted his mouth. “You have to be very careful about organic and hemp fabrics.”
Aria nodded sagely, as if she’d known this all along. They’d spent the whole morning playing the green version of “I spy,” pointing out the vegetarian restaurants on South Street, the city’s many recycling bins, and the fact that some of the buses ran on natural gas. Hallbjorn had told her that he’d recently dedicated himself to saving the environment. He looked so sexy and earnest while talking about carbon emissions, and Aria found herself wanting to prove just how green she was, too.
“So what made you become so environmentally conscious, anyway?” Aria asked as they passed a vintage store she loved. “I don’t remember your being so committed when I was in Iceland.”
“I started becoming aware while I was in Norway, but I really got into it when I started university this year,” Hallbjorn admitted. “I joined an activist group that was trying to stop a big corporation from dumping their waste into the river near the school. A girl named Anja ran it. She set up some amazing protests.”
There was a wistful look on his face. “Was Anja . . . a girlfriend?” Aria asked, trying not to sound jealous or prying.
Hallbjorn stepped around a large blue parking meter that had a plastic Christmas wreath hanging from it. “Yes. But a month ago she joined a Greenpeace boat that attacks whalers off the coast of Japan. I wanted to go too, but she told me she needed to be alone.”
“I’m sorry about Anja,” Aria said as a passing car honked its horn to “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” “I recently had my heart broken, too.”
“Really?” Hallbjorn raised an eyebrow. “What happened?”
Aria told him some of the details about Ezra, leaving out that he’d been her teacher. “It really hurt when he left. I thought I’d never get over him. But he’s probably with a new girl by now.”
“Yes, that’s how I feel about Anja,” Hallbjorn said miserably. “She changed my life. Pushed me to do things I wouldn’t have dreamed of. And now . . . poof.” He cupped his palm under his chin and blew, miming a dandelion seed scattering in the wind. “Now she’s with a guy who, when not saving whales, chains himself to trees in the rainforest that are about to be bulldozed.”
Aria snickered. “He’s probably not that great. I bet he wets his sleeping bag every night.”
“Or perhaps he secretly eats endangered rainforest monkeys,” Hallbjorn said, playing along.
“Or he doesn’t recycle!”
“What can your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend’s flaw be?” Hallbjorn tapped his chin. “That she’s actually a man?”