Interlude: Panic at the Glacier

(Iceland, Between Paris and Tokyo)

The lagoon didn’t move.

No waves. No wind. Just milk-colored stillness, broken by jagged shards of blue ice drifting like ghost ships across the surface. Coco stood near the edge, her back to me, arms rigid at her sides. Her hair was unbound, silver strands caught in a lazy breeze that didn’t stir the water.

I crunched up the gravel slope behind her, breath visible in the Icelandic air. We’d flown in from Paris the night before—an impulsive stopover before Tokyo. She’d said yes with that usual shrug, the one that said why not but never why.

Now she was silent. And the stillness felt personal.

“You cold?” I asked, stepping beside her.

Her jaw twitched. She didn’t look at me.

“This place is fucked,” she said, low.

I waited.

“It’s too still. Too quiet. I hate it.”

The wind picked up for half a second, then died again. Even the air felt hesitant.

She exhaled, sharp and sudden. “I shouldn’t have come here. Shouldn’t’ve said yes.”

“Because it’s cold?”

She finally looked at me. Her eyes were glassy. Wide open. Like she’d forgotten how to shield them.

“No,” she said. “Because quiet places make it hard to not remember.

Something in my gut dropped. “Remember what?”

Her gaze went back to the lagoon. A long silence. Then—

“My sister drowned.”

I didn’t move.

“She was seventeen. I was twelve. We were at a lake. She said she’d swim out to the dock. She laughed the whole way. Like she always did. And then—” Coco swallowed. “Then she just ... didn’t come back.”

A pause. Shallow breath.

“I didn’t scream. I didn’t run. I just ... froze. Like a fucking idiot. Like maybe if I stayed still, it wouldn’t be real.”

I reached for her hand. She flinched, but let me take it.

“They said it was a seizure. That it wouldn’t have mattered. But I’ve never really believed them.”

Her voice cracked. “I think that’s the moment I learned to run. From everything. From quiet. From stillness. From anything I can’t fuck my way out of.”

I squeezed her hand. She didn’t squeeze back.

“Every time it gets quiet,” she said, “I hear the splash. The silence after.”

I looked at her then—not at the mane of wild silver hair or the lithe body that could twist like silk under my hands, but the trembling girl behind the bravado. The one I’d caught glimpses of, but never fully seen.

And in that moment, I saw it all.

The way she laughed louder when things got serious. The way she changed the subject when the sex got slow. The constant movement. The teasing. The dare-me’s and don’t-stay-too-long’s.

She wasn’t just wild. She was haunted.

“I’m not asking you to stop running,” I said, softly. “Just let me keep pace.”

She let out a wet, guttural laugh. “Yeah? You gonna jog beside me in every goddamn country on Earth?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

She turned to me then, eyes rimmed in red, and gave a broken smile that looked more like surrender than amusement.

“What if I break you?”

“You already have,” I said. “And I’m still here.”

The glacier groaned behind us—ice shifting somewhere deep within its belly. A low rumble. The kind you only hear when everything else is silent.

She took a long breath. Then another.

And stepped into me.

She didn’t collapse. She didn’t weep. She just stood there, her forehead against my chest, breathing. Like it was the first time in a long time she’d remembered how.

We stood in that cold silence for what felt like years. No kiss. No clever quip. Just breath and ice and history between us.

Then, as the wind stirred her hair again, she pulled back and said:

“You want glacier sex, don’t you?”

I blinked.

She grinned, shaky but present. “You were thinking about it. I know that look.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Liar,” she said. “But thanks for not trying.”

She took my hand, finally. For real.

“Tokyo better have noise,” she added, walking back toward the trail. “Because if you make me cry again, I’m riding you with the door open.”

I followed her down the slope, still holding her hand.

She didn’t let go.