The Fjord Between Us

We stayed on the deck for another hour.
We talked the way we hadn’t talked since Amsterdam—about the firm, yes, but also about everything else. About what she’d thought when she’d first seen my name in the company directory. About the six months I’d spent convincing myself the Amsterdam version of her and the office version were different people. About how exhausting it was to be careful all the time.
“I annotated your documents in red,” she said at one point, “because you were the only person whose work I actually read carefully.”
I stared at her.
“That is the most Tanvi thing you have ever said to me.”
“I’m aware,” she said, and she sounded both mortified and amused, and I felt something in my chest loosen that had been tight for three years.
—
Here is what I understood, standing on that deck above the fjord:
I had been afraid of wanting her. Not because she was a colleague. Not because of professional risk, though I’d used that as scaffolding for years. But because Amsterdam had been the kind of night that sets a standard, and I hadn’t trusted that anything real could hold up to it.
I’d been protecting myself from disappointment by refusing to find out.
And she’d been doing the same thing. Careful and controlled and watching me for a signal I’d been too afraid to send.
We’d been waiting each other out for three years.
The fjord was still. The sky above the mountains had gone the deep blue of almost-morning. Somewhere inside, Beata was probably listening through the window with her blanket and her aquavit and her impossible accuracy about people.
Tanvi turned to look at me. Really look, the way she hadn’t let herself do across conference tables.
“For what it’s worth,” she said quietly, “I’m glad Beata buries things in paragraph four.”
I reached out and tucked a strand of hair back from her face—the wind off the fjord had been pulling at it for an hour—and I felt her go very still.
“I’m glad she’s annoyingly perceptive,” I said.
The distance between us closed the way distances do when both people finally stop measuring them.
Behind us, the fjord held its silence. The mountains reflected in water that had been still all night, waiting for something to move.

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About the Author

Clara Vance — a former corporate strategist, expert in the tension that builds between two desks. Her hobby? Morning coffee chats in the office where she collects ideas for her stories.

— Clara Vance

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Categories: Contemporary, Romances

Tags: 10min stories, Clara Vance, contemporary romance, fjord, forbidden attraction, Norway, office romance, second chance, short story, slow burn, travel romance, workplace romance

September 5, 2026

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