Chapter 2
Sawyer
I watch Ivy with her cousins from the safe distance of the checkout counter. Jenny points to a flyer that Ivy leans forward to consider, while Vicky jumps up and down about something Ivy tells her.
“Paper or plastic, Sawyer?”
“Whatever’s easiest,” I tell Neena distractedly.
When I look up again, Ivy is alone in the vestibule. She pulls a tear-strip from a flyer far to the left, slips it into her bag, and follows her cousins out the door.
I wonder what captured her attention. I definitely intend to find out.
“That’ll be two hundred and sixty-eight.”
I tap my credit card, take the receipt, and tell her goodbye.
As I exit, I look for the flyer that interested Ivy and based on placement, I narrow it down to one of two. The first was posted by the Rec Center and advertises a new yoga class for couples.
Well , I think, unless her shithead Juneau boyfriend (Sorry. Fiancé. Gag.) is planning to join her in Skagway for some hot yoga, it must be the other.
On a pale-yellow sheet of paper, there’s a hand-drawing of a cabin, a horse, and two teenagers in old-fashioned costumes kissing in a field. Beneath the drawing, it reads:
AUDITION FOR SKAGWAY’S WINTER PLAY: WUTHERING HEIGHTS!
A NEW STAGE ADAPTATION WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY brUCE FRANKS!
Fraternal Order of Eagles. October 20. 7:00pm.
Only one tear strip has been removed.
Voila, I think, tearing off a second strip and shoving it in my back pocket. We have a winner.
Although I’ve never read Wuthering Heights , my mother was a huge fan of Emily Bront?. The book spine at home is dark blue with gold lettering. I’ve seen it sitting on the shelf my entire life and never thought to give it a chance. Maybe now I will.
As I load the dozen grocery bags into the bed of my truck, I take a moment to process the facts that: 1. Ivy Caswell is currently in Skagway, and 2. She may be here long enough to audition for and perform in a play. That I greet this information with a pure and undeniable burst of pleasure in the general vicinity of my heart makes me hate myself a little.
I hoist myself into the driver’s seat and bang the steering wheel with my fist. It’s hard enough not to pine after Ivy Caswell when she’s one of the ten thousand people walking around Skagway every summer day. How the hell am I supposed to ignore her when she’s only one of a thousand locals?
I shouldn’t be pining after her.
I shouldn’t even like her.
But having a complicated past with someone binds you to them in ways you don’t necessarily want or like. And that’s how it is with me and Ivy.
As children, we would run into one another at least a few times every summer—at a summer camp in which we were both enrolled, at the Fourth of July festivities in town, at a BBQ in someone’s backyard, or at a church picnic. She was just one of those seasonal locals woven into the fabric of my life. And without fail, we’d find each other at each and every one of those events. Her freckled face would break into that sweet, gap-toothed smile at the sight of me, and I can only imagine my face returned the favor. We’d stay hip to hip for the whole afternoon or evening, playing hide-and-seek, dunking each other in someone else’s pool, eating hot dogs laden with bright yellow mustard, and hugging goodbye with gusto when it was time to go.
When we hit our teen years, Ivy got a job at the Kozy Kone, and I barely recognized her the first time I stopped in. Her freckles had disappeared, covered by some kind of thick, skin-colored makeup. Gone were her red pigtails, replaced by a shoulder-length bob I hated. With shiny silver braces fixing that beloved old gap in her teeth and pert boobs swelling under a light blue T-shirt, she looked like a different person.
We exchanged awkward hellos, all that blessed easiness from our shared summers suddenly lost. She made me a vanilla cone with chocolate sprinkles, but avoided my eyes as she passed it across the counter. It tasted so bitter, I threw it in the garbage on the way home and avoided the Kozy Kone for the rest of that summer.
The following year, I’d grown into my six-foot tall frame, and the pimples I’d sported the summer before had cleared up. I was still awkward around girls—even those I’d known my whole life—but right around April, I started counting the days until I could visit Ivy Caswell at the Kozy Kone. I would be smoother and more confident this year. I’d remind her of the friendship we’d cherished as children.
Her hair was longer that summer—wavy and wild, falling down past her shoulders. With her braces gone, her smile was perfect. And the little boobs that had so flustered me the summer before were womanly now. They were breasts . And I’m not going to lie—the desire to touch a girl’s breasts or even just to see them—was never far from my mind.
Luckily, she didn’t catch me gaping at her chest as I stood in line waiting for my turn. I had raised my gaze to hers just in the nick of time.
“Hi! Welcome to the Kozy—Sawyer Stewart!”
I recognized her smile, even without the gap. It was Ivy. Ivy, my favorite summer friend.
“Hey, Ivy.”
“Hey.”
She’d licked her bottom lip, then bitten it with her straight white teeth. Running a hand through her hair was just about the sexiest thing I’d ever seen a girl do. I felt a surge of blood to my cock.
Fuck. No. Not that.
“Hey,” I’d murmured again, my excitement and lust surging forward without my permission, like a runaway train on greasy tracks.
She’d giggled at my discomposure. “Wanna place an order? Vanilla? Chocolate sprinkles?”
Somewhere in the fog of my lust, it occurred to me that she’d remembered my order from the one time I’d stopped in last summer. My heart throbbed with tenderness.
“Y-Yeah.”
“Cone or cup?”
“Cone.”
“Sugar or wafer?”
“Sugar.”
“You got it.”
I’d swayed toward the glass case a little, watching as she leaned over the buckets of frozen cream to roll my scoop. I saw a hint of white bra at the V of her T-shirt, and felt my cock harden inside my jeans. I was getting a visible fucking erection, and it was too late to stop it now.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Without saying a word, I turned around and raced out of the shop, down the alley to the right of the Kozy Kone, and around to the back of the building. Standing against the hot pink painted clapboard, I leaned my head back and tried to concentrate on anything but Ivy Caswell’s perfect smile, gorgeous hair, and full breasts in a white cotton bra. It took a few minutes, but I finally got myself under control. The problem was, I’d made an idiot of myself by running away without a word, and I couldn’t face going back inside the Kozy Kone for the rest of that summer either. It wasn’t until we were sixteen that we finally—
“Hey!”
While I’ve been thinking about Ivy’s and my journey from childhood playmates to awkward teenagers, I’ve driven all the way home and parked my truck in front of the lodge. My little sister, Reeve, stands at my open window, hands on her hips.
“Earth to Sawyer!”
“Hey, Reeve.”
“Want some help getting the groceries inside?”
“Sure.”
I cut the engine and swing my body down from the cab, slamming the door shut behind me.
“Something got you in a bad mood?” asks Reeve, pulling down the tailgate.
“We need to do a grocery run up in Whitehorse. IGA’s thinning out.”
“That’s to be expected. Grocery barge is only coming once a week now.”
“Like I said.”
Reeve loops two bags of groceries on each arm, narrowing her eyes at me.
“Hey. What’s up with you?”
Ignoring her question, I take two bags on each of my arms and turn toward the lodge, trudging up the steps. Over my shoulder, I ask, “You ever read Wuthering Heights ?”
“Absolutely,” says Reeve, letting the screen door thwack! shut behind us.
Of course she has. In an attempt to try to get to know the mother she can’t remember, Reeve spends every winter reading the collection of books on our mother’s bookshelf. It’s an annual ritual for her, and by tacit agreement, the rest of us don’t bother her about it. In fact, more often than not, Hunter, Tanner and I will build her a fire in the lodge’s great room and make sure it’s good and hot with plenty of extra firewood sitting beside it, so she can curl up comfortably all day long.
“Good story?”
“Define ‘good.’”
“Holds your attention?” I ask.
“Definitely.”
I push through the kitchen door to find Gran and Paw-Paw sharing coffee at a little table in the corner, and baby Wren sleeping in her car seat at their feet.
“Harper here?” I whisper to Gran.
She shakes her head, standing up to help with the groceries. “Went up to the Walmart in Whitehorse with your dad.”
“I was just telling Reeve we need to do the same.”
“IGA getting empty?”
“It’s thinning out, for sure.”
As Gran and Paw-Paw start emptying the bags, Reeve and I head back to the truck to bring in the rest.
“You gonna tell me what’s eating you?” Reeve asks.
“What’s eating Sawyer?”
I look up to see Parker standing at the foot of the lodge steps. She’s holding my dad’s toolbox, and there are smudges of oil on her face.
“Nothing,” I grunt.
“He’s in a mood,” says Reeve.
“Shut up, Reeve.”
Parker follows me and Reeve to the back of my truck and hefts herself onto the liftgate, spreading out her arms to block the remaining groceries.
“Move it,” I tell her. “Gran’ll have your head if her ice cream melts.”
“Then you’d best tell us what’s wrong.” She glances over her shoulder at the ice cream, then back at me. “And quick.”
Parker is only one year older than me and Reeve is three years younger, but boy, oh, boy are they busybodies. And their favorite object of harassment? Yours truly. One on one, I can deal with them. But when they gang up on me together? They’re a force to be reckoned with. My older brothers and sister have no idea what a communal terror they can be.
There’s no point in fighting them. If I don’t tell them what’s going on, they’ll bug me every chance they get until they have their answers.
“It’s nothing!” I mutter. “I ran into Ivy Caswell at the IGA. That’s all.”
Parker stares at me for a second, furrowing her brows. “Ivy only comes down in the summer.”
“That’s what I thought,” I say. “Guess we were both wrong. Now, shove over.”
Instead, Parker reaches behind for the bags, handing two to me and two to Reeve before hopping down.
“Why’s she back?” asks Reeve. “I thought she went to college up north.”
“She graduated in May,” I say, preceding them back into the lodge. Why do I know that? Why the hell do I keep tabs on her? “She was supposed to start a job in Juneau this fall, but… Did you know that Priscilla Caswell is sick?”
“Priscilla is sick?” asks Gran, who meets us at the kitchen door, holding it open for me and Reeve.
“She’s got cancer,” I say.
Gran takes the two bags I’m holding. “Gosh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I was, too.”
“Good of Ivy to come and help,” says Gran with a knowing smile.
“ So good ,” purrs Reeve, all sassy.
So good! Parker mouths, pantomiming a blowjob as she follows Gran and Reeve to the kitchen to help sort the rest of the groceries.
Right this second, I could strangle all three of them.
But even greater than my need for murder is my need for advice. And with Hunter in Seattle with his fiancée, Paw-Paw trapped in the kitchen with Gran and my sisters, and my dad running errands with Harper, my only hope for some male advice is my older brother, Tanner. Hoping he’s not indulging in some “afternoon delight” with his still-new bride, I leave the lodge and knock on his cabin door.
McKenna answers— fully dressed, thank god —almost immediately.
“Sawyer! Come in!”
“I don’t want to bother you,” I tell her. “Just looking for Tan.”
“He went fishing,” she says. “Said he wanted to catch dinner.”
I’ve noticed that Tanner and McKenna often have dinner in their cabin, and sometimes I envy them and their alone time. I don’t think I’ve eaten a meal without Gran, Paw-Paw, Dad, Parker, and Reeve my entire life. Don’t get me wrong. I love my family…but they can also be a lot sometimes.
“Anything I can help with?”
I shake my head. “Nah. It’s okay.”
She steps onto the porch and sits in one of two rocking chairs, pointing to the other.
“I give good advice,” she says. “I promise.”
I sit down across from her. “How do you know I need advice?”
She shrugs. “Just a feeling.”
Unlike my sisters, who prefer to beat information out of me, McKenna’s more laid-back approach makes me actually want to talk.
“You ever met Ivy Caswell?”
“I have,” she says. “I mean, I don’t really know her, but we’ve said hello.”
I take a deep breath. “You ever had a complicated relationship with someone?”
“Sure. Of course.”
“Were you and Tanner complicated?”
She chuckles. “You were here for it. You know the answer to that!”
My brother told me once that the first time he saw McKenna, he thought she was a teenage boy. If that’s not complicated, I don’t know what is.
We sit in silence for a few minutes, rocking back and forth, and I’m grateful for the way McKenna doesn’t force me to say more right away.
“Want some tea?” she asks, rubbing her hands together. “It’s a little chilly out.”
“Sure,” I say.
She pops back into the cabin to make tea, and I think about what I want to ask her, about what I want to say, about what’s weighing down my heart. When she returns, I take the tea and let the hot mug warm my hands.
“If someone’s engaged,” I say, getting right to the heart of the matter, “they’re off the market, right? Even if you feel like there’s unfinished business between you, you can’t make a play for them, right? It’s too late. It’d be wrong.”
“I don’t know about that,” she says, blowing on the steam rising up from her mug. “Marriage is one thing. Marriage is a binding contract, emotionally and legally. But an engagement isn’t legal or binding. In my opinion, the intention to get married is totally different from being married. An engagement gives the couple time to plan, you know? They plan their wedding, obviously, but they also figure out where they want to live, how to divvy up their finances, whether or not they want kids. An engagement is the time to sort out the big stuff that comes after the vows are spoken. Sometimes an engaged couple might find, during that planning process, that they weren’t meant to be. An engagement gives you the time and space to change your mind.”
I mull over what she’s saying, putting it into context where Ivy and I are concerned.
“Did I hear that Ivy got engaged?” McKenna asks nonchalantly, taking a sip of tea.
“Yeah. To her college boyfriend.”
“Has she been with him for a while?”
“Two years off and on.”
Included in the “off” part is about four months last summer while Ivy was in Skagway. That summer, she was mine, and I was hers, and it all ended too abruptly for any sort of closure.
“Another thing to remember is that college is really different from real life,” McKenna points out. “So many decisions are made for you or exist to make your life easier. Meals are made for you in a dining hall. You have a dorm or apartment to live in. Medical and mental health services are included in the cost of tuition. It’s easy. Real life is totally different. You grocery shop. You make your dinner. You wash your own dishes. You rent or buy your own apartment. You need to get insurance—for your body and your home. College and real life have very little in common. If Ivy and her fiancé met in college, I’m thinking they have a lot of real-world work to do before they say ‘I do.’”
And it’s hard to do that work while one of them is in Juneau and the other is in Skagway , I think with satisfaction.
“Does she know how you feel about her, Sawyer?”
I look up into the kind, brown eyes of my sister-in-law and shrug.
I think about the summer before last—the summer that McKenna came to Skagway to pose as Tanner’s fiancée, and Hunter fell in love with her best friend, Isabella, and Harper and Joe got back together. There was so much going on with my older siblings, they didn’t notice that I was falling in love, too. And while their love affairs led to engagements and marriages, mine died a swift death in September.
Does Ivy know how I feel about her?
She did. Once upon a time, she knew exactly how I felt.
“We haven’t exactly talked in a while,” I say.
“What’s a while?”
I shrug. “The summer before last.”
“Wait. Before last? You mean the summer I came to Skagway? Over a year ago? That’s the last time you talked to her?”
“Unless you count that one conversation back in May when she told me she was engaged, and I walked away right before telling her she was making the biggest mistake of her life.”
“Oof. Wow. Okay.” She taps her chin in thought.
“What?” I ask, leaning forward in my seat. “What are you thinking?”
“Well, I don’t want to steer you wrong,” she says, waiting a beat before finishing her thought… “But if you care about her, I think it’s time to start talking to her again.”
***
Ivy
Turns out I’ve heard the movie Practical Magic before.
Heard, not seen.
During my freshman year at a posh Vancouver boarding school, my roommate was obsessed with this movie, watching it over and over again on her iPad. I know every word of dialogue and every word to every song in the film. I just didn’t know the name of the movie and can’t ever remember actually watching it. Maybe I blocked it out. That first year away at school was the loneliest of my whole life, and with a life like mine, that’s saying something.
I glance at Jenny, who sits beside me and, for once, isn’t slinging snarky comments in my direction. She watches, entranced, as Sandra Bullock races down the main street of a small New England town, a pack of dogs at her heels, and leaps into the arms of her first love, the local produce man. I blush at their kiss, a full-bodied lust-fest complete with Sandra’s ankles locked around his waist in the middle of broad daylight.
Clark and I don’t kiss like that.
My cheeks flush.
The only person I’ve ever kissed like that is—
“Can you get us more popcorn?” murmurs Jenny, bumping the empty tub against my arm, her eyes transfixed on the screen.
“Sure,” I say, taking the paper bucket and side step out of the aisle.
I make my way to the Purple Parsnip bar, where Bruce has set up a popcorn machine. To my dismay, however, it’s being manned by Reeve Stewart, who leans her elbows on the bar, flipping through a magazine and looking bored.
“Not a fan of the movie?” I ask her.
“Seen it a million times.”
She gestures for the popcorn tub, and I hand it over.
Since last summer, the Stewart girls—Parker and Reeve in particular—have been frosty with me. I’m guessing they know what happened between me and their brother and blame me for hurting him.
Reeve slides the bucket back to me.
“Thanks,” I say. “What do I owe you?”
“Nothing. Bruce doesn’t charge for refills.”
I’m uncomfortable knowing that she doesn’t like me. I want to yell, It was never supposed to get that serious! We agreed to keep things casual! but I’d look unhinged, so I swallow my words.
“Thanks again,” I murmur, turning away.
“Hey, Ivy!” Reeve calls after me.
I face her, eyebrows raised.
“We’re all real sorry about Priscilla. If there’s anything we can do…”
I manage a small smile. “That’s nice, Reeve. Thank you.”
She nods, then looks back down at her magazine.
I head back to my seat and pass the popcorn to Jenny, who takes it without saying “thank you.” By this point in the movie, Sandra Bullock’s husband is dead, and she’s raising two little girls with the help of her great-aunts.
I pull out my phone, turn down the brightness, and check my messages. There are four waiting—two from my father and two from Clark. I decide to read my father’s first.
FATHER:
Ivy, I cannot reiterate strongly enough how much this internship will mean for your future and the future of the Caswell name. When we spoke on Sunday, I offered to provide professional care for your aunt. As of today, I have hired an RN who will arrive in Skagway on Wednesday morning. The same plane that delivers the nurse will wait at the airport to take you back to Juneau on Wednesday evening.
Please plan accordingly.
***
FATHER:
On a personal note, I want to add that I was very proud of you when you shared the news of your engagement. Joining our family name with the Rupert name was something to celebrate. But that pride is quickly devolving into disappointment at your current behavior. As of Wednesday, I look forward to you focusing your attention henceforth on the far more important matters of your future, which include your wedding to Clark and an advantageous career in state politics.
A sharp, buzzing anger rises up within me, and I lean toward my cousin, and whisper, “I’m going to the bathroom. I’ll be back in a few.”
“Whatever.”
I step back down the aisle and beeline for the unisex restrooms at the back of the Purple Parsnip. Both are empty, which should give me a few minutes to get myself together. I enter one and lock the door.
“How dare he!” I stare at my reflection, gripping the sides of the wash basin as tears of fury and frustration stream down my cheeks.
I turn on the water, which is freezing cold, and splash my cheeks.
“He has no right!” I tell myself, patting my cheeks dry.
Sitting down on the closed toilet seat, I re-open my text app and start typing.
ME:
Father, please cancel the nurse you’ve scheduled and the plane to fly her here. As I shared with you on Sunday, I’m not going anywhere until my aunt is finished with chemo. Once she is stable, I will cheerfully return to my life with Clark in Juneau. Please try to understand, and know how sorry I am to disappoint you.
I press enter, then close my eyes tightly, clutching my phone in my hand. It buzzes a moment later.
FATHER:
I do not understand and I am very disappointed.
It hurts deeply that he’s disappointed in me. It frightens me that we are finally on good footing, and his disappointment could ruin all of the goodwill between us. For a second—just a second—I consider changing my mind, my fingers hovering over the Reply button. But before I weaken and make another decision I regret, I shove my phone in my pocket and face myself in the mirror.
“No,” I say to my reflection. “You’re staying this time.”
I lift my chin. He’ll get over his disappointment, or he won’t. You can’t let fear of losing his approval make decisions for you. If it’s that easy to lose his love and esteem, you never really had them anyway.
Though I hadn’t started dating Clark Clement Rupert III to win my father’s approval—at least not consciously, anyway—I found that securing it meant a lot to me. For the first time I could ever remember, my father looked at me as though I had worth. After our engagement, I’d even overheard him bragging to some business associates about his daughter who was marrying into the most prominent political family in Alaska. It had made me feel important to hear him say that, especially when he’d added that I was finally living up to the Caswell name.
After graduation, my father and I had spent a weekend with the Rupert family in Juneau. Clark’s and my engagement party had been a veritable “Who’s Who” of Alaskan business bigwigs and local political dealmakers. I couldn’t ever remember a time my father had looked at me with such admiration and approval. His own marriage had been a disaster. Maybe through my smart and sensible marriage to Clark, I could heal something in our tiny family. Maybe my father and I would even grow closer.
Before he left that weekend, he tried to convince me not to spend a final summer in Skagway, and stay in Juneau instead. But I’d won that skirmish, promising him that I’d leave for Juneau at the end of August and start my life as a government intern and blushing fiancée in the fall.
But then Aunt Priscilla got sick, and I couldn’t— I wouldn’t —honor that promise.
It had made my father livid.
Since then, our conversations—almost exclusively via text—had been combative, with ample reminders that I was becoming a disappointment to him. My brief sojourn in the warm light of his love and approval was starting to fade. Could I bear to find myself alone in the cold?
I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and let it go slowly.
Think about something else.
Memories of my summers with Aunt Priscilla and Uncle Alan flit through my head like a rosy-toned slide show. I owe them so much. My heart would’ve withered away with only my absentee and impervious father for affection. I can’t leave them when they need me most. I won’t.
“I’m not going to Juneau,” I whisper. “I’m not leaving Skagway. Not this time. Not yet.”
Flipping over my phone, I tap on Clark’s messages, bracing myself for more anger and coercion; my fiancé, who has become my father’s little acolyte over the past year, doesn’t disappoint.
CLARK:
Your father’s really disappointed, Ivy. And honestly, I am, too. You’re hurting me. You’re hurting us. With my family’s political connections and your dad’s business contacts, we could rule this state, and instead, I feel like you’re ruining things for everyone. I feel like you don’t care about us and don’t want a future with me. I hope I’m wrong. I really do.
I re-read Clark’s words, gulping softly. They hurt. I hate it that they do, but the idea of losing him—of losing the life we’ve envisioned and started planning together—scares me.
Clark is by no means perfect, but dating him gave me a sense of place and position that I craved. I liked walking into parties on his arm. I liked the way other students sized us up, staring at us—Ivy Caswell of Caswell Coal and Clark Clement Rupert III, the Lt. Governor’s son—in awe and envy. We were even written up in the campus newspaper as “Couple of the Year.”
Clark’s practicality about our combined social, political, and economic worth appeals to me, too. Clark and I may not be passionate, per se, but we are compatible, and we do make sense. The prospect of losing his love scares me almost as much as losing my father’s.
His follow-up message proves how adept he is at pushing my buttons, at hurting me, then kissing it better.
CLARK:
Baby, I miss you like crazy. My bed is so empty without you.
I need my little spoon here beside me.
Come home.
He attached three pictures of the apartment we purchased together, including two of our kitten, Feisty, who’s growing up super fast while I’m away. In one picture, she’s curled up on my pillow. In the next, she perches on a padded windowsill, surveying Juneau’s harbor with its vibrant blues, greens, and whites muted in the background. The last picture is a selfie of Clark, looking preppy and handsome on the way to work at the capitol. His smile pulls at my heartstrings.
I brush away fresh tears, hoping with all my heart that caring for my aunt isn’t jeopardizing the happy ending I want so badly.
ME:
I love you, Clark. So much. Please don’t doubt my commitment to you and to us. I have to help my aunt for a few more weeks, but I promise I’ll be back in Juneau soon. Please don’t be mad, and please don’t give up on me.
I feel pathetic for begging, but I can’t help it. My parents got married recklessly in a haze of lust, the consequence of which was complete and utter unhappiness, for them and for me. I have to try to fix those mistakes if I can, and the only way to do that is to marry someone safe and stable, with the blessing and approval of my father.
Besides, I’m a realist. I know that no marriage is perfect; they just exist in degrees of imperfection, and I’m trying to mitigate mine. It doesn’t matter that Clark’s and my relationship isn’t the steamiest. It doesn’t matter that he seems to take my father’s side more than mine. It doesn’t matter that he’d choose a rowdy night out with friends over a quiet night at home with me. What matters is that he’s a solid choice. He’s a nice boy with good prospects from a great family. More than just a solid choice, Clark is the right choice. Every time I look at my father’s face, I know it. I’m sure of it.
He doesn’t write back right away, which is to be expected. It’s Saturday night. He’s probably out on the town with his high school friends. I won’t hear from him until tomorrow.
I splash my face with more cold water, blot it dry and take another deep breath.
I’ve got this.
As I return to my seat, I spy Bruce Franks, who stands at the back of his improvised theater. Because the Kozy Kone is just a few doors down from the Purple Parsnip, I see Bruce almost every day over the summer, and he’s always been kind to me. When I smile at him, he waves me over.
“Oh, my stars and garters!” he exclaims in a stage whisper. “What’re you doin’ here off-season?”
“Helping out my aunt and uncle.”
His lips turn down. “I heard about Priscilla. Terrible thing, cancer. How’s she doing?”
“The prognosis is good,” I say. “But the treatment is awful.”
“Chemo is something different. Breaks you down before building you up,” he says. “How’re the girls? I see Jenny’s here with you.”
“She’s impossible,” I confess. “Angry and difficult all the time lately.”
“Tough thing to see your mama sick.”
“I know,” I say. “And I’m being patient. I promise.”
We stand in companionable silence for a moment before he nudges me gently.
“Hey, darlin’,” he says, “I think I saw something about you doing theater up there at UAF.”
I nod at him. “How’d you know about that?”
“I’ve got an old friend in the theater department. Kent Sorenson. You know him, right?”
“Of course! I love Professor Sorenson! He cast me as Ophelia in King Lear !”
“I know,” says Bruce. “I saw pictures of the production on Facebook. Knew I recognized that red-headed Ophelia on my feed.”
“Wow. Small world.”
“Small state ,” Bruce corrects me.
He’s right. Alaska is tiny when it comes to people. There are more people in the city of Seattle than there are in the entire state of Alaska. Everyone is a few degrees of separation away from everyone else, and that’s a fact.
“So…” he starts. Suddenly, he stares at the movie screen, fanning himself. “Oh, Lord! Hit pause a second. Would you look at Aiden Quinn! My god on high, he was a snack and a half once upon a time!”
I giggle at Bruce’s enthusiasm, turning my attention back to the movie for a second. Sandra Bullock’s in another passionate lip lock. ( I’m beginning to understand my roommate’s obsession with this movie!) My stomach fills with the rapid and unexpected fluttering of butterfly wings as I watch Aiden Quinn push Sandra Bullock against his hotel room wall and kiss her like the world is ending. They fall onto the bed, her on top of him, grasping for each other, gasping for breath, desperate for more.
And for a second—just a split second—I remember what it was like to be kissed like that.
Don’t go back to Fairbanks…don’t go back to him…
“Whew! So anyway,” Bruce continues, all business now that Aiden Quinn is no longer on the screen, “I’ve adapted Wuthering Heights into a play and auditions are on Thursday. Any chance I could convince an erstwhile Ophelia to try her hand at Catherine Earnshaw?”
I remember the flyer at the grocery store and nod.
“I think you could,” I tell him, thinking I’m entitled to a little fun as long as I’m staying in Skagway. “See you Thursday.”