Chapter 4
Sawyer
My first rehearsal for Wuthering Heights is on Tuesday.
I pick up McKenna and Reeve in front of the lodge, and they jump onto the bench seat in the truck beside me. As we leave the campground behind, Reeve opens her rehearsal binder and sighs loudly.
“Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday until the week before Christmas? McKenna, this schedule is bananas.”
“First of all, no, it’s not. Three rehearsals a week is standard for community theater. Just wait until the week before the show, Reeve! We’ll be in the theater every night! And second of all, it’s the off-season. What else are you doing?” My sister-in-law gives my little sister a look. “Nada. That’s what.”
“I’m used to having free time.”
“Free time’s overrated,” says McKenna.
“Reading by a fire isn’t overrated,” mutters Reeve.
“Won’t Tanner miss you?” I ask McKenna.
“I guess,” she says, then winks at me. “But he’s awfully glad when I come home.”
“Ohmigod, gross!” Reeve makes a retching sound. “He’s our brother!”
McKenna chuckles at her revulsion, then turns back to me. “What do you think, Heathcliff? Too many rehearsals?”
“I’ve never been in a play before,” I answer honestly. “I guess this is what you need to do to make it happen.”
“How do you feel about starring with Ivy?” asks Reeve, leaning over McKenna.
“Don’t start,” I warn her. “I’m not in the mood for teasing.”
“No,” she says. “I’m not teasing, I promise. Are you okay with it?”
Remember how I healed my bruised heart with lots of whiskey after Ivy left the summer before last? Well, my family sure got an earful about how much she’d hurt me. I guess Reeve has a right to wonder.
I glance at McKenna, in whom I confided last week. She knows exactly how confused I feel about Ivy, but she doesn’t betray me. She stares straight ahead without saying a word and I’m grateful to her. She’s a good secret keeper.
“It’s fine, Reeve. I’m okay with it,” I say.
“I think she’s shallow and a total snob,” my sister says. “She’s only dating that guy from Juneau for, like, status.” She makes her fingers into air quotes. “ The coal titan’s daughter and the lieutenant governor’s son . Yuck. Puke. I hear he’s a jerk.”
“How do you know that?” I ask.
“Do you ever go on TikTok? Everyone at UAF knows that,” says Reeve. “He cheated on her with some bimbo named Mandee. It’s common knowledge. And in my opinion, she’s weak for going back to him. Don’t be a doormat. Like, grow a spine already.”
I know all about Clark cheating on Ivy, which accounted for my surprise and disappointment when Ivy returned in May with his ring on her finger.
“It’s none of our business,” says McKenna gently. She deftly changes the topic. “Hey, Reeve, have we heard from Aaron about the budget yet? To build the sets? Bruce asked me to run the numbers. We may need to hold a fundraiser in November, and he said we could have a party at the Parsnip if needed.”
“I don’t know,” says Reeve, her nose in the air the instant Aaron’s name is mentioned. I swear, there are moments my sister could give snobby Ivy a run for her money. “I don’t talk to him unless I have to.”
They get into a discussion about the cost of sets and props, but I tune them out as we bounce over the last of the Dyea Road before reaching Skagway. Ever since Reeve mentioned Clark cheating, my thoughts have turned dark.
The truth? I hate Clark Clement Rupert III for what he did to Ivy Caswell. It was a slim-to-nothing chance that she and I would ever work out, but I still wanted her to be happy. If he could’ve made her happy, I would’ve come around to accepting their union. But he can’t make her happy. I’m sure of that. A leopard doesn’t change its spots. Once a cheater, always a cheater. If fidelity matters to her, which I’m sure it does, she’s setting herself up for a lifetime of misery.
I brood about this for the rest of the ride, park on the empty street near the theater, and follow my sisters inside, looking for Ivy as I make my way down the aisle. I find her in the front row center.
Before plopping down beside her, I pull my script from my back pocket.
“Hey.”
“Hi,” she says, moving her elbow from the shared armrest. “I didn’t see you come in.”
“I’m stealthy.”
“Good word.”
“I got lots of ’em.”
“Is that right?”
“Sure. How else do you kick the SAT’s ass?”
She looks at me skeptically. “ You kicked the SAT’s ass?”
“Perfect score on English,” I say with a little shrug.
Her mouth hangs open. “You got an 800 on the English portion of the SAT?”
“Yep. But my math skills suck. I only got a 600.”
“Suck? People would kill for a 600 on math. Are you kidding me, Sawyer?”
( No, I’m not kidding. I got a 1400 on the SAT, and I really and truly thought about going to college, but in the end, I decided it just wasn’t for me .)
“Shhh,” I whisper. Bruce climbs onto the stage. “Be polite. The director is speaking.”
“Thespians,” starts Bruce, beaming at all of us with “prayer hands.” “Welcome!”
Everyone claps while Bruce pretends to shush us. I swear…he is Cameron from Modern Family . It’s uncanny.
“Tonight is not about me. Tonight is not about Wuthering Heights. Tonight is not about Catherine and her Heathcliff,” he says, gesturing at me and Ivy. “It’s not about cues or lines or descriptive actions or bright interest! Tonight is about…trust!”
I have no idea what’s going on, but I clap along with everyone else.
“The world is our stage! The stage is our world! Come, friends, and partake!”
Ivy jumps up and rushes to the stage, so I follow her, standing uncertainly on the sidelines to see what’s about to happen.
“Sawyer, Sawyer, Sawyer,” says Bruce, stepping over to me and patting me on the shoulder. “You’re such a natural, I forget you’re new to this. Go stand across from Ivy. You’ll do the trust exercise together.”
Herded over to Ivy by Bruce, I stand across from her.
“First,” he says, “I want you all to pair up like these two. That’s right. That’s right. Vera, can you work with Mr. Hedgely since he’s playing Joe? Aaron, darling, come and pair up with McKenna. It’s just for fun. Everyone’s part of the pack tonight. Reeve, you’re with me. Now, everyone! Sit on the floor with your back against your partner’s back.”
I sit down with my legs straight out and look up at Ivy, who hesitates. I raise my eyebrows, and she rolls her eyes, lowering herself to the floor. As I turn away from her, I feel her back brush against mine. Since I’m wearing a T-shirt and she’s wearing a bulky wool sweater, I lean back, into her, against her…until I finally feel the heat of her body.
“Don’t push me over,” she mutters.
“Then push back a little,” I whisper.
“Alright, actors!” Bruce cries. “We’re all in place.” He looks around the stage, then frowns. “Wyatt and Layla, you’re playing siblings, remember. No funny business while you’re on my stage.” His eyes land on me. “Yes, Sawyer and Ivy! Oooo! I like the tension!”
As Bruce speaks, Ivy relaxes, letting herself lean back fully. I can feel the prickle of wool fibers through my T-shirt, the column of her spine nestled neatly against the column of mine. Our spines fit together , I think, marveling at the thought.
“Now,” says Bruce, “I will give you individual scenes to run together. You must speak in a whisper, which means you may need to strain to hear, but it will demand that you listen to each other. Hear each other. Heathcliff and Cathy, start on page forty-two. Catherine’s death scene. Vera, I want you and Mr.…”
I tune out the rest of Bruce’s instructions, opening my script to page forty-two. At some point, I realize, Ivy and I have equalized the pressure of our backs, which makes the structure of our positions feel cooperative, integrated…even, essential.
“You start,” Ivy whispers. She must have turned her head a touch because I feel her breath on my ear.
“Right. Okay.” I’ve read the book twice at this point, and Bruce’s script at least five times, and this scene is—by far—the heart of the work, the underlying theme. I want to get it right. “Give me a second, okay?”
“Okay.”
The stage instruction reads that Catherine lies in her bed, on the brink of death, straining toward the door of her chamber. Heathcliff appears in the doorway, out of breath, as though he’s climbed a dozen flights. He rushes to her bedside and grasps her in his arms, kissing her head and forehead, her cheeks and nose and lips. When he draws away from her, agony is chiseled into the sharp lines of his face. She will not recover from this illness, and he knows it now.
“Catherine!” I whisper, leaning into her, but trying to be gentle with her dying body. “My life. My soul. How can I bear it?”
“You and Edgar have broken my heart, Heathcliff.” She coughs weakly. “I will not pity you.” She pauses, then adds, “You are so strong! How many years will you live after I’m gone?” She coughs again, and it’s a pitiful sound. “Will you be happy when I’m gone? When I’m deep inside the earth, will you forget me? Will you pass my grave twenty years hence and say, ‘ There is Catherine Earnshaw. I loved her once, but I have loved many since .’”
I clench my jaw in anger and injustice. She lies in the bed she earned as Mrs. Edgar Linton. She dies another man’s wife, giving birth to his brat. And yet, she is so damned selfish, she demands my reassurance that I will love none as I have loved— as I love —her. She forces me to say the words when the truth of my heart is etched upon hers.
“Are you bedeviled to speak so?” I demand. “Those words will be branded in my memory and eating deeper eternally after you have left me! I could as soon forget you as my very existence! I will never love another. But you! You selfish, brutal creature, while you lie in eternal peace, I will live here , on earth, without you…in the fires of hell!”
“I will not…be at peace,” she vows softly, a coughing attack making her heave and jerk against me. “How can you imagine it so? I’m not wishing you greater torment than mine, Heathcliff. I only wish us never to be parted, and should a word of mine distress you hereafter, think I feel the same distress underground, and for my own sake, forgive me! Hold me, Heathcliff! Tighter!”
I lean back against her, harder, more urgently. “ Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. If you loved me, then what right had you to leave me? Because misery and degradation and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, Catherine—not on my part. Never!”
“Oh, Heathcliff!”
“You , of your own will, did it. You chose your poor fancy for Edgar Linton over—over me ! Over us ! I have not broken your heart— you have broken it, and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you…oh, god! Have pity! Should you like to live with your soul in the grave?”
She shutters against me, and I imagine she is crying. My hands shake from wanting to reach for her, caress her, hold her. When she speaks again, it is in quiet sobs.
“If I’ve d-done wrong, I’m d-dying for it now…”
Another cough, so much weaker now through her tears. I lean forward a little, hoping she will lie back against me and use my body as her final resting place.
In the script there is a note that Nelly hurries into the room and tells Heathcliff he must go, that Edgar and the doctor are coming.
“No!” Cathy cries, her head lolling between my shoulder bones, soft red hair tickling the back of my neck. “No!”
“Cathy, I will stay under your window in the garden—”
“No!” she orders me. “You may not go. You must not go. Not for an hour! Not for a minute!”
“I must! But I will return!”
The script says that Heathcliff jumps from Catherine’s bedroom window into the garden. When Nelly, Edgar, and the doctor enter the room seconds later, she has died. Somehow, they manage to save the baby, which Edgar whisks from the room.
Against my back, Ivy unclenches every muscle. The hand holding her script flops onto the floor and the binder slides open from her lap onto the wooden stage. I am frantic to turn around and look at her, to be sure she’s still breathing, to make certain she didn’t…die.
I forgive you! I want to scream. I forgive you! For your own reasons, you chose him over me, but you loved me, too. In your own way, you loved me, too. I forgive you!
But Heathcliff’s sorrow takes him to a different, darker place. I lean forward until my chin almost touches my knees, and the shadow of my body makes the script on my thighs hard to read. Catherine lies prone on my back, her weight welcome, and yet—if she is truly gone—terrifying.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, an old memory resurfaces, and though I try to push it away, I find I can’t.
My father stands over my mother’s grave, with Reeve in his arms. I stand between Hunter and Harper, each of them holding one of my little hands. Tanner and Parker, also hand in hand, stand across the grave from us, between Gran and Paw-Paw. We are a blur of black clothing and tears.
I blink my burning eyes and look down at my script.
“How did she die?” I bite out in whispered anguish to Nelly. “Like a bloody saint?” A mewling sob escapes my throat. “Did she…did she mention my name? Even one time?” Ivy’s engagement ring catches the light of an overhead bulb, and the brightness blinds me for a nasty split second. I growl with anger, with pain. When I dare speak again, my voice is so low, so menacing, the gravel of it scratches my throat. “I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. So, be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh god! It is unutterable! It is unbearable. Ic- cannot live without my life! Ic- cannot live w-without my…my soul!”
I close my eyes, clenching them tightly shut as my forehead lowers onto my open script. There are no more lines prefaced by the name HEATHCLIFF. I can rest for a moment now.
It takes a few seconds of deep breathing for me to realize that the stage is silent.
No one else is running scenes or reading lines.
My eyes pop open, and I realize that Ivy’s weight is no longer resting on my back. Straightening into a sitting position, I find everyone looking at me, staring at me , in awe.
Reeve, who peeks at me from behind Bruce, has tears streaming down her face. I think of baby Reeve beside a grave, held fast in my father’s strong arms. Why does it feel so recent? So immediate?
I love you , I mouth to her. I don’t say it enough.
I love you, too , she mouths back, mustering a teary smile for me.
“My god,” hisses Bruce, his wide eyes transfixed on my face. “That…was…a… tour de force ! brAVO, Sawyer Stewart! brAVO!”
Suddenly, the whole stage explodes in applause, but there’s only one face, besides my sister’s, that I am desperate to see. I bend my knees and pivot on my butt to find Ivy staring at me with an incalculable look.
Wonder. Admiration. Confusion. Fascination.
I feel the tether that connects her to me and me to her.
Does she feel it too?
She finally registers that I’m staring back at her.
Her eyes alight on mine.
And she smiles.
***
Ivy
I’m shook.
My face is smiling at him, but my body is agitated in a way that feels desperate, visceral. Is it longing? Or repulsion? Or something else entirely?
Only one thing is certain—my childhood friend, my sometimes hook-up and one-time lover, Sawyer Stewart, is all grown up. Only a grown man could play Heathcliff with such gravity of feeling.
“What’s going on?”
He’s speaking to me. He’s looking for an explanation.
“What?”
“Why is everyone clapping?”
I wipe away the wetness on my cheeks and clear my throat. He’s not putting me on. He’s truly confused.
My smile deepens, and my body relaxes. “Because that was amazing.”
“What was?”
“Your performance. Your reading. Heathcliff. He came… alive. You’re a gifted actor, Sawyer. Truly.”
“Oh,” he says, running a hand through his thick, dark-blond hair. “Okay.” He looks around the stage and grins at the rest of the cast. “Thanks, everyone!”
The rest of the rehearsal flies by in a blur of ensemble-building exercises and drama games meant to loosen us all up and help us get to know one another as actors. Ten o’clock arrives all too soon.
“Cast!” calls Bruce from the middle of the stage. “It turns out I know the guy who owns the Purple Parsnip, and you’re all invited over for a beer or two on me!”
“Parsnip closes at nine on Tuesdays,” mutters Vera.
“Not tonight it doesn’t, Miz Grumpypants,” says Bruce. “Aaron, close up shop here and meet us over there. Everyone else, follow me!”
I look at Sawyer, who’s standing next to me after our final exercise of the night. “Are you going?”
He glances at Reeve and McKenna. “Depends. We came together.”
“Oh.” Disappointment, unexpected and sharp, surprises me.
Reeve bounces over to us. “Can I have a beer?”
“Are you twenty-one?”
“No. But, Gran let me drink champagne at Tanner and McKenna’s wedding.”
“Okay. One beer, then. One.”
“Yes!” she cries, running back over to McKenna. “He said I could have one!”
“She looks up to you a lot,” I say.
“She looks up to all of us,” he answers. “She has no memories of our mom.”
“I’m sorry for that. I don’t remember my mom very well either. She left when I was eight.”
“I remember you telling me that. Mine died when I was four,” he says softly.
“Do you remember her?”
“Sometimes I think I do,” he says. “But I don’t know. My grandparents, dad, and older siblings have told stories about her throughout my life. I’m not really sure what’s a real memory and what’s a fabricated memory based on a story I’ve heard.”
We’ve paused across from each other, standing on the edge of the stage, while most of the cast, led by Bruce, have already left the theater. Aaron quietly pushes a broom across the stage. It’s quiet and intimate, and I’m not anxious to leave.
“Why didn’t you go to college?” I ask him.
“Wasn’t for me,” he says, jumping off the stage and grabbing his fleece jacket from the first row. When he puts it on over his head, I get a peek of his taut stomach between his jeans and T-shirt. Muscled and flat, with a sprinkling of wiry, dirty-blond hair that disappears south of his waistband, it’s Greek-god perfect. My breath catches. My cheeks flush. Memories of the summer before last coming rushing back to me, and for a second, my knees feel weak.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Fine!” I chirp.
I jump off the stage, shrug into my own coat and pull on my mittens.
Think about something else. Talk about anything else. The weather!
“October nights in Skagway are about ten degrees warmer than they are in Fairbanks, but it’s still cold here,” I inform him, apropos of absolutely nothing. If my cheeks were pink a second ago, they must be scarlet now.
“Um. Yeah. I guess that’s true.” His eyebrows furrow. “Sure you’re okay?”
“Fine,” I say again, grabbing my script and heading up the aisle toward the theater exit.
Behind me, Sawyer says: “Hey, listen! I don’t judge other people for going to college. I mean, it’s fine for some people. You, for example, seem to have flourished there. It just wasn’t for me.”
He’s mistakenly assumed that his decision not to attend college was the source of my weirdo outburst. Grateful for anything that takes my mind off his “happy trail,” I lean into a new avenue of conversation.
“Why wasn’t it for you?” I ask, stepping onto the boardwalk and taking a deep gulp of the chilly night air. It prickles my lungs, which is grounding.
“Even at seventeen, I knew I wanted to stay in Skagway and work with my family. I love the tourist business, and I love my family,” he says as we turn toward the Purple Parsnip.
“It’s amazing you had that kind of clarity at such a young age,” I say. “Some people spend a whole lifetime trying to figure out what they love and what they’re good at and how to make a living by combining the two.”
“Well, I knew. So, I didn’t see the need to spend money on an expensive education.”
I feel a little jealous of how clear-headed and certain he sounds. I’m still not sure how exactly I’m going to use my newly-minted college degree. My father wants me to go into politics, and marrying Clark certainly dovetails with that plan. But I haven’t thought much about what I want.
As though reading my mind, Sawyer asks, “What do you plan to do? Once Priscilla’s better, and you leave Skagway?”
“Clark and I just bought an apartment in Juneau,” I say. “It’s nice. There’s a view of the harbor.”
He doesn’t say anything in response to this, just keeps walking beside me, his arm occasionally brushing mine in a way that’s distracting and comforting at once.
“He’s going to work with his dad at the capital. I had an internship all set up there for the fall, but I had to, you know, postpone it.”
“They’re holding it for you?”
“I don’t think so,” I answer honestly. “They’re all very angry with me.”
“Who’s angry?”
“Clark, my father, Clark’s father.” I try to laugh, but it sounds strangled and pathetic. “All the men in my life are furious with me.”
“I bet your Uncle Alan isn’t furious with you.”
I glance up at Sawyer—at his strong, sharp jaw and plush lips. His lashes, especially when I look at his profile, are long and dark. The Parsnip is only six blocks away, and I find myself wishing it was a much longer walk.
“He’s not,” I say. “He’s grateful I’m here.”
“That’s because being here is the right choice,” he says matter-of-factly. “Prioritizing the people you love is never the wrong move. I think it sucks that your father, fiancé, and future father-in-law don’t recognize that.”
Me too .
“What would it say about you if you prioritized a flashy apartment and posh internship over the aunt you love?”
That I was shallow and heartless and selfish.
“I admire you for being here,” he continues. “If they can’t see that, well, that’s on them, Ivy.”
His words remind me that before we were co-stars, before we were lovers, we were friends, and he was always kind to me. Throughout my childhood and early adolescence, Sawyer was a good friend to me every summer. I loop my mittened hand though his bent elbow, even though he didn’t offer it.
“Thanks, Sawyer.”
He doesn’t unlink our arms or otherwise push me away, and it makes me happy.
“But you still didn’t answer my question,” he points out. “What do you plan to do once your aunt’s feeling better?”
I look around the almost-empty streets of Skagway—at the old-western storefronts on either side of us and the wooden-plank boardwalk under our feet. The air is crisp and clean, and you can see every star in the sky. The thought of returning to Juneau makes me feel melancholy. It shouldn’t, of course—my apartment is beautiful, I’ll have a challenging job, there are lots of cultural opportunities, and I can begin planning my wedding—but it does. It makes my heart feel heavy. It makes me feel like crying.
“I don’t know,” I whisper, my voice a broken sound.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he says, his voice gentle. “It’s good you’re here. You have a little time to figure it all out.”
We’re almost at the Parsnip now, and I wish time would stop. I wish I could just keep walking along the boardwalk with Sawyer forever.
Wait. Forever?
The thought slipped gently through my mind before I had a moment to vet it, but I find the idea of forever with my hand nestled in Sawyer’s elbow doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the prospect of returning to Juneau to be with Clark. It doesn’t generate the same heaviness or melancholy inside of me. It feels effortless, unexpectedly organic.
But I don’t want to compare Clark to Sawyer or Juneau to Skagway. My future is with Clark in Juneau. The decision’s already been made, and questioning it could wreck the relationship I’m building with my father and his dreams for my future.
“I guess we’re here,” says Sawyer.
I look up at the gaudy lavender building and nod. He gently untangles my hand from his arm.
“Thanks for walking me over,” I say.
“Anytime.”
“I missed you,” I blurt out. “I always missed you after I left.”
“I missed you, too.”
“ That summer…I should have told you I was leaving.”
“Yes,” he agrees. “You should have.”
“I didn’t know how to say goodbye…” I gulp softly. “We’d always been friends—”
“Who kissed sometimes,” he reminds me.
“Yes. And then suddenly we were…”
“More,” he whispers, taking a step closer to me.
“More,” I whisper back. “Sawyer, I want—”
“What do you want, princess?” he asks me, his eyes searing.
“I…I…I don’t know,” I answer, my gaze sliding to his lips.
He inches toward me, his face closer and closer, his lips about to touch mine when the door to the Parsnip opens and Bruce sticks his face outside.
“Our stars have arrived! Are you two coming inside or what?”
“Of course!” I cry, jerking away from Sawyer.
“Sure,” says Sawyer, shoving his hands in his pockets and frowning at me. “We’re coming.”
Without another word, he follows Bruce inside, and I’m left behind to follow.
***
Were we about to kiss?
Oh, my God, was I going to let that happen?
I’m lying on my back in bed, my hand suspended overhead so I can stare at my engagement ring and let wave after wave of shame wash over me.
I’m not a cheater.
Clark is— was a cheater, but he changed his ways, and I forgave him.
But me? I am absolutely, positively not a cheater.
And it hurts my heart, and my sense of honor, to wonder if I would have let Sawyer kiss me if Bruce hadn’t interrupted us. I like to believe I would’ve turned my face away at the last second, but I think that’s a lie. I think I probably would’ve kissed him back and hated myself even more than I do now.
If I was smart, I’d pull out of the show—tell Bruce that Aunt P. is too sick to be left alone three nights a week, but everyone in Skagway is so on top of everyone else, he’d know it was a lie. My uncle is home from school every day by five o’clock, and he knows it.
Well, I tell myself, aside from rehearsals, you’ll just have to stay away from Sawyer.
And what about when you’re at rehearsals? asks my heart. You have two or three scenes in which Catherine kisses Heathcliff. What are you going to do about that?
“It doesn’t count,” I mutter. “That’s acting. As long as a kiss takes place on the stage, it’s not cheating.”
My phone buzzes on the bedside table: CLARK.
I don’t feel like talking right now, but I feel so guilty about the time I spent with Sawyer tonight, I feel like I have to answer.
“Hi, Clark,” I say.
“Hey, babe!” His voice booms over the line. “How’s my girl doing tonight?”
“Okay,” I say. “I had my first rehearsal.”
“Oh, man.” He chuckles. “Was it a total joke?”
I frown. “No. Actually, it was good. Fun.”
“As much fun as you can find in freakin’ Skagway, huh? God, Skagway in October. I don’t know why you’re doing this to yourself, babe.”
“You know exactly why I’m doing this. My aunt’s struggling,” I say. But in my heart, I know my bitter attitude is less about my aunt and more about what almost happened with Sawyer. Lighten up, Ivy. “Anyway, yeah. It was fun. You know, it’s a pretty good script. I think it could be a great show.”
“You’re so fuckin’ artsy, babe. The Juneau libs are gonna love that about you.”
Clark is not a “lib.” To Clark’s and my father’s amusement, I am.
Fun fact: while Alaska almost always goes red in the US presidential election, Juneau often votes blue. Point in fact, only forty-three percent of Juneau’s population voted for the Republican candidate in 2020. Being slightly left of center in Juneau is an ideal place for me to land in terms of political ideology.
“How about you?” I ask him. “Do you love that about me?”
He laughs. “You’re so cute, babe. Hey! Did I tell you that your dad managed to get me a job at APC? The hedge fund? Not an internship. A job .”
“Wait. What?”
“Yeah. He said that I should work at APC for a few years to make contacts and get some decent finance experience, and then we could start talking about me taking a position at Caswell Coal.”
“Huh. Okay. But I thought you wanted to check out politics for a few months.”
“Your dad thinks finance is a better idea. He was in town for business last week, so we had dinner. He said to zig-zag…or something like that. Like, my dad’s a politician and yours is a business owner, so I should go into business or banking, and you should go into politics. He said it cross-strengthens our families. And he said something about coal legislation needing to be passed, but I guess he wants to talk about that with you. He’s anxious for you to get back down here, babe.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“How’s your aunt doing?” he asks, but I know that distracted tone. He’s checking out social media and doesn’t really care about my aunt.
“Clark,” I ask instead, “are you even interested in finance?”
I imagine him looking away from Instagram and re-focusing on what I’m saying. “What? Finance? Yeah. I’m interested.”
“Really? Because I don’t—”
“Am I interested in making money? Dumb fuckin’ question. Yeah, babe. I am.”
“ Not a dumb question,” I counter. “We met in a poli-sci seminar. I don’t remember you ever taking a single business class at UAF. I had no idea you were—”
“I’m good with it, Ivy. I’m excited,” he says, his tone turning sour. “Jesus! Just be happy for me, okay?”
“I am, Clark,” I say. “If a job in finance is what you want—”
“It is,” he snaps.
“Then I’m happy,” I say softly.
He switches gears, telling me about going out last weekend with his high school friends, how they almost got kicked out of a place called Salt that has a lively after-work bar scene. He fills me in on Feisty’s shenanigans, and I beg him to send me more pictures of her. He tells me he can’t wait for me to “come home,” and I feel a sharp pang near my heart when he says this. I’m grateful for that quick jab; it must mean I love him and want to be with him, right? Yes. It means I’m missing him, and want to get on with our life in Juneau. I’m sure of it.
“You sound tired, babe,” he says after regaling me with stories of city life. “I’ll let you go.”
“I miss you,” I say.
“I miss you, babe.”
“You love me…right, Clark?”
“You’re so cute,” he answers. “I asked you to marry me, didn’t I?
“You did.”
“Well, there you go. Sleep tight.”
He hangs up, and I drop the phone on my pillow. Then I take a deep breath and close my eyes, hoping that a feeling of rightness and certainty and deep, requited love will wash over me in the quiet minutes after talking to my fiancé.
I wait and I wait for that feeling to engulf me, and finally, I drift off to sleep.