Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
JAXON
Saskatchewan sunset is an event. The whole sky catches fire, horizon to horizon, layers of colour stacked from gold at the bottom through pink and violet into a blue so deep it's almost purple.
No mountains in the way. No trees blocking the view.
Just the earth and the sky meeting at a seam that stretches forever.
Elise stopped working to watch it. That's how I know we're in trouble.
We're parked at a rest stop west of Swift Current, day twelve, leaning against the tailgate of the truck.
She's got a sweater wrapped around her shoulders, and her hair is doing the wavy thing again because the Saskatchewan wind doesn't respect blowouts.
Her planner is closed on the dashboard inside the cab.
Closed. Not open, not being annotated, not consulted.
Just sitting there, abandoned, while its owner leans against a truck and watches the sky change colours without scheduling it.
"I could live out here," I say, mostly to myself.
"No you couldn't. The nearest grocery store is an hour away."
"I could adapt."
"You can't adapt to not having groceries."
"I'd grow things."
"You'd grow things." Her voice is flat. "You, the man who lives out of a duffel bag and has eaten Timbits for breakfast four of the last eleven days, would become a farmer."
"It could happen."
"It couldn't."
"You don't know."
She looks at me sideways. The sunset turns her face warm, catching the hazel in her eyes, and my chest does the thing it's been doing for six days now.
The tightening. The pull toward her that I keep telling myself is just proximity, just the forced closeness of a shared truck cab, just the natural result of spending all day every day with someone who challenges everything I say and somehow makes it feel like a gift.
My phone buzzes in my back pocket. The screen lights up with an email notification, and my heart rate spikes before I've consciously read it.
Subject: Assignment Opportunity — Patagonia Series
Hi Jaxon,
Following up on our conversation at the MEC launch last month.
We'd like to formally offer you the lead photographer position for our six-part Patagonia expedition series.
The project runs October through March, based out of El Chaltén with satellite shoots across Torres del Paine and Tierra del Fuego.
Full kit provided. Flights, accommodation, and a per diem covered. Rate as discussed.
This would be our flagship content series for 2026. We need confirmation by September 5.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Best, Liam Firth Content Director, Meridian Outdoor
Six months. Patagonia. October through March. Full expedition. The kind of assignment I would have said yes to without reading past the subject line three weeks ago.
Three weeks ago, I wasn't leaning against a truck in Saskatchewan watching a woman with a closed planner and wavy hair argue about my agricultural potential.
"Good news?" Elise asks, because my face is apparently doing something obvious.
"Assignment offer. Big one." My voice sounds strange, even to me. Too casual. "Patagonia. Six months. October start."
"Patagonia." She straightens off the tailgate. "That's incredible, Jaxon."
"Yeah." My thumb scrolls through the email again. Full kit. Per diem. Flagship series. "It's a dream gig."
"When do they need an answer?"
"September fifth."
"That's eleven days from now."
"Eleven, technically."
Her arms cross, and she turns back to the sunset, which has deepened into violet. The gold is gone. "You should take it."
"Yeah?"
"Of course. It's Patagonia. Six months of professional photography in one of the most stunning landscapes on earth. It's exactly what you do."
She's right. It is exactly what I do. Fly somewhere beautiful, shoot it, leave.
The rotation that's kept me moving since Mom died.
Iceland, Scotland, Portugal, New Zealand, Morocco.
Name a country and I've got a portfolio folder for it.
Name a continent and I can tell you where the best light falls in November.
The rotation that Kenzie says is a grief response dressed up in adventure.
"Would you turn it down?" I ask.
"Would I turn down a dream job? No."
"Even if it meant leaving something?"
Her jaw tightens. Barely visible, but I've spent eleven days mapping the microexpressions of Elise Boyd, and I know what that jaw means. She's choosing her next words carefully, running them through a filter, removing the parts that feel too honest.
"You wouldn't be leaving something," she says, measured. "You'd be going to something. That's how opportunities work. Your life is in Calgary. Mine is in Toronto. We were always going to different places."
The sentence is perfectly constructed. Logical. Air-tight. It's also the most painful thing she's said to me in eleven days, which is impressive given that she once told me my glove box was "a biohazard in a small enclosed space."
"Right," I say. "Different places."
We drive to the rental in silence. It's a farmhouse apartment outside Medicine Hat, the last stop before Calgary tomorrow.
One bedroom, pull-out couch, a kitchen that smells like someone's grandmother.
Normally this would be the part of the evening where we settle in, make tea, sit somewhere and talk until neither of us can keep our eyes open.
The part I've started looking forward to more than the driving.
Elise goes straight to the bedroom with her suitcase. The door closes. Not a slam. A deliberate, quiet click.
My duffel lands on the pull-out with more force than necessary. The couch springs protest. The room is small, dimly lit, and the walls have framed cross-stitch samplers with phrases like BLESS THIS HOME and HAPPINESS IS HOMEMADE.
My phone is in my hand before I've decided to call anyone.
"Tell me I'm not an idiot," I say when Griffin picks up.
"Context?"
"Meridian offered me Patagonia. Six months. October start."
"Bro, that's massive. Congratulations."
"Thanks."
"You don't sound like a guy who just got offered Patagonia."
"I told Elise about it, and she said I should take it, and then she went to bed."
A long pause. In the background, I can hear faint music. Griffin's always got music on. "What did you want her to say?"
The cross-stitch sampler on the opposite wall says BLESS THIS HOME in yellow thread. The stitching is uneven on the H.
"I don't know."
"Yeah you do."
"I wanted her to say don't go."
Griffin doesn't respond immediately, which means he's thinking, which is unusual and therefore significant.
"Jax. You've known this woman for eleven days."
"Twelve."
"You've known her for thirteen days, and you wanted her to ask you to stay."
"When you say it out loud, it sounds insane."
"It sounds honest. There's a difference." A beat. "Wait. No, there isn't. It sounds insane AND honest. Both."
"Thanks, Griff. Very helpful."
"What are you going to do?"
"Take the job. Obviously."
"Obviously."
"It's Patagonia."
"It is."
"Six months, full kit, flagship series."
"All true."
"And Elise lives in Toronto, and I live in Calgary, and we've been in a truck together for merely two weeks, and that's not enough to change a career trajectory."
"No."
"So I take the job."
"Sounds logical."
"You're doing the thing where you agree with everything I'm saying because you know I'm wrong."
"I'm doing the thing where I let you talk yourself into something you don't want and wait for you to figure it out." The music in the background gets quieter, like he's moved rooms. "Can I tell you what Sloane would say?"
"Do I have a choice?"
"She'd say that the fact that you called me at 10 PM to talk about a job offer you got three hours ago means the job isn't what's keeping you up."
The farmhouse creaks around me. Old bones settling. Through the bedroom door, there's no sound. Elise is probably in her planner, colour-coding tomorrow's drive into Calgary. Two hours and forty minutes. The last page of the itinerary. The end of the trip.
"She told me we were always going to different places," I say. "And she's right. She's always right. She's the most right person I've ever met."
"She sounds terrified."
"She sounds logical."
"Same thing, with her. You told me that."
My forehead drops against the back of the couch. The ceiling has a water stain in the shape of a lopsided heart, which feels like the universe is being heavy-handed.
"I like her, Griff. Not in a twelve-day, road-trip, proximity way. In a real way. In a way where I can't imagine pulling into Calgary tomorrow and watching her get out of my truck."
"Then tell her that."
"She doesn't want to hear it."
"She doesn't want to hear it, or she's afraid of what happens if she does?"
The bedroom door is still closed. The cross-stitch says BLESS THIS HOME. The dream catcher is in the truck, catching nothing but dark.
"Go to bed, Jax," Griffin says. "Talk to her in the morning. Before you get to Calgary. Don't let the truck do the talking."
"What does that mean?"
"It means don't just drop her off. Don't let the trip end without saying the thing."
"What thing?"
"You know what thing. Goodnight, man."
The line goes dead.
The pull-out mattress is worse than usual, or maybe that's just my head. Every time I close my eyes, I see the sunset. The violet sky and Elise leaning against the tailgate with her arms crossed, building walls out of logic and geography.
We were always going to different places.
She said it with total certainty. The certainty of a woman who booked fourteen days of rentals, mapped every fuel stop, and colour-coded a binder to prevent exactly this: the feeling of freefall when the plan runs out.
But plans run out. They always run out. Mom's health plan ran out in four months.
Dad's marriage plan ran out while Kenzie and I were still in school.
Every plan I've ever made has run out or been replaced by a plane ticket and a new assignment and the comfortable numbness of moving too fast to feel anything.
Elise runs out of plan tomorrow at 2:43 PM Mountain Time, when the truck pulls off Deerfoot Trail and into Calgary proper.
And I have no idea what happens after that. Not because I haven't thought about it, but because every version of it requires one of us to bend, and neither of us knows how.
She's a planner in Toronto. I'm a photographer who lives out of duffel bags. She schedules visits with her father a year in advance. I haven't opened my dead mother's boxes in two years. She builds structure to feel safe. I dismantle it to feel free. On paper, we make no sense.
But the paper doesn't know about the canoe, or the rice she trusted me to cook, or the photo she took of me against the Manitoba sky with her thumb in the frame.
The paper doesn't know about the way she laughs when she loses the fight against it.
The paper doesn't know that she's the first person in two years who's made me want to stop moving.
My phone glows on the floor beside the couch. Kenzie's name. A text from three hours ago I missed during the sunset.
that photo you sent. you look like mom when she was happy. whoever took it, don't let her go.
The water stain on the ceiling is definitely heart-shaped. The universe isn't even being subtle anymore.
Sleep comes eventually, thin and restless, full of prairie sky and a woman who says we were always going to different places with the conviction of someone who's already grieving.
Two hours and forty minutes to Calgary.
Two hours and forty minutes to figure out how to say the thing Griffin told me to say, to a woman who's spent her entire life making sure nobody ever gets close enough to break the salad bowl.