The Great Alone

“Matthew!” she yelled down at him.

He looked up.

“My parents are on the ferry. Going to Sterling. Can you come over? We have all day together.”

He put down his ulu. “Holy shit! I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

Leni went back to her bike and jumped on.

At the homestead, she fed and watered the animals and then ran around like a madwoman, trying to get ready for her first real date. She packed a picnic basket full of food and brushed her teeth—again—and shaved her legs and dressed in a pretty, off-white Gunne Sax dress Mama had given her for her seventeenth birthday. She twined her waist-length hair into a single wrist-thick braid and tied the end with a piece of grosgrain ribbon. Her stretched-out gray wool socks and wafflestompers kind of ruined the romantic effect, but it was the best she could do.

Then she waited. Holding her picnic basket and blanket, she stood on the deck, tapping her foot. Off to her right, the goats and chickens seemed agitated. They were probably sensing her nervousness. Overhead, a sky that should have been cornflower blue darkened. Clouds rolled in, stretched out, dimmed the sun.

They were on the ferry now, pulling into Homer; they had to be. Please don’t let them come back for something.

While she was staring down the shadowy driveway, she heard a distant motor whirring. Fishing boat. The sound was as common here in the summer as the drone of mosquitoes.

She ran to the edge of the property just as an aluminum fishing boat puttered into their cove. Nearing the beach, the motor clicked off and the boat glided soundlessly forward, beaching itself on the pebbled shore. Matthew stood at the console, waving.

She hurried down the stairs to the beach.

Matthew jumped down into the shallow water and came toward Leni, dragging the boat higher on the beach behind him, mesmerizing her with his smile, his confidence, the love in his eyes.

In an instant, a glance, the tension that had held her in its maw for months released. She felt giddy, young. In love.

“We have until five,” she said.

He swept her off her feet and kissed her.

Laughing at the sheer joy she felt, Leni took him by the hand and led him past the caves on the beach to an inland trail that led to a stub of forested land that overlooked the other side of the bay. Cliffs jutted out beneath them, defiant slabs of stone. Here, the ocean crashed against the rocky shore, sprayed up and landed like wet kisses on their skin.

She laid out the blanket she’d brought and set down the picnic basket.

“What did you bring?” Matthew asked, sitting down.

Leni knelt on the blanket. “Easy stuff. Halibut sandwiches, crab salad, some fresh beans, sugar cookies.” She looked up, smiling. “This is my first date.”

“Mine, too.”

“We’ve lived weird lives,” she said.

“Maybe everyone does,” he said, sitting down beside her, and then lying down, pulling her into his arms. For the first time in months, she could breathe.

They kissed so long she lost track of time, of fear, of everything except the softness of his tongue against hers and the taste of him.

He loosened one pearl button on her dress, just enough to slip his hand inside. She felt his rough, work-callused fingers glide across her skin; goose bumps changed the feel of her flesh. She felt him touch her breasts, slip beneath the worn cotton of her bra to touch her nipple.

A crack of thunder.

For a second she was so sluggish with desire, she thought she’d imagined it.

Then the rain hit. Hard, fast, pelting.

They scrambled to their feet, laughing. Leni grabbed the picnic basket and together they ran along the winding beach trail, and emerged on the bluff by the outhouse.

They didn’t stop until they were in the cabin, standing face-to-face, staring at each other. Leni felt raindrops sliding down her cheeks, dripping from her hair.

“Alaska in the summer,” Matthew said.