“He was in your house when you moved in?” Diana stares pointedly at the moose head that looms over us, the pale pink streamers haphazardly woven through his antlers. Muriel—or likely Toby, by Muriel’s instruction—decorated the Ale House in honor of my birthday, a surprise that brought a lump to my throat when we stepped through the doors to the sound of strangers singing. Muriel carried out a strawberry shortcake—made with berries from my garden that she helped herself to while we were out—loaded with candles.
I choked my slice down, not having the heart to tell her the truth about my aversion after she’d gone to all that effort.
“Him. Them.” I nod toward the two deer heads that Toby mounted on the other side of the long, narrow room the week after we dropped them off.
“By the way, that lodge that Jonah had me go to get the Jeep?” She flashes a horrified look my way before bringing her martini to her red-painted lips—a special addition to tonight’s Ale House menu, for my birthday, and on the house. Teddy said Toby’s been practicing his bartending skills all week.
I laugh. “Yeah, I know. I stayed there my first night back, when I was stuck in Anchorage.” It feels like so long ago. “But it’s not bad once you get used to it.”
Diana’s eyes are glossy and bloodshot. She never managed to get a nap in. Soon after I showed her around, we were in the air, giving her a real look at Alaska—the vast, wild, six-million-acre expanse of the Denali National Park where she saw a grizzly bear feeding off salmon in the stream, the looming, granite-faced gorge of Ruth Glacier, the wreckage of a plane that crashed into a ridge two years ago and can’t be recovered, which I was not happy to see—before Jonah landed at an upscale mountain hotel where we had dinner reservations. It’s been nonstop since she arrived. How she’s awake is beyond me. “We’ll finish this drink and go home.”
“No, I’m fine!” She waves off my wor
ries, her diamond ring glinting, even in the dim light.
It brings a smile to my face, even as another wave of shock hits me.
Diana is engaged.
Diana is getting married. They won’t set a date until she gets a handle on balancing law school and a full-time job, but it’s coming and I’m going to be her maid of honor. That was decided years ago, before any potential suitors had even surfaced.
The hard part? I’m now four thousand miles away.
I knew this was the natural next step for her and Aaron, and I’m genuinely happy for her.
But, if I’m being honest, I’ve also been feeling the weight of envy all day, at how my best friend’s life is moving along, with an exciting career and a posh apartment and her family just twenty minutes away from her. At how she didn’t have to uproot her life for any of it. She found a man who fits well into her urban, fast-paced life.
Me? I fell in love with a sky cowboy from Alaska.
And ever since those words tumbled from my mouth this morning, despite vehemently denying them, I haven’t been able to shake the fear that there is truth to them, that deep down inside, I know this—me here, or Jonah anywhere else—isn’t going to work.
Am I happy here?
I’m happy with Jonah. I love him in a way I didn’t think existed—wholly and resolutely.
But am I happy here, in my life?
Or have I been fooling myself into thinking that one morning I’ll wake up and things that feel foreign and temporary will finally feel like home?
I overcompensated for my harsh words by taking every opportunity to touch Jonah today—to hold his hand, to tickle his side, to play with his beard—and prove that they’re false. He responded in kind, with smirks and squeezes and back rubs, never withholding an ounce of affection.
But I saw it in his eyes.
The sadness. The worry.
Possibly the worst of all—the same doubt I’m beginning to fear.
And now I’m helpless against that little voice in my mind that purrs terrible, dark thoughts: What if Trapper’s Crossing never feels like home? What if I grow bitter with Jonah for what he loves to do? What if he one day decides that I will never fit into Alaska the way he wants me to?
What if I tell Jonah that I want to move, and he refuses to leave?
It’s strange how your relationship can feel impenetrable one day and vulnerable the next—with a misunderstanding, a few words, and a mountain of repressed worries that finally swell to the surface.
This roiling in my gut feels like the disastrous trip to the safety cabin all over again. All I want to do is fix whatever I might have broken between us, but what if we can’t get back to where we were?
What if I stuck a pin in this bubble of delusion that we’ve both been floating in?
For the first time since Jonah arrived in Toronto and asked me to move to Alaska, I’m truly afraid that an end date to us is inevitable, no matter how much I love him.