by Katy Regnery
“Mitch,” I say, “your parents said you’re in college?”
“Yep,” he answers, taking another serving of Cody’s stuffing. “Junior year. I go to the University of Alaska, Southeast.”
“Where’s that?”
“Juneau.”
“You like it there?”
He grins at me, and it’s impossible not to smile back. With dark hair like his mother and light eyes like his father, he’s very good-looking and quite charming.
“It’s a lot warmer down there,” he says. “And there’s a lot more to do.”
“City life,” says Rita, taking a sip of the wine they brought. “I don’t know why anyone would prefer it there to here.”
“Aana!” cries Mitchell, using the Yupik word for mom. “You can’t be serious!”
“Oh, I’m serious, all right,” she says. “Juneau’s a big place. Got ten times as many people there as here.”
“Sure does,” agrees her son. “Plus, it’s warmer, easier to get things, and a lot more interesting. There’s theaters and festivals, all those government buildings with people comin’ and goin’—”
“You can keep ’em,” says Rita, waving her hand dismissively.
“—lots of good hiking, but there’s also businesses and opportunity. Museums. More places to see, more people to know.”
“If it’s so great,” grumbles his mother, “then why come home at all?”
“Because I love you and Pop,” he says, winking at her. “Can’t get rid of me that easy, aana.”
She beams back at him, shaking her head like she disapproves, but pleased as punch for all to see.
Mitchell turns to me. “Pop tells me you’re studying to be a vet?”
I nod. “Yep. I’m in my final year at the University of Minnesota.”
“You from there? Minnesota?”
“Nope. Montana.”
“Race to the Sky country,” he says, which surprises me. This entire group of people identifies parts of the world based on which sled dog competitions take place there, Mitchell included.
“Do you race?” I ask him.
“Ma and Cody tried to teach me when I was a kid. Didn’t take.”
I glance across the table at Cody, who stares at Mitchell with an inscrutable expression, and suddenly I realize he’s been a little quiet since the Beaudoins arrived. I wonder what’s up with him. Rita and Jonas usually put him in good spirits. He’s comfortable with them.
“Cody’s a great teacher,” I tell Mitch, flicking my eyes at Cody, only to find him staring down at his plate, his eyebrows furrowed together. I turn back to Mitch. “We’re racing the Qimmiq together—everything I know, I’ve learned from him.”
“When do you go back to college?” asks Mitch, changing the subject.
“January.”
“Yeah. Me too. We start up again on the twenty-first.”
“Same here. I guess that’s pretty standard at American universities.”
“You know,” says Mitch, giving me a teasing smile, “UAS has an amazing marine mammal research program. If you ever decide to switch from land animals to sea mammals, I’d be happy to show you around the campus.”
“After almost eight years in school, I think I’m ready for a break,” I tell him with a chuckle.
Cody clears his throat. “You got a girlfriend down there in Juneau, Mitch?”
“Mitchy’s too young for a girlfriend,” teases Jonas.
“Pop, I’m almost twenty-one.” He turns to me, cocking his head to the side with a flirtatious grin. “How old are you, Juliet? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Twenty-four.”
“You got a boyfriend?”
I slide my eyes from Mitch to Cody, who looks like a thunder cloud at the end of the table.
“In fact, I do,” I say, winking at Cody.
“Wait...not Cody,” says Mitch, looking back and forth between us.
“Why not?” asks Cody, while I say, “Yep,” at the same time.
“But he’s—”
“Mitchy,” interrupts Rita. “How about you open that other bottle of wine we brought? I stuck it in the fridge.”
“He’s—”
“Mitchell, the wine,” says Rita firmly.
“... twice your age,” mumbles Mitch, standing up from the table and heading into the kitchen.
“No, he’s not,” I say softly, staring at Cody like we’re the only two people in the world. “He’s just right.”
Cody gives me a small, fake smile, but his face is drawn and troubled...and I hate it.
We have dessert in the living room, and after dinner, Mitch and Jonas give Cody a hand feeding the dogs while Rita helps me with the dishes. We stand at the sink together while she washes, and I dry and put away.
“Cody’s a good cook,” she says in her broad Alaskan accent.
“The best,” I say. “We have a deal that I make breakfast and he makes dinner. I’m winning that bargain.”
She nods. “He did a lot of planning when you said you were comin’. Got that room up there all spruced up for you.”
“And you helped,” I say, drying a mixing bowl, “which I appreciate, Rita.”
“Uh-huh. You know, Cody...he cares for you.”
“I care about him too.”
“No,” she says, looking at me. “I don’t mean it like that. I mean...Cody’s falling in love with you.”
Heretofore, Cody’s only told me that he was “falling” for me, which is a far more casual expression of feeling. There hasn’t been any mention of love yet, and frankly, with a solid end-date to our relationship on the horizon, it would be best if he didn’t. It’ll only make things harder when I have to go.
“I’m the only woman he’s been around for a long time,” I say, trying to downplay her words. “We’re both infatuated. But—”
She places a soapy hand on my arm. “Cody’s falling in love with you.”
Her dark eyes seize my blue, and I am forced to feel the gravitas of her words.
Falling...in love.
It’s different from caring about someone. It’s even different from loving someone. Falling in love is actionable. It’s intense and possessive. But it’s also involuntary. You can be sensible about caring or loving, but it’s impossible to maintain any perspective or much logic as you fall. It happens too fast—like all physical and emotional falls in nature—to be controlled. It’s a wild thing, with an energy and forward momentum of its own.
Her gaze is too intense, so I slip my arm from her grasp and turn around, busying myself with wrapping some leftover pumpkin pie in plastic wrap.
“He hasn’t said that.” Not exactly, anyway.
“But you know it’s true,” she says, resuming her scrubbing.
Part of me—a primal part of my humanness, of my womanhood, that speaks nonverbally and understands instinctually—acknowledges that Rita is speaking the truth. But another part of me—the part interested in self-preservation, or in comfortable logic—would prefer other, less incendiary, less frightening, terminology.
“I only know what he tells me. And he told me he’s ‘falling’ for me.” I laugh awkwardly. “No mention of love.”
Rita places a rinsed platter in the drying rack and looks at me. “Okay. If you say so.”
Her eyes are calling me out on bullshit. Yeah, she’s said her piece and she’s not going to pursue it, but she also believes that Cody’s falling in love with me, and the sheer force of her conviction forces me to acknowledge that it’s true.
“Cody’s been through a lot,” she says. “Don’t hurt him.”
“I...I won’t,” I say, though my words, like the good intentions behind them, feel flimsy. I already know that leaving Cody in January is going to hurt me. I can only imagine how much it’s going to hurt him too.
***
Cody
I watch the way Mitch ladles out the food for my dogs—it’s so effortless for him with ten perfect fingers and a body fourteen years younger than mine. His moveme
nts are fluid, not jerky. There are no spills. He lifts each bowl with the thumb and four fingers of his left hand, then fills the ladle, steadying it mostly with his thumb and index finger like a pencil and effortlessly dumping the contents neatly into each bowl.
I’m mesmerized watching him do such simple movements that I once took for granted.
I’m...jealous.
Hell, I’ve been jealous for hours, I think, turning away from Mitch to check on Salem’s front left paw. I pulled a thorn out of it two days ago and she’s still favoring the right. Maybe I didn’t get it all.
“Hey, Pop!” Mitch shouts toward the grub shack. “You almost ready with the leftovers? Got three dogs left!”
“Coming, son!”
Mitch is almost twenty-one, the same age I was when I lost my fingers.
He’s also four years younger than Juliet to my ten older.
How can I possibly compete with someone like him?
I’m just an old guy, his parents’ friend...twice your age.
I saw the way he looked at her—the way his handsome face lit up and his green eyes twinkled. She likes green eyes. Wouldn’t she like them all the better in the face of a man who has all ten fingers, only a few years younger than she, with none of the baggage I have?
Mitch had a loving, stable childhood with Jonas and Rita. He’s studying marine biology at college, a perfect complement to Juliet’s veterinary studies. He’s got his whole life ahead of him.
Me? The best years of my life are long gone. I had a shitty childhood and no formal education. I served the Marines in on-the-ground logistics, which didn’t shield me from seeing the horrors of combat or prevent me from retiring with a permanent, and grotesque, disability.
While Mitch is down there in Juneau embracing city-life—mixing it up with different people, and experiencing life to the fullest—I choose to stay about as far away from civilization as possible, hidden away in a tiny town where I can live my life under the radar, where my hands in snow gloves can go, mostly, unnoticed.
But I can’t expect someone as vibrant and young as Juliet to stay hidden up here with me...not that she’d want to...not that I’d ask. I care about her too much to ever ask her to hide her light from a world that deserves the brightness of her beauty.
I should stop loving her.
(I wish to God I could.)
“Hey! How’s Salem’s foot?” I look up to see her standing over me, and my whole body reacts—she’s the lodestone to my iron, and all I want to do is fuse myself to her forever. “She still favoring the right?”
“Looks that way.”
“Cody, we got ’em all fed,” says Jonas, approaching us with Mitch by his side. “Mitchy, go tell your aana we gotta get going. I got two cats and a dog at my office that need to be looked in on before we can head home for the night.”
I offer my hand to Jonas, grateful for my friend. “Thanks for coming.”
“Thanks for having us,” he says. “You roast a mean turkey.” He turns to Juliet. “Good to see you again, too.”
She leans in to hug Jonas. “You too.”
Rita and Mitch approach us from the house, bundled up to go home.
“Thanks for Thanksgiving, Cody,” says Rita. “I left you the wine and the rest of the apple pie.”
“Thanks,” I say, letting her cup my cheeks over the chain link of the kennel fence.
“You be good now,” she says. Her eyes shift to Juliet. “And you remember what I said.”
“Oh. I, um...” Juliet clears her throat. “I will.”
Mitch lets himself back into the kennel area to hug Juliet. “It was great meeting you. Offer to visit me in Juneau stands. Anytime.”
Every muscle in my body clenches, but I don’t move.
“I’ll keep it in mind.” Juliet chuckles, patting his back before stepping out of his arms. “You’re a terrible flirt, Mitch.”
“Yeah, well...can’t blame a guy for trying.” He shrugs, giving me a sheepish look as he backs up through the gate to join his parents. “Thanks for dinner, Cody.”
“Get back to Juneau safe,” I say, putting an arm around Juliet and pulling her against my side in lieu of pissing on her leg.
“Well,” says Juliet, after we’ve waved good-bye, “that was...interesting.”
“What did Rita say to you?”
“Just girl talk.”
“Seemed important.”
She gives me a look that reads: It’s none of your business, so I let it go.
“Let’s bring Salem in tonight,” I say, crouching down to unhook her collar from the stake next to her doghouse. “I want a better look at that paw.”
I pick up the husky, holding her close to my chest as Juliet opens the kennel gate and the front door to the house. She’s quiet and, I suspect, upset about something, but fuck and hell, I’m a little upset too. Mitch flirted with her all night, and she seemed fine with it. Not to mention, being around Mitch just confirmed what I already knew: that Juliet deserves so much more than me. That no matter how much we’re enjoying each other now, now has a sell-by date, and it’s less than two months away.
I settle Salem on the green rug in the bedroom, near the stove, and watch as Vi approaches the younger dog cautiously. They sniff each other, Salem jumping up for a second to smell and be smelled, but after deciding neither is a threat to the other, or maybe just reintroducing their brains to one another’s scent, they curl up butt to butt and close their eyes.
Juliet’s taken off her coat and boots by the time I turn around to find her sitting on the edge of the bed. I ignore her as I head to the hallway closet to find tweezers and wet a washcloth in the bathroom. I feel a fight brewing between us, and frankly, I’m not sure how I feel about it. Part of me wants to avoid it, and part of me is spoiling for it.
Unfortunately, however, I’m going to need her help first. Of the many things I’ve taught myself how to do with five fingers, using tweezers is almost impossible. I can pinch things between the thumb and pinky of my right hand, but it’s clumsy at best. I don’t want to hurt Salem, and I suspect the little piece of thorn bothering her is in deep.
“I think she’s got some of that thorn still stuck in her paw,” I tell Juliet, placing the tweezers on her knee and holding the hot washcloth in my hand.
“Hmm.” She kneels down on the floor, petting Salem gently for a second before turning over her foot. “Can you use my phone as a flashlight?”
I grab her phone from the bedside table, noticing the cache of waiting messages from her friends and family, which makes me feel even worse about today. She missed out on Thanksgiving with her friends and family...for what? For dinner with a cranky old man and his measly group of friends.
She hunches closer to Salem, gently explaining to my dog what she’s doing. “I just want to take a look, pretty girl. I think I can help.”
I hold the light steady for her—the least I can do—as she inspects the soft, furry spots between Salem’s pads.
“Yep,” she says when Salem whimpers. “It’s swollen and painful. Here it is.”
As she works on squeezing the area to ease the thorn base out, alternating use of her fingers and wiping off the increasingly bloody paw with the hot cloth, I decide it’s the right time for us to chat.
So with my usual grace, I blurt out: “You should be with someone like Mitch.”
Her neck snaps up and Salem half whimpers, half snarls because her finger slips.
“Are you seriously going to do this while I’m doctoring an injured animal?”
“I’m just saying...”
She soothes Salem with some sweet words, then goes back to what she was doing.
“I don’t want to be with Mitch,” she says softly, concentrating on her patient. “I get it that he and I are closer in age than you and I, but emotionally, he’s about a decade younger than I am.”
“He’s got his whole life ahead of him,” I say.
She raises her eyes to mine, her expression pissed. “Give me
the tweezers. It’s coming to a head.”
I hand them to her and press on with my thoughts. “He’s—”
“If you say one more word about Mitchell Beaudoin and I getting together, I will throw these tweezers in your face, walk to town, and stay overnight at a hotel.”
“Good luck finding a room over a holiday weekend.”
“I’ll find one,” she tells me, somehow keeping her voice even, though I know I’m making her mad.
“I’m sure there are a lot of nice, young guys at your college.”
“I’m sure there are.”
“And you’d be better off with one of them.”
“Believe me,” she says without looking up, “you’re acting like such a jerk right now, they’re all looking pretty good.”
“I’m not trying to be a jerk,” I tell her. “I’m trying to tell you that we shouldn’t be together...that I’m not good enough for you. I’m too old. I’m too broken. I’m too much of a mess. You could do a lot better than—”
“Got it!” she says, holding up the tweezers in victory. There, clasped between the tiny points, is a sizeable piece of thorn. She picks up the washcloth and rubs it over Salem’s foot. “You’ll feel better now, I promise.”
“You, uh,” I say, holding her phone out to her. “You have a lot of messages.”
She takes the phone from my hand and throws it up on the bed without looking at it, holding my eyes all the while. And damn if I don’t start feeling like the younger one between us because she looks like an angry schoolteacher, about to rap my knuckles for doing something wrong.
“Why do you think I stayed here for Thanksgiving?” she demands.
I shrug. “You felt sorry for me?”
“Honestly? Yes. Maybe a little. Spending a holiday all alone sucks.” She cocks her head to the side. “But sympathy was...hmm...less than ten percent of my decision. What’s the main reason I stayed?”
I stare at her, waiting for her to say more.
“What the hell do you think this is?” she cries.
“This...what?”
“This...us!” she yells.
Viola stands up, coming to sit beside me, and Salem whimpers, looking back and forth between us.
“I don’t know what the future holds!” she shouts. “I don’t know what will happen when I leave here in January! But I don’t care if you’re thirty-four. I don’t care if you’re fifty-four. My heart has already decided what it wants. Whatever you are, whoever you are, you’re what I want! I don’t want Mitch Beaudoin, you dumbass! I’m in love with you!”
