But damn, it felt so right.
Sighing, I made the best picture of Dale and the dogs my laptop wallpaper. Dropping a kiss on my index finger, I pressed the tip to Dale’s face and shut down the computer.
My body wanted to shut down as well. The not-so-fun trip to Denali with Brian combined with the misery of saying good-bye to Dale and his family took its toll on me. I leaned my head back, caught a glimpse of the newlyweds next to me sucking face, and closed my eyes.
Sleep came, but nightmares tormented me. Brian tattooing my thigh. Dale and Gypsy falling through the ice on his dogsled. Jake getting stabbed. Mick, Noah, and Riley crying. Meg getting into trouble at a bar. My father dying alone in Florida. Every real and imagined horror possible crept into my subconscious at once.
And I couldn’t wake up.
I tried. In the dream. I shook myself and slapped at my own face, screaming, “Wake up, Cormac! Wake up!” I couldn’t, though.
A sharp jolt of pain in my ankle did the trick.
“Oh, sorry,” the girl next to me said as I groaned.
“No problem.” I massaged my ankle she had hit with her pink carry-on.
“We’ve landed. Do you need a hand?” the guy asked. His new wifey shot him a dagger of a look. If he’d had a tail, it would have sagged between his legs like his balls were.
“I’m all set. Thanks.” No sense in causing friction between the newlyweds. Life would no doubt take care of that eventually.
Thirty minutes later, I hobbled through the rain to Meg’s car, and she jumped out as soon as she saw me. Even in the dark of night, the concern was visible on her face.
“What the hell happened to your ankle, kid?”
“Sprained.” She took my bags from the airport porter and tossed them into the trunk.
“How?”
“Running from a psycho.”
She stopped at the passenger side door she was opening for me.
“Iditarod guy was a psycho?”
“No. Iditarod guy was perfect, but there are psycho killers in Alaska as I expected.” I got in the car, and Meg shoved my crutches into the back seat.
“Psycho killers? What are you talking about?” She slid into the driver’s seat and angled against the door to face me.
“Just get me home. Please.”
Meg nodded, started the car, and pulled into the flow of traffic. “So what about Iditarod guy?”
“What about him, Meg? He’s there. I’m here. End of story.”
“I see.” Meg chewed on her bottom lip as she maneuvered around the car in front of us.
The windshield wipers squeaking back and forth filled the silence inside Meg’s car. I leaned my forehead against the cool glass of the side window, watching it fog with my breath. Proof I was still alive even though my heart no longer beat.
****
My apartment was a cold, dark rat hole compared to Dale’s log cabin. Okay, so it was a well-decorated, clean rat hole, but the scent of
alone
hung in the air like a noxious gas. I couldn’t take in a deep breath. My lungs wouldn’t allow it.
Meg scooted by me and tossed her soaked umbrella into the holder by the door. She dropped my stuff onto the couch and flopped onto the soft cushions. Coiling her damp hair onto her shoulder, she rested her feet on my coffee table.
“You should probably get off that ankle.” She patted the empty space next to her.
Droplets of rain dribbled down my neck. I hovered, stone-still, in the threshold, staring at the stupid mat I had at the door that said,
Wipe Your Paws
.
Paws. Of course.
“Alanna. Come here.” Meg got up and tugged on my hand. I limped to the couch and rested the crutches against it. Easing down next to Meg, I sat and pulled a throw pillow onto my lap. Meg situated another pillow under my ankle on the coffee table, and I grunted in gratitude.
We sat in complete silence, staring into the dark. I wasn’t aware until Meg put a hand on my wrist that I’d been petting the brown suede of the pillow in my lap. When I looked down, the pillow was dotted with something wet. Meg got up and went into the bathroom. When she returned, her jacket was off and the tissue box was in her hands. She didn’t say anything. She pulled a tissue from the box and handed it to me. I wiped away the tears, but more fell in their place.
By the time Meg helped me get my coat off and slipped her arm around my shoulders, grief hit me like a tractor-trailer.
“Oh, honey,” she whispered, stroking my hair. “Tell Meg all about it.”
****
“Well.” Meg folded and unfolded the tissue on her lap. My tale had caused her to join the crying. “Well,” she said again.
“Good thing I wasn’t away longer. Who knows what trouble I could have found?”
Meg managed a weak chuckle as she rubbed my forearm. The rain drummed like a funeral dirge on my windows.
“On a positive note, Evelynne is dying to read your finished article.”
Dear Meg. Always finding a silver lining for me. She unsuccessfully stifled a yawn.
“It’s late, Meg. You can go. I’ll be—”
“Are you insane?”
“What?”
“Insane. Have you lost your mind?”
“Maybe.” Definitely.
“I’m not going anywhere. Whether you want it or not, we’re having a slumber party, kid.”
****
When I awoke the next morning, Meg was hogging the entire bed, her long limbs stretched out in every direction. Her snore was loud and erratic, but somehow comforting. It combated the misery.
Some of it anyway.
I rolled to my side and closed my eyes, trying for a few more winks. Wasn’t ready to get up and face an entire day—an entire lifetime—without Dale.
My mind pulled up a vision of Dale’s bedroom. The knotted pine walls. The sleigh bed. The waiting arms of an Iditarod champion and all the other glorious body parts that went along with that.
“Oh, stop,” I hissed. The world wouldn’t fall apart because Dale and I weren’t together. The world sucked because of it, but surely it wouldn’t come unglued at the seams or wobble off its axis.
I mean, I could fix all of this right now. Easily. Quit my job and hike back on over to Alaska. No big deal. Except that I hadn’t spent six years at
Gaia
, working my ass off to meet every deadline, to make sure every comma was in the right place, to write stories that said something. I couldn’t pack up and leave it all. I had been aiming for the big office, the big stories, the big paycheck. My arrow was so close to hitting its mark, and I wasn’t about to give that up for a silly thing like love. I’d lived for years without it. What were seventy or so more years?
A loud breath escaped my lungs, and Meg shifted beside me. I rolled to my back, giving up on the extra
zzz
’s attempt. Meg’s sleepy squint would have been laughable under any other circumstances.
“Morning,” she rasped.
“Yes, it is.” Grouchy Alanna in full swing.
“See.” Meg scooted up to rest her back on the headboard of my bed. “The sun still rose.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“No?” She hopped out of bed, jostling the mattress enough to make my ankle hurt. After ripping open the blinds, she flailed her hands toward the laser beams of sunlight that screamed into my bedroom. “What do you call that?”
“Unfortunate.” I rolled away from her and pulled the covers over my head. “I liked the rain better.”
“Alanna, hiding won’t make it hurt any less.” The bed bounced as she knelt and tugged the sheets until my head was exposed again.
“What will?” I met Meg’s dark eyes, seriously hoping she had an answer to this question.
She attempted to smooth her sleep-mussed hair. “Nothing I know of, kid.”
Damn.
“Why did you come back to New York?” she asked.
It was my turn to slide up to sitting. “I had to.”
“Why?”
“Because I have a life here, Meg. I’ve got a great job. One that will get even better if I get promoted. I’ve worked for it. I deserve it.”
Meg nodded as if what I had said had made sense to her. Of course it made sense. It was practical. Stuff you couldn’t argue with. And yet, the argument sounded stupid even to me.
“Okay. Maybe that’s where your answer lies. At work.” She fussed with the end of my T-shirt she had worn to bed. A cone filled with chocolate ice cream decorated the front of it.
“Ice cream.” I slipped my legs out of the covers and reached for the crutches. “I need ice cream.”
Meg reached over to my side of the bed and placed her hands on my shoulders. “It’s seven o’clock in the morning. You’re not having ice cream for breakfast. It won’t make you feel better, Alanna.”
“I’ll use extra fudge sauce.”
Meg shook her head. “C’mon. I’ll get you breakfast.” She hopped off the bed and walked out of the bedroom, gathering her long mane into a messy ponytail.
“But you can’t even pour a glass of orange juice.” I followed Meg anyway. Something to do at least.
“By
get
breakfast, I mean
buy
breakfast, of course.” Meg turned to me. “And then we’re going to do a load of laundry.” She pointed to my bags still packed on the couch. “Then we’ll buy groceries, go to the movies. Whatever you want.”
“You don’t have to babysit me, Meg.”
“I know. Maybe I missed having you around, you brat.”
She plopped on the couch and turned on the TV. Bunching her legs underneath her, she looked so adolescent I had to laugh. I hobbled over and sat beside her.
“I’m sorry.” I put my hand over hers, and she squeezed it.
“You’re allowed to be a jerk.” She kept her eyes trained on the TV. “Just this once.”
I poked her in the arm. “What’s happening with Matt?”
Her dark chocolate eyes studied my face. “We don’t have to talk about that.”
“No.” I cleared my throat. “No. I want to. I want to know all is not lost when it comes to love.” For everyone else besides me, that is.
Meg twirled a hesitant finger around a length of her hair that had slipped from the ponytail.
“Out with it, Petrisi. C’mon.”
“Aside from his parents thinking I’m a bit…
brazen
, I think was the word his mother used…things are good.” She munched on her bottom lip. “Really good.”
A faraway grin stretched across her lips, and though her eyes were still on the TV, she was so not watching it.
“Uh-oh,” I teased.
“No. No uh-oh.” She flicked a peek toward me that was a mix between
I love him
and
I’m scared to love him
.
“You’ve already seen him more times than most guys, haven’t you? And you went away with him.”
Meg nodded. “Matt is…different. Or maybe I’m different. I don’t know.” She stretched out her legs and rested her feet on the coffee table. “I guess I’m tired of club Meg and want to be girlfriend Meg. Is that stupid?”
“No. We’re not as young as we like to think we are, Meg. I think we’re getting past the club scene.”
“You’ve been past the club scene for years now. What took me so long?”
“Just waiting for your Prince Charming, I guess.”
“Whom I found in a bookstore.”
Whom I met in Alaska
.
My cube on Monday morning was a jail cell. Meg had spent all weekend trying to cheer me up and, though we had laughs—it was impossible to spend time around Meg without cracking up—I wasn’t feeling much better about leaving Alaska. The whole woe-is-me crap was ticking me off now too.
“Snap out of it, Cormac. Get on with things.” But I wasn’t sure what
things
to get on with. I had polished the final draft of my article and emailed it to Evelynne on Saturday. I had a few ideas for a new piece, but honestly, I wasn’t in the mood today.
I scanned my desktop. The lime green sticky note stuck to my desk calendar caused me to freeze.
“Report to me directly when you come in,” it read.
Had Evelynne already made her decision? Had Hirsh and Zemmans handed in their stories? Had she picked one of them? Did I want her to pick one of them?
Grabbing the crutches, I sighed and scuttled down the hall toward Evelynne’s office. No sense in letting my list of questions get any larger.
A few
hellos
and
welcome backs
emanated from cubicles along the way, and I returned the greetings. No one had to know I was a mere shell of a person. I could keep up the charade.
Evelynne’s secretary waved to me as I approached her desk.
“Alanna, dear. It’s so good to see you.” She got up from her seat and pumped my hand enthusiastically. “Your poor ankle. Aside from that, how was Alaska?”
Ouch. “Wonderful, Becky. Trip of a lifetime.” No one besides Meg knew the real story of my ankle. Everyone thought I had hurt it once I got home to New York. Just easier.
“I keep telling Ralph we have to go there, but he never listens to me.”
“His loss,” I said.
“Indeed.” Becky put her hands on her hips and stepped back behind her desk. “Evelynne’s inside. Go ahead in.”
Nodding to Becky, I shuffled to Evelynne’s door and rapped my knuckles against it.
“Come in,” Evelynne’s muffled voice sang out.
She was sitting, the pointed tips of her green high heels peeking out from underneath her desk.
“Welcome home, Alanna.”
Home. Why didn’t it feel like home anymore?
“So sorry to hear about your ankle. Guess you had gotten used to traipsing around rough terrain in hiking boots, huh? The dry, level New York sidewalks caught you by surprise.”
“I’m my own worst enemy,” I said, feigning embarrassment at the clumsiness she thought I suffered from. She gestured to the chair in front of me, and I sat.
“Give yourself time to get back into the way things roll here in New York. I imagine it’s a different way of life in Alaska.”
“Very different.” Wonderfully different. Life-changingly different.
“Read your piece. Saw the pictures.” Evelynne extracted a mint green file folder from a neat stack on her desk. For a moment, I imagined her telling me she hated all of my work and I was fired.