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Easton shakes his head. “Haven’t seen him yet. Just thought you might want to know. I won’t be late again.”
Cleary done with the conversation, East heads over to the SUV we’re fixing after it was rear-ended, and he gets right to work.
I shouldn’t let him get away with that. I should say something, any-fucking-thing, but I don’t.
Morgan is back.
I’ve often wondered how much Easton or their dad know about our loss of friendship. Rhett is at the center of it, so he knows. Plus, he and I struck up a friendship after Morgan left. Rhett and Morgan went years without talking at all, but now they call each other when it has to do with the family. Rhett wanted to tell him to call me, but I nipped that in the bud. No good would come of it. All it would do is make Morgan pull away even more. The idea of Rhett going to him about anything would get him all up in his head, automatically on the defensive. The Swifts are all tangled in so much family drama, so much pain, that none of them can see any of it clearly.
Not my problem. None of it is my problem.
But I’ve sure as shit done a good job keeping myself entangled with them my whole damn life. First through my friendship with Morgan, and then in the way it was blown to hell.
“Fuck,” I groan to myself before heading to the paint stall, where I have a Honda waiting for me, hoping it will keep my mind off the Swifts, but knowing it won’t.
*
Morgan is leaving.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to me. It doesn’t come as a surprise, but knowing doesn’t make the big, gaping hole inside me any smaller. I always knew that when East was old enough, Morgan would be outta here, and now Easton is seventeen, and Rhett is back from law school, ready to become the next Birchbark Swift royalty. Morgan waited his turn, and now that time is over, and he’s leaving in three weeks.
Three weeks.
He asked me to go with him to California…
“Come on, Dust. How fun would it be to have my best friend with me. We can do anything…meet guys, have fun, have a life.”
I said no.
I don’t want to meet guys.
I want him.
That’s why I’m sitting at the bottom of the old Birchbark lighthouse, with a bottle of whiskey, a burning throat, and so much pain and fear and love that my insides feel like a tornado, picking up new debris to throw around me with every second that passes.
I smell the fresh water in the distance, know the rocky shore isn’t far away.
I don’t know how to leave Birchbark, don’t know how to leave the UP. That’s never been what I wanted. I’m not like Morgan. I don’t have all these big dreams. I don’t want to see all these new places. I love it here. I’ll always love it here.
But I also love him and don’t know how to be without him.
I pick up the bottle and take a swig, then drop my head back against the wall of the lighthouse.
“Ah, fuck. Please don’t tell me Morgan is here with you,” comes a deep voice from behind me. Rhett.
“Nope,” I say, popping the p in a way I wouldn’t if I hadn’t already drunk too much. “What do you want?”
“Well, I sure as shit didn’t want to hang out with you tonight.”
“This is our spot, mine and Morgan’s.” One of them, at least.
“Before I left for college, it used to be mine.”
I’m not surprised. It’s quiet here. The lighthouses aren’t manned anymore, so it’s the perfect place to come to be alone.
“But you left.”
“And now Morgan’s leaving. He doesn’t own everything, ya know?”
