Page 71 of Stuck With the Smokejumper

I laugh out loud on the porch steps. I have no idea what you're talking about, I type back, which is a lie he'll see through.

Sure you don't.

That's it, brief, easy, the kind of exchange we might have had if he were still down the hall instead of hundreds of miles away. Distance hasn't changed us, not yet, not today.

The evening winds down the ordinary way. Dinner. A game of cards nobody's fully invested in. It's been a good day. I got work done. I laughed with my friends. I learned things about people I thought I knew everything about. I flirted with my boyfriend from three hundred miles away.

Then everyone drifts off for the night, and I go to my room alone. The day's good mood starts to thin out around the edges. I find Beck's shirt where I left it, folded on top of my dresser. I pull it on over my head before bed the way I did at the drive-in, sleeves swallowing my hands, hem falling well past where it should. It smells like him, faint, familiar, something clean and woodsy that I could identify blind by now as him.

The scent takes me straight back to that night. The sundress. The temperature dropping once the sun went down. Beck noticing before I said anything. Disappearing inside his truck, coming back with this shirt.

He was right there that night. Solid, warm, an arm around me. Tonight it's just the shirt.

I get into bed and let my mind drift to last night. I remember what he said.

We try.

I don't need to know where we'll be in October to know I don't want us to end now.

I'm going to miss you too.

And then the part Beck doesn't know about.

“Beck,” I'd said, and he'd looked at me, waiting. I know what I was about to tell him. I love you. Three words, sitting right there. I wasn't uncertain. I wasn't scared they weren't true. I know, with complete clarity that I love him.

But I looked at a man about to leave for an active fire season, and decided I didn't want to hand him something that enormous the night before he left, not when it might feel like I was asking him for an answer he may not be ready to give.

So I'd said something smaller instead. Come back safe.

That's the plan.

I'm not sure I'd do it differently if I had the moment back. But lying here now, wearing his shirt, the truth of it is as present as it was on the porch. Maybe more so, now that there's this much distance between us to measure it against.

My life is still full.

But I know now, in a way I didn't fully understand even a few weeks ago, how much better all of it is with him in it.

twenty-six

Beck

The aircraft's too loud for conversation, which is fine, because there's nothing to say that hasn't already been covered in the briefing. Reid's across from me, checking his gear one more time out of habit rather than necessity. Beyond him, three other jumpers from our regular crew sit, faces I haven't seen in two months but bodies that still know how to sit in a plane like this, economical, braced, ready.

Below us, northwestern Montana unrolls in ridgelines and timber, rugged enough that no road gets anywhere close to where we're headed. That's the whole reason we're in the air instead of driving.

Smoke rises thin against the horizon ahead. Lightning strike, probably two or three days old, smoldering unnoticed until yesterday, when someone spotted it from a lookout and called it in. Small right now. A handful of acres. Remote enough we're the fastest way anybody's putting boots on it today.

Catch it small. That's the whole job.

I've spent most of this summer waiting to feel this kind of focus. Now it's here, sharpening the way it does right before a jump, everything narrowing down to only what needs to happen next. Gear check. Spot check. Wind.

The spotter leans out, reads the terrain below, drops streamers to check wind drift, calls out adjustments over the noise. I watch the fabric ribbons twist and drift. Good spot. Manageable approach. Steep enough terrain we'll need to be precise, not so steep it's unreasonable.

“Two minutes,” the spotter calls.

Reid catches my eye across the aircraft. We've done this together enough times a look covers it.

The door opens. Wind roars in, replacing the engine noise with something more raw. I move into position, watching the ground get more detailed, trees resolving into specific shapes, the jump spot below.