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I am desperate for this weekend away with him, which is absurd given we live together.
“Well, I’m sure he’s going to spoil you.” Again, with my mother’s tittering laugh, as if she knows something I don’t.
I can’t imagine what his gift to me will be this time. Should I be preparing myself for another joke? Matching camo pants to go with the jacket from Christmas?
He’ll have a hard time topping the airplane pendant.
Unless he proposes.
My stomach leaps with anticipation. It’s been more than a month since we visited the safety cabin, since the pregnancy scare and the potentially disastrous engine failure. I haven’t asked and he hasn’t hinted.
But that would certainly make this day memorable.
I say my goodbyes to Mom and Simon, and then holler into our quiet house, “Jonah! You promised me coffee in bed today!” He even made me demonstrate how to use the barista machine and write out the steps for making my latte.
A few moments go by with no answer. “Jonah?”
Still nothing.
A vague recollection of his phone ringing early this morning stirs in my memory. I remember the low, gravelly sound of his sleepy voice as he answered, but I remember little else.
I haul myself out of bed and stagger to the bathroom, angling for a long, hot shower to wash the chlorine from my skin and steam the alcohol from my pores.
The Post-it stuck to the middle of the mirror stalls me in my tracks.
Sorry, Sam called. Really needed me. I’ll be back in a few hours. Promise. Happy birthday!
I read the note several times over to make sure I haven’t somehow misconstrued it, to make sure I’m not still drunk, all while a sinking feeling settles into my stomach. That phone call I heard was Sam. He was calling to ask Jonah to come in to work on his weekend off.
And, instead of saying he can’t, instead of saying that it’s my birthday and he promised me a weekend away, Jonah said yes to Sam and stuck a Post-it Note to the bathroom mirror.
A few hours, my ass. When has he ever been back after a few hours? He could easily be gone all day.
But it’s a horrendous fire, I tell myself, trying to settle the gnawing ache in my chest and the lump forming in my throat. A fire that is running rampant, destroying forest, killing animals, chasing people from their homes.
What Jonah’s doing is important, I tell myself, even as hot tears trickle down my cheeks, the wave of hurt and disappointment overwhelming.
The most painful thing about this, I realize, is that I’m not surprised.
* * *
I pull the blanket tighter around my body, as much for comfort as to quash the slight chill lingering in the shade of our porch, despite the climbing temperature outside, and listen to the sound of tires over gravel as our pickup crawls up the driveway. Jonah arrived home half an hour ago, the approaching purr of Veronica’s engine bringing both relief—that he has arrived home safe, that it’s still early in the day—and a fresh wave of melancholy. I don’t know what he’s been doing in the hangar since he landed, but he certainly didn’t run home to me.
It’s left me with far too much time to dwell on my thoughts and insecurities, to dissect fond memories—the weekend he flew across the continent to tell me he can’t live without me, the morning he braved the snowy mountains and whisked me off to the cabin for Christmas, all those early nights tangled in sheets, sharing our best intentions.
I’m left wondering if that’s all they were—intentions. Has something changed? Have we changed in these last few months? Because those memories suddenly feel so far from where we are now—me here, day after day, finding ways to occupy my time until Jonah comes home, telling myself over and over again that what he does is important, that it’s only for the summer months, that I knew going in this is how it would be.
I’m tired of telling myself that.
I didn’t really know this is how it would be. At least, I didn’t know how it would feel.
I brush my palms against my cheeks, trying to rid any last evidence of tears, and then I shift my focus to the hazy, smoke-filled sky and the small ripples forming over the surface of our quiet lake as I wait to face him.
“You ready to …” Jonah’s words drift when he meets my eyes.
I guess wiping away tears wasn’t enough to hide the fact that I’ve been crying.
“What’s going on? Did something happen?” he asks, his voice panicked.
