everything you ever wanted?”
“She doesn’t exist, buddy.”
Jed bellowed our a hollow laugh. “Jennings, one day, you’re going to realize everything you ever wanted has been waiting right there in front of you and you never realized you could have had it all.”
“If that’s the case, I give you permission to slap me upside the head to wake me up.”
Now, he’ll never have the chance.
Stumbling to my feet, I go to the closet where I know I’ve kept photos of me and the guys over the years. Sliding the hefty box labeled “Lumberjacks” into my arms, I carry it over to the couch and yank out a bunch of pictures.
Kody’s bright hair which looks almost neon orange in the Alaskan sun.
Brad’s arms scooping his then girlfriend, now wife, into his arms as he threatens to dump her into the hot tub behind the Smiths’ family home.
Nick, brooding, and flicking off the camera. Tossing the picture on the desk, I find one where there’s actual laughter on Nick’s face when he’s pointing at Jed, who stripped his hair from its dark brown to bleach white. “God, look at Jed parading around without a care in the world,” I wonder. My lips curve even as I set that one aside to put in a frame later.
The next picture has me blinking rapidly. “How did this one end up in here?” The slim brunette with glasses is laughing with Jed’s sister, Maris, while Jed has them both in a headlock. He’s grinning madly at the camera.
But even after all these years, my heart still twinges at the quiet beauty of Kara Malone. After all, it’s not every day you realize you might actually be in love and then quickly shove the woman out of your life knowing that trusting someone with that much of your heart could lead to nothing but broken dreams and heartbreak.
After all, hadn’t life taught me that from an early age?
Leaning back, I hold up the picture, which shows Kara smiling up at Jed. “I wonder what she’s up to. Knowing Kara, she’s probably slowed down global warming or she’s sprouted palm trees in Antarctica,” I mumble. But the truth is, she was just that brilliant.
By the time I met her, Kara had already attained dual masters in physics and ecology by the age of twenty-three and was on a fast track to get her PhD. And I was what? Petrified, I can admit with so many years in between. Lifting the bottle of clear liquid to my lips to take a drink, I sigh with regret at the way we ended. “She didn’t deserve the way I dicked her over,” I admit aloud, not for the first time. Then again, the only other person I’ve ever admitted that to is gone. Jed listened when I told him a few years ago the reason I let her go was because “I couldn’t bear to watch her walk away like everyone else did.”
Jed clapped me on the shoulder, before telling me, “Look around, my friend. None of us ever walked away,” before heading back into the cabin we rented for that particular reunion in Montana.
Memories come rushing through my system the longer I hold on to Kara’s photo. Staying up overnight in order to take the ferry to Juneau so I could string a few days together with her. Teasing her about trying to save the world as we lay in bed, when she’d very seriously explain, “No, just trying to make my part of it safer.” I remember repeatedly chastising her for rubbing her wrist raw with her grandmother’s bracelet over her delicate skin whenever she got nervous or upset.
“I wonder if she’s coming to the service.” Knowing how close she and Jed’s sister were, it wouldn’t surprise me. As much as Jed, Brad, Nick, Kody, and I are brothers, those two women were born sisters on opposites sides of the country.
And now we’ll all be reunited because of Jed’s death? It’s abhorrent to me. My temper boils over at the injustice of it all. Swiveling in my chair, I hurl the bottle against the wall, and the glass shatters into a thousand pieces. “Damn you, Jed. Why the fuck did you go and die on us? What are we going to do without you?”
Dropping the picture, all thoughts of anything beyond the crazy-wild man who loved life and everyone in it, including a woman who’s likely long forgotten I exist, disappear. I shove the box aside and cut loose.
It’s