Page 83 of Hunter
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“It wasn’t good,” I tell Hunter on the ride home. “She got really upset about my coming back next summer. She reminded me that I’m their only child…” I sigh pitifully. “It was rough. And it’s just the beginning.”
“You know,” says Hunter, “we’ve been avoiding it to some extent…the future. We’ve just been living in the present and enjoying our time together. But now, here we are in mid-August, and we haven’t figured it out yet. We don’t have a plan.”
“Ihaven’t been avoiding it,” I say. “I’mcoming back next summer.”
“Okay,” he says. “MaybeI’vebeen avoiding it.”
I don’t say anything, because part of me—asignificantpart of me—agrees with him. We haven’t talked about the future in any real terms. Aside from me coming back next summer and him visiting Seattle a few times, we haven’t really addressed it at all. And I want to. Moreover, Ineedto. Summer’s ending, and I’m getting more stressed out by the day.
“I was having trouble envisioning how it would work,” he tells me, driving by the Skagway airport on the way back to Dyea. “But I may have figured out more of it today.”
I look over at him, my curiosity piqued.
“What happened today?”
He grins at me. “I was offered a part-time job in Seattle.”
Until he says this…until the moment these words leave his lips…I don’t realize exactly how worried and scared I’ve been. Losing him felt impossible, but so did a long-term, long-distance relationship. Hearing him say that he was offered a job in Seattle? It’s an answer to every prayer I didn’t realize I’d made.
My face crumples. My eyes well with so many tears, I can’t hold them back. Embarrassed, I reach up to hide my face behind my hands, silent sobs shaking my shoulders.
The car stops moving, and Hunter’s fingers gently pull my hands away from my face. I throw myself half over the console between us, and he pulls me into his arms as best he can.
“Baby, it’s okay,” he says gently. “It’s all going to be okay.”
He holds me as I cry, as sobs rack my body, and a deluge of tears burns my cheeks.
Two major memories play like a movie on a screen in my mind—leaving Santos behind all those years ago and being forced to give him up, and leaving Hunter behind last summer and forcing myself to give him up.
I didn’t realize how frightened I was that it was about to happen all over again. Only my profound and intense relief in this moment clue me into the fact that I’d been living in a pressure cooker and didn’t know how to turn it off.
“Shh,” he murmurs. “Shh. It’s okay.”
I take several deep breaths, trying to calm down. When I lean back to look up at Hunter, I hiccup, sniffling softly.
“T-Tell me,” I say. “Tell me what happened.”
“Kit called,” he says, reaching for the Kleenex he keeps in his side door and handing me two.
“Kit…from the show?” I wipe my tears as I nod for him to go on.
“Yep. She said she was sorry about what happened. She complained to human resources in LA about how we were treated, then quit UPN and took a job as a location scout in Seattle for AMC+.”
“Interesting.”
“Yeah. She’s building a small team down there and said she has a job for me…if I want it.”
I stare at him, waiting for him to say more. Moving to Seattle, even on a part-time basis, has to behischoice, not mine. I can’t make this decision for him.
“Just to be clear, I have to be back in Skagway every summer, Bella,” he says. “My family’s business is important to me.”
“I know it is.”
“But from October first to the end of April, it’s pretty dead here, honestly. I figure, if Kit could use someone from October to April, that’d work out fine for me.”
“So you said yes?”