“I get that,” Greta says. “I’ve been there too.”
“You have?”
“I mean, not married,” she says. “But a lot of the guys I’ve dated thought it was cool at first when I went out on the road. They worked in advertising or tech or had jobs I honestly can’t even remember because they were so boring. But it meant they had normal schedules, normal lives. And after a while, it started to wear on them that I was always on the move. You miss a lot in this life. Weddings. Birthdays. Anniversaries. It’s hard to make relationships work. Friendships too. Most of mine have slipped away over the years. My friend Yara is a musician too, so it works with her. But with others, not so much…” She trails off and takes a sip of her beer. “Which is why I now tend to date people who are already in the business.”
Ben lifts his eyebrows. “Oh, are you…?”
“No,” she says. “Not at the moment.”
“Right,” he says, trying and failing not to look pleased. “Right.”
Suddenly, Greta’s face feels too warm from the fire. She picks up her glass but realizes it’s empty. Ben shoots to his feet, pushing his chair back hastily.
“Another round?” he asks, then walks off without waiting for an answer.
As she watches, he leans over the bar to order, then notices the giant stuffed head of a grizzly bear and pulls out his phone to take a selfie with it. Greta is thinking it might be the most unself-consciously dorky thing she’s ever seen when he raises an index finger and takes a second one pretending to be picking the bear’s nose.
She closes her eyes and scrubs at her face, wondering if he’s seen the video by now. Because that’s what you do, isn’t it, when you meet someone random like this? You go digging for information. Fifteen minutes of searching this morning, and Greta already knew Ben’s middle name (Robert), his hometown (McCall, Idaho), and his alma mater (Colgate). She found a picture of him at a faculty dinner with his wife, who is tall and blond and pretty, if a bit generic-looking, and read several interviews he did when the book came out, where he mostly talked about Jack London but also mentioned how much he loves Dave Matthews (she knew it!), how he eats exactly eight almonds for a snack while he writes (because of course he does), and how he wanted to be an explorer when he grew up. The biggest scandal she could find was a prank involving a swimming pool and a pair of swans during his senior year of college.
A similar search for Greta is fairly quick to yield evidence of her meltdown—not just the video but dozens of articles too—and she’s weighing the odds that Ben is someone with a moral objection to Google-stalking when a text from her manager, Howie, pops up on her phone: Where the hell are you?
She stares at it for a moment, then writes: Alaska.
I’m serious.
So am I.
You’re in Alaska?
She takes a selfie with the bar and the bear and a half dozen men in plaid shirts in the background, then sends it to him.
That looks like Brooklyn, he writes back.
Trust me, it’s Juneau.
Please tell me you’ll be back in New York tomorrow.
She winces, then writes: Saturday.
You’re killing me.
Sorry. It’s a slow boat.
You’re on a boat?
A ship, actually, she replies. It’s a long story. I’m with my dad.
Oh. Wow.
Yeah.
Okay, well, just so you’re aware, everyone here is going to lose their shit over this.
Greta bites her lip. I know you’ll handle it.
I’ll try. But I need you to promise me you’ll show up on Sunday.
I will.
I don’t mean physically, he says. You have to knock it out of the fucking park.
Her stomach does a little flip. But before she can respond, Howie writes back again.
And you better spring for the good wifi package, because we might need to do some remote interviews.
Thanks, Howie, she writes, but her heart quickens.
All of a sudden, Sunday seems incredibly soon.
A bottle of beer comes sliding across the table, and she looks up to see Ben sitting down across from her again. “You okay?” he asks with a frown, and she nods as she slips her phone back into her jacket pocket.
“Fine.” Behind her, a group of men are talking about the day’s kayaking adventure, roaring with laughter as they recount how one of them managed to flip over three times. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she says to Ben, “but you seem like the kind of guy who would’ve had something planned for today.”
“Why would I take that the wrong way?”
“I don’t know. You seem sort of…”
“Boring?” he says. “Normal?”
Greta shakes her head. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to,” he says. “Look, maybe I don’t play in a band or go to cool parties or smoke a lot of marijuana.” He pronounces this last word so deliberately that it’s a struggle for Greta to keep a straight face. “I’m a dad, you know? And a professor. I like to read. I nerd out over history, and I collect random facts the way most dudes collect—I don’t know, beer cans? Sports memorabilia? I don’t even know what most dudes collect. And I actually like doing laundry. I’ve got a whole system to color-code my calendar, and I set an alarm clock even on mornings when I don’t have to work…” He trails off with a frown. “And I don’t really know why I’m telling you all this except that you make me feel kind of insecure.”
“Why?” she asks.
“Because I think I might be one of those normal guys with normal lives that you were talking about, and sometimes I wish I weren’t. And because you’re so much cooler than me. Which, I realize, makes me sound like I’m in high school, but that’s sort of how you make me feel. Like I’m the yearbook editor and you’re the girl in the grunge band that plays all the parties I never get invited to.”
Greta laughs. “Can I tell you something?”
“Yeah.”
“I set an alarm clock too.”
He raises his eyebrows. “You do?”
“Otherwise I’d never get anything done.”
He takes a sip of his beer, but she can see the edges of a smile around it. “I did have plans, you know. I was supposed to go fishing today. I signed up months ago.”
“You did?”
He nods. “As soon as I booked the cruise. The salmon are just starting to run this time of year, and I wanted to make sure I had a spot.”