We all did it. We found the will to find our dreams, all of us. Brad’s got his family and his boat. Kody’s building homes like they’re Lincoln Logs. Nick achieved his dream years ago by becoming the MMA heavyweight title holder and is now helping create them. I’m in the air or directing people to get there. And Jed? “He found love and marriage, something he never believed he’d be able to do legally in his lifetime. How fucking heartless is life that it took him from it?” I wonder.
Kody lets out a rough sound in my ear. “That he did. Call me when you’ve figured out when we’re heading up. I’ll drive up to you and store my car at your place, cut down on time.”
“Right.” We both disconnect, each of us lost in a brotherhood of friendship that began close to twenty years ago.
And suffered a devastating blow tonight I only hope we can recover from.
Back in my condo, I sit in the dark drinking straight from the bottle of locally brewed gin Jed sent me for my last birthday. “Listen, buddy, as a bar owner, I might not be able to afford as much as you can, but I can get you a direct line to the best-tasting liquor in the world,” he joked.
He wasn’t wrong about much, including the fact the Florida-made gin whispers down the back of my throat as smooth as water.
Lou came into my office not long after I got off the phone with Kody. She took one look at the devastation on my face and asked only, “What do you need me to do?”
“Payroll’s done,” I responded dully. “Find pilots for my flights.”
“On it.”
“If I haven’t said it before, Lou, I appreciate what you do keeping everything in line here.” My words are sincere even if my voice is flat.
“I know, boss. Now, get out of here.” She squeezed my shoulder before she left my office. I left not long after. I only wish the rest of my night permitted such liberties.
The phone call I endured when I broke a date for a charity event frayed my temper to the very threads. “Jesus, it’s not like we were an item,” I snapped before I ended the call. And now I’m more glad than ever over my unwilling celibacy in the last several months due to the business taking on more work and keeping me away from home. “If this is what dating is like…” I leave the rest of my sentence unsaid as I take another swig of gin. Unfortunately, the lack of compassion from the woman in question reminds me vividly of a conversation I had with Jed years ago.
“Don’t you want to settle down one day?” he’d asked me a few years ago. “Find the one woman who you’d give up anything to have, who could give you 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 like all the air has been sucked out of the room until I’m in nothing but a void of pain and emotion weeping near the tangible evidence of the past that showed at one time there were five of us who considered each other brothers.
Now, there are only four.
What are we supposed to do?
Kara
Dear Dean.
Well, we’re on our way back to Alaska. For so many years, I tried to tell you about my time there, and now that you’re gone, it’s funny how the words just want to pour out of me.