“I want someone ambitious,” she says, “and successful, but I don’t want for my whole world to have to revolve around his job any more than I’d ask for his whole world to revolve around mine. We can both work and have pride in our careers, but they’d just be a part of our lives, not everything.”
I’m him! my heart cries. I could be your guy—your “next-someone”!
Little do I know, however, that there’s a massive bucket of icy cold water waiting for me in the wings in 3…2…1…
“Um…what else? Oh! Big one! Someone who lives in Seattle, of course, and loves it there as much as I do. Go Hawks!”
And just like that, all of that beautiful warmth is gone.
“Orcas at two o’clock!” calls Matt from the helm and Amanda jumps up to get a better look.
Seattle.
Ugh.
Seattle.
The city. The congestion. The pollution. The crime. The cost-of-living.
Okay, okay. I live in Sitka, one of the most expensive cities in America, so I can’t complain about the cost-of-living in the city, but I recently watched the documentary, “Seattle is Dying,” and it made me sad. Really sad. The drug and homelessness situation is out of control in the city I once loved, and frankly, I don’t think the quality of life in Seattle can come close to the quality of life my family enjoys in Sitka.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t hate Seattle. For most of my childhood, it was my home, and come September, I’ll be cheering on the Hawks as loudly as Amanda.
I just don’t want to live again. I don’t want to raise my kids there.
It’s not my home anymore.
After the beauty and safety of my life in Sitka, I know it would make me deeply unhappy to move back to a city.
Amanda turns back to face me with a smile of pure wonderment. “Do you see them? Whales!”
But maybe…just maybe, it would be possible to help her see what I see here in Sitka.
Is it possible I could help Amanda understand that Sitka is a better place than Seattle for everything she wants? That if she’s looking for a place with chivalrous men who love their kids and their women and their jobs, and even the Hawks, for God’s sake, she really can’t do better than where she is. Right now. Right this minute.
Right here in front of her.
Amanda
I looked up the Talon Lodge on my laptop so I have an idea of how beautiful it is, but nothing prepares me for the actual thing. There’s a reason this place is one of the premiere hotels in the Inner Passage. It’s breathtaking in every way.
We arrive at a main docking area and Luke takes our bags, leading me up a metal ramp that leads to a wooden bridge. And there, in front of us, surrounded by fir trees and wildflowers, is the main building at the Talon. Warm light pours from the windows of the luxury log cabin-style lodge, that boasts porches and patios perfect for catching a sunset. We are welcomed warmly and by name, and offered a glass of champagne, which I love.
After we check-in, at the end of the upstairs hallway in the Bluff House, we find our king-bedded room, which is quite possibly the most perfect room I’ve ever seen. The bed is a soft pillow, with crisp white sheets and a gold satin coverlet, situated beneath a bay window. An overstuffed, brown, leather easy chair sits invitingly in the corner of the room, but the piece de resistance is the double sliding doors that lead to our own, private balcony.
Crossing the room, I open the doors and step outside, breathing in the fresh, clean air of Alaska, and gazing out over the tops of fir trees to the rocky islands dotting the water.
Luke comes up behind me, putting his arms around me and resting his chin on my shoulder. “What do you think?”
In five years of dating and living together, Bryce never treated me to a getaway at so beautiful a place. And yet, this man—this sweet, thoughtful, incredibly handsome man that I’ve known for so short a time—wanted to share this place with me.
“It’s so…” My voice breaks and I have to clear my throat before continuing. “…beautiful.”
“That’s Mt. Edgecumbe in the distance,” he says, his breath dusting my throat as he speaks. “It’s a dormant volcano.”
“How dormant?” I ask, leaning back against him and loving the way he welcomes me, tightening his grip around my body with a contented sigh.
“Last eruption was 2000 BCE, give or take.”