Copper Creek: A Sawyer's Ferry Novel

by Cate Ashwood

  Except what if he said yes?

  What if he felt the same way about me that I did about him, and when I asked him if he would stay with me, to build a life with me… what if he said yes?

  The idea turned over and over in my mind like a song stuck on loop until I managed to catch up with him almost an hour into the reception.

  “Frankie, this is incredible. It’s so much more beautiful than I thought it would be.”

  He lifted one eyebrow. “Happy you’ve got such confidence in me.”

  I laughed. “All the confidence in the world, just limited imagination. When you told me Holden and Gage were actually getting married in a barn, I thought they were nuts. This is gorgeous.”

  “What can I say? I’m a miracle worker.”

  I was so tempted to lean in and kiss him. Or drag him off somewhere to do a lot more than that.

  “I gotta go, though. First dance is up in a second, and I gotta make sure the DJ doesn’t fuck it up. He’s not the sharpest crayon.”

  “Come find me when you’re done.”

  He beamed. “’Kay. See you in a few.”

  The DJ called everyone to gather around the dance floor, then announced Gage and Holden’s first dance. The music swelled and they swayed in each other’s arms, the only two people inside the warm light of the spotlight.

  I watched from the corner near the house, searching for Frankie in the crowd as Gage dipped Holden low, pressing a long kiss to his lips as the music swelled.

  “Ugh.”

  I looked to my left to see waiters standing, watching the couple. I vaguely recognized them from around town.

  “I’m not a homophobe,” the one said, “but I don’t understand why they need to do that shit in front of people.”

  He hadn’t meant for anyone other than his coworker to hear it, but I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t.

  “Why’d you take a job serving a gay wedding if you have a problem with it?” I asked.

  “I didn’t say I had a problem, just that they oughta keep it to themselves.”

  “Sounds like you do have a problem.”

  He threw his hands up. “Listen, man. I don’t want trouble, and I got a job to do, so if you don’t mind—”

  “I’d mind a lot less if you’d keep your fucking mouth shut.”

  “Whoa,” his friend said, stepping in. “Pete didn’t mean anything by it.” He turned to his friend. “I think you should go get another bottle of wine.”

  Pete nodded, keeping his eyes on me as he took a step back. “Yeah. Good idea.”

  He turned and walked away, but I was still riled up. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I needed to calm down. Making a scene at Gage and Holden’s wedding was the last thing I wanted, so I clamped my mouth shut, but inside, my guts were churning.

  I clenched my fists at my sides and willed myself to relax.

  It didn’t work.

  “You okay?” Frankie walked up with a concerned look on his face.

  “I’m fine. Some asshole had some less than positive things to say about the fact that Holden and Gage both have dicks.”

  Frankie scowled. “Which one?”

  “Pete.”

  He nodded like he wasn’t surprised at all. “I’ll have a word with his boss.”

  “You don’t seem surprised. You get a lot of shit about being gay in New York?”

  “Not in the circles I run in. There is bigotry out there, but I don’t encounter it much.”

  “Must be nice to be automatically accepted for who you are,” I said, unable to keep the touch of bitterness out of my voice.

  Frankie narrowed his eyes. “Are you okay? Did Pete say something to you?”

  “No.”

  He paused like he wasn’t sure if he believed me. “Okay,” he said finally. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  As I watched Frankie trot off, I came to two more obvious realizations.

  So obvious, in fact, I had no idea how I hadn’t thought of them before.

  First, if Frankie stayed, he’d have to deal with closed-minded locals like Pete. It might not be every day, but it would come up a hell of a lot more often than it did in New York. Not every camo-wearing, gun-owning, truck-driving dude was a homophobe, but not all of them weren’t, and I hated to think that Frankie would be less safe or less free.

  And second, if Frankie relocated to Sawyer’s Ferry to be with me, I’d have to come out. I’d have to tell the people I cared about that I’d been lying to them for my whole life. Every one of the relationships I had with people in Sawyer’s Ferry stretched back as long as I could remember, or close to it.

  I wasn’t anonymous here. People thought they knew me, and coming out was damn near guaranteed to hurt at least a few of them.

  My stomach churned at the thought, and suddenly everything that had seemed so clear hours before was muddier than a Juneau day spa.

  Frankie

  The day had finally come.

  I’d started the countdown the moment I’d stepped off the plane, but somewhere between the cake tastings and the excise tax forms, the excitement to get the hell outta the frozen wasteland of Alaska had waned.

  I didn’t need to be the most introspective asshole on earth to figure out why.

  After the wedding, I’d stayed to help with the cleanup. Barrett, who’d seemed a little off earlier, stayed as well. I’d meant to ask him about it, but by the time everyone headed home, we were both exhausted.

  We’d spent the entire next day in bed. My departure was hanging over both our heads, but for most of the day, neither one of us mentioned it. The change in the air between us was palpable, though, the inevitable coloring every last minute we were together.

  There were so many things left unsaid, and I was too chickenshit to be the first to say them. I wanted him to ask me to stay, or tell me he was willing to give everything up to be with me. But that was ridiculous. It had only been two months.

  I needed to remind myself of that over and over to keep things in perspective.

  And if he’d been unwilling to leave Alaska to be with his wife, what were the chances he was willing to give it all up for me?

  The choices for him weren’t much better if I stayed. It would be a life-altering change—everything would be turned upside down just to be with me. It wasn’t as simple as emptying out a drawer for my shit. It was about admitting his bisexuality to his family and friends, and it wasn’t fair of me to demand that of him ever, but especially for a relationship younger than the ricotta in my cousin’s fridge.

  There was a part of me, a part I was too scared to acknowledge, that suspected my feelings for Barrett were much larger than his for me. Mentally, I felt like I’d been in the relationship longer—he’d spent so long resisting me that it was a bigger leap for him to get to where I was.

  And an even smaller part of me was terrified that this had all been some out-there experiment for him. It was safe to get involved with me, to experiment with what it was like to be with a man, because I was leaving. There had always been an end date on my stay, and so there wasn’t a chance the relationship would go sour and I’d blab about his proclivities all over town.

  I tried to forget about it, partially because it was devastating to think about, but mostly because I had less than twenty-four hours in his arms, and I wanted to make the most of them.

  “You need anything?” He kissed down the length of my spine as I lay, arms crossed over his pillow, splayed across his bed.

  “I’m okay,” I told him, relaxing down into the softness of his mattress.

  I’d lost count of how many times he’d made me come, how many times he’d been inside me. I was boneless and exhausted and totally unwilling to give into the tug of sleep before I had to.

  Barrett got up off the bed and left the room, and a minute later I could hear the water running in the kitchen.

  I closed my eyes and waited for the dip in the mattress to signal Barrett had come back. I didn’t have to wait long. The
bed shifted and Barrett’s hand slid over my shoulder, leaving a path of warmth where his skin had touched mine. It was late—so close to the time when we would have to say goodbye. I could already feel the back of my eyes prickling and my throat tightening.

  I would not cry in front of him.

  Would not.

  But fuck, I was already close.

  “What time is your flight?” he murmured, and I felt the words against my skin as he spoke.

  “Eleven.”

  “Can I take you to the airport?”

  I rolled over to face him, willing myself to hold it together. “Gage and Holden are flying out for their honeymoon on the same flight. They have a stopover at La Guardia.”

  “Oh.”

  I threaded my fingers through his hair and leaned up to kiss him. “But you can make me forget for a while that I have to go.”

  He smiled, but his eyes were filled with sadness. “I can do that.”

  I managed to hold it together until Barrett’s house faded from view, and then it was nearly Chris Crocker–level tears as we drove toward the airport.

  “Jesus, Frankie. Are you okay?” Holden turned around in his seat looking alarmed before turning to Gage. “Pull over a sec.”

  I managed to nod, but Holden was already climbing out of the front seat and into the back. He put his arms around me and pulled me against him.

  “I’m fine,” I protested, but it was weak, and Holden hugged me tighter. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Not just sex, huh?”

  I shook my head. “Not just sex.”

  “He feel the same?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Maybe he does. I don’t think it was just sex for him either, but I don’t know that it was this for him.”

  “You didn’t ask?”

  “What good would that have done? Our situation isn’t clear-cut. I can’t throw my life in New York away only to come here and completely disrupt his. And he can’t dump everything he’s got here and move to New York. Both scenarios are unfair.”

  I felt Holden nod, his head resting on mine.

  “And it was such a short time…” I wiped my eyes. “Two months is nothing, and it’s not enough time to know how you really feel about someone.”

  “We might be the wrong people to ask,” Gage piped in from the driver’s seat.

  “Yeah, but your relationship is an anomaly. You’re both freaks.”

  I sat up, extricating myself from Holden’s arms and pulling myself together. I dabbed at my eyes with a tissue and straightened my shirt. I was not going to walk into the airport like that, and though my heartache was long from over, I could fall apart back in New York. I still had a couple of months before Gia kicked me out for good.

  Maybe losing Barrett would be good for me.

  I felt like a different person than the guy I’d been when I’d arrived in Sawyer’s Ferry. Maybe this could be the thing that jump-started me getting my shit together and moving on with my life.

  It felt like an impossible idea now, but what else could I do?

  I would find a way to move on.

  Barrett

  “How many times have I told you to get your fucking boots off my desk?”

  Mason swung his feet down, planting them firmly on the floor, and then stood. “You got it, boss.”

  I bristled at the nickname. It felt wrong to hear it from anyone but Frankie, despite the fact that Mason had called me boss for years before Frankie’d shown up on the scene.

  It had been three months since he’d left. Three months since I’d had any word from him.

  Holden had told me he’d gotten home safe, but beyond that, nothing. I flipped back and forth between not wanting to know a damn thing and wanting to know everything about his life back in New York.

  He was gone, and there was a hole in my life where he used to be.

  I reminded myself how ridiculous it was that I missed him as much as I did. We were together for less than two months, and most of that time, he annoyed the ever-loving fuck out of me.

  The days right after he flew out had been the worst. I kept wanting to pick up the phone to fill him in on something that had happened, or just to hear his voice, but I stopped myself before I could. Contacting him was pointless.

  Drawing out the bitterness wouldn’t do either of us any good. I knew from experience. It was better to make the cut, permanently and completely. Thinking any different was counterproductive.

  Our impasse had existed before we met. He was never coming back to Sawyer’s Ferry, and I couldn’t leave. This was my home, my business, my life—everything was here. I couldn’t pick up and move across the country any more easily than I could have done it for Naomi.

  So as much as I missed him, I knew that one day, that deep ache would fade, the hurt would subside, and everything would go back to normal. Until then, I was throwing myself back into work. It was something tangible I could concentrate on, and owning a business meant there was always something that needed to be overseen.

  Tonight, I’d let Ted go home early to surprise his wife, and I’d taken over responsibility for the local deliveries.

  “Everything’s good to go for tonight. Just Bert’s Liquor, the gas station, and J’s.” Mason walked around the side of the desk and shoved his hands in his pockets. “You need anything else before I take off?”

  “No. You can get outta here.”

  “Don’t stay too late,” he reminded me. “You’ve been a grumpy fuck since he left, and sleep deprivation’s not doing you, or anyone else here, any favors.”

  The observation caught me off guard, but before I could ask him why he thought Frankie’s exodus had anything to do with my mood, Mason had ducked out the door, and I was left alone.

  I grabbed the clipboard and my jacket and headed out. Winter had crashed in with a vengeance, like the warmth of summer hadn’t seen a point in hanging around Alaska if Frankie wasn’t going to be there, and the sharp chill in the air seemed more hostile than it ever had before.

  I made the first two deliveries quickly, fatigue hitting me halfway through unloading at the gas station. I hadn’t been sleeping well. Even though I’d washed my sheets, the phantom scent of Frankie’s skin was embedded in them, and nothing I did fixed the fact that even though he was gone, the memory of him lived in my house like he’d never left. The lack of rest was beginning to catch up to me, and by the time I made it to J’s, all I wanted was to inhale a burger and pass out in my bed for a thousand hours.

  The longer I lived in Alaska, the more deliveries I did in the dead of winter—or the middle of fall for that matter—the more I hated snow.

  Mentally, I thanked Jane for keeping her walkways shoveled. Dragging a loaded dolly through deep snow was a bitch and a half. I loaded up the dolly and hauled the keg in through the door.

  “Hey, Oscar,” I said, walking backward into the pub. “Where’s Jane?”

  I’d never seen Oscar in the front of the house before. More than that, I’d never seen Oscar in anything other than a stained apron and chef’s clothes, but tonight he was in jeans and a black T-shirt, and his hair had been combed and gelled.

  “She and Miranda went to Anchorage. They’re going to shop for Miranda’s dress.”

  “Right. I think she mentioned it the last time I saw her. I can’t believe Miranda got engaged.”

  “Neither can Jane. Miranda’s excited, though, and Jane’s been looking forward to the mother-daughter time. Miranda doesn’t come home enough.”

  “They’ll have a good time in Anchorage.”

  “Without a doubt. I think she was nervous about leaving me in charge, though.”

  “Ah, you’ll be fine. You know this place as well as she does. She couldn’t have left it in better hands.”

  “Thanks, man.” Oscar smiled. “Can I get you something while you’re here?”

  “Yeah, please. I’ll grab a burger once I’m done unloading.”

  “
You got it.” Oscar gave a nod and then ducked into the kitchen. If Oscar was working the front of the house, it meant that Bud was probably in the back. Without fail that meant my burger was probably going to be inedible, but my ability to care fled when I saw the postcard behind the bar, tacked at an angle into the corkboard beside the draught menu.

  Abandoning the beer in the middle of the floor, I walked into the pit to get a closer look. Frankie’s beautiful face stared back at me in black and white.

  The Beverly Butler Gallery Presents: Emerging Artist Frankie Bell

  Exclusive Photography Exhibit

  November 26th, 2018

  390 Bleecker Street, New York

  A surge of pride rolled through me. A photography exhibit. He had a fucking photography exhibit. In New York fucking City.

  Fuck office work.

  Fuck temping.

  Frankie was going to get his dream.

  I was so proud I could barely stand it.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” Oscar said, coming back around the corner.

  “It’s amazing.” I flipped it over. The postcard was hand-addressed to Jane. I traced my thumb over Frankie’s name before turning it back, etching the information into my brain.

  “Gage and Holden flew out a couple of days ago. They promised to bring back a couple of prints. Jane’s gonna frame them and put them up in here.”

  “That’s great.”

  I handed the postcard back to Oscar. “Could I get that burger to go?” I asked, my mind already racing.

  It was odd, but that tiny piece of paper had changed everything.

  By the time I got to Copper Creek the next morning, I’d mostly worked out in my head how the next week was going to go. It was terrifying, but I had also never been so sure of anything in my life. Ever.

  It wasn’t until that moment when I saw Frankie following his dreams that I realized I’d been living my entire life with the illusion of a safety net around me, and I had never once stepped out of it.

  Even when I’d started up my business, a venture that most people worry about failing at, I never considered failure because I had so many people backing me up—people who invested in me, who supported me, who bought kegs of beer that tasted like shit because they’d known me since I was in diapers.