Killing Time and Relaxing
Those summer days hanging out on the beach, sometimes with Jake, but most of the time alone (he did have a job) were some of the best of my life. I finished The Two Towers and started The Return of the King. I managed to burn the hell out of my back because I lay on the shore too long in my bikini top and cut-off shorts on my stomach without putting on sunscreen or flipping over. Jake laughed at me that night and rubbed aloe on my back when he saw my burn (I hadn’t realized it…yet).
He and his roommate had a band, and some nights I watched them rehearse. The Saturday before I was scheduled to leave, they were performing a huge party that one of their co-workers was planning. For the most part, it was a laid-back week of relaxing and just enjoying each other’s company. I didn’t have to put on a show or pretend to be perfect for him. He already knew who I was and liked it.
Spider Man
Remember the giant spider the night I got there?
One night when we got home from dinner, the giant spider was halfway between the house and the tree in the front yard. No really, it was suspended by the lines it had created across the open space.
“I’m done with this. This is creepy!” Jake yelled, grabbing a shovel from the back of his truck. He annihilated the spider mid-air while I cheered him on.
A Divergence Arises
At the same time, a rift was opening between us.
A deadline loomed. It came to a head one evening.
“I wish you still lived in Charleston, and we could date for real again,” Jake said over dinner out of nowhere.
I looked at him across the table and said, ‘I wish I could too.”
In that moment, what wasn’t said was just as important as what was said.
The next morning when Jake got up early for work, I got up early too and drove to the beach. It was something I used to do a lot when I was stationed in Charleston. I would get up early and sit on the beach to watch the sunrise.
I needed to think.
I had already made one really naïve mistake with Bob.
Movies and romance novels make it sound like love conquers all. If you have amazing chemistry and you’re right for each other, relationships just magically come together. But this isn’t Sleepless in Seattle.
There’s another cold hard truth in life…
Relationships are work.
Long distance relationships even more so. Couple that with the fact that Jake and I were at two different points in our lives and diverging, and it becomes more than just work.
I was living in Seattle with the goal of getting my bachelor’s in electrical engineering. I still had three years to go in the program. Aside from the cost of moving, the program that was paying for my schooling was now set, unless I wanted to fight for my funding again, I had to stay in Seattle until I graduated.
And believe it or not, Jake understood. He wasn’t asking me to give up any of that. He, like me, just wished that somehow things could be different.
But they weren’t.
Jake had married and divorced early in his military career. He had made quite a few mistakes after his divorce (I was one of them when he ghosted me in our first go-round). He grew up and learned from his mistakes. He was almost ten years older than me, established in his career and looking to settle down and get married again.
The Hard Truth
I was leaving in a few days. Unless something miraculous happened, it was unlikely that I was ever moving back to Charleston. There was no future for me and Jake after the end of the week.
We both knew it.
Next Adventure: A Quick Trip to Savannah, A Wild Party, Acceptance, and Parting for Virginia
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I joined the Navy at 18 to escape a small town in the Mojave Desert. A diagnosis of MS disrupted my dreams of becoming an astronaut or a super spy. I made limoncello from my lemons and became a super electrical engineer instead. My fascination with live high voltage drew me to Alaska. I came for the job, but stayed for the adventure. I enjoy blogging about my journey as a woman working in STEM, my experiences dealing with everything MS has handed me, and the wonder of the Alaska wilderness. My husband and I have undertaken the task of turning 30 acres of remote land into an off-grid retreat. I write stories about unique women in STEM who save the day and the hot guys who sometimes help along the way, as well as historical fiction about the Klondike Gold Rush. Teasers for these stories can be found on my website. I self-published my first horror novella, The Dark Land, on Amazon in May of 2020. I released the sequel, The Devil’s Valley, in May of 2021. Both stories are set in the wilderness of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, and draw on the Athabascan “Head Waters Peoples” legends of the Cet’ann, or “The People With Tails”.
