Lumber Jacked(18)

The noise grew louder and I leapt for the door; I nearly pulled it off the hinges in my excitement. I launched off the patio and hustled across the lawn, my eyes on the sky. I saw it— Anna’s plane—as she swooped over the treeline, coasted a few dozen feet off the water, and then landed with grace just to the south. She steered the plane to the dock, cut the engine, and anchored just as her floatplane drifted with a gentle bump into my dock. I had already made it to the dock and covered the twenty or so feet to her cockpit in just a few bounds. I yanked the door open and was greeted by…

“Joe?” I asked, my entire worldview tilted and tipped on its ass. The old man looked just as shocked as I did. Probably because I yanked his cockpit door open with more eagerness than he was used to when making deliveries.

“Yes, Mr. Simms,” Joe answered. “You had a delivery set for today? Sorry if I’m late, I had to fuel up before I flew out here. Long trip home.”

Joe smiled weakly.

“I have all your goods in the cargo hold, if you’ll just let me…”

He shifted out of the cockpit but couldn’t move with me in his space. I shook myself and moved back, still too stunned to speak. He stepped onto the dock, opened the cargo hold, and pulled out the two coolers full of my damn groceries.

As he did so, Joe added, “Guess you heard about Anna by now. Finally sold her daddy’s house. The offer came in when she was stuck here with you, actually. Buyer bought it with cash the day she got back home. She was so excited. She took the first flight out to Seattle as soon as she was packed.”

The old man struggled to push the heavy coolers to the dock and my senses kicked in long enough to help him. We carried the coolers into the cabin and Joe, nice as he was, helped me unload. The entire time, my mind whirred with noise.

She wasn’t coming. She left. Gone.

I looked out the window at the plane and I turned to face Joe. “You have her floatplane,” I stated dumbly.

Joe looked up from the cooler with a slightly bemused look on his face and answered, “Yeah, she sold it to me. Tried to give it to me, but it’s a good old girl. I paid her a fair price. She’s gonna need the money to get settled down south. And I helped her daddy keep it up all those years, I guess she wanted me to have it.”

That was it; the final blow. She sold her plane, her only way she had to make a living up here. That meant she was done. She was gone, really gone. I thumped down on the barstool in the kitchen and stared at my hands as that realization sank in.

To avoid being a total pussy, I cleared my throat and asked Joe the last question I could think of, “Do you know where she is? Did she leave a number to call…just in case?”

I had no other way to reach her. I hadn’t thought to ask for her number when she was here. I was a fucking idiot! I scolded myself, infuriated at my own goddamn stupidity. The old man mumbled something while I internally shouted, but my monologue cut off when he passed me a small piece of paper.

“She left her cell number, told me to call if I had any problems with the plane or her deliveries. You need it?”

I beamed at Joe and copied the written numbers into my satellite phone. There wasn’t any cell service up here, not for miles.

I thanked Joe profusely and walked him out to the dock. He told me he’d see me next week, jumped in the cockpit, and reeled in his anchor. Within a few short minutes, he was airborne and I ran to the cabin, phone in hand. I hit “Send” on her contact information and held my breath as the phone connected, then rang. Once, twice, three times.

Pick up the damn phone, Anna!

Apparently she heard me because she picked up on the fourth ring, slightly breathless and worried. “Hello?” she asked.

All the breath whooshed out of me. Even her voice made my cock hard.

“Hello? Joe? Are you okay?”

Her anxiety ramped up and shook me from my stupor as I quickly cleared my throat and responded. “Uh, actually it’s me. Jack.”

The silence on the end of the line was deafening. I waited a beat and then continued, “Joe gave me your number. He just delivered my cargo and… and it wasn’t you. What the hell, princess? Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving?”

I heard a small hiccup on the end of the line, like a sob but not quite. I waited for a response, but all I heard was silence.

“Damn it, Anna, talk to me!” I snapped, aware that I had lost my mind. The woman I loved was hundreds of miles away and I had no way to reach her. No way to touch her. “Are you all right? Are you okay down there? God, Anna, why didn’t you tell me you were leaving?”

She stuttered a bit before she responded, “I tried to tell you, Jack, that day in your car. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you when dad’s house sold. I didn’t really have a way to get ahold of you, and it all happened so fast. I’m in Seattle now, I actually think I found a job.” She paused for a moment before she added, “I’m really excited about this, Jack. This is what I have been dreaming about since Dad died. The house sold, I got the money, and now I’m out of Alaska. This is it, my big dream. I can’t come back.”