I thank her and pick up the extension in my room. “Hello? Sophie?”
“Hey.”
“Where are you?”
“We’re on our way back, just outside Thunder Bay,” she says. “I think we’re about four hours from you.”
“Why didn’t you go through the States?”
“George didn’t want to. Should we come get you?”
My mind’s racing. I haven’t decided. “I don’t know.”
“Well, if you want us to, we’ll come through Fort Frances. If not, we’ll just stay on the number one. It’s faster. What do you think?”
Okay, I need to make up my mind. If I leave, my dad and Pat will be upset. And I’d stand Scott up because we’re supposed to hang out later. I won’t get to know him better.
“I think I’ll stay,” I decide.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Thanks for calling, though. Have a great drive. And say hi to Salt Spring for me! I’ll be back in a couple months.”
“You’d better be!” she says. “Don’t do anything crazy like stay or something. We’d miss you.”
“I won’t.” I can’t picture myself staying in Fort Frances. Although, come to think of it, something about my time with Scott makes me think that I could see myself staying with him.
As the days go by, that idea grows stronger. We see each other every day. He cooks me dinner at his apartment and buys me a red rose that I keep in a vase in my room at my dad’s. Before it wilts, he buys me another one to replace it. The first time he gives me a rose, it’s because “he cares about me.” The second time, it’s “a symbol of his feeling for me.” The third time, it’s because “he loves me.”
“I love you too,” I tell him. We’ve only known each other three and a half weeks, but when you know, you know.
Everything but Scott fades into the background. We spend all our time together, at his place or on the lake. In early August he begins to worry about what’s going to happen when he has to go back to school, and by mid-August he takes me back to the cliff overlooking Rainy Lake, where we went when we first met. We sit and look out at the water.
“I have to go back to Moorhead in eight days,” he says.
“Let’s not think about that. We’re together now.”
He turns and takes my hand. “I don’t want to leave. I don’t want us to be apart.”
“Me neither.”
“Let’s stay together, then. Come to Moorhead with me.”
“Moorhead? Would I like it there?”
“It’s not about there. It’s about us being together.”
I run my fingers over the moss on the rock ledge. The water sparkles below. “Why don’t you come back west with me?” I ask. “You’d like Victoria. You’d love Salt Spring.”
“I have to finish school first. I only have nine months left. Then we can move together. Maybe I could even get posted at Customs in Victoria, if they have pre-clearance. We’ll only have to be in Moorhead for less than a year.”
“What would I do there?”
“You’d be with me,” Scott says. “We’ll be together. That’s what I want. Is that what you want?”
“I’d like us to be together. How can we, though? I don’t think I’m allowed to live in America.”
“You can if we get married,” he says. “I want to be with you, for us to be together. Let’s get married.”
I take a long, deep breath, my mind racing. I never thought I’d get married. I love Scott, and I don’t have anything against marrying him, but I didn’t think I’d ever marry anyone. “Can’t we be together without a piece of paper that says we’re married?”
“The piece of paper is what we need,” he says. “It’s a formality. It’s what we need to do to be together. It’s worth it to me.”
“Me too,” I decide.
Together
Thanks to the confidential advice of the immigration officer at Customs, Scott’s got it all figured out. I pack some clothes into a suitcase, put it in the backseat of Scott’s Grand Am, and tell my dad we’ll meet them over there.
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