Sublime

But five out of every one thousand Alaskans go missing every year. Just disappear. And most of the dreamers . . . well, they don’t make it past the first winter.

Jo looked at the bar, where she’d worked for a few summers pouring wine and shaking cocktails for the hordes from away, sunburned tourists who’d said her little seaside village was quaint and asked what folks did here in the winter. Well, this is what we do here, she thought. We gain weight and drink too much and get on each other’s nerves.

evanescence.

Love, she thinks, isn’t ownership, but a sense that where her body once ended, it begins anew in him, extending her reach, her confidence, and her strength. As with anything so rare and precious, it comes with a new anxiety: the fear of losing him, the fear of that heartbeat ceasing. That would mean the end of her.

colluded

Private, like if she told you anything about herself, she was giving away something she could never get back.

doggedness

One inheritance of living under the male gaze for centuries is that heterosexual women often look at other women the way a man would.