Midnight sun

13 | Dylan

Smiling Moose Bar is located on one of the busiest intersections running close to Wake Forest. Breakfast is hot, deep fried, homemade and can be ordered all day long. In late evenings it becomes a spot for locals coming back home from their commute, passing truck drivers and construction workers that finished their shift.

I'd driven by the place a dozen times, going to and from Anchorage but I'd only ever stopped when my crew invited me because the idea of a bar doesn't excite me in the slightest.

As I walk in, a few guys look up from their drinks and wave at me. The place is packed this evening, which meant maybe twenty people. There are several trucks parked across the road, so half the patrons are probably from out of town. As long as the beer was cold and fresh, I didn't care.

For a while I nurse the beer guys have ordered for me while listening to their usual chat. Having Noah sitting here, participating in the conversation like he's been part of my crew all this time has me feeling confused. But after the first Bud Light, I feel some of the tension in my back uncoil. The crew obviously liked Noah, even if they also enjoyed giving him a hard time. After a few initial questions for him, questions about the move and the job, questions that were, I noticed, carefully polite and avoided anything too personal-the bunch of them settled into normal gossip and banter about fellow workers and locals. I, for my part, sat and listened. This is my routine, I am on the outside.

Thirsty for some more cold beer, I get up and walk to the bar. Just as I flag down a bartender and place an order, I sense a presence at my side. I turn and find myself shoulder to shoulder with Noah.

"I can see why you don't go out often," Noah scans the bar–beer signs, nature scenes on china plates mounted to the wall. A vintage poster of Pamela Anderson from a Barb Wire movie next to a severed moose head. All that accompanied by a mournful wail of country music. "Charming."

"Yep. It's the same damn story every time." I lean my forearms on the bar and look back at the booth where the rest of the crew is chatting away. "But it's nice to catch up with the boys once in a while, talk about something else than work I guess."

"So you like it? Wake Forest?"

"Sure. It's my home. Well, I was born in Anchorage. But I love the whole area. The nature, the lake. Everything about the life here in Alaska."

"Do you ever think about leaving here?" Noah asks as the bartender delivers their beers and grabs the money they both placed on the bar top. But he doesn't make a move to go back to their table. I watch as he takes a slow sip of amber liquid in his glass before speaking again. "Move away and never look back?"

The entire conversation has been unexpected. And nice.

"Sure, I'd thought about it before." Before, with Tom. But after, it was more like a far-off dream. 

"Where would you go?"

"That part I'm not sure." Alaska is all I've known. I've never been out of the state, and wouldn't have the first idea about where to go or how to start over by himself. It's daunting.

"What about you? You're going back to where you've come from?"

Noah is guarded. I can see it in the hard set of his brows as he watches the glass in his hands. In the way Noah chews on the inside of his cheek like he doesn't know how much he should say. Doesn't know how much he can trust me. He can, of course, trust me, but there's no sense in me saying that. My word means next to nothing when you've been treated like an outcast your entire life. I know exactly how Noah is feeling, wondering who's genuine and who's just looking to find out his secrets so they can preach their bullshit to him.

"I don't think I'll go to Cincinnati." He looks around the bar. "But I would like to find my mom."

"You don't know where she is?"

"She's... The last time she reached out to me I wasn't in the best state of mind. And I pushed her away. She is an addict. I can't remember the last time I saw her sober."

Noah talks after a long time of silence. "I don't know where she is. I've been doing some research, contacting relatives and her friends. Well, my Aunt is helping me because she knows some family members and we've been contacting them through her Facebook. But nothing so far. She probably doesn't want to be found or is on a bender somewhere in LA. Apparently, someone saw her there a few months ago."

"I really hope you get what you're looking for, Noah," I say.

He nods and takes another sip of his beer. "We never really talk about you. How about your parents?"

"My old man lives in Anchorage, my mother passed away a few years ago."

"Oh. Sorry to hear that."

I nod. "Cancer. That year was sad, seeing her change so much. But I find comfort in the fact that she lived an amazing life. She was an international flight attendant, travelled the world. Then, met my dad when she was on a layover in Alaska and stayed. She's Norwegian by the way."

"No way? You're half Norwegian? Well, that makes a lot of sense now."

"What does?"

He motions at my face in a vague gesture. "All that Viking stuff you got going on there."

I laugh–full belly laugh and Noah looks at me like he just saw a mirage in a desert. I guess I don't laugh often.

"Is that a compliment?" I smirk.

Noah snorts. "I told you already that you're hot."

"Oh, I remember that day." I chuckle and we both smile at each other in a way that makes me think of some other time. A time when I was young and carefree and full of joyful energy and eagerness. I almost let myself imagine this is my life, a normal day where I go to a bar, see a guy I like and we just talk about ourselves, getting to know each other. I buy him a drink and he laughs at my jokes and I ask him for a number–and maybe I get a kiss in the end. Maybe I take him out for dinner the next day. And he likes me.

"No siblings?" Noah goes on, pulling me back to the conversation at hand and I don't mind sharing a bit more about myself. It feels good.

"Nope. An only child. My mamma wanted to completely dedicate herself to her art. She opened a gallery in Anchorage, which she used to call her second baby." I smile at the memories.

Noah tips his head to the side, and offers me a small smile. "I like this side of you. You smile more."

"You too."

And then the mood in the bar shifts. It is instant, invisible, and unspoken: an electric tension in the air, raising the hair on my arms, making my heart skip. Noah gives me one sidelong glance, those moss-green eyes pulling on my bones, dragging me deeper. He smiles again, and the smile smokes with its own heat. It is a knowing smile, a let's-fuck-around smile. A smile I imagine that guy from my fantasy gives me at the end of our evening at the bar.

I clear my throat and scrub a hand roughly through my hair. "I should go join the guys."

Noah looks down, trailing a finger over the bar absentmindedly. "Yeah. Me too."

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