The View

The View: Part 2 - Doubts

           

Billy walked up behind Gabe, who was sitting on a downed log with his ax propped next to him.  Billy noticed that there had been something up with Gabe for a while. He had abandoned chopping wood about a half hour before Billy finally went to check on him.

"Gabe is everything okay?" Billy asked his middle child. "Earth to Gabe. You haven't been acting like yourself lately."

"Yeah, just thinking," he said not looking up from the spot in the distance he had been staring at.

"What you thinking about... or who?" A slight smile appearing in his face at the thought of his son thinking about a girl.

"Ruby. The girl I met in town last week."

"Oh really. She's the girl you had dinner with, right." He asked trying to get more info from Gabe.

"Yeah."

"Well what's wrong? Did you not have a good time?"

"No I had a great time with her. She's wonderful. I have never met anybody like her before. She's funny and sweet. Man, she's pretty. She says what she thinks, in this way where she wants to share what she is thinking with you, not in like a know-it-all kind of way. It's her way of sharing her joy and curiosity for something with you. She has this wonder about the world. We talked for hours about everything and nothing.  She might be funnier than me. She's so smart too. She's basically a stranger to me but I can't stop thinking about her." Gabe had never felt this way about anyone before so he didn't know what was going on.

"Sounds to me like you really like her, son," Billy said patting his son on his shoulder.

"I do Da, but what is she doesn't like me?"

"You said she came up to you right?"

"She said she had seen me and wanted to meet me. Said she had to meet me because she thought I had so much joy, the way I laugh and joke all the time."

"Did you talk about seeing each other again?"

"Yeah she told me to come see her the next time I was in town."

"Gabe, I think she might like you too. If she said she wants to see you again."

"I just don't know what to do."

"You take the skiff tomorrow and go see her," Billy told Gabe, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"That's not what I meant. I don't know about starting a relationship with someone. What if I'm thinking this is more than it is? Maybe she just wants to be friends."

"Gabe, things will work themselves out naturally. You get to know one another, and if it's more it falls into place. Just enjoy yourself," Billy tried to reassure his son that things would be ok. "Be yourself, she saw something in you that drew her to you in the first place. And in the end, if it should not work out, you at least got some good advice from your old Da that you can apply to the next girl," he chuckled and patted his son on the back.

"Thanks, Da," smiled Gabe, knowing that his dad was right.

"And Gabe," Billy said as he stood up to head back to the main house, "any girl that ends up with you is lucky. You have grown up to be a good man."

Gabe beamed with pride. That meant more than anything his Da had ever told him. Just knowing that his Da was proud of the man he had become gave him the confidence he needed to go see Ruby.

---

The next morning Gabe took out early in the family's skiff. He docked it in Hoonah, quickly made his way up the ramp to see Ruby sitting drinking a cup of tea on her porch. Walking up towards her house the smile on his face got bigger and bigger. He wasn't sure what he was going to do or say when he got to her. He stopped for a moment and just took her in, sitting there. "Man I like that view," he thought to himself.