Page 2 of Seale the Deal

I bite my lower lip, because this is the part I don’t even want to think about.

London, maybe, I say. Or New York. They both have incredible theatre scenes, but the visa sponsorship process is brutal, and I barely have enough money left to survive another few months here, let alone move overseas.

Remi doesn’t respond right away. Instead, she gives me that look that’s equal parts concern and restraint. I’ve seen it before. It’s the face she makes when she’s trying very hard not to bulldoze someone with her opinions.

She’s a wonderful person. Big ideas. Relentless momentum. It’s how she built her writing career into what it is now. But it also means she sometimes believes that because she can steer her own life in the right direction, she knows exactly how everyone else should steer theirs too.

Sometimes, it’s helpful.

Other times, it’s a lot.

The show’s starting, Remi says finally, and I know it’s a convenient way of not talking about the idea of me moving even further away.

I let it go.

Long-distance best friendships have the same unspoken rules as long-distance relationships. You don’t talk too much about the distance or how weird it is to love someone you mostly exist with through a screen. You focus on what works, which is ninety percent Reels being sent back and forth and ten percent calls and texts.

Two years ago, Remi slid into my DMs, complimenting my fashion sketches and asking if I did character art on the side. I didn’t, but somehow, we kept talking anyway.

We met in person three times over the next two years. Once when she came to Vancouver for a reader convention, once when I flew to Seattle and we drove to California for fun, though somewhere around Sacramento, we had a blow-up fight in a Taco Bell parking lot and managed to come out of it with gorditas and a stronger friendship, and finally when she convinced me to spend four miserable February days in Alaska for the experience.

And those four days were where I first met Ruger.

Though it’s hard to remember much else about the trip, considering I spent most of it in survival mode. But I remember Ruger. The handsome, rugged, bearded mountain of a man Remi calls her twin brother. If it weren’t for the increasingly heavy winter gear he handed me on a daily basis, I probably would’ve died.

Despite the fact that he and Remi bicker almost non-stop when they’re together, it’s clear he has a lot of love for her. At one point, Remi was telling us about a book signing she was at where some man came up to her table and started accusing her of being part of the cause of the male-loneliness epidemic, and he had plenty to say about that guy and why he was lonely. It told me a lot about who he is as a person, and I liked that he’s a man who is unafraid of feminism.

As for Remi, despite thousands of kilometres, wildly different lives, and trips that most people would construe as disastrous, she became my person.

I wish we could be on this show, Remi says quietly, about twenty minutes later.

Us? I ask. Like as a couple?

Yeah, I mean, think about it, she says. You could get a green card and then eventually move to LA or New York or some other fashion hub way easier than trying to navigate work visas—

She stops speaking abruptly, and her expression shifts from thoughtful to light bulb.

Oh my God, she says. Why didn’t we think of this when Captain Skinny-Dick broke up with you months ago?

Captain Skinny-Dick is the nickname we not-so-affectionately gave my ex. A commentary, really, on sex that felt more like being poked with a broomstick than pleasured.

Again, love isn’t always built on sexual compatibility. Though moving forward, I should probably take that into consideration.

Think of what? I ask carefully.

You coming here on a K-1 visa. She gestures toward her TV, even though I can’t see it. On my screen, a woman is currently throwing a drink at her fiancé in a restaurant. Like the show.

I blink at her. You want me to date an emotionally unstable man from Florida?

No. Remi rolls her eyes. I mean the visa part.

Remi. I laugh. That’s not how immigration works.

I know there’s a process, she says. Paperwork, interviews, whatever.

Photos. Proof we’re in an actual relationship, I continue. You know, evidence we’ve spent time together.

We have spent time together, Remi says immediately. Just not romantically.