And he did still feel the melancholy of being far from home, the huge, teeming country between him and everyone he’d grown up with. He spent his Sunday mornings watching football games alone at the cinder-block dive in the center of town, regretfully eating two to seven slices of the free pizza provided by the guys from the Philadelphia-themed sub shop across the street. He would order something easy on the stomach to start—a Miller Lite, maybe—and work his way up to the hearty local beer by halftime. He’d smoke cigarettes outside at commercial breaks with the scruffy guys in hunting gear, looking at the photographs of large, dead animals on their phones and resisting the urge to snicker at their outsized pride. Together, they watched the college girls following their own weekend rituals, some in sweaters on their way out to brunch with their parents, others disheveled in skirts and heels, still trying to put an end to the night before. Watching them, only two years out himself, he found himself grateful that he had made it through that part of his life alive and relatively unscathed.

Now his father was due for a visit, his first since Alex had moved to Montana. He wasn’t dreading his father’s arrival, exactly, but he also wasn’t quite sure what to do about it. His parents had gotten divorced soon after he left for Missoula, and Alex had maintained a cordial, if not overly warm, relationship with his father, visiting him for meals and holidays but usually sleeping at friends’ houses. He’d consistently encouraged his father to visit, in vague terms, with the fairly doubtful promise that if his father saw it out here, he’d understand the appeal. His father was not the outdoor type, though he’d been a Boy Scout, and thus thought of himself as a person who appreciated nature. He was most appreciative of nature when it could be quickly followed, or, preceded, by a decent glass of Pinot Noir. (The same was admittedly true of Alex, though man of the people that he’d become, he preferred a shot and a beer.) Luckily enough, Missoula had recently been blessed—cursed?—with its first fancy wine bar. Alex was torn, in his imagining of the visit, between his desire to show off the town’s timid flickerings of culture and wanting to drag his father to one nightmarish hovel he frequented after another. You call yourself a Republican? Welcome to the real America, Dad. It’s full of cheap shit and alcoholics. He would probably strike some kind of balance, like a sucker. His phone buzzed and Kate’s face flashed on the screen.

“I’m sorry I got nasty the other night,” she said. “I’m stressed, you know?”

“It’s fine if you don’t want to hang out anymore,” he said. “I’m going to be pretty busy for a while.”