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Friend: So, how did you two meet?
Main Character, exchanges look with partner: Funny story. We met in Alaska.
Friend: Alaska? I don’t see you as the outdoors type.
Main Character: I’m not. So much not. In fact that’s why they sent me. They had been having trouble with employees going up and not coming back.
Friend: But you came back.
Main Character: As fast as possible. I have nothing against Alaska. I can see, theoretically, why someone might like it. Someone who isn’t me.
Love Interest: Wasn’t either or us. That’s sort of why we met.
Main Character, resumes story: We were both up there on temporary assignment. It was a huge project. We might never have met if they hadn’t insisted on a team building retreat. The resort offered all manner of winter wonderland activities: snow machining, dog sledding, hiking in the snow. It was hideous.
Love Interest: We were the only two who stayed inside the entire time.
Main Character: Yup. Stayed inside, sat in front of the fire, and bitched about Alaska.
Love Interest: It was a bonding moment.
Main Character: After that, we often got together for meals. We were both working insane hours in order to get done and go home. We often ate at weird times. It’s hard to find someone willing to eat dinner after midnight, or breakfast at 4 am.
Love Interest: And someone willing to bitch about AK.
Main Character: And that. Eventually one of us decided …
Love Interest: Had to have been you. You are a nicer person than I am.
Main Character: Whoever it was, we agreed that we should be making more of an effort. We decided to look for the good parts. We did the tourist things. We took a North Lights flight, with an ex-employee as a matter of fact. We had a great time. And then came home.
Friend: Which one of you moved?
Main Character: That’s the funny part, neither one of us. I live up by the river. This lovely person lives downtown. It measures out at 3.7 miles. We have been just over a 5K away from each other for years.
Friend: So you had to go to Alaska to meet someone who lives across town?
Main Character: Yup.
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Afterword
Inspiration. I signed up for a course in Alaskan history, UChicago Graham School, Alaska: Indigenous, Russian, American. In looking around for books to read beforehand, I found many, many memoirs about people who had moved North. So I posited a main character who did NOT want to live in a snowy wonderland, thank you very much. [North To Alaska]
Does she – or he – come back or stay in Alaska? A reader suggested that the main character does the rom-com thing AND comes home, with someone else who was there temporarily. Et voila.
Onwards!
Katherine
Virtual Brush Box 
Thanks for more fiction! A lovely day to start the day. As I look out the window, with the additional couple of inches of snow that fell last night, I can give a big NOPE to Alaska. My parents were there once, as part of one of their cruises. I have a photo of them standing on a glacier.
I love this story. You might consider making it longer, a novelette, and publishing it.
You are so good at this!
Joan
This is delightful!
Thank you all. This one was fun.