Chapter 4
In the kitchen, I open the fridge and get a box of six eggs Mr. Homer left for her.
What a fucking asshole. If she were to get snowed in here, she’d starve.
Her daddy is also an asshole, the kind I’d pop for free.
Images of those consecutive events, first Homer, then her daddy, make me smile, and I grab orange juice, ketchup, and some cheese that I sniff before I consider serving it.
I put the items on the counter, bend to get a pan, and straighten back up to find Isla has taken a seat at the bar, an amused look on her face. “Seriously?” she asks.
“Dead serious.” I make a show of spinning the pan by the handle. “What kind of eggs do you like?”
“Scrambled.”
“Me too.” I wink at her.
She laughs. “Ah, what a weekend this is turning out to be.”
“Yeah. Wanna drink?” I ask her. “Got a minibar under the TV. Grab rakija. It’ll open up your appetite.”
“Nah, I’m good.”
“Vodka?”
She shakes her head.
“Whiskey?”
“It’s early.”
“It’s the weekend.”
Isla laughs, and I watch her ass sway to the TV. She crouches. Nice. I smack the pan. Once, twice. Gonna smack that ass. Stove fired up, I oil the pan, then scramble all the eggs in a bowl, fast and furious to make bubbles.
“I add milk to it,” she says.
“No milk.”
“It’s fluffier with milk.”
“What is it with women and bugging me while I’m in the kitchen? You see a man in here and immediately get your boss on.”
She lifts her arms, palms up. “I was just suggesting. Here.” She puts the tiny vodka bottle on the bar. I take the eggs off the burner and grab two plastic plates, ’cause nobody is doing dishes up in this bitch, then add cheese, wishing I had kobasa, but cheese will have to do. “Toast?”
“Yes, please, and butter.”
“Make a screwdriver.” I search the pantry for bread, but I can’t find it.
“On top of the fridge.” She points.
I grab the bag, shaking my head. She’d need a step stool to get the bread. What a terrible host Homer made me out to be. I’m gonna remedy that.
I place the plates on the bar and lock eyes with her pretty green ones that can’t see well enough to drive. “Where’s my screwdriver?” I ask.
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Vodka and OJ. That’s it.”
“Everything has a fancy name. Glass?”
I pass her two plastic cups.
She mixes the liquids in one and pours only orange juice for herself. “Everything fancy has a name. What’s yours?” she asks and sips.
“You think I’m fancy?” I round the bar and breach the space some women define as arm’s length. Her perfume reaches my nose. A mixture of cinnamon and maybe orange. A heavy wintery combination, and it suits her. It’s warm like her.
“Fancy in the way you made me breakfast. I’ve never had a guy make me breakfast.”
“Then I’m your first.”
More blushing because we both know it’s not about breakfast. I want to fuck her, and I breached her space bubble. “Cheers.” I lift my cup and sit next to her.
She clicks her cup with mine and drinks her orange juice, then puts it down, and smacks her lips. “Forks.”
Fuck. I groan and stretch over the bar, looking underneath, finding packed plastic cutlery in a bowl I left here last time I stayed. I sit down and catch her lifting her eyes from my ass up to my face. She was checking me out. This is going well for me.
We eat quietly because we’re both hungry and because we’re strangers. I presume some of the reality has set in for her while I’ve dealt with mine and moved into action already. Most people take a while to process their reality. I’m not most people, or I’d be dead.
Isla cleans up, tossing the leftovers into the garbage, then joins me by the window.
The snow stopped falling, the skies cleared, and the sun shines over the infinite white landscape interrupted by the few people skiing down the professional route not a mile from the house.
“Stefan,” I introduce myself.
She nods, and as I watch her profile, she stares ahead. “What now?”
“We hit the slopes.”
She turns her head sharply, her eyes wide. “I can’t ski or snowboard. Maybe we can sled?”
I purse my lips. “I haven’t done that since I was a kid.”
“It’s fun.”
“Let’s do it.” I find my phone in my pocket, get it out, and call Mr. Homer, then tap my foot when I’m sent to voicemail. I call again. I call three times before he finally picks up.
Isla looks at me expectantly. She’s nice and pretty, and I pick up a lock of her hair, winding it around my finger, treating it like a yoga exercise so I don’t bark at Homer for making me call a hundred times.
“Did you go to the store?” I ask him. I pay him to care for the house and to get shit stocked for when I come back.
“Not yet, Ludi.”
“Grab things for dinner too.”
“Like what?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” I mute the line. “Do you have any allergies?” I ask her.
She widens her eyes, then shakes her head.
“She eats everything,” I tell him and hang up.
Isla laughs as I grab her jacket, throw it over her shoulders, and head for the door. “We’ll get the snowsuits and other shit at the bottom.”
She pushes her arms through the jacket sleeves, follows me out the door and down the steps, and we’re off to the slopes.
“What and where is the bottom?”
“You’ll see.”
The bottom is what I call a tiny town set up exclusively for tourists. Two motels, three private lodgings, a few shops, and a main house with a restaurant attached to a place where people can rent or buy everything they need for their winter vacation. We’re in line with families.
Excited kids run around everywhere, and I’m just waiting for one of them to slip and fall or run into my leg and knock his or her teeth out. Isla hops in place, and although we’re indoors, her breath fogs the air as she blows into her fisted hands.
I move her to stand in front of me, grab her hands, and, along with mine, shove them into her pockets.
Her body, pressed against mine, goes taut, and I slide my thumb over her smooth cold skin.
I know I’m coming at her like a semitruck, but she’ll get used to it, and frankly, she can always tell me to fuck off.
I accept fuck-offs, though if she told me that, I’d try a little more and a little harder.
I like her. She rolls with the day and her circumstances. I can appreciate that.
The girl at the counter wears a beanie. Purple locks stick out from under it. She smiles as we step up. “How can I help you?”
“I have no fucking clue,” I tell her.
She blinks.
I explain. “Give me everything we’re gonna need for sledding. Suits, hats, gloves, a sled?”
“Sure. We have sleds, or tubes for kids who like to go solo. Which do you prefer?”
I nudge Isla.
She takes the hint. “A pair of tubes, please.”
The girl nods, types on the screen, then bends over the counter looking for something. “How many kids?”
“None yet,” I say.
She types some more and turns the screen to me. “Two adult tickets for the morning and items I think you’ll need.”
I read the screen. “Fantastic,” I say and pay. Once that’s cleared, the girl points at the end of the long counter, and we grab our stuff, dress in snowsuits, and carry the tubes outside. Isla’s is pink, mine blue with a smiling elephant. I even got an inflated trunk I can hold on to.
I don’t like that we have two tubes instead of one family sled, but allowing her to make that decision was important. I’m playing to win, not to make her more uncomfortable. I’ll do that later.
Outside, in a line with little people that come up to my hip, Isla’s eyeing the chairlifts and looking a little pale.
“You scared of heights?” I ask.
“Kind of.”
“The cabin is near the top of the hill and you didn’t seem to mind.”
“It’s different from the lift.”
“We could walk up.” I catch the empty incoming chair and grab her around the waist. She yelps, and I load her up on the seat, running along to catch up with it. I leap onto it, then settle in next to her. Isla’s eyes are closed. “Oh my God, I can’t look.”
“We’re two feet from the ground,” I deadpan. This is a mini lift that goes up the mini hill, but I can’t say that. I’m trying to understand her fears and struggles and shit. I have so little fear of things that I don’t wanna come off as a coldhearted bastard.
She elbows me. “No, we’re not.”
“We really are.”
She peeks with one eye. “Oh, okay. That’s not so bad.” Then she turns. “Oh no.”
“Look forward.”
“I’m gonna be sick.”
“We’re almost there.”
“No no no, I’m gonna be sick.”
“It’s gonna be fine. Look.” I point. “Kids are getting off there.”
She grips my hand. Now, if I planned this, it would not go as well as it’s going. I’m gonna be the tube-sled hero, and everyone loves heroes. As the line approaches the end, I pass her my tube so she’s holding both. “Stand up,” I tell her.
I grab her waist and leap off the thing into the snow, landing firmly on my nonslide boots, holding her with my other hand. She looks up at me, cheeks rosy, lips plush, green eyes bright in the sun. Her gaze drops to my mouth.
“Better?” I ask.
“Well, now I have to sled down.”
“You suggested sledding.”
“Only because I don’t ski, and now that I’m here, I don’t really want to sled either, and I feel terrible you paid for all this, and I’m such a chicken—”
I slam my mouth over hers and grab the back of her head, angling it so I can invade her with my tongue.
She fucking melts under my touch, her body, instead of becoming taut and unsure, relaxes, and she strokes my tongue with hers.
My dick jumps, ready to fuck, but there’s kids everywhere and I’m a perverted cartoon ready to happen.
Some dad’s gonna hit me with a shovel in the back of my head and bury me here.
With that in mind, I peck her lips, then lick mine. “Go put your tube over there.” I point at a place where I see people are leaving things like backpacks and diaper bags.
Isla blushes prettily but does what I ask her while I throw my tube onto the snow and watch what the kids are doing.
Belly down, arms out, one boy jumps on the tube, screaming his lungs out as he slides down like a rocket.
We won’t be doing that. I wait for a girl to go, and she sits on the tube, little feet dangling.
I do the same, lifting my big-ass feet, and keep watching her.
Her dad steps up, eyes on me, head tilted.
It takes me a second to understand that murderous look on his face.
He thinks I’m a creep. I am many horrible things, but that ain’t one of them.
I keep staring at him, daring the bitch to come at me, because I’m fucking offended at what I presume he’s thinking.
He takes his kid off the tube and sits on it himself, then puts her between his legs, taking off, looking back, still glaring at me.
Isla approaches, and I do what the dad did and sit, then pat a place between my legs. “Come on.”
Isla bites her lips and shields her eyes from the crisp sun, gazing down the hill.
“Get on.”
She starts backing off, and I sit up. “Wait, watch your step.”
Too late, Isla loses her footing, slips, falls on her ass, and one kid bumps into her.
She grabs his tube, screams, and they start sliding and spinning, her hair flying everywhere, and as I’m freaking out that she’s going to break a leg or two, she starts laughing.
She and the kid make it to the bottom, both laughing their asses off.
I push off with my hand and don’t move much.
I push again, then use my legs to try to slide.
Nope. Awkwardly, with my long legs, I kind of crab-walk myself down until I pick up speed and finally glide after her.
At the bottom, I leap off the tube and walk to her.
She’s lying on the snow, doing scissors with her arms and legs as I hover over her, hands on my hips. She extends a hand, and I help her up.
Her breaths come out in pants. She’s the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. Just when I think she’ll forfeit the day, she says, “I want to go again.” She tucks her hand under my elbow and drags me toward the line.
We sit in the lift, and she stares ahead. “I think I’m looking for a thrill ride.” She turns to me.
I lift an eyebrow.
Neither of us is thinking about sledding.