Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
FUN ANNETTE, MEET ADVENTURE HAMMY
Hammy
T he snowfall stopped early this afternoon. The plows have cleared the roads, the skies are clear, and the moon and stars are lighting the newly fallen snow. The perfect conditions for a first date. I haven’t stopped thinking about it all day.
I glance at Annette , who I picked up moments ago. Not only is she dressed in warm enough gear that we won’t have to stop because of the cold, but she has a grin on her face like she’s legitimately excited.
“ It took some searching to find where Doomslide Summit is,” I say. “ Did you know it’s not an officially named hill?”
Annette laughs. It’s not a chuckle and it’s not a hearty laugh. It’s a musical thing, and it’s a beautiful sound. “ Good thing you have those spy skills to help you out.”
I can’t believe I’d said I gained skills by training as a spy. First , I was an intelligence operative. Second , that’s a secret I guard fiercely, not something I joke about. I’d flinched the moment I said it yesterday and was hoping she’d forget about it. But here we are.
I nod. “ Otherwise , I couldn’t have checked it out already to gauge whether I’m manly enough to brave it.”
She laughs a bit more this time. “ Did you decide that you are?”
I shrug, even though this hill is no match for me. Not long ago, I sped down an Olympic luge track on my back with a thin fiberglass and steel sled between me and the track. And the track had parabolic curves and hairpin bends. But I’m not here to brag or sound like I’m bragging. So I say, “ I don’t know. It sounds pretty intense.”
I haven’t dated for a while, but I dated a lot in my younger years. As a field operative, I never allowed any relationship to move beyond casual because I didn’t think my job and a serious relationship could coexist. After leaving the field for the role of Director of Covert Identity and Disguise , I could’ve settled down and had a real relationship, but I never found anyone who really grabbed me. Until now. Annette has grabbed hold of me firmly and I can’t stop thinking about her.
“ Please ,” Annette says. “ I watched you hang lights like it was a Sunday stroll.”
“ Ahh , but they didn’t train us in snow tubing.” I did do an Escape and evasion techniques using natural terrain course and part of that was descending uneven mountainous areas, but I can honestly say we didn’t get “snow tubing” training.
“ So you’re saying this could be more dangerous than a covert operation?” she asks.
“ Maybe . If you hear me shout ‘abort,’ you’ll know.” I’ll admit I do enjoy joking with her about the spy thing even if it makes me flinch.
I park near the top of the hill and pull the inflated snow tubes out of the back of my crossover. As we walk to the hill, I ask, “ So , when was the last time you did this?”
“ Oh , wow. Um …” Annette thinks for a moment. “ Probably when Reese was still too young to sled by herself. She was five the first time she braved it alone, so the winter before that.”
“ A couple of decades, then?”
“ Sounds about right.”
“ That’s too long ago,” I hand her a tube. “ I’m glad we’re going to remedy that.”
The hill is long and decently high. We’re probably going to get some good speed going down. I can see why it’s a favorite sledding spot—there is plenty of flat, open field at the end of the hill. Well , except for one section toward the bottom where it looks like some kids piled up snow to make a ramp.
I drop our tubes, then spot a sturdy stick a couple of feet long and pick it up before we both get situated on our tubes. They have handles on the sides, and we grasp the ones on the outsides, but I reach across to grab hold of her inside handle and she grabs hold of mine, linking us together.
“ Ready ?” I ask.
She nods, but I can see she’s a bit nervous.
“ Any tips you’d like to share before we take off?” I ask. “ You know, besides ‘ Close your eyes and hope for the best.’”
“ I recommend keeping them open until we’re aimed in the right direction. Unless you want to risk veering toward that ramp.”
“ Solid advice. Okay , to both of us—good luck, have fun, and don’t die!” I use the stick like an oar to nudge us toward the slope. Then , I drop it and grab onto my handle.
We pick up speed quickly. We’re both making sounds like a rallying cry mixed with pure exhilaration and for Annette , occasionally a scream. Our tubes start to turn, and then we’re going down backward before eventually spinning to face the direction we started. By the time we slow at the base, we’re both laughing.
“ That was such a rush!” Annette says as we get off our tubes. “ I’d forgotten how fun this is!”
Her cheeks are flushed—although that could be windburn from our descent—and her eyes are alive with excitement.
As we head toward the hill, hauling our tubes and still breathing heavily from the adrenaline, she asks, “ So , is this normal for you?”
I glance at her. “ Snow tubing?”
She shrugs. “ Adventurous things in general.”
“ I …” I pause, carefully choosing my words, “have been known to participate in extreme sports now and then.” I try to take in every facet of emotion on her face. If I have to guess, I’d say her expression is part impressed, part longing, and something else I’m unsure of.
“ Do you have kids?” she asks. “ I mean, beyond an honorary daughter.”
“ Not unless you count the other Lancaster kids. I was their honorary uncle until their dad, Rick , passed away five years ago, and now I’m an occasional stand-in dad for them, too. But no, I never married. I traveled so much—sometimes without advance notice—that I didn’t think a relationship could work.”
“ I wouldn’t have guessed that graphic design and branding would require so much time away from the office.”
“ I don’t only do it in-house, like many in my profession. And our clients tend to be…a bit demanding.”
“ Do you still travel a lot?”
“ Nah . I leave that for the younger ones. How about you?”
She turns her focus to Doomslide Summit as we get to the more uphill part. “ Not too much. Five or six times per year.” She winks. “ The rest I leave for the younger ones.”
We’re mostly up the very long hill when Annette looks over the snowy landscape lit by the nearly full moon. “ I thought by the time I was an empty nester, I’d be celebrating the holidays somewhere warm. On a beach, a coconut drink in my hand, soaking in the sun and watching the waves. Not clinging to an inflatable tube, praying for mercy from a hill named ‘ Doomslide .’”
“ Eh , the beach is overrated—it’s hot, sand gets everywhere, and it’s not easy to wash off.”
“ Snow might wash off easily, but you end the day with soaking wet everything.”
“ True ,” I say. “ But if you get injured, you don’t even need an ice pack. You can just flop down in the snow.”
Annette laughs. “ Making snow angels and healing bruises in one fell swoop.”
“ Another reason why snow wins in a match against the beach.”
We finally make it to the top of the hill. “ Speaking of winning a match…” Annette says as she takes off running toward the middle. “ You better hurry, because this time, we are racing each other down!”
We leap onto our tubes from a run and the momentum sends us down the hill. I jumped onto mine from an angle, so now I’m spinning. When I face forward again, I see I’m headed straight toward the piled-up snow that’s making a ramp.
When I hit the jump, it sends me and my tube airborne. I’m guessing I’m a dozen feet in the air, and I whoop the entire time. I don’t land flat, so I’m sent tumbling across the snow. I’m laughing, though, so when Annette’s face appears over me, I see that she’s not concerned.
“ Were you showing off your acrobatic skills, or are you injured and the rolling is to get the full-body ice pack?”
I wink. “ Maybe a bit of both.”
By the time we make it to the top of the hill a third time, Annette has decided that she wants to go off the jump, too. She gets lined up to head straight toward it, and I give her tube a little nudge over the edge before hopping onto my own and cheering for her the whole way down.
She hits the ramp perfectly. Other than some mid-air feet flailing and a half-exhilarated, half-terrified squeal, she does it so much more gracefully than I did.
When Doomslide Summit tires us out and we start getting cold, I drive us to a nearby outdoor skating rink solely for the big fire they have every night, and we take a seat on a bench near it to warm our toes. I open my bag and pull out two mugs and the spiced apple cider that’s been staying warm in a thermos. I fill both mugs and hand one to Annette .
She removes her gloves and wraps her hands around the mug, holding it to her nose, closing her eyes, and breathing in the scent. I love that she enjoys small things like that.
I take out a container of cookies, open it, and hand her one. “ This is to warm your taste buds.” I grab one, too, and take a bite as she does. She’s savoring the bite, and I can tell the moment she feels the subtle heat of the cookie.
Her eyebrows rise, and as soon as she swallows, she says, “ Spicy cookies?”
I nod. “‘ Hot Cocoa Cookies .’ And the ‘hot’ isn’t because they’re fresh out of the oven.”
“ They’re delicious! Did you make these?”
I shake my head. “ I occasionally do, but I didn’t make these. This was my favorite cookie as a kid. One day at work, I described them to Charlie and said I wished I could find them somewhere. She has the superpower of discovering the best place to go for things like baked goods.
“ The next day, she comes into work with a box in her hands, beaming. She’d found these—the exact cookie of my childhood. I picked them up on my way to your house.”
As we’re eating the cookies and drinking the cider, Annette leans into me. It’s only a bit, but it confirms I’m not the only one feeling a connection.
When Annette finishes her second cookie, she puts her mug on the bench beside her, brushes off her hands, and then swings one leg over the bench so she’s facing me. I do the same to face her.
“ So , Hammy , speaking of this season of life turning out differently than we guessed, did you ever expect to get tangled in Christmas lights with a woman one night, then tube down a snowy hill with her the next?”
I didn’t even think to dream about that or I would have. “ No ,” I say with a sly smile, “but now I know what I want my retirement plan to be.”
Something crosses Annette’s face that I can’t interpret. Uncertainty , maybe?
She shakes her head. “ I’m not thinking about retirement— I’m still trying to figure out what happened to Fun Annette . She left around age thirty-two and hasn’t been seen since. I think she might be in witness protection.”
“ Fun Annette isn’t gone. She just went on a covert mission for a bit.” And this time, it’s me bringing up operatives. It’s almost like I want Annette to know.
“ And now it’s time for me to ‘come in from the cold’? That’s what they call it, right?”
I chuckle. “ I think that’s for operatives who’ve gone rogue.”
“ Maybe Fun Annette did go rogue, and she’s out there making questionable decisions and hiding from Responsibility Annette .”
“ I’ve only ever seen Fun Annette . Well , and Stop , Thief ! Annette . What makes you feel like you lost her?”
“ That’s not a conversation topic for a first date.”
“ Are you worried it’d scare me off? I mean, in the past—” I glance at my watch—“twenty-eight hours, I’ve been pulled off a ladder by a protective canine, tangled in lights, accused of being a thief, faced Doomslide Summit , and braved going airborne off a ramp made by children, and I’m not scared yet.”
Annette laughs. “ Fair enough. Okay . Well , I was married for twenty-seven years, but I didn’t exactly have a partner. In the beginning, it was easy to let Fun drive our lives. Then , we had a child, so Responsibility took the wheel and Fun was pushed to the passenger’s seat. Bryce didn’t like that, so he decided to get in his own car so Fun could still drive instead of staying in the family car with us.
“ Then we had a second child, and as she grew, more and more responsibilities piled in—school, homework, sports, making healthy meals, doctor visits, never-ending laundry, play dates, music lessons, making sure soccer cleats still fit, and science fair projects got completed—and Fun got pushed to the back seat. Then to the trunk. At some point, without even noticing it happened, it fell right out the back.”
Annette puts a hand on her forehead before using it to brush her hair away. “ It’s not like I hated any of those responsibilities. Well , maybe laundry. And I can’t blame everything on Bryce —that’s not fair. I mean, who knows? Maybe I’d be exactly where I am either way. I guess that’s not the point. It’s that now I can let Fun Annette take the wheel but I don’t know how to entice her back.”
I study her for a moment. “ I’ve got an idea.” I pull out my phone to look up the city’s list of activities for the holidays. And then my phone starts to ring. Not the one in my hand, but the one in my coat pocket. There’s an instant shift in energy between us the moment she realizes I have a second phone.
“ I am so sorry. This is work. Can you give me a minute?”
I walk a dozen feet away as I answer. It’s my assistant, Soren . He’s at the office, working late. The 3D printer is out of ink and he can’t find any. As I’m explaining where it is, I look at Annette . If her ex-husband had been letting Fun drive, there were probably times when she felt she couldn’t trust him. Maybe he even had his own second phone. It isn’t hard to guess that she likely has trust issues.
And then there’s me. I’ve spent most of my life wearing disguises and pretending to be different people. I’ve been pretending to be Hammy for the past six years. Like I’m any better.
Soren finds the ink. I hang up, slide the phone into my pocket, and head back to the bench by the fire where Annette is waiting.
To keep things light, I say, “ Well , Fun Annette has definitely come in from the cold tonight. I’d say that the best way to keep her around is to keep inviting her back for more ‘missions.’”
“ Oh , yeah?”
I nod, thinking I shouldn’t ask her on another date but desperately wanting to. “ Tonight was part one of her re-orientation. The Lancaster family’s Secret Santa night is a lot of fun, and it’s this weekend. What do you say to going with me? We can entice Fun Annette to stick around.”
She smiles. “ I think I’d like that.”