Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Cat
T he plane touches down in Alaska in the early morning. You wouldn’t know it was morning, though. It’s still so dark outside. During this time of year, the area only sees a few hours of sunlight each day.
Kindra and Ezra thought of that, though. They made Jim install lighting to every event area so that we can see what the fuck we’re doing. The mansion windows have also been fitted with screens that come down and mimic daytime. It’s supposed to help with seasonal depression.
Who the fuck could get depressed on vacation? Not me, that’s for sure.
Shorty lets out a yowl as I pull his carrier from beneath my seat. Everyone on the plane thought his little protests were cute at first. Now, more than a few pairs of eyes shift toward me with an angry glare.
“At least it isn’t a crying baby,” I say with a smile.
“I’d have preferred a wailing newborn to the incessant yowling,” a man grumbles.
“Then go fucking make one,” Kindra says.
I’m so glad she’s my friend.
And to be fair, it’s not as embarrassing as Kindra’s plane ride a few months ago. My toys stayed quiet for their flight to Alaska.
We make our way out of the airport, and Shorty begins to lose his mind. With the way he’s flailing around in his carrier, I must look like Clark Griswold when he’s holding the box containing Aunt Bethany’s unfortunate cat. He screams and claws the sides, and fur flies from the air holes.
“Is he always so pissed off?” Kindra asks as we slide into the limo Jim ordered for us.
I place the carrier on the seat, and the yowling kicks off again. “He probably needs to use the bathroom. He’s been in that thing for hours. You’d be pissed off if we crammed you into a tiny box.”
Shorty goes quiet, and moments later, a foul stench fills the limo.
Kindra gags and rolls down her window, but she quickly rolls it up again as an icy blast enters the car. “I changed my mind. I’ll take the yowling over that smell any day.”
I peer into the carrier, and Shorty hisses at me. Great. Now he’s pissed off and his back feet have little poo shoes. Shit smears paint the floor with each angry step he takes.
“I’m so sorry, Shorty,” I whisper into the air holes.
“You’re apologizing to the cat ? How about the humans that have to smell that for the next hour?” Kindra pinches her nose and breathes through her mouth.
I place the carrier between us on the seat. “We just have to smell it. Poor Shorty has to wear it like a shameful badge, and now I’ll have to bathe him. He hates water.”
Kindra already stocked my room with the cat supplies I requested, but I didn’t put cat-safe shampoo on the list. This is Shorty’s first trip, and I didn’t realize he’d be so upset. I probably should have put him in a cargo carrier with a litter box, but I was too worried the airline would lose him.
This isn’t the best start to the winter retreat, but it can only go up from here.
I hope.
At least Bennett won’t be there, which already makes this trip better than the one we took this summer. We’ll all breathe a little easier without his incessant fuckboy energy hanging over us like a dark cloud. Well, we’ll breathe a little easier once we’re out of this car.
In his place, we have Maverick, and that’s a major upgrade. He’s tall, tan, and his green eyes could convince a woman to strip in two seconds flat.
As much as I hate to admit it, Bennett is attractive too. His dark hair, bright blue eyes, and tattoos are incredibly easy on the eyes, but his personality is more akin to a honey badger—angry, volatile, and unforgiving. That’s where Maverick really shines. He’s so sweet.
“Stop daydreaming about Maverick,” Kindra says beside me, though she sounds like she’s talking through a cold because she’s still pinching her nose.
“What makes you think I’m daydreaming about him?”
Kindra lets out an exaggerated, feminine sigh. “You do that shit...that pathetic little sigh. That’s how I know.”
Everyone seems to think I’m tossing my line into empty waters, but Maverick hasn’t said he isn’t interested. I mean, he hasn’t said he is interested, but that’s beside the point. By the end of the retreat, I’ll gather the courage to make my move and get my answer.
“How’d he get his name, anyway?” I ask. “I can’t find anything online about why he’s called the Midnight Masochist.”
“Jesus, are you stalking him?”
Maybe.
“No. I was just curious,” I say.
Kindra laughs and looks out the window. “He was originally the New England Nightstalker, but he hated getting lumped with Ramirez, so he wrote to the papers—my paper, to be exact—and requested the name change upon threat of a spree. Understanding how personal a name can be, I changed it to what he requested, and it stuck.”
“I can’t picture him as an actual masochist, though. Can you?”
Kindra gags. “God no. I don’t want to yuck someone’s yum, but the thought of being the dominant one in the bedroom makes my skin crawl, and if Maverick is a masochist, that means he’d be the sub.”
I don’t know if I could pull it off myself, but I’m willing to try.
The road gets rougher as we bump along. Snow drapes everything in winter’s finest, and even the towering trees are dressed for the season. I pull out my phone to check the weather app, but my cell signal is abysmal already, and we aren’t even on the back roads yet.
The lack of connection can be a bit annoying at times, but I enjoy the unplugged experience Jim’s locales provide. Sometimes it’s nice to disconnect from the world and just experience things.
“I hope we bought enough booze,” Kindra says as she stares out the window. “On the island, Jim could have the pilot fly into town for supplies if we needed them, but out here, we’re on our own. We have someone to relay important messages each day, but we’re too far from fucking Walmart if we need anything in a timely manner.”
I pat her jean-clad thigh. “Relax. Since this is the inaugural winter retreat, there are bound to be hiccups, but I bet you’ll discover that you’re more prepared than you think.”
She stops gripping her nose so that she can give my hand a squeeze. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Anytime.”
Unlike Kindra, I’ve had my fair share of friendships throughout my life, but this friendship is unlike any other. She feels more like family than a friend.
A while later, the limo pulls to a stop beside a very large shed. A patch of dirt serves as a small parking lot, though it’s mostly covered in snow. Earthy bits peek out here and there.
The driver opens our doors, and we step into the icy air. I hold in a fart for fear it might freeze my asshole if I let it out. I’ve never experienced such temperatures.
Kindra hands a pink ski mask to me, then pulls a purple mask over her face. “We’ll take one of the snowmobiles to the mansion. I didn’t want to ask the coachman to pull the horses out just for us. I hope that’s okay.”
“Whatever gets me to the nearest roaring fireplace is fine by me. Let’s do this.” I pull the mask down and inwardly recoil at the way it presses my hair to my neck.
I have some pretty hardcore sensory issues, but I try to keep them hidden. I learned to mask my little idiosyncrasies when I was in school. The girls at the lunch table only had to make fun of my sockless feet one time before I learned it was better to be uncomfortable than to be bullied.
Now that I’m an adult, I still work to keep my non-normal behaviors in check. Instead of asking Kindra to wait while I move my hair so that it doesn’t annoy me, I swallow the discomfort and try not to think about it. Or about the way the tag in the jacket keeps making a really annoying crinkle sound. Or about the fact that the mask fabric feels like steel wool on my skin.
It’s not that I can’t trust Kindra with this secret. I don’t fear she’d make fun of me. But sometimes, people change once they know. They try to handle me with kid gloves, constantly checking to be sure I’m comfortable. I don’t want to put that burden on my friends.
Kindra pulls one of her bags from the trunk of the limo, and I do the same. It’s our winter gear. We hurry inside the shed to dress, and though the gray metal walls block the wind, they do little to dispel the bone-chilling cold. My nipples get so hard that it hurts, and I won’t be shocked if they pierce the lacy bra and put my eyes out.
“Put your gear on over your clothes,” Kindra says. “It will help with the cold.”
I pull out my ensemble—bought on clearance because I’m poor and New York is expensive. “I hope Maverick doesn’t see me in this,” I say as I place one leg into the fluffy pants. “By the time I get all this on, I’ll look like the Michelin Man.”
“Better than having your skin turn black from frostbite.”
“Good point.”
I hurry and finish dressing, then squeeze into my winter coat. Now that we’re protected from the elements, complete with hideous goggles, we only have to ease the snowmobile out of the building and onto the trail. Unfortunately, my arms are pinned in a position that makes me look like the letter T.
We toddle out of the shed and stop. Our luggage—and the wallpaper Kindra ordered—huddles in a little pile where the limo once stood. I look from the snowmobiles to the pile, then at Kindra.
Kindra huffs. “The driver could have at least brought our things into the shed before taking off. Help me get the bags safely into the building so that Ezra can come back for them in a bit.”
The driver probably had to hurry back to the airport. Most everyone arrives in a few days for the opening ceremonies and the New Year’s Eve bash, but Maverick planned to fly out soon after our flight departed. He should arrive tonight.
I can’t wait.
In all the excitement, I forgot about Shorty and his poop predicament. I hurry to the pile of bags, expecting to find one very disgruntled and cold cat, but his carrier is nowhere to be seen.
My heart drops to my asshole.
“Kindra, did you happen to grab Shorty’s carrier from the back seat?”
She lowers the two bags she’s just picked up. “Please don’t tell me he’s still in the limo.”
“Okay, I won’t.” I pause. “But I think that’s what happened.”
Kindra rips off her gloves and wrestles with her pockets until she finds her phone. As she brings it up to her face, she closes her eyes and releases a deep sigh. “I have no way to contact him. He couldn’t have waited five minutes?”
Tears fill my goggle-covered eyes, and my shoulders quiver with a sob. “I’m the worst cat mom ever. I forgot my child in the car. The government will probably take him away from me now.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic. CPS doesn’t stand for Cat Protective Services. And besides, the actual CPS fails children on a daily basis, so it’s not like you have that much to worry about.”
It doesn’t change the facts. I forgot my child—my shit-shoed child—in the back of a limo that is now who knows how far away. As if that wasn’t bad enough, now Shorty will be forced to sit with the stink.
And so will Maverick, once the driver picks him up.
I want to crawl into a deep hole, bury myself, and hibernate for the rest of winter. Maybe life will be less bleak when I emerge.
“Cat, there’s nothing we can do about it here. Let’s get up to the mansion and figure it out someplace warm.”
Kindra eases the snowmobile out of the shed, and we clear the parking lot of our things in record time. Despite knowing Shorty is speeding away down the road, I still feel another twinge of disappointment when we reach the bottom of the pile and find no cat.
I’m just about to give up hope when we hear the crunch of snow under tires. We both turn as the driver steps out of the limo.
He opens the back door and shoves the cat carrier into my waiting arms. “I’m charging a hefty cleaning fee, just so you know. I do this job as a favor to Jim, but I draw the line at that smell.”
Before I can apologize for the tenth time in three seconds, he’s slamming the driver’s side door and peeling away.
I breathe a sigh of shit-tainted relief and hurry back into the shed to transfer Shorty to his backpack for the ride in. Kindra follows me, though I’m not sure of her emotions right now, since a purple ski mask covers her features. I’m willing to bet she’s three-parts as relieved as I am and one-part annoyed that I’m slowing things down.
The little space-pod backpack sits at the bottom of the pile. I dig it out and remove my gloves so that I can transfer Shorty from one container to the next. Using a nightshirt from my bag, I clean off his paws so that the smell won’t transfer with him.
To say that he’s angry would be an understatement. His dark pupils demolish his gold irises, leaving a raging black hole in each eye socket. I’ve scruffed him, yet that doesn’t stop his claws from swiping ever closer to my face.
Once he’s mostly clean, I stuff him into the space pod and loosen the straps so that it will fit on my back over all these layers. This will keep the cold wind away from him.
Outside, we hop onto the snowmobile and start into the woods. The treads grind over the trail. It’s not a very smooth ride, but Jim couldn’t secure a team to build a road on such short notice. By next year, we’ll have a cobblestone path that will make this ride much more enjoyable.
Though we might need to adjust the time of year. The sun is just beginning to rise, and it’s almost eleven in the morning. Just before three in the afternoon, it will set again.
At least the trees have been cleared. The path is fairly wide, though I suppose it needed to be to accommodate the horses and carriage. That was my idea, and while it took some begging and pleading, Jim agreed to it in the end.
After a few minutes, the trees break apart and the mansion looms before us. It was built to look like a quaint cabin in the woods, but I’ve never seen a three-story log cabin with a fountain out front.
Ezra stands on the wraparound porch. He gives us a wave as we bring the snowmobile to a stop. With the grace only an Englishman possesses, he descends the stairs and welcomes us to the Alaskan wilderness.
The winter retreat has officially begun.