5. Chapter 5
Chapter 5
Rachel
I couldn’t believe myself; I’d shot my shot with Juniper Hart and succeeded. As I braided my wet hair, not wanting to deal with it when Juniper knocked on my door in less than fifteen minutes, my phone rang. I quickly tied the ends and answered the FaceTime request, setting it on the bathroom counter as I applied some primer.
“Happy Halloween!” My sister, Sarah, was wearing a sexy Ghostface costume with the mask propped up on the side of her head. Her black dress had some strategically placed rips in it and was short enough to reveal the fishnets adorning her legs. “You’re not dressing up this year?”
“We’re on the top of a mountain and it’s snowing, so, no. But you look so cute!”
“Thank you!” She did a little twirl to show off the full look. “We’re doing a group of hot slashers. It’s not the same without you. How’s the lodge?”
In truth, I had mixed feelings. A part of me wanted to say that while I loved the view and unplugging, my boss was an asshole. But I refrained, fearing that if I voiced it out loud, I’d be admitting defeat. I knew coming out here was an enormous risk—Juniper said so about a thousand times, after all—but as it had only been a month, I didn’t want to say I was wrong… yet.
“It’s gorgeous out here. Like, seriously gorgeous. The village on the other side of the mountain has all this Bavarian architecture and the cutest cafes for when I don’t feel like cooking. You should come out and hike some summer.”
“Your room’s a suite, right? Maybe we’ll get the whole gang to come. Ima and Abba can get their own room, and I’ll share one with your sorority sisters and some of my friends. It’ll be like old times.”
“I miss you guys so much. But I do not miss having swamp ass. You’d frickin’ love it here, Sarah. Maybe I can convince you to move.”
“I would kill for a good hike. Florida is too hot and too flat. Maybe I will once I’m done with grad school.”
I smiled as I applied my foundation. “Hey, if you want a job here, I know a guy.”
“Ha! I’d have no shame in being a nepo baby at your lodge, thank you very much. How’s the boss man?”
“He’s… a little reserved,” I said, choosing my words carefully as I put on some eyeliner. While I didn’t want to do a full face when staying in, I did want to look presentable. “But we’re having a movie night together in, like, a few minutes. Not gonna lie, I have no idea how to dress.”
Sarah balked. “Movie night? With Juniper Hart?”
“What, did you look him up on LinkedIn or something?” I swapped my eyeliner pencil for my mascara.
“Instagram, but yes. Rach, he is so fine! I mean, he’s barely posted anything since he announced his retirement, like, four years ago. Just the occasional photo from a hike, but he’s never in those. All scenery.”
I shrugged a shoulder. “He is really hot, yeah.”
“Is his hair still long?”
“Yeah, it reaches his shoulders. He wears it in this little half bun more often than not. On most guys, I’d say it looks douchey, but it’s perfect on him.”
“Play it cool. Don’t overdress. Sure, he’s your boss, but it’s nine o’clock on Halloween. You don’t want to look like you’re trying too hard, either.”
“Chunky sweater or flannel?”
“Flannel. It’ll look cute with your leggings.”
“I’ve got a few oversized ones. You’re a lifesaver.” I topped my look off with some light blush and then spritzed on some setting spray. “I was totally overthinking.” I picked up my phone as I walked to my closet so I could throw my red flannel on over my bralette. “Hopefully, he loosens up tonight. We haven’t really gotten to know each other super well yet. I get the vibe something happened beyond his snowboarding accident, and it’s turned him into a total grump.”
“I hope both of us have some luck tonight,” Sarah said. “Julie will be at this party I’m going to.”
“If you don’t ask her what her favorite scary movie is, I swear!”
I moved my phone with me again, carrying it to the kitchen so I could prepare some snacks to set out. As I dumped some popcorn into two buckets, I added watermelon-flavored sour gummies and M a few loose wisps of overgrown bangs framed his face. Despite being dressed for comfort, he was still handsome enough to take my breath away, and I employed the focus of a hawk in order to keep my eyes on his face rather than his crotch.
The door swung closed behind him, locking into place as I stepped aside to let him in. I walked backward as I led Juniper inside my suite, speaking with my hands. “Now, there are a few ground rules I gotta lay out.”
He cocked a brow. “There are rules to movie night?”
“Fun rules, I promise. Now, as this is an awful movie with fantastic comedic commentary, we don’t have to sit here all quiet. Riffing along is highly encouraged.”
“Talk shit about the movie. Got it.”
“The only other rule is that if you make fun of me for my snack habits, I will sue you for workplace harassment.”
Juniper scoffed as he looked at how I’d decorated my space. “How bad can it be?”
“Not bad at all, though I may be biased.”
“Time will tell, I guess,” he said. He pointed to a photo on the television stand. “Is this your family?”
“Yup! My parents, my biological sister, and my sorority little sister. Probably easy to guess which one is the biological one.”
“She looks a lot like you. Do you miss them?”
“A little, but we keep in touch. My sisters and I text and FaceTime a lot.”
“It’s nice that you have them.” If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he almost sounded wistful. “Good family’s hard to come by.”
“Well, if you need some, my parents basically adopt every stray they come across. Literally and figuratively. My dad always comes home from work with some stray cat to bring to the vet.”
“No wonder Sasquatch likes you so much. He can probably smell you come from a family of animal lovers.”
I laughed as I took my spot on the couch. “For all the cats he saves, my dad’s more of a dog guy. He would love Sasquatch. You know, they’re hoping to be the first ones to book once we open reservations so they can say they were legitimately first in line.”
A short exhale passed through his nose as the corner of his lips threatened to upturn. “That’s cute.” The tease of a smile faded as he winced when he walked over. Juniper was quick to mask his expression, and if I had blinked, I would have missed it.
“You okay?”
“Flare up. I’ll be fine.”
“Can I get you anything?”
He sat next to me, close enough to touch but far enough to maintain a respectable distance. “I took my meds before walking over, so I should be fine soon. Thanks, though.”
“Well, if you do, let me know. I have a heating pad and painkillers I’m more than willing to share.”
He looked at me and nodded. “Thanks. I may actually take you up on that heating pad.” He stood as he asked where it was.
“If you’re hurting, I can get it.”
“I’m already up. But, thanks. Get the movie on.”
“It’s in my bedroom. There’s a little basket with a red and yellow blanket; you can’t miss it.”
“Much obliged.”
I swallowed back my nerves as I pulled the movie up. Since I couldn’t hear Juniper rummaging about, I could only assume he was doing a quick scan of my room as he fetched the heat pad. Something about it felt surprisingly intimate. With how long it took him, there was no way he wasn’t examining the old sorority and family photos on the desk and walls. When he finally emerged, the blanket tucked beneath his arm, he moved to the kitchen. Once the heating pad was in the microwave, he waited by the island overlooking the living room.
“Figured we could use the blanket, too. One of us is bound to want it at some point.”
“Good thinking.”
As I smiled at him, I tried to focus on anything other than the way his gaze softened for the first time since I’d met him. The blue lines of his flannel made his eyes pop, even in the dim lighting of my room. Like this, he didn’t seem so mean and scary. Like this, he was just a normal man—a normal man in a lot of pain all the time.
I’d probably be easily irritated if I was constantly uncomfortable, too.
His voice snapped me out of my thoughts. “You own a lot of stuff in red.”
“Do I?”
“Varying shades, but yeah. I’ve noticed.”
My cheeks felt hot as his words sank in. It shouldn’t have surprised me. I said so to Sarah myself: Juniper was reserved. As a formerly shy kid, I was more surprised I hadn’t guessed he’d be more the silent observer type than I was since he noticed me like that at all.
As Sarah’s own teasing bubbled back up in my brain, I brushed the thoughts aside and said, “Well, that blanket is from a sorority sister. She made it for my birthday one year. Michaela’s the crafty type.”
“Did you like it? Greek life, that is.”
“Oh, fuck no. I hated it.”
With his brows raised and a sly smile forming, he looked amused. “So then, why’d you stay?”
“To force myself to be more social. I made a few good friends from it, and we made the best of it together.”
“You? Struggling to be social?”
“I used to be as quiet as you, believe it or not. You should have been at my bat mitzvah. Half the crowd couldn’t hear my reading.”
Juniper laughed, a proper one for once, and it made my heart leap in my chest. “I find this very hard to believe.”
“Then my sorority days did their job.”
“So what’s the pipeline from sorority girl to shitty movie aficionado?”
“You know, it’s funny you ask! My Big, Little, and I went to a midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show every month for, like, two years. Poor Ariana always got her ID checked, even though she’s only a year younger than me. Anyways, that introduced us to bad movies.”
The microwave beeped. Juniper turned to grab the heating pad before joining me on the couch again with the blanket, an inch or two closer than he had been before.
“I promise I won’t make fun of you for your snack habits later if you promise not to judge me for needing to sit on your heating pad. This nerve is a literal pain in my ass.”
“Deal.” I grabbed the two popcorn buckets and handed one to Juniper. “Help yourself.”
“Thanks.” He glanced at my bucket as he popped a piece into his mouth. “Watermelon sour gummies, M&M’s, and popcorn? Huh.”
“Workplace harassment, Juniper. Final warning.”
“No, no, it’s not that weird.” To my surprise, he reached for the candy bowls on the table and poured some of both into his bucket, his snack mix now matching my own. “There. Solidarity.”
“Everyone always teases me for it, but it’s good. I swear.”
“I believe you.” While his voice was still even, his tone lacked its usual sarcastic bite.
I hit play, letting the intro roll. As the comedians settled into their seats on the screen and the movie began, Juniper and I sat in silence until the shot panned over the ski lodge in the snowy mountains, when Juniper said, “Holy shit, I’ve been there. We used to ski and snowboard at that resort all the time when I was a kid.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah. They’ve got some great beginner trails, and you get to ski for free until you’re a teenager. They’re down in Durango.”
“You’ll have to let me know how accurate this movie is as far as that’s concerned. I feel like these shitty movies are even better when you’ve been where they filmed them.”
“Did you see any from Orlando?”
“There’s one that was filmed at UCF. It’s a trip. Think ninja movie meets 80s rock band flick.”
“If I don’t hate this,” he said as he shifted his body to sit diagonally on the couch so he now almost faced me, “you’ll have to show me that one too.”
It felt like a promise. “It would be my pleasure.”
We watched the movie in relative silence, except for us laughing along to the commentary or Juniper pointing out fun facts about the lodge where the movie was filmed. It felt wrong to crack more jokes as he recounted his experiences, so I just listened, soaking up every word he said.
It was the first time I’d heard him speak with no trace of sarcasm, bitterness, or disdain.
Then, when the film took a break to show the fictional adventures of the comedian’s crew, Juniper said, “You wanna know something crazy?”
“Crazier than the loose plot threads?”
I couldn’t tell if he chuckled or scoffed as he shifted in his seat again. He cracked his hip. “Probably.”
“Lay it on me.”
“I don’t miss it. Snowboarding, that is.”
“No shit?” While this was a big confession from him, I also sensed that my not knowing much about him as a professional athlete was why he was telling me this to begin with, so I did as Sarah said: play it cool.
“Yeah. Sure, I had a great time during my run. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. But looking back? It’s almost like I didn’t have any sense of identity beyond that. It sent me into a quarter-life crisis when I realized I didn’t know who I was when my board and gear were taken away, but now that I’m feeling better adjusted, it’s admittedly nice.”
“I’m glad you could get there. You’ll have to teach me your secrets,” I said. “I got pretty lost in work, too. It’s easy to do that.”
“Next time you get in your own head, let me know. Sasquatch and I will take you for a hike. I stick to all the easy trails so I don’t risk triggering a flare-up. You should be able to handle it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Isn’t Florida flat as fuck?”
“For the most part, yes. Especially compared to here.”
“So, forgive me for assuming some incline and altitude changes might be challenging for you.”
“I’m pretty familiar with the stair machine at the gym, thank you very much!”
He laughed. “Alright, alright. But my offer still stands.”
Another promise. “I’ll take you up on that sometime.” We turned to the screen as the plane on television crashed into the mountainside, triggering the titular avalanche. “So long as that doesn’t happen.”
“Parks Service is pretty good about posting avalanche warnings, so we should be able to dodge ‘em.”
The conversation lulled again as we watched, picking at our snacks and cracking the occasional joke. As Juniper shifted to pull the heating pad out from under him, his body inched closer to mine. There was no way it was intentional, but it didn’t stop my breath from hitching. Juniper let the pad rest by the arm of the couch and didn’t bother to pull away from me. Our elbows brushed against each other now every time we’d reach for a snack bowl, and I caught a faint whiff of the earthy, warm notes in his aftershave.
After a few more minutes, I continued riffing along, and Juniper eventually joined in, commenting mostly on the poor acting and lack of sense from the characters. I felt hyper-aware of every breath both of us took and noticed how he’d lean into me whenever he laughed. The next thing I knew, I wasn’t watching the movie anymore.
I watched Juniper instead, taking note of the small details of his face. He was so beautiful it wasn’t fair. Juniper turned his head, just enough to catch me staring, and his smile froze for half a second before curving into something slower.
“What?” he asked, barely above a whisper.
I shook my head, the corner of my mouth tugging up. “Nothing. Just… your commentary is better than the movie.”
Her eyes narrowed, playful, but there was something else there—something that made the air between us feel electric. Juniper shifted slightly, his leg brushing mine.
“Careful,” he said, voice low. “Keep talking like that and I might think you actually like having me here.”
My breath caught, and I tried to play it cool, leaning back into the cushions. “Sasquatch is still my favorite.”
His tongue darted out, wetting his bottom lip. “Naturally.”
On screen, an ambulance crashed, snapping us out of the moment. Mentally, I cursed Mia Farrow, even though she was to thank for bringing us together like this in the first place. At the corny scene, Juniper chuckled. “Oh, man, this is so lame.”
I nudged his side with my elbow. “Yeah, but you’re laughing.”
When we first met, it seemed Juniper was as icy as his light blue eyes and the snow already on the ground. But now, as our eyes met, I could have sworn he and his gaze thawed. “I suppose I have been, huh?”
As I nodded, I was glad I hadn’t called him an asshole to Sarah earlier. After tonight, I felt like I’d seen a whole new side of Juniper. While he hadn’t fully opened up by any means, I had a better understanding of him now that he actually spoke to me beyond work tasks. Before, I found him to be an insufferable drag, but now I saw the traumatized spirit beneath. Just like I’d once taken a leap by going through sorority rush week, he was taking a leap by being on this very couch with me, chowing down on watermelon sour candy, and giving me a look behind the curtain of his life.
No way would I take this moment for granted.
Before I could say anything else, Juniper said, “You were right. This was fun. Maybe we can include Sasquatch before he crashes for that other one you were telling me about.”
“Hell yeah! And if you want, we can let Netflix auto-play these tonight. I don’t mind staying up late. Not a traditional Halloween, but whatever.”
To my surprise, Juniper said, “As long as I’m not keeping you up and my constant creaking and cracking doesn’t bother you, I’d like that.”
A warmth blossomed in my chest that I tried in vain to ignore. “It’s not bothering me. I’d like that too.”