CHAPTER 25
Phoebe
He yanks up my leggings and steps away from the table, like I’ve gotten on his last nerve.
“I’ll be back shortly.”
I twist around to watch Evander snap off the surgical gloves and exit through the tarps. He slaps the clear plastic closed behind him.
A blast of cold hits me and I shiver. I’m not sure if the frigid wind is coming from the storm or off of Evander.
“Are you headed up on the roof?”
“Yeah.”
Something has just happened. I said or did something wrong. I probably asked too many questions. Did I? Maybe. Honestly, I’m not certain I did anything wrong.
He seemed to be enjoying our conversation. I really thought he found me entertaining. He entertains me, that’s for sure.
Evander is a lot funnier than I ever suspected. He’s always hidden it well under the layers of grumpiness.
All I know is that in an instant, everything has changed. He’s grumpy again.
He’s angry with me.
I push myself up to sit on the edge of the table. Yeah, the stitches sting a little. They’re going to bug me for a bit. But I can live with it.
I swing my legs over the end of the table, watching Evander’s blurred figure move behind the plastic sheeting. I want to say something to him. Not an apology, really, since my intention wasn’t to be nosy or annoying. But I could ask him to tell me what’s bugging him.
I don’t.
He doesn’t say anything to me, either. Not a word. Soon, he’s slamming the door shut and he’s gone.
I glance outside the window in the kitchen area. The snow continues to race sideways across the white landscape and the narrow sliver of gray sky that I can see.
Suddenly, a sense of dread moves over me, landing with a thud on my spirit. I want to stay hopeful and cheerful, but I’m worried. About several things.
We’re in danger here, no question about it. I’ve lived in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas my whole life, and I’ve never once seen a winter system like this one. I know that my family is seeing it too, and they’ve got to be absolutely crippled with worry.
I only hope my stupid brothers, who think their sports careers give them some kind of superhuman, death-defying protection, aren’t trying to find me.
Please, no.
I hope my mom can convince them to not leave the house. I hope my dad isn’t completely devastated that I’m not safe at home.
But the truth is, I have no control over any of those things. Or the storm’s path. Or whether this shack will stay upright.
And I sure don’t have any control over what’s going on in Evander’s head. There’s no point in trying to shape what he’s thinking or feeling. That’s for him to do if he chooses.
Or, he can continue being a grumpy ass.
I slip off the table until my sock-covered feet hit the cold wooden floor.
I pull my leggings up to my waist, then touch the cushion of square bandage on my butt.
With just these few movements, I can already tell that Evander did a really good job patching me up.
The skin isn’t pulling, but the sutures feel secure.
Not for the first time, I’m thankful that it’s Evander that I’m stuck with. I’m incredibly lucky.
I need to keep busy so I can stop thinking about what is and isn’t going on with him. I retrieve my toasty warm coveralls and boots from their spots near the fire and put them on. All the while, I try not to ask myself why I’m not keen on removing Evander’s sweater.
The man has a right to his own clothes, after all.
It’s just… I smile sadly to myself. I can be pretty ridiculous sometimes. The truth is, I don’t want to give up the sweater because it’s his. It smells like him. And it may be the only thing of his I can have.
“Jeezel Pete, Phoebe!” I say aloud. Pretty ridiculous, indeed.
I go ahead and pull the cashmere off over my head, turn it right-side out, and hang it by the fire. It will be nice for Evander to have something warm to wear when he comes back inside.
So what if he’s never going to want me? The world will keep spinning. When this is over, I’ll put on my big girl panties and continue on with the life I have, the one I’m immensely grateful for.
We can’t always get what we want. I think there’s been a few hit songs about that exact thing over the years, so it must be the truth.
I find the pan, open a can of Beefaroni, and bring my nose near the clumps of macaroni and sauce. Evander’s right—it smells fine. I dump contents in and set the pan on a big, flat rock placed by the fire.
While my Boyardee brunch is warming, I decide I might as well go all Little House on the Prairie and tidy up in here. I’m feeling so much better, I realize, almost back to my usual level of energy.
I came very close to dying. I’ll think about that later.
Once I push the table to its spot near the dry sink, I fold the blankets and place them on the old couch. I find a ragged broom in the back room and sweep dirt from the wood floor and the tattered rag rug. A sheet of paper I find in a drawer serves as a handy dustpan.
The whole time I’m working, I hear the now familiar stomping and scraping sounds on the roof. I glance at the ceiling, noticing that the snow has been packed tight into the cracks, like mortar. Snowflakes no longer drift down.
I bet Evander did that on purpose, creating insulation that helps keep the heat from escaping.
He’s a very smart man.
In fact… I glance around the front room. With the tarp and the chinked roof, it’s reached an almost livable temperature in here. These insulated coveralls and snow boots are too warm.
I take them off and put on my underwear beneath my leggings, then add my turtleneck over my thermal underwear top. I add a log to the fire and snarf down the fairly delicious macaroni—I was starving.
After rinsing off the spoon and pan, I decide that it would be nice to have something hot for Evander to eat. I dump two cans into the pot and return it to the flat hearthstone, giving it a stir.
I crawl under a blanket and stare at the flames.
Apparently, that’s the end of keeping my mind on other things, since I’m right back to thinking about Evander. I glance at the ceiling, the clomping and raking sounds continuing, when it suddenly occurs to me…
The roof is his escape.
As soon as Evander gets sick of me, he goes up to the roof. It’s the equivalent of how my dad heads to the woodshop to tinker, or the garage to work on one of his old cars, when he needs a break from my mom. It gets him out of the house. It’s his excuse.
One day with me and Evander already needs a man cave.
Ugh.
The thought of that makes me incredibly sad.
But it is what it is.
The walls suddenly heave in a punishing gust of wind. The flames shoot high when air swoops down the fireplace chimney. Then comes a huge crash on the roof, followed by a yelp and a sliding sound that I follow with my eyes until it goes silent at the opposite end of the shack.
Evander’s fallen off the roof.
I jump up, fling wide the plastic, and pull open the door. Just then, I realize I’m not wearing my boots or coveralls. Too late for that now.
“Evander!” I scream into the raging winds, but my voice gets swallowed as I step outside. He can’t hear me. He’s on the opposite side of the shack. The wind is as loud as a freight train. “Evanderrrrrrr!”
Only then do I reach a full understanding of this storm. My eyes widen. My mouth falls open. My heart seizes from the bitter cold. I’m wrapped in a curtain of horizontal snow.
I look down. I’m up to my knees in heavy, wet flakes. I look up. The drifts are so tall that I’m standing in a narrow canyon of ice.
I run as fast as I can down the carved-out path. No idea where I’m going. Already knowing I’m risking my life doing this.
I don’t care.
“Phoebe?!”
Evander comes around the corner. I can barely see a sliver of his expression under the parka hood and balaclava, but even in a blizzard, it’s enough to see how pissed off he is.
“What the ever-loving fuck are you doing out here?”
He rushes toward me and before I know it, I’m off the ground, out of the snow, and he’s carrying me to the cabin.
“Really?” he yells. “We’re doing this again?”
He knees open the front door, uses a snowshoe to toss aside the tarps, and sets me down. He points toward the couch. “Strip. Cover up. Stay near the fire.”
I watch his eyes track to the warming pan of Beefaroni. His head snaps to me.
“I made you some lunch,” I say, knowing that I’ve managed to make a fool of myself in the process.