20 - Brie
A Storm’s Coming
~
Brie
The snow fell fast and heavily, and it made the cabin creak more. It weighed on the roof and made it impossible to make phone calls, go online, or just go outside. It had been days since I was outside, and the cabin fever was setting in again.
The rooms were getting smaller. I knew the markings on the walls, and we had just about run out of topics for casual conversation.
I watched Tobias brooding over my coffee cup. He withdrew into himself more; he openly looked at pictures of Lexi’s mother, thinking about her, though he never said anything about her to me. I could tell he missed her, maybe even wondered what life would have been like if she were still alive.
He wasn’t the only one being chased by ghosts.
I had my own. I couldn’t call Holly. There was no way of knowing how the hospital investigation was going, but I thought about it more and more, turning possibilities over in my head.
Had I made a mistake? Had someone else? Could we have missed something that cost a little girl her life?
I thought about it a lot, but couldn’t ever come up with new answers. There was only what I already knew.
Gideon walked around aimlessly. He didn’t know how to do anything but guard.
But the heavy snow meant no one could leave or come in.
There were no news updates, and he just didn’t know what to do with himself.
He would read listlessly, turning the pages of a book for a little while before giving up, bored, and look out the window. There was nothing to see there either.
Not even Gunner could find much to joke about. When he did, he laughed a short, sad sound. His smile hardly reached his eyes anymore. One evening, he stood next to me as I made a pot of hot chocolate, and I asked him how often he visited his family.
“I don’t,” he shrugged.
“Like never?”
“Well, there’s no one to visit,” he said with a short, joyless laugh.
I didn’t know what to say. I just watched him smile it off and try to make a joke about being a lone wolf.
“But I have you guys, so I know what family is like, and it’s not my permanent vibe,” he said and walked away from what had become an awkward moment.
Lexi spent hours by the fire, reading, playing board games, and falling asleep in my arms. Our routine had become frozen with the snow. There was no way we could get any classes going in a house full of bored, idle men.
The last straw was when our multiplication lesson turned into a push-up competition. Gunner thought it would be great motivation to see how high Lexi could multiply, and he and Gideon then, after teasing and goading Tobias, would do just as many push-ups until one of them just couldn’t go any more.
“Six times seven is 586!” Lexi screamed, focused more on the push-up tournament than actually getting the right answer.
I gave up, gave in, and called it our winter break. There was no winning. In a toss-up between science and Monopoly, Monopoly always won, even with me. I spent hours on the carpet with Lexi building puzzles, playing board games, and talking about life in the city.
I was winning a particularly combative game of Scrabble when Tobias heard a roof sheet come loose. It rattled in the wind, slamming into the cabin softly at first, then louder as the wind picked up, and none of us could accuse him of trying to escape a crushing defeat.
“It looks like there’s a blizzard blowing in,” Gunner said, letting out a long whistle.
“We should fix it sooner rather than later,” Gideon said, already strapping his tool belt around his waist.
Gunner joined him. “It’s a two-man job. Keep the ladies safe, old man,” he said, saluting Tobias before heading out, closing the door behind him.
Lexi lay curled up on the armchair, her book open and forgotten on her lap. I watched Tobias gently put a throw over her and take the book, carefully placing a bookmark between the pages.
“I swear she’s going to grow an extra three feet by the end of winter with all the sleep she’s been getting lately,” he said, squeezing my arm on his way to the kitchen. “Would you like a nightcap?”
“Sure,” I smiled, following him into the kitchen.
We hadn’t been alone since the night we spent with Gideon, but we were past the awkwardness now. We had spent many more days around the same living room fire, at the same dinner table, having conversations with no real consequences. The earth had not swallowed us whole.
It wasn’t as simple as a sexual awakening.
Being here had just become an awakening, not just for me.
I knew I had changed, and from the first day I met the men to now, they had changed too.
Tobias was slowly learning to let his guard down.
He smiled more often, showed more emotion, and every now and then, I’d catch him quietly mourning Lexi‘s mother. He hadn’t reached the point of actually talking about her, but he was healing in his own way.
In this tiny cabin, the world had become bigger.
I wanted more. So did Gideon. He had spent all his life serving and protecting, as his father had done and his grandfather before him.
It was as if it had finally dawned on him he actually had a choice.
He was a real person, too, and didn’t have to constantly suppress his own needs and desires to give whoever paid his salary what they wanted.
I learned that alongside him, alongside Lexi, along with Gunner, too.
Though I sometimes woke up and cursed the snow and sighed at the thought of another day trapped indoors, I had to admit that taking the risk and coming to the cabin was the best decision I had ever made. It was the best thing for me, even with all its uncertainty.
I watched Tobias reach up into the top cupboard for a heavy bottle of whisky we rarely drank from. His shoulders were tight, his face moving from a thoughtful expression to a tight smile and back again in cycles. He had something to say, but couldn’t find the words to say it.
“I’m really glad you came here,” he said with a warm, but still awkward smile.
“I’m glad too,” I said, punching his arm playfully.
“Not just for Lexi,” he said, looking directly at me. Our eyes met, and he held my gaze. “For me, too. I’m glad I met you and that we have… this.” Tobias wanted to say more.
He stumbled over his words, and for some reason, it made me anxious. I wanted to know what he was thinking, but I was also afraid he might actually say it. Whatever it was, it threw this newfound world of mine into chaos.
My hands tightened into fists, my fingernails digging into my palms. I wished he would just say it, make it quick, rip off the band-aid.
Everything was great, but it was also delicate and complicated.
It could fall around all our ears with just one word.
One cog in the machine decided this wasn’t right.
“The other night,” Tobias started, his voice low and his back turned to me.
“Yes, the other night.” I walked around him so he couldn’t avoid looking at me.
He smiled, acknowledging the tension I had created.
“Are you into that?” he asked. “Threesomes.”
He said it as if he were afraid of the word itself, though he had enthusiastically participated in one. I couldn’t help but giggle.
Memories of that night flooded my mind. I could feel a flush rise from my chest at just the thought. I took a sip of the whiskey he had poured into my tumbler, let it tingle on my tongue, and burn my throat on its way down.
“Honestly?” I said. “It was my first one. I had never even considered it before, but. Yeah. It was fun. Did you?”
Tobias was quiet for a while. He swirled his glass in his hand, inspecting the color of the whisky expertly before taking another sip to delay his response.
Gideon and Gunner were still banging on the roof, arguing as they worked about the angles of the nails, the right length to use, and whether they would need more.
Tobias held my face in his hands, pulling me into a kiss. His lips were warm, always surprisingly soft. He pinned me to the counter, deepening our kiss, sucking my bottom lip into his mouth.
He stepped back, his hands finding their way to my waist. “I was thinking it would only be a one-time thing.”
My heart started racing. A year ago, this would have been all I wanted. A kind, gentle, capable man in a committed relationship that could maybe become more. But after the time I had spent in the cabin, I wasn’t sure I wanted that anymore.
“I know you aren’t staying here forever, but I’d want to see where this goes. You know?” Tobias asked.
There was a hopeful sparkle in his eyes, willing me to say yes.
To commit to being with only him until we figure things out.
I had grown to care about him; he was one of the good guys.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to say yes.
Instead, I stared at him, blinking. I couldn’t find the words to say between my confusion and what I knew he wanted to hear.
“I… I don’t know,” I stuttered. “Can’t we just let things be?”
Tobias’s hands became limp around my waist; he inched away from me slightly.
“I don’t really know what I want right now. I’m just doing what makes me happy in the moment,” I squirmed.