Chapter 14 Daphne
Chapter fourteen
Daphne
It’s been a week—one glorious week without Gerald.
Sure, I’m barely able to pay my bills, and I don’t really have a place of my own yet…but I’m doing it. I’m living life for me.
And it’s all thanks to the goofy, handsome yeti who gave me a room to crash in and a job to help me get back on my feet.
Honestly, I don’t know what I would have done without him.
Probably froze to death on the streets with my twisted ankle.
A visual of Jack Torrance at the end of The Shining movie pops into my head, but I shake it away quickly.
I switch my focus to tidying up the cup full of ballpoint pens on my desk.
The front lobby door spins on its axis and in walks a human man in a hard hat and safety vest, carrying a clipboard.
“I take it you’re not checking in for a ski vacation?” I cock my head.
“No ma’am, I’m looking for an Andri Nordin?” He reads the snowman’s name off his sheet. “I’m with the cable company here for an install.”
“Oh! I didn’t know that was happening. I’m sure the guests will love cable.” I point behind him, to the very well-worn VHS lending library. “I mean, I’ve watched Pride and Prejudice so many times that the sound is getting wonky.” I laugh.
The workman, all business, doesn’t even crack a smirk.
“No ma’am, I’m here to hopefully install the internet.”
“Oh really?” I can’t contain the excitement in my voice. I’ve been hoofing it to the cafe and using my phone to try to sign up for an online college. While Hallow’s Cove has its charms, the lack of cell service and internet can make remote higher education a real pain in the ass.
“Yes, now can you please help me find Mr. Nordin?” He taps his snow-wet boot impatiently on the tile floor.
“Ugh, he’s normally kind of just around?” I’m zero help. But to be fair, he is always usually pretty close by. Hovering makes it sound more nefarious than I think it is, but he always seems to be within arm’s reach. “I mean, actually, I haven’t seen him all morning.” Which is strange.
“Well can’t you call him—” The worker immediately looks annoyed. “Of course you can’t, I forgot where I was.”
I’m not the only one inconvenienced by the lack of service in this picturesque little town.
I’m about to ask him to just please have a seat so that I can go find him, when the snowman himself strolls into the lobby.
He’s got a few white bags in his arms, and he smiles wide when he sees me and the vested man.
“Perfect timing!” Andri puts the bags on my desk and turns to the man, shaking his hand. The cable guy’s eyes go wide as he takes in his hulking form. It’s very obvious this guy doesn’t frequent monster haunts because he is visibly taken aback by Andri.
“First time in the old HC?” He pats the man on the biceps and sends a jolt through his body.
“Yeah,” the man says dryly.
“You get used to it pretty quick, no stress, man. What do you need from me to get this Wi-Fi train rolling?” He smiles that smile that hides his fangs, the one that keeps people at ease.
“Um, I just need to see where the telephone landline comes in. It might take me a few days to get you up and running though—I’ve heard nightmares from another tech about some kind of weird energy that makes tech go haywire here.” The cable guy seems to have gotten his bearings back.
“Perfect, give me just a sec to drop this stuff off and I’ll lead the way,” he says as he turns back to me.
He reaches his blue hand into the largest bag and pulls out a sleek white box and puts it in front of me. The fruit logo embossed in silver on the box stares back up at me.
“Is this a laptop?” I ask.
“Not just any laptop, it’s yours.” Andri grins wider for me.
“For me? What? Andri….”
“I’m updating things around here, and since I know you’re trying to get back to your studies, I figured you might find something like this useful.”
“This is too much, you’re already helping me so much, I can’t accept—”
“It’s a tax write-off, you’re really doing me a favor.” He pushes it closer to me. “And don’t worry, I got the extended warranty—so even if you dump a whole pot of coffee on it, it’ll be cheap to fix.” The yeti winks.
I laugh, because I can very much see myself doing that, but then I have to bite my lip.
Something about the fact that he got me a gift, one that he knows I need, and he’s even Daphne-proofed it so I won’t be able to easily destroy it with my klutziness is so fucking heartwarming I’m on the verge of tears.
“Thank you—for everything—Andri,” I whisper, willing the tears away.
His eyes soften, and he reaches for my cheek right before the man in the lobby loudly clears his throat. His hand retracts, and he grabs the other bags on the counter.
“I’m glad you like it.” He turns back and motions for the man to follow him. He leaves me in the lobby on the verge of happy tears, and I have to turn and squint at the ceiling for a moment before I check in the guest who arrives right after Andri leaves.
“Sorry, these allergies are awful,” I tell them as my eyes leak onto the keyboard.
“Sure, winter allergies, got it.” The vacationing minotaur one hundred percent doesn’t believe me.
Even though I don’t see Andri for the rest of the afternoon, time flies.
The ski resort functions with check-in and check-out blocks, so you can stay for as many weeks in a row as you’d like, but never less than a week.
It’s a strange, very old-school, way to run a resort, but I’ve really come to like it.
Each week brings in a new crop of faces and takes away some of our more annoying guests.
It makes it easier to keep your customer service smile on when you know there’s an end date to dealing with the rudest of them.
But it also makes it easy for our very non-techy booking systems to keep up.
The only downside is that Fridays are my busiest. Everyone who’s checking out meets up with everyone checking in, and I’m scrambling to make sure that Lerana has enough time to get all the rooms cleaned.
I don’t know how the faun does it, one day a week to flip all the rooms and cabins on top of her job at the diner—she’s superwoman.
Sure, it helps that this place isn’t very big. Our thirteen rooms and three cabins are more than enough to handle.
According to the green and black computer screen, I’ve got everyone booked in for the next block of visitors, and I can breathe easy for a few minutes. So as the lobby clears out, I can grab a cup of tea from the coffee stand.
I pour the boiling water onto the apple cinnamon tea bag and stare out the window at the perfect white mountain landscape that unfolds in front of me. The sky is blue and clear, and even though it’s assuredly freezing out, it radiates warmth.
The snowstorm we got last week was supposed to be the start of some super high-accumulation cold front, but it seems to have fizzled out into perfect skiing weather.
“Perfect if you actually want to ski,” I say aloud and snort to myself at my own joke.
“We get it, you hate skiing.” I hear a jovial laugh behind me and swivel. I feel weird, because technically my boss just caught me not only daydreaming on the clock, but also belittling the thing that makes us both money.
“I was totally just working,” I tell him as I scramble back to my post.
“Daphne, there’s no one in the lobby. I don’t care if you take a break, you’re not a machine.” Andri follows me to the desk and peeps my sleek new silver laptop closed on the desk. “But speaking of machines, are you sure that’ll work for you? If not, we can go get—”
“It’s literally perfect, thank you.” I smile at the yeti, who obviously needs my approval of the gift for whatever reason.
“I’m glad. I was also wondering if maybe, well you know, there’s this thing tonight…” He squinches up his brow.
“A thing?” I’m not sure where this convo is heading.
“There’s a party, it’s pretty casual, but I was wondering maybe…” He’s not making eye contact now.
“Maybe?” I egg him on, wondering where this is headed.
“Will you go with me?” His eyes flit up under hooded lids, and I can almost feel the anxiety in his gaze.
“Yeah, I’m always down to hang out with my new friend.” I slap his arm.
Andri stills and doesn’t act very excited at the thought of me joining him.
“No. I mean, will you go with me, Daphne. A date, I would like to take you to this party as my date.” He takes a deep breath after he gets his words out.
A date? There’s lots of logical pathways that would be able to lead my thought process here… but for some reason, I assumed that we would just stay friends. That my weird feelings were just my broken heart searching for the path of least resistance.
But it’s not a big leap for my mind to wonder what being with Andri romantically might be like. My imagination veers a hard left into panic though, when I realize that I have no idea what kind of equipment snowmen are working with.
“Daphne?” Andri looks crestfallen as he waits for my response.
“Oh god, sorry!” I blurt out as he pulls me from my inner monologue. “I’d love to. Go on a date with you, that is.”
His face beams, and his spins straightens.
“Really?”
“Yeah, of course…but I do want to set the expectation that I’m not sure if I’m ready for anything deeper than fun right now.
Is that okay?” I can at least be honest with the man who has helped me so much.
I don’t tell him that if I was going to choose anyone to be serious about in Hallows Cove, it would one hundred percent be him, but I don’t want to get his hopes up in case I have to pull back.
“Without a doubt, I’m happy to do whatever makes you comfortable.”
“I trust you.” I smile as I grab his hand. His warm palm envelops my fingers, and he just lets that perma-smile melt into something lazier as he looks at our clasped hands. “What should I wear?”
“Anything, it’s just a super casual hang at the bar in town. Be comfortable, because it doesn't matter what you wear, I’m sure you’ll look amazing. Meet me here in three hours?” he asks.
I nod in reply, and he drops my hand reluctantly and heads back out the door to his own cabin.
A fluttering feeling sticks in my belly as I realize that I’m excited for tonight. A date, a new laptop for school, and someone who thinks the sun shines out of my ass? Things are shaping up for once in my life. I won’t let this happiness, no matter how small, pass me by.