I swallowed against my thick tongue. They loved taking jabs at each other, and to give them this ammunition was too easy. “She was a student. I can’t…go there.” I put my hands up to emphasize my point. With a glance, I saw her pulling out of the parking lot, skis secure on her roof. “It’s not right.”
“She’s not your student now, is she? Because she looked legal,” Clark asked.
“She’s twenty-one, but it’s still weird. I was her teacher.”
“Many a hot video starts out that way,” Clark ribbed. The guys laughed, and I groaned. Why didn’t I tell them I wasn’t into her? Would have been simpler.
“That’s between you, your hand, and your sticky computer screen.” I pulled off my hat, throwing it in the bed of my truck.
“Look at you with the standards all of a sudden. Last I checked, you’d fuck anything with tits.” Clark laughed big enough that I could see the fillings in the back of his mouth.
“Ignore them.” Tam clapped me on the shoulder. “It’s cool, man. There’ll be another one who comes around. I should introduce you to Jessie. I bet she’d like to go out with you.”
“You did, remember? We went on that double date in October. She said she could tell I wasn’t into something serious like she was.”
Tam frowned. “Oh, right.”
I couldn’t fault my friends for trying. Were there quite a few tourist hookups over the years? Sure, meeting a cute girl at The Horse and Trails and bringing her back to my small apartment in town was frequent enough when I was fresh out of college. As young guys, we all had our wild times of hookups and late nights. Slowly, my friends settled down, got wives, or at least long-term girlfriends. Tam found Penny, who l adored like a sister. I was never hurting in the one-night stand area, but anything longer than three dates fizzled out before it went anywhere. All the women in town, I knew and had experienced my share of them. Maybe I should have been pickier as a young man, but I was young and stupid. Did I deserve the man whore reputation I built? Maybe.
At the time, it all seemed to be in good fun. Why settle down with a girl from town when there were so many options coming in every weekend for recreation? My parents never minded me being away for long periods, partying, and coming home with girls. Why should they? Both were busy with their work in real estate, selling luxury second homes to out-of-towners. I think they were happy to have one less person in the house, leaving drink stains on the table and eating all their food. The moment I graduated from college, they replaced my bed with a Pilates machine and my shelf of books with a floor-to-ceiling mirror. If I needed to stay over at their house, I was stuck with the foldout in the living room.
But my grandparents always had a room for me.
Sweethearts from their first meeting when Gran walked into the attendance office on her first day of high school and Gramps offered to walk her to her first class. He used to tell everyone, “The second I saw my Winifred, it was over. She was the prettiest thing I had ever seen. Never looked at another woman.”
They were married for sixty-one years.
Even a year later, losing them within months of each other was the single most devastating event of my life. I took little solace out of inheriting their house. My parents wouldn’t have wanted it, too small, too far from town, and far too rustic for their tastes. I moved out of my bachelor apartment above the bar in town and into the cabin in the mountains that had always felt like the truest home I had. With the move came an abrupt change in me. I was nearly thirty, with only my dog to keep me company. While I didn’t need to find a wife right away, the stark truth was, the last relationship I had that lasted longer than three weeks was in middle school.
The first night at the cabin, I lay in my old room and realized for the first time how lonely my life had become. It was too much to expect to see someone and fall for them right away, the way my grandfather did, but shouldn’t I be open to the possibility of something serious?
But Icicle Creek had other plans. The women I had previous dalliances with were already in relationships or completely unsuitable. And now, I’m being propositioned by a girl who, last I saw, had braces and Pokémon stickers on her binder.
“Man, I don’t know what’s the matter with you. Truitt Baker can’t weigh more than a buck fifty, has a rat tail, and that guy always has a new girlfriend.”
“Thanks,” I grumbled into my tall can.
“You know what I mean. You are way better looking than even me, and I bagged the hottest girl in town.”
“Yeah, but he has to actually talk to a woman in the morning if he wants one to stick around,” Clark joked.
My friends all laughed around me. I responded with a halfhearted smirk to let them know I wasn’t offended. They weren’t wrong.
“It’s not that hard to talk to girls. They’re women, not a mathematical equation.”
Maybe if they were, I’d have an easier time.
“Ask them about themselves—tell them they look pretty in the color they’re wearing. They eat that shit up.”
With one hand, I crumbled the can in my hand, tossing it into the small plastic bag in the back of Tam’s truck.
“I got to dip. Maizie is getting hungry.”
“Now there’s a female you’ll commit to.” Clark laughed. “Too bad it’s a terrier.”
Ignoring my friends, I climbed into my truck, ready to head the twenty minutes back to my place in the woods. As good as that tall boy lager was, what I really craved was my favorite Hazy IPA from nearby Icicle Brewing. Driving down my road, I spied a car stuck in a snowdrift to the side. Some people had no idea how to drive in the snow. A peek in the window as I passed told me there was no one in the car. Good. Hopefully, they called someone. Shaking my head, I continued down Sitka Lane into my driveway on the right. As I pulled into my driveway, I could practically taste the hoppy goodness on my tongue.
That wish died out as I spied a lone figure standing on my front porch, bathed in the yellowy flickering light I meant to switch to an LED bulb. Beside the woman—yes, on closer inspection, it was clearly a woman—was a large suitcase. A bright pink beanie with two white puffs like mouse ears covered brown curly hair in two braids. She was short. I could see that much, far shorter than me. The woman was wearing a bright white coat. No, not a coat, dear God, it was…a sweater. She was standing on the doorstep wearing a thin sweater. It couldn’t be over thirty degrees Fahrenheit outside, and this woman was on my porch, jiggling my doorknob, freaking out my dog, and looking in my windows. In a summer sweater. As I cut the lights, the woman turned to face me.