Page 17 of Stuck on the Slopes

“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 Ihadn’tguessed 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 ofRocky Horror Picture Showevery 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.”

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