Page 14 of Catch Yourself a Snowmance
Carson and I look over her simultaneously.
“What? We might as well?” Tori says.
“I’m down with cooking,” Carson says easily.
“Why not?” I agree.
The three of us head into the kitchen. We make a simple meal of spaghetti and garlic bread. Tori tosses a salad.
“We make a good team,” Carson says while I’m draining the pasta at the sink.
He walks up behind me and nearly cages me in with his presence.
“I need to rinse my hands.” His voice is low and soft.
I shake out the noodles in the colander and step to the side. “All yours.”
I walk back over to the stove to stir in the sauce. Tori steps up beside me.
Her voice is barely a whisper. “Anything going on there?”
I don’t exactly know what to say. Nothing is going on. Ofcourse nothing is going on. But I’m feeling things I haven’t felt in a long, long time. Those flutters in my belly. My eyes seem to seek him out, watching him move through the house, looking for him among our friends, waiting to see what he’ll do or say next.
It’s a little vacation infatuation. It’s harmless. And, like the snow outside, all of those sensations will melt away when I leave this mountain.
Chapter 6
Carson
Guys! I'm eating junk and watching rubbish.
You better come out and stop me!
– Kevin McCallister, Home Alone
Liam and I raided a trunk and a few boxes in the attic after dinner and discovered a bunch of blankets in the middle of the afternoon yesterday, so we all had something extra to stave off the chill last night.
Do the extra blankets we found smell like mothballs? Yes.
Do I now smell like mothballs? Probably.
We’re trying to ration our firewood, so we waited until evening to light the fireplace yesterday. But today, we’ve agreed to let it burn all day. Cell service has been spotty in the storm, so we’re fully cut off from the outside world for the time being.
I make quiches for breakfast, and enjoy myself a bit too much watching Alyssa devour her slice with a smile. As the morning winds on, we sit around talking, some of us in themain rooms, others in their own bedrooms reading or napping.
We make lunch. Then we clean up. I lie down for a while, and when I wake I walk through the house looking for Alyssa. Mostly, I’ve spent the day following her around like a puppy. She’s fun to talk to and we seem to hit it off. We talk about our families, our jobs, our dreams. And she seems interested in it all.
No one else seems to notice the amount of time Alyssa and I are spending with one another, or if they do, they’re not making a big deal about it. I’m grateful for that. I don’t need Gage or Mitch acting like a couple of frat boys while we’re all cramped in such close quarters.
Noelle pulls out another board game before we sit down to a dinner of pan roasted chicken and vegetables.
“Who’s making dessert?” Jennifer asks while we clear our dinner plates to the sink.
“Dessert?” Liam asks. “I feel like all I’ve done is eat and sleep, eat and sleep, eat and sleep.”
“And that’s a bad thing because …?” Mitch asks.
Noelle wraps her arms around Liam’s waist and stands next to him. “Are you complaining?”
