29
JANIE
“A bear hunt?” Benedict’s gorgeous face frowns on my phone screen.
“Not a literal bear hunt. We’re hunting for Bear, the reindeer.”
“We’re going to kill the mayor?”
I chuckle, “No! We are just trying to spot him. Just another ridiculous tradition, no one ever sees him. There’s no way he’s still alive or if he is, he probably migrated north years ago.”
“How d’you know it’s him for sure?”
“One of his antlers is broken off to a sharp point. Or at least that’s what legend says.”
“Right but this sounded like a competition, there was a prize in your spreadsheet.” I fight a smile but he catches it. “Yes, wifey, I read every word. Consider it foreplay.”
“The hunt is on Friday, not Saturday.”
“I’m painfully aware of that.”
I smile wide because I can’t help it. “If anyone actually spots our four-legged mayor, they get the $500 prize.”
“Five hundred dollars! I’ll get us the world’s best and brightest flashlights.”
I snort, “Will the flashlights you pick cost more than the prize?”
“Probably. See you tomorrow then?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“And you’re positive tomorrow is Friday?”
“Afraid so.”
“Alright, it’s nine fifty-nine,” he makes a show of looking at his designer watch. “I’d better bid you goodnight,”
“Bid me?Bid me?What is this, eighteen-fifty—”
“Goodnight, wifey!” He yells as he hangs up on me.
I laugh. And he saysI’mfun to bother.
But as I flip off the light by the glorious guest bed in this dreamy house Ben bought, something in my chest tightens. Like it has every night since he took care of me. Since I admitted I didn’t want to be alone and he came through for me like no one ever has before. Not even Gran was as attentive or gentle when I got sick as a kid. No boyfriend has ever doted on me like he did. He never mentioned the Saturday sex we had to miss and he even offered to stay in Juniper Falls with me instead of popping up to Toronto for the week.
Juniper Falls over Toronto?
That cannot last.
Even sex-starved, he’ll get bored eventually. He said so himself. And I’m not going to be sitting here pining after him when that happens. Even though I’m tired of doing it over and over, I open the dreaded album on my phone and flip through it one more time before going to sleep.
_____
“There is no way that was a bloody raccoon!” Ben says again as we enter the house.
“It absolutely was.”
“Raccoons do not snort like horses.”
