She shooed him away.
The laugh under his breath before he busied himself at the stove did dangerous things inside her chest.
By the time she joined him at the table, he’d lit a couple of emergency candles that had clearly been used a few times before. They were gnarled with knobs of melted wax down the sides and at the base, and he didn’t have a single candlestick for them. One went in a mason jar, another was wedged into a terra cotta pot.
But the soft glow was cozy and perfect in its imperfection, casting flickering shadows on the walls, and the bowl of stew Josh set in front of her smelled amazing.
“Dig in,” Josh said. “I’m just going to grab my phone and check the outage map.”
She knew it would be polite to wait, but her stomach was trying to turn itself inside out to get at the stew. So as she watched him cross to where he’d left his phone, she lifted the spoon to her mouth…and moaned around the first bite.
Josh pivoted on his heel.
Candlelight was the best and worst way to see one’s ex respond to what could only be described a sex noise, triggered by food they made you.
His brows lifted and the corner of his mouth quirked up. “Good?”
“Very,” she mumbled.
“Excellent.” He grabbed his own bowl, sat across from her, then tapped on the screen of his phone. “Big outage area, all the way to the highway. A crew is on site, apparently. Estimated time to power being restored is ninety minutes.”
“So we don’t need to share a sleeping bag all night to conserve heat?” She was teasing, but the idea of pressing their bodies together—for safety—made her squirm. She shouldn’t go there.
“For the best,” Josh said dryly.
She wrapped her hands around the bowl. “I’ve got this stew to keep me warm.” And then she yawned. “God, sorry.”
“Why are you sorry? You need your rest.” He gestured to her bowl. “Eat as much or as little as you want, and then crawl into bed. I’ve got extra blankets if you need them.”
“I’m eating all of this.” But after another few bites, she yawned again.
“Maybe the snowshoeing was too much.” Concern laced his words.
“No,” she protested. Yes, her eyelids felt heavy and her eyes were scratchy. But the walk was nice. “I might be ready for bed soon, though.”
“You can take the lantern with you. It’s an LED flashlight. You can leave it on all night and it won’t run out of battery.”
“And leave you out here homesteading with the candles?”
He held up his phone. “I have a full battery. I’ll watch the last period of the hockey game.”
“Just like the pioneers did.”
“Exactly.”
“I’ve never seen a hockey game. You could put it on if you want?”
“You don’t mind?” He told her about his niece’s fiancé as they finished eating, and explained how hockey has three twenty-minute periods of play, and right now there were colour commentators on the video on his phone, so he turned the volume down and gave her the Josh commentary instead.
Most of it went over her head, but she knew they were cheering for the Hamilton Highlanders.
“The cheer is sometimes,Go Boars Go, because their mascot is a wild boar.”
“How aggressive.”
“A bagpipe-playing wild boar.”
She laughed out loud. “How…hilarious? Is it supposed to be funny?”
