He was half off the bed, braced for defense, and she froze; she hadn’t realized that her fear had quieted with the s’mores until it came roaring back. They stood like that across the cabin from one another, and then he sat back down as if nothing had happened, and she took a deep breath.
She swiped the marshmallows off the ground and brandished the bag and the cards. “Fancy a game?”
He looked between her hands. “A game of what?”
She shrugged. “Five-car draw? Texas hold ‘em? I’m not picky.”
“We’re going to play poker?”
“I know you missed an enormous chunk of life stuck behind a computer, but please tell me you have at least played cards before in your life.”
He shrugged. “You don’t have to leave a computer to play cards. Until they banned it, I played a ton of online poker.”
“You’re telling me you’ve never held a deck of cards?”
“Who has cards lying around? Aside from the owner of this cabin and your family, obviously, who I am sure are wonderful.”
She snorted. “So at least I don’t have to teach you the rules.”
“There’s not a chess set in there, is there?” he asked hopefully as she sat down across from him and smoothed the quilt between them.
“Of course, you play chess. Online?”
He grinned. “Of course.”
“No, there’s no chess set hiding around. Sorry.” She wouldn’t have told him if there was.
She slid the cards out of the deck and shuffled them. He pivoted to face her and crossed his legs.
As she shuffled, she noticed the energy bars were arranged neatly into piles, but not by flavor. A chocolate was mixed with peanut butter. She put down the cards and leaned over.
“Why did you sort them like that?”
“Expiration date.”
“Expiration date?”
“It just seemed to me that with preserved food, we should eat the oldest first?” He picked up a coconut bar. “This one is only good for another month.”
“Okay, first of all, the best-before date is really squishy, especially for dried food. I mean, liability says they have to put one on there, but it’s not like next Tuesday they’re suddenly terrible. And also, if we’re here a month… We’re not going to be here a month.” She’d ski off and leave him here before she spent a month in this cabin eating nothing but oatmeal and s’mores with a werewolf.
She picked up the coconut that apparently had been in her bag long enough to approach its expiration date. “This one isn’t a surprise. I hate this flavor.”
“Well, why did you buy it?”
“‘Because I didn’t know I hated it when I bought it.”
“And yet you’re still eating it?” he asked.
“I’m not going to throw away a bunch of food because I didn’t like it.”
“Oh.”
“Would you?”
“I like most food,” he said defensively.
“You would! Food waster.”
