She’s so fucking pretty.
Sopretty.
If she were ten years older, I’d be saying to hell with the pancakes and kissing her.
But she’s not.
And I need to get my head on straight.
“This might not last, but I’m enjoying the hell out of it today,” she murmurs as she swirls the mug and watches the wine inside.
I frown at her. “What might not last?”
“Try the cabinet next to the fridge,” she says instead of answering me. She settles into a chair at the small table, crossing one leg over the other, and points with her wine mug. “I think I saw some olive oil in there. Not ideal, but it’s better than crusty pancakes.”
I go digging, andyes.
Even better than olive oil, there’s nonstick spray.
Looks expired, but it’s butter flavor. “Did you bring all of this?” I ask her as I get the first pancakes on.
She pauses with the mug halfway to her mouth. “You’ve never stayed in a vacation rental house, have you?”
“I might’ve once a decade or so ago.”
Her smile explodes again. “You want to live, book yourself a vacation rental once a month and see what weird things happen. Usually they’re nothing out of the ordinary, and if they’ve been around a long time on the rental sites, you’ll have stuff like the pancake mix that someone else left here. But sometimes you get in a situation with people who aren’t authorized renting out a house, or with previous people leaving their edibles or mega boxes of condoms.”
She takes another sip of wine, then continues. “And sometimes the houses are just strange. I stayed in this one just outside of Cleveland that had pink toilets and a massive marble statue of a vagina in the courtyard out back. But the house itself was built in like the early nineteen hundreds. There was zero water pressure and the beds were so soft that I couldn’t sleep. Except for the bed in the attic room. That one was so hard you might as well have slept on the floor. And it smelled very weird.”
“You always stay in vacation rental houses when you’re on the road?”
“Depends on how long I’m in any given city.”
“You have a favorite city?”
She opens her mouth to answer as I reach to flip the pancakes, and there’s a massivepopthat plunges us into darkness.
Fuck.
Aspen makes a noise as my eyes adjust to the low light coming off of the fire in the living room.
“You good?” I ask her.
“Did the power just go out?”
“Yep.”
I pull out my phone and flip on the flashlight, taking care not to aim it at her.
“I mean, duh. Yes. Of course the power went out. Like you thought it would.” Her voice is a little higher than normal.
“Happens in heavy snowstorms.”Cook, pancakes. Keep cooking.Wonder if I can finish the rest of the batter over the fire? Also, is she panicking about the power being out? “We’re as prepped as we can be. Nothing to worry about.”
But don’t flush the toilet. Or plan on taking a shower.
Also—shitagain.
I head around to the window over the table, drop the blinds, and pull the curtains shut, then do the same in the living room and the bedroom.
