“I guess it would be,” Walker said, suppressing a smile.
“Also,” I added, “I guess, if I’m honest, I don’t particularly want you to get eaten by a bear.”
At that, Walker let the smile happen.
“What?” I said.
He shook his head. “Nothing, really.”
“What?” I insisted.
So Walker shrugged. “You don’t want me to get eaten by a bear. That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in years.”
I did not make Walker crawl back over to his original sleeping area on his injured knee after that. I let him lie next to me and do breathing exercises while the pain took its time subsiding.
Purely out of human compassion, of course.
I also wanted to keep an eye on him and make sure he didn’t try to sneak out to wrestle the bear.
And that’s how we fell asleep side by side.
And then suddenly—boom—it was late morning the next day.
And our mothers arrived.
And they started clanging around the living room, cleaning up empty bean cans and snapping blankets as they folded them, with just a whiff of mom-judgment about two lazybones sleeping in on a beautiful day.
“What the hell happened in here?” Taffy demanded as Walker and I sat up.
“What did you do to the rental car?” my mom wanted to know.
I looked around. It was bright and sunny out, the fire had burned to embers hours ago, and it wasn’t even cold in the house anymore. We must’ve thrown off all our layers in our sleep as the room warmed up, and everything was everywhere. It looked like the morning after a frat party.
Walker was even shirtless.
When he looked down and realized, he dove into his wadded-up T-shirt, which wound up inside out and backward with the tag standing up at the hollow of his neck.
I tapped the same spot on my own neck and frowned at him.
He frowned back.
I touched mine harder until he looked down, noticed his problem, and reworked his shirt into proper position.
The moms watched this whole communication go down.
“How bad is the snow?” I asked as a distraction.
“It’s already melted,” Taffy said. “Mostly. The temp’s back up to seventy-five.”
“Unseasonably warm,” my mom corroborated.
“But it was chilly in here this morning when we first arrived,” Taffy said. “Why didn’t you turn on the heat?”
Walker was rubbing his eyes. “The power was out.”
“Did you flip the breakers?”
“Of course I flipped the breakers.”
