I should say something. I should acknowledge what just happened, that it happened. Gideon looks a little nervous and a little lost and I should tell him that I liked it. That I meant it. That I’d happily do it again and more when my butt’s less cold; that I’ve been thinking about kissing him kind of a lot but didn’t really mean to actually do it.
My heart feels like it’s thumping sideways, like it’s somehow gotten stuck the wrong way around it’s Gideon, I just kissedGideonand I liked it and despite everything, I wasn’t prepared for this. Someone should say something.Ishould say something—
“If the tortillas are still good, we can make burritos tonight,” I blurt out as Gideon wraps the sled rope around his hand. “Do you like burritos? I think they’re super.”
Gideon clears his throat and looks up at the top of the slope, then glances over at me. His face is perfectly neutral, so I give him a cheerful smile because that’s what my face does on autopilot, sometimes.
“Yeah,” he finally says. “Burritos sound good.”
CHAPTERSIXTEEN
GIDEON
There are tortillas.There are refried beans. There is cheese.
We make burritos. We don’t talk about what just happened.
“Have you ever put grouse in these?” Andi asks, standing in front of the stove, poking at beans with a spatula. Her hair is in a fresh braid, over one shoulder, and she’s down to leggings and thick socks and my blue sweater that she stole.
I’m on the brink of losing my mind about it and she’s acting like nothing’s happened. Maybe nothing did. Maybe when people don’t get told practically from birth that thinking sinful thoughts will send you to Hell, they kiss people in the snow and it’s not a big deal.
Maybe this is only a big deal to me. The thought makes my chest twist unpleasantly, so I shove it aside.
“Grouse?” I echo.
“Sure. You said they were game birds,” she says, shrugging as she stirs, balancing on one foot and tapping the toes on her other foot on the floor behind her. Fuck. What was I doing?
“That doesn’t mean I cook and eat them myself,” I say, grabbing a cast iron pan from the cabinet. I’m supposed to be making dinner, not wondering whether her skin’s also a little pink under the sweater.
“Might be good. And if you’re catching them anyway…” she trails off, shrugging.
“Have you ever actually been hunting?” I ask, walking up to where she’s blocking practically the whole stove, leaning and tapping, sweater sleeves rolled up around her wrists.
I take another step forward and tap her on the hip to get her to move over, and she gives me a smile like sunlight.Fuck.
“Nah, never appealed,” she says as I put the pan on the other burner and turn it on. “Rick used to go when I was younger, and I think a bunch of his family do it, but I never went. Lucia has friends who give her venison in exchange for tomato plants, though.”
“Well, processing birds is an enormous pain in the ass without the right equipment, and the equipment’s not worth it unless you do a whole lot of it,” I say, watching the pan and not Andi. “But if you’d like to catch one, get the feathers off, and butcher it for grouse tacos, be my guest.”
I stare at the pan, willing it to heat faster. Andi’s quiet right next to me, so close that every time she moves scratchy wisps of wool rub against my bare forearm, and it’s making my entire arm tingle.
This has never happened to me before.
Not the physical parts. I have, in fact, kissed women. I’ve been naked in sexual situations that resulted in orgasm. Not often, but enough. That said, my relationship history is… by-the-book.
Meet a woman, somehow. Ask the woman out. Go on dates. Kiss. Maybe more, all on a timeline that feels pre-determined, like I’m checking boxes. Inevitably call it off before it gets serious and wonder, for the millionth time, whether it’s something wrong with me. It’s been different, once or twice, felt less like checking boxes and more like anticipation, but those never lasted, either.
I’msupposedto be dating. Hell, I’msupposedto be married with a couple of kids by now, like my siblings Matt or Zach or Beth, and there’s been no small measure of concern over the fact that I’m not. At a certain age, I’ve come to understand, you’re supposed to simply pick someone and start reproducing, and neither part of that equation has ever appealed to me.
I’d rather be alone than settle, and I had a vasectomy when I was twenty nine. My family doesn’t believe me about the first and doesn’t know about the second. Except for Reid, who drove me and then spent a weekend making fun of me while I complained about my balls.
The last time I kissed a woman without a date first was in college, where I did some alcohol-fueled fumbling that I never felt great about the next morning. Even those were few and far-between. I started college when I was twenty-four and had already enlisted, gotten out, and worked the kind of job that made me decide to use the money from the GI bill, so I was older than most of the kids there. The only urge I ever got about drunk eighteen-year-olds was to make sure they got home safe.
Truth is, the alcohol was good at shutting up the tiny voice that’s always whisperedthis is wrongabout every physical encounter I ever had.
“Do your parents still have chickens?” Andi asks, and I realize I’ve been staring a hole in a frying pan.
“No,” I say, plopping a tortilla onto it. “Someone left the door to the coop open when I was sixteen or so and a fox got in there.”
