“—foraging mushrooms is a very bad idea unless you’re an expert mycologist, which I’m not,” he says. “Most poisonous plants here aren’t deadly, but the fungi will fuck you up. Secondly—”
“If you ever start a metal band, that should be its name.Fungi Will Fuck You Up.”
“There’s not much danger of that happening,” he says, trying not to smileagain, and God, the way my stomach twists when he does that. “Secondly, it’s not the dead of winter. We’re barely a week in.”
I sigh and tilt my head back against the boulder, resting my forearms on my knees, my ratty braid over one shoulder. Half my hair is sticking out of it, but there’s no point in fixing it right now.
“No one is forcing you to eat my trail mix,” I point out, even as he tilts the bag into his hand, frowning at what’s probably the incorrect ratio of ingredients. I can’t tell whether his fervor for getting exactly the right bits out are because his opinions are that strong, or because he wants to avoid eye contact while we’re sitting this close.
Which—is fine. Honestly. I get it. I enjoyed whatever happened yesterday, but I also know that it was probably because of the adrenaline from sledding, and the fact that we’ve both been cooped up for a while, not to mention we were probably a little dehydrated. These things happen! Not a big deal.
Also, okay, suddenly being back with Gideon like this, more physically proximate than even those summers when we were together all day every day, is a mind-fuck of the highest order. He’s a total stranger and I somehow know everything about him. I’ve spent twenty years moving on from our friendship and here he is, again, familiar and alien all at once. Sometimes it feels like no time has passed and sometimes it feels like it was forty years, sixty, that we didn’t know each other. I don’t know what to do and I don’tnotknow what to do, but it seems like kissing him was probably incorrect.
Even if I really, really liked it, and I’d swear on a stack of bibles that he did too.
“I’m glad you came,” he says suddenly, when he’s finished eating his handful of Approved Trail Mix Ingredients, leaning his head against the boulder behind us.
For a moment, I’m surprised into silence.
“Yeah, well,” I say, eloquently. “I mean.”
“It can get a little boring out here,” he admits. “As much as I like not having to deal with people…”
I copy his pose and raise both eyebrows. Now we’re both leaning against the boulder, the sun weak through the clouds, the branches reaching toward the sky half skeletal and half bushy evergreens, like the forest could never make up its mind.
Gideon’s looking at me very seriously, that insouciant swagger somehow back in the line of his body against the rock, the splay of his legs on the ground. The moment stretches, ready to snap and for half a second I wonder if I’ll ever get to kiss him indoors, in fewer layers.
His phone alarm goes off. We both sit up straighter then stare as he pulls it from his pocket and turns it off.
“Well,” he says, rising to his feet. He’s got his binoculars out, gazing over the boulder at the net trap, and it’s not like I have a thing for birdwatchers, exactly, but I might have a thing for the calm, confident way Gideon approaches tasks. “I think we’ve got one,” he tells me. “You coming?”
* * *
It’s a grouse,and it ispissed.
Gideon goes to his knees in front of the net, stretched between two trees. He puts his gloves in his pockets, takes careful stock of the situation, and then sighs.
“You really got yourself worked up, huh?” He says it in this low, soothing rumble that goes up my spine. “All right. I’m gonna get you out of this, try not to get your—oh, you’re spittin’ mad, aren’t you. Can’t say I blame you.”
I stand a few feet back and watch, because the few other birds we’ve caught today were a pretty straightforward affair: Gideon pulled at the right few spots in the net, and they flew away. But the grouse is considerably bigger—the size of a small, skinny chicken—and it is absolutely not interested in being comforted by Gideon.
“Course the first one we got had to be a firecracker,” he says. “Usually, they give up after a few minutes, but she’s real spirited.”
“You need help?” I take a cautious step closer, since I don’t want to piss the bird off more, and see that Gideon’s got one big hand around her shoulders, mostly immobilizing her neck and wings, while with the other he untangles the net from around her feet.
“I can get it, but if you don’t mind,” he says. “She’s not making this easy.”
I kneel in the snow beside Gideon and take my own gloves off. He’s still talking to this bird in this low, soothing voice that makes my skin pinprick as he works both hands around her body, keeping her wings in.
“Okay,” I say, and the grouse fixes me with an angry, beady stare, as if to sayI fucking dare you.
“I’ve got her, take as long as you need,” Gideon says, so I get to work.
She’s got the black cords of the net wrapped at least twice around each foot in knotwork that it’s pretty hard to make sense of, given that every few seconds she scrabbles at me with her talons. They’re not deadly claws or anything, but she does get me once and I yelp, snatching my hand back.
“You okay?” Gideon asks, frowning, as the grouse squawks.
“Fine, just surprised,” I say, and shoot her a glare. “Holdstill, it’ll be easier for everyone.”
