“Uh, we could freeze to death.”
“Boring.”
“It’s not that boring, actually.There’s intense pain, followed by numbness, muscle rigidity, disorientation.”
“It’s boring, Tean.I’m in a really weird headspace; I need you to dig deep.”
“Some people who die from hypothermia feel extremely hot at the end and paradoxically undress.”
“I said deep!”
“I don’t know!I guess if we were stuck up here long enough we’d have to resort to cannibalism.”
“Cannibalism?Again?”
“This is a lot of pressure.”
“Babe, we’re talking about being trapped in a snowstorm on the ass-end of the Wasatch Mountains.I’m throwing you a softball here.”
“Sometimes, people have to drink their own pee?”
“Tean!”
“I’m trying!”Tean checked that his glasses were still in place.“Maybe we’d get found by some of those isolationist prepper types.They’d have some kind of compound.”
“Okay.”
“We’d think they were rescuing us.”
“But they weren’t, duh.”
“Probably not.”
“They’d definitely use me for my body,” Jem said.And then he threw a sidelong scowl at Tean.“And not for cannibalism.”
“Um, like, sex stuff?”
“Oh my God.”Jem drew a breath.“I’m doing all the heavy lifting here, sweetheart.”
“I don’t know what you want!”And then, in a burst that Tean couldn’t hold back, “I’m out of practice.”
A huge grin spread across Jem’s face.“It’s okay, babe.You’ll get there again.”
The snowfall did thicken as they grew closer to the lodge, and by the time they made the turn, it was sticking to the roads.Although Tean was normally the pessimist of the two, he’d taken Jem’s predictions about the weather more as a sign of his overall worry about the dinner than anything else.But already a thin layer of white fuzzed the blacktop, and Tean wondered if maybe Jem had been right.
“Do those headlights look familiar?”Jem asked out of nowhere.
Tean glanced over his shoulder, but there was only darkness.
“Never mind,” Jem said.He laughed.“You know, I might be a little nervous.”
Tean put his hand over Jem’s.The fine gold hairs there tickled his palm.
“All good now,” Jem said.“Got my head screwed on straight, I promise.”
Then the drive curved, and the lodge came into view: a stone veneer accented with honey-colored wood, high windows that shone like quicksilver, deep eaves already frosted over.The drive circled a fire pit, and flames danced in lanterns bracketing the lodge’s entrance.On the spruce and pine planted around the perimeter, holiday lights glowed.
Jem followed the drive to the porte cochere.He buzzed down the window as a red-cheeked man of middle age approached.
