Snowed In Read online

  “Could you be any more enthusiastic about it?”

  He released a deep breath that would have fogged all the windows in my dad’s Hummer.

  “Okay, look,” he said. “I mean, I’ve got a girlfriend, you have a date, but we can still be friends, right?”

  Could we? I’d been friends with lots of guys. Dated lots of guys. Even if he didn’t have a girlfriend, I’d only go out with him a time or two…okay, maybe three times. All right, maybe four. Four tops. But he did have a girlfriend. So he wasn’t dateable, but I did like him.

  I nodded. “Yeah, okay. We can be friends.”

  “Friends share things. This thing I want to show you is really neat. You’re gonna love it. And like I said, I went to a lot of trouble to fix lunch. So let’s go enjoy ourselves.”

  “Okay.” I could do that. I could force myself to have fun.

  He jerked his head to the side. “Let’s go then. We’re burning daylight. Isn’t that what they say in Texas?”

  “Not anyone I know.”

  After a while we left the road. Josh climbed up a snowy embankment and reached back for me. While I was wearing gloves, he wasn’t. I could feel the strength in his hand as he pulled me up. I really didn’t want to notice how strong he was. Or how big his hand was. Or that it was probably warm and I wouldn’t mind feeling it against my cheek.

  I guess we were officially in the natural part of the island, no longer the town. We were surrounded by leafless trees, occasional evergreens, and lots and lots of snow. I didn’t know how anything survived here, but I’d seen pictures of the island in summertime and it was lush and green. So survival definitely happened.

  And while I found this much snow a little disorienting, I had to admit that I found it beautiful as well.

  “I sorta hate to ruin this by trampling through it,” I said.

  “People do it all the time. If you look around, you’ll see other tracks. Besides, more snow will eventually fall to cover it up.”

  “You know, where I used to live we might have one day, maybe two, of snow all winter. If that. And most of the time, it stayed on the ground only a couple of hours. Some years it never snows. And it never stays looking this pretty. I’ve never known a winter like this.”

  “Never known a Wynter like me, either, I bet.”

  His eyes were sparkling and I laughed. “No, I never have.”

  All the awkwardness or irritation or whatever it was that had settled in between us seemed to melt away.

  He showed me how to put on the skis, with the toe jammed into place, the heel free. Then he demonstrated the sliding motion of cross-country skiing. Even with the ski poles, I found it hard to keep my balance. Josh grabbed me when I almost toppled—twice. To his credit, he didn’t laugh either time.

  When he thought I had the hang of it, he led the way toward wherever it was we were going.

  A small part of me—okay, a large part—was glad that it was just the two of us. Not that I wanted Nathalie to be sick. It was just that I’d really started to like Josh. I was comfortable around him. And I liked watching the way he moved through the woods.

  Every now and then he’d stop and wait for me to catch up.

  “Just take your time; we’re not racing,” he said when I arrived nearly breathless. “You’ll be sore tomorrow.”

  “You’re not even breathing hard,” I said, unable to keep the irritation out of my voice.

  “I do this a lot. A few times a week. It’s great exercise.”

  “You like the outdoors?”

  “Oh, yeah. Come on. It’s not that much farther.”

  I nodded, determined to tough it out. I wasn’t quite as cold anymore. As a matter of fact, I was getting warm and was considering shedding a layer or two.

  And I was glad that we weren’t racing, because it gave me a chance to appreciate the tranquility of our surroundings.

  We passed an old military cemetery, marked by an arch above the gate. The spikes of the picket fence were visible, but very few headstones were.

  “I know this is probably weird,” I called out to Josh, “but I like walking through old cemeteries.”

  He turned to face me. “It’s not weird at all, but it would be kinda hard to walk through there today.”

  I nodded. “In the spring, maybe. I’ll still be here.”

  “We can hike here then. We’re actually on a pretty clearly marked trail. It’s just not real obvious now because of all the snow, but it’s easy to get here.”

  “I like reading old headstones.”

  “Some of the ones in there are really old, like from when Britain and the colonies were at war. Not all the graves are clearly marked anymore.”

  “So you don’t know who’s buried there?”

  “Not really.”

  “That’s sad.”

  “The Preservation Society puts flags on the graves on Memorial Day.”

  “Everyone here is into history, huh?”

  “Pretty much.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “It’s not too much farther. We’ll eat first.”

  “You went to a lot of trouble for this?” I asked incredulously.

  We were sitting on a covered stone picnic table near a natural stone arch. Through it, we had a beautiful view of the lake.

  Josh had put a folded quilt on top of the table, which we were sitting on since, even with the overhead covering, snow had managed to find its way in and was piled around the bench seats. And even with the quilted padding beneath us, my butt was still cold. Although after our trek over the snow, the rest of me was actually kind of warm.

  I held up the pre-packaged pimento cheese sandwich and repeated, “For this?”

  Josh grinned and tossed a bag of sour cream and onion chips into my lap. “I didn’t say it was anything elaborate.”

  “You gave the impression it was something you’d cooked yourself.”

  “I put a lot of thought into which items to buy.”

  Laughing, I shook my head. Did he seriously think that counted?

  He pulled out a Thermos, poured hot chocolate into the mug-shaped top, and handed it to me. It was warm and really good.

  “You redeemed yourself,” I told him.

  “Even better than that.” He took out a bag of miniature marshmallows. He scooped out a few and dropped them in the mug.

  I watched the steam rise, thinking that a guy who went to the trouble to bring not only hot chocolate but marshmallows really was something special.

  I’d never been one to envy a girl because of her boyfriend. But right now I was sorta thinking that Nathalie had it really good.

  Not that I should have been thinking about Josh at all, or comparing him to anyone, or envying the girl he’d hooked up with.

  So I went straight to a topic that was totally boring but would at least stop me from thinking about how much I liked sitting in the cold with Josh. I didn’t want to even think about how much more I’d like it in the summer.

  “I’m used to lazy picnics,” I said. “But I’m guessing we’re not going to dawdle here, are we?”

  “Not really. There’s a limestone cavern over there that I want to show you.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “No, Ash, it’s incredibly dangerous. That’s the reason I want to eat first. In case it’s our last meal.”

  I decided to totally ignore the fact that he called me Ash, which only my best friends did.

  “You want your last meal to be pimento cheese?”

  He grinned. “Nah, I’d want it to be steak. So I guess we’d better survive.”

  He took the mug from me, gulping down a good deal of the hot chocolate and the marshmallows that were melting on top. It felt like a really intimate thing to do—sharing the mug—but I understood his not wanting to weigh his backpack down with a bunch of mugs.

  He poured more hot chocolate and dropped more marshmallows into the mug before handing it back.

  “Thanks,” I said. “So you must do this a lot. You seem to hav