“Are there pictures?” I ask, and Gideon rolls his eyes.
“Andi,” he says, all patient and offended-sounding as he pulls his phone out with his other hand. “Of course there are pictures.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
GIDEON
For some reason, I let Andi win the argument the next day over whether I can go do my job or not. I’m up here during the winter for the sole purpose of conducting a survey on the nesting habits of the ruffed grouse, and so far I’ve surveyed precisely one of several probable nesting areas.
I tell her that, obviously, and point out that my ankle feels much better and it’s wrapped up properly and also I’ll be very careful, but she just folds her arms and blocks my way to the front door, as if I could not a) use the back door in the kitchen, or b) simply lift her up and move her, something I’ve already proven I can do.
In any case, I’m attempting to compile data on a tablet—a pain in the ass, but the laptop takes way too much power to bother bringing to the cabin—when she bursts through the kitchen door, a tiny flurry of snow swirling through at her feet.
“Did you know there’s a sled?” she asks, all breathless, still in the doorway, holding up a plastic sled just over the threshold so it’s technically outside.
“Close the door, you’re letting snow in,” I tell her.
“It looks pretty nice, actually,” she goes on, turning back to the sled she’s still holding up, her braid sliding across her back, her cheeks and nose faintly pink from the cold, her fuchsia hat dotted with melting snow.
“It’s a Wal-Mart plastic sled.”
“Yeah, but it’s the expensive Wal-Mart plastic sled,” she says, enthusiasm undampened. “You know, they always have the super-cheap ones out front in the bin for ten bucks, and those are the ones that crack if you look at them funny, but if you go to the winter outdoors section in the back you can get a nicer one for thirty dollars? This is a thirty-dollar Wal-Mart sled.”
“What are you, a cat? Come in or go—”
“Yeah, yeah,” she says, lowering the sled to the porch and finally stepping inside so she can close the door. “We’re not paying to heat the outdoors, stop letting the outside in, what was I, raised in a barn?”
“I didn’t say any of those things.”
“You didn’t have to,” she says, bending to take her boots off, but she’s smiling at me like it’s a joke and I’m in on it, so—I guess it is. “There’s some wild stuff in that shed.”
“Why were you in the shed?” I ask. “You should be careful, there are probably black widows—”
“It’s December, they’re all dead,” she points out, taking off her hat and coat and draping them over a kitchen chair, which isn’t where they go. Underneath she’s got my blue sweater on, and she pushes the too-long sleeves up her arms like it’s already a habit.
It’s a couple sizes too big for her, chunky and formless, but it looks good anyway. She’s all flushed and cozy and warm, and wearing my sweater like it belongs to her, and I’m somewhat alarmed to discover I don’t hate it. The opposite, actually, which is even more alarming.
“Could be snakes,” I say, instead of all that.
“They don’t hibernate?”
“They’d stop hibernating right quick if you dropped a shovel on one.”
“I can outrun a frozen snake,” she says, opening the fridge, as if that’s even the issue here. “I’m gonna make tomato soup and grilled cheese for lunch, you in?”
“I can make it,” I say without thinking.
“You can sit your ass down at that table and wait to be served,” she says, pulling the ingredients out. “Keep playing Stardew Valley.”
“I’m not playing Stardew Valley,” I say. “I’m compiling the GPS data from—what?”
She’s grinning this reckless grin at me, braid over one shoulder as she rifles through a drawer for the can opener.
“I’m just teasing,” she says. “You don’t have to look so mad.”
“I don’t look mad,” I grumble, shutting the tablet and pushing it to one side because I’m clearly not going to get anything done. “It’s in the drawer next to the sink.”
“Ah,” she says, pulls it out, and shuts the drawer with her hip. It’s not the sort of thing I should notice, but at this point I’ve got a whole goddamn list of things I shouldn’t notice about Andi but do anyway.
Like: the slight gap between her front teeth when she smiles at me, smaller than the gap she had as a kid but still there, like she had braces but they didn’t fix everything.
Like: the way she wears leggings that dig into her waist a little, and thinking about that soft, fleshy bump is why I burned dinner last night.
Like: how she was stronger than I expected when she wrestled me on that bed and how I liked that more than I should have.
“You sure I can’t help?” I ask, because the alternative is to sit here and watch her, and that feels dicey at best.
“If you really want to do something, stick your foot on a chair,” she says without looking up from the soup she’s pouring into a pot. “Rest that ankle because after lunch, we’re going sledding.”
“I’ve got work to finish,” I say, glancing at the iPad even though I also put my foot on a chair. “I’m already a couple of days behind on tagging, and if I want these data sets to mean anything in the spring, I can’t afford to lose more time. I can’t just go sledding in the middle of the day.”
She glances over her shoulder as she puts a slice of cheese into her mouth and smiles around it.
“Suit yourself,” she says, and goes back to making lunch.
“Almost there,” I say an hour later. I’ve got the sled under one arm and Andi crunching through the snow in front of me, and I don’t want to talk about how this happened.
“There’s still a lot of trees,” Andi is saying, hands in her coat pockets, breath fogging out in front of her, cheeks and nose and lips all pink again.
“It’s a forest.”
“You said there was a good spot!”
I sigh because I’m a sucker with no spine and even less ability to say no in the face of the way Andi looks when she thinks she’s got a good idea. She had the sled at first, but it’s kind of big and it was awkward for her, so after the fifth time she knocked it into a tree and dropped it I picked it up.
“Here,” I tell her. “Just after that rock.”
“How far from the cabin are we?” she asks, plunging ahead.
“Maybe three-quarters of a mile,” I say, watching her braid swing across her back. “If you check the GPS I handed you before we left, it’ll tell you exactly—”
She stops and her face lights up. Coincidentally, I forget what I was saying.
“This is perfect,” she says, and turns to me, she’s smiling with her eyes crinkled, the kind that threatens to turn into a laugh at any second, and it feels so good I have to look away.