“You should put birdseed out to lure them,” Andi says, the fifth or sixth time we’re hiking back up to our hideout.
“It’s not good form to feed wild animals,” I say. “Dangerous to make them dependent on humans for their food, particularly out here where they’re unlikely to encounter more of it any time soon.”
“One snack does not a dependency make,” she says. “Think how much faster this would go with a lure.”
“You brought the GPS, right?” I ask. “You can go back to the cabin, don’t feel like you have to stay.”
“Why? This is fun,” she says, and we’ve both got our hands in our pockets, but she nudges me with her elbow, glancing over, flushed and conspiratorial like there’s a secret only the two of us know, and for a moment every single thought leaves my brain. “I’ve never played a net sport with greese before.”
“It’s not—” I start, and she’s laughing again, but this time she wins and I smile.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ANDI
I hold my hand out to Gideon, both of us sitting on the quilt that’s keeping the ground from freezing our butts all the way off. I’m glad he talked me into dressing as warmly as possible—which included his sweater that I’m borrowing, something Gideon is demonstratively grumpy about but seems to actually kind of like, which I simply cannot think about right now—because sitting around in the freezing cold is, in fact, a very chilly pastime.
“You take the almonds, I’ll take the dried cranberries,” I’m saying.
“What are the white things?”
“Coconut, I think.”
Predictably, Gideon frowns a little at that, even as he selects several almonds from the palm of my hand. “What kind of bougie trail mix has coconut?” he asks, popping them into his mouth.
“Sorry, should it have only had acorns, wild blueberries, and whatever suspicious mushrooms you can forage for yourself in the dead of winter?” I ask, tossing the rest of my handful into my mouth. Dried coconut and cranberries are perfectly good in trail mix, thank you very much.
“First—”
“Here we go,” I tease, and Gideon’s lips twitch like he’s trying not to smile, a facial expression I’ve become an expert on.
“—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 smile again, 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’t not know 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 is pissed.
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.