“I’ve got news for you,” I tell her, and she laughs, even as she’s glancing around the forest. “You’d hear it if it were nearby,” I reassure her.
Andi doesn’t look reassured.
“How big is real big?”
I shrug and hold my hand about three feet off the ground.
“I’m not a hog sleuth,” I point out. “I can’t tell you that it’s got a chipped tooth and had berries for breakfast by looking at its tracks.”
“What use are you?” she teases.
“I can tag the hell out of a grouse.”
We stand, brushing snow off ourselves. It falls to the ground in clumps.
“How dangerous are they?” she asks. “You did say they were the worst thing out here.”
“No, I said the worst thing was a mountain lion, followed by a momma bear,” I correct. “I just said you’re more likely to come across—”
She flicks some snow off her sleeve right into my cheek, and my sentence gets all tangled up.
“It’s fine,” I finish. “They probably won’t attack unless provoked.”
“Probably,” she says, looking back at the tracks. “Great.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
GIDEON
It’s evening when Andi walks into the kitchen with an armful of clothing and looks over my shoulder at the iPad, where I’m backing up bird data.
“Nosy,” I say, and she makes an indignant noise.
“You’re using it right out in the open where anyone can see it,” she says.
“Doesn’t mean you have to look at my private computer activities,” I say. I’m trying to tease her but I think it comes out a little too serious, and next thing I know, Andi’s bright red and not quite meeting my eyes. I don’t know what to think about any of it.
“Just for that, I’m not offering to toss your laundry in with mine,” she says.
“You’re doing laundry again?”
“I’m out of,” she says, and then stands a tiny bit taller. “Unmentionables.”
We look at each other for a long moment, and I’ve seen her half-naked and had my mouth on her bare skin, and I’ve got no clue what to say.
“I think you just mentioned them,” is what I go with, and glance at the pile in her hands. Sure enough, there are underpants and sports bras in every color of the rainbow and several whimsical patterns. I look at them for a moment too long, then realize I’m looking at her dirty laundry and look anywhere else.
Andi just sighs and sort of laughs. “I’m trying to be a lady, okay?” she says.
“How’s that going?”
Andi scrunches her face. “I’m about to wash and hang unmentionables in the bathroom I currently share with a gentleman, I’ve been taking baths with a washcloth and a sink for the past ten days, and my hair has so much grease in it I could fry a small turkey,” she says as she walks into the bathroom. “I’ve felt more ladylike, I’ll tell you that.”
“There’s a bathtub,” I point out, still talking to her through the doorway.
Andi tosses her laundry in the sink, looks at the bathtub, and then looks at me.
“You could take a bath,” I go on, pointing out the obvious.
She grabs the hand-cranked laundry machine from under the sink and starts filling the tank from the water filter, then gives me the world’s most skeptical look.
“The water’s freezing and in short supply,” she says. “I’m fine, I promise. Or do you need me to scrub harder during my sink baths?”
“We’ve got a stove and a creek,” I say. “No reason the water can’t be hot and plentiful.”
Andi pauses, then turns the water off. She’s quiet for a long moment.
“That’s a huge pain in the ass,” she finally says in a tone of voice that I’m pretty sure means I’ve never wanted anything more.
I walk to the bathroom door and lean against the frame, glancing past her at the tub. It’s pretty small—maybe two and a half feet by four feet, basically a wooden basin with a drain in the bottom—but that makes it easier to fill.
“I’ll make you a deal,” I say. “Let me toss a few things in with your laundry and I’ll get you some hot water.”
“That’s not a fair trade.”
“Sure it is, if I don’t have to look at your greasy hair any more,” I tease, and Andi huffs and rolls her eyes.
“Your hair is also gross,” she mutters. “You’re gross. Go get me whatever it is you want me to wash.”
A few minutes later, there’s a giant stockpot full of water heating up over two burners on the stove and the sloshing sounds of the hand-cranked laundry machine coming in from the bathroom. I’ll need to refill the water tank in the kitchen, but that’s a problem for daylight, not right now. While it finishes heating, I lean against the kitchen counter and pretend I’m not watching Andi as she pulls her unmentionables from the washer and hangs them on the lines strung over the bathtub, their presence already oddly familiar since she only brought enough for a few days.
Everything about Andi is like that: startlingly new and oddly familiar at the same time, like an old melody with new words. Like I know it, deep down, even if I don’t know exactly how to sing along yet. Andi’s just like I remember down to the millimeter, down to the hitch in her laugh, the freckles in her eyes.
When I woke up this morning, I was a million degrees and half-off a twin mattress, one arm under Andi’s head, her back to me. I came awake in stages, like you do: heat, light, the hardness of the floor under my left leg, Andi’s bare skin in front of me, rising and falling as she slept. I don’t know how long I watched her for, cataloguing the night before, making sure I slotted the memories away properly—did you like it? Jesus—warmth and the thump of her heart under my palm, every noise I could draw out of her. I thought about it until she stirred, not quite awake yet, and I could pull my arm from under her, drop a kiss on her bare shoulder, and get up.
Then I locked myself in the bathroom and got myself off, hard, fast and quiet, biting my lip against the desperate noises I wanted to make. It didn’t take long. I was barely done before the guilt set in—not deep, but always present—and I made bacon as penance.
When the water’s ready, Andi clears out so I can lug it into the bathroom and pour it into the tub without splashing too much anywhere, then top it off with the water in the bathroom tank. When I’m done it’s hot enough to turn my hand red, but that won’t last long.
I grab the pot and look around. No Andi.
“Bath’s ready,” I call, then hear something fall in the pantry.
“There’s bath stuff in here,” she says when I poke my head in. She’s on her tiptoes, a flashlight in one hand, the other elbow-deep into a shelf above her head.
My first instinct is to tell her to watch for snakes. I remind myself we’re indoors.
“It’s getting cold,” I tell her.
“Hold on,” she says, lurching upward on her tiptoes, the sweater she’s wearing sliding down her neck and exposing a patch of collarbone. It’s my sweater, of course, because that’s practically the only thing she’s worn for days now, as if she’s committed to making me lose my mind.