"Uh oh," he said after his fifth crêpe, gaze going to the window where the clap of thunder was loud enough to make the window panes rattle in their frames. "Hope no one is on the road," he went on. "You alright?" he asked, brows furrowing. "You haven't eaten anything."
"I'm not anorexic." The words shot out of me, knee-jerk, defensive, my voice a mix of frustration and desperation.
"I, ah, yeah, baby, I wasn't saying that. You just haven't touched your food. And it's banging. So I figured something was wrong."
"Sorry," I said, eyes fluttering closed for a long moment, my stomach wobbling. "That was just a knee-jerk reaction. People assume I don't eat because I'm so thin," I admitted, sucking in a deep breath, feeling it settle the anxiety that skittered across my nerves. "I had the stomach flu once. It came on while I was at school, and I was throwing up in the bathroom, and every day after that, the whole school joked about me being bulimic."
"Okay, first. Everyone you went to school with was a dick. Secondly, it never crossed my mind, Katie. Some people just have that kickass metabolism."
"I would like it if mine kicked a little less," I admitted. My weight had always been an issue for me. And as far as we had come as a society with body positivity, people still felt like it was okay to tell thin people to eat a cheeseburger, as if we wouldn't have thought of that ourselves. I used to sneak weight-on pills into the house in high school, desperate to get a body that rounded out in all the nice ways the other girls' bodies had, while mine stayed stubbornly flat and narrow.
I thought, largely, that I'd overcome the insecurity about it. But I found it still crept up. Especially where men were concerned.
I remembered crying in the bathroom after I found out my ex's browser history included anime porn where the women had boobs bigger than my head.
And, apparently, it mattered just as much that Rush know I had no control over how my body chose to metabolize the food that I very often shoved in my mouth.
I would deal with the clear dysfunction of that when I was back in Navesink Bank.
"So, is there, ah, something wrong?" he asked, eyeing my plate. "Or are you just not feeling the crêpes?"
"You're a pig," I told him, feeling a smile pulling at my lips as I passed him my plate, feeling no small surge of pride as he dug in with gusto, even with a stomach full already.
"You should open a breakfast place," he decided, scraping the plate clean of strawberry filling and powdered sugar.
"You're going to have a stomach ache. That was a lot of sugar."
"Oh, sweetheart, you underestimate my ability to eat complete crap without feeling bad about it. "I'm already planning something cheesy for dinner. Just gotta figure out if we have enough for whoever shows up. If they can make it in this. That street sucked in good weather," he said, getting up, gathering the dishes, taking them to the sink to wash. "Get a look at this wind," he went on, making me get up, walk over to his side to look out the back window.
The trees were waving around ominously, making me wonder how strong their roots were, if limbs might pop off and come down on us where we stood. "This place is built pretty solidly," he told me, as if sensing my thoughts. "I'm a little more worried about the power if this keeps up."
Did the place even have some flashlights? Candles? Oil lamps? Maybe a generator.
"I will look around to see if there are any candles or camping lights," I offered.
"Good. I'm gonna try to break into that locked shed out back to see if there is a generator. Though, I don't have high hopes. It'll be fine," he added, clearly for my benefit since he didn't seem the least bit concerned about death by tree limb. "At some point, someone is going to show up. Fee, the others, or the person who owns this place."
"This is, it's not... I don't like crowds anyway," I said, cringing at my awkward attempt to say that I didn't mind the fact that it was just the two of us.
"I like your company too, babe," he told me, giving me a smile. "You gotta finish that book, so I can bitch to you about the plot twist," he told me, putting the dishes in the drying rack.
I wouldn't tell him this, but I totally tried to read my book and look for supplies at the same time just to be able to talk to him about it as the storm raged around us.
It seemed like the most exciting thing that would happen the whole retreat.
Of course, I had no idea that in just a few hours time, I would be sharing a bed with Rush freaking Rivers.
FOUR
Rush
The storm raged damn near apocalyptic for hours.
The shed ended up being home to some rakes, shovels, and a family of mice only. No generator to be found. Katie had scrounged up a flashlight and one gas lantern which we both agreed we would use in the common space, then take turns using it go get ready for bed before extinguishing it, not wanting a fire risk.
The rain had started soft at first, making me wonder if we were being alarmists just because we were deep in the woods without all the ideal resources.
But then it started to pick up steam, pelting at the windows and roof with an end-times-type fury as the wind continued to whip through the trees.
Between cracks of lightning and claps of thunder, I could hear the telltale snapping of trees in the woods, a little fact that I kept to myself because Katie seemed to work herself up into a panic over the idea of a tree crashing through the roof.
I wanted to tell her it wasn't a valid concern, but as surrounded by them as we were, and as the hours stretched on with very little respite, I started to get concerned myself.
Sure, if something happened to the roof, we had the cars to get out of Dodge. But I had a feeling that the road leading there wasn't going to be completely clear, nor would it be high on the list of the township to clear seeing as we seemed to be the only ones up here.
I kept my worries to myself, though, as we both took turns staring out of windows, checking our useless phones, reading the books we brought with us.
But, for me, I was mostly wondering about the others, about why no one else had made it but us, if maybe Katie and I were the ones who got it wrong.
I'd be more inclined to believe that if it was just me at the cabin, if I had mixed up the date. But Katie had always had great attention to detail. The office would fall apart without her. I really didn't think the two of us would both get it wrong.
So, then, where the hell was everyone else? Sure, it was possible some of the others had plans they couldn't get out of, or simply didn't feel like being in the woods. But there were quite a few employees at our job now; someone else should have shown up.
For one insane moment, I wondered if Fee had done this on purpose. But Fiona wasn't someone who meddled. She minded her own business, did her own thing, let everyone else do theirs.
Besides, what purpose did that serve?
Again, if it was just me here, I could see that. Fee might not have been a meddler, but she liked to fuck with you on occasion. And this would be her finest work yet.
But it didn't make sense that Katie was here too. If there was anyone in the world that no one wanted to fuck with, it was Katie.