by Lily Craig
"No," said Madelyn. Luckily, they didn't need to return to city life for at least a few days, but the gusts of wind pouring bursts of snow into view wouldn't have bothered Madelyn even if they had plans to leave. She mentally thanked nature for bringing her this surprising turn of events, for providing her the perfect retreat to get back into Georgie's good graces.
"You hungry?" asked Georgie, tapping Madelyn's shoulder to get her attention before she started to walk downstairs. The jeans Georgie wore had a dark wash, the denim thick but fitted against her toned legs. Madelyn nodded vaguely while she watched Georgie move.
It was funny. All this time she'd been close to Georgie, she'd never thought of her as hot. Kind, yes. Dependable, of course. And obviously, Madelyn had grown fond of Georgie in her friend’s absence and realized her true feelings. But she'd never noticed just how devastating Georgie was up close.
There was a casual aura to Georgie that belied the intensity of her inner workings. She stepped along the main floor of the cabin with her hands in her pockets, shoulders slouched and posture lazy. Madelyn watched from the second-floor landing while Georgie took out bread for toast and set out the jam and butter that Madelyn had brought.
"Come down here," said Georgie, smiling up at Madelyn. "Creeps me out to have someone watching from up there like a Dementor or something."
"Dementor?" laughed Madelyn. "Do I really look that rough before my coffee?"
Georgie mumbled something under her breath that sounded like a swear. She rummaged through a cupboard and took out the coffee, brandishing it so Madelyn could see it. Within a few seconds, the coffee machine was burbling away, its sounds magical to Madelyn's ear.
"Sorry, forgot we had a caffeine junky in our midst," said Georgie. "Come on down, the water's fine."
"Water? You mean coffee, right?"
"Yeah, yeah."
As Madelyn descended, her gaze never leaving Georgie's fluid movements around the kitchen, she noticed that Georgie's initial reserve was wearing off. When she'd arrived yesterday, everything had felt wrong, like a skipped beat. Conversation was stilted, any silence deafening. Madelyn had tried consciously to get back into a rhythm with Georgie, but it had improved the most overnight when the two of them were sleeping.
She didn't know how it had happened, but she thanked the universe for its mysterious workings.
Snowfall trapping us together for the trip, check. Sleep that scrubs away some anxiety of reconnecting, also check.
Madelyn almost couldn't bear wishing that the same luck follow her through her confession to Georgie, whenever she gathered up the courage to actually do it. If she told her everything and Georgie smiled and agreed with her, that would be the greatest gift.
They ate a casual breakfast, Madelyn feeling self-conscious in her thin t-shirt without a bra. She didn't wear pyjamas other than old shirts and sweats normally, but in these close quarters with Georgie, Madelyn regretted not bringing along a nicer pair. Something that made her look rested and cute. That might draw Georgie’s eye to Madelyn’s assets.
"What do you want to do today?" Madelyn asked, setting down her mug of coffee. Crumbs ringed the plate in front of her and there was a dab of jam still on the knife laying across it. Georgie stared out the window, wordlessly taking in the blustery view.
"God," said Georgie, stretching. Madelyn glanced at those sinewy forearms and felt heat gather at the back of her neck as she admired how they flexed while Georgie moved. Working in the trades had honed Georgie's already tough appearance into one of utility, and it was damn sexy. "I don't know. Think we could go for a swim?"
Madelyn watched in surprised silence for a second as Georgie laughed at her own joke. It'd been a long time since the two of them had been alone, and perhaps longer since Georgie had been in a good enough mood to joke–about anything. Now she was laughing at the biggest snowstorm Madelyn had seen in ages.
Two could play at that game, thought Madelyn.
"Yeah, let's get out there for a nice sunbathing session and then cool off with a dip in the lake. You want to borrow my sunscreen?" she said, smiling. But it was a silly thing to say, and the humor in Georgie's eyes dimmed to an embarrassed grin.
“Yeah, I'd like to get outside. We've been cooped up in here for a while and I don't think that snow's melting anytime soon."
Madelyn shoved her embarrassment down and tried to ignore it, opting instead to smile while meeting Georgie's gaze. "Sounds great. Let's go for a snowshoe? The listing for this place said there was outdoors equipment in the shed out back."
The plan was easier said than executed, for the piles of snow had closed off the shed from the path to the back door. Once Madelyn and Georgie had finished getting ready, Madelyn changing into warm clothing while Georgie washed the dishes, they stood at the back with the door open. Wind blew sifting snow onto their faces while they strategized.
"How deep do you think that snow is?" asked Madelyn.
"Only one way to find out," said Georgie, stepping down the wooden stairs and into the drifts on the path. She sank to above the knees and turned back to shrug at Madelyn. "Guess it could be worse."
Georgie waded through the snow, breaking a path that made it easier for Madelyn to follow. With the door shut behind them, warmth had quickly dissipated to a thin layer of comfort beneath their coats. Flakes still fell around them, and though they were slower than last night's deluge they showed no signs of stopping outright.
Madelyn was surprised at how walking through the deep snowy path quickly worked up a sweat. It had only been about twenty feet of trudging, but the thickness of the snow and unsteadiness of each footstep had sapped her of energy. Her breath steamed into the air in front of her.
"Door's snowed shut," said Georgie, pointing to the piles of snow in front of where the latch closed the shed doors. "You seen a shovel around here?"
"Is it worth it, though? It was hard work just walking here. Maybe we don't need to snowshoe today?" asked Madelyn. A shower of snow fell onto her face from a branch above them and she spluttered.
Georgie laughed, apologizing quickly afterwards. "Sorry, it's just that your face was so... shocked," she said, hand on her hip while she grinned at Madelyn.
Madelyn would accept ten more branches dumping snow on her if it meant Georgie would smile at her like that. She knew most of the heat prickling her body was from the journey to the shed, but part of it warmed her center, a source she suspected owed more to Georgie's charm than the toll of winter. She brushed flakes from her face but a few lingered on her eyelashes.
"Go on, tell me more about your desire to see me humiliated by winter. Is that why you wanted to get outside? Personal avalanches, just for me?" said Madelyn. She sidled closer to Georgie, unable to keep her enthusiasm under wraps. Her right hand nudged Georgie's shoulder playfully, as if it had a will of its own.
Georgie raised an eyebrow. "I don't need to see you humiliated, just taken down a peg or two. Soon you'll be Dr. Melnyk and I won't be able to laugh at a Dr. Melnyk for anything. Would be wrong."
"Not true," murmured Madelyn, but the mood had already shifted. Gone was the fleeting cheer she'd felt bubble inside her. Now Georgie was already digging at the snow covering the base of the shed doors, lifting it out of the way with her mittened hands and kicking it with her boots.
Why did Georgie always have to make it seem like grad school would push them apart?
The Master's program Madelyn finished a couple years ago had awoken something inside her, a thirst for old volumes of knowledge that few wanted to read. Madelyn had always liked school, but graduate education had elevated that affection to flat-out love. She was excited to be in a doctorate program and wanted Georgie to be happy for her, too.
Though Madelyn’s thoughts dampened her mood, she didn't let them stop her from helping Georgie displace the snow from the shed doors. They were getting closer to opening them, the left-hand side now jiggling a few inches further than it had before. Just when it seemed like their efforts wo
uld never be enough to get the doors open, the snow gave, and they pulled them back.
Inside, metal canoes lined the walls and fishing gear was strewn haphazardly about the back area, interspersed with a variety of sports balls. Madelyn saw cross-country skis that looked like they came from a garage sale in the 80s, and near the front sat several stacks of vintage snowshoes. They were the kind made of wood and strung with rawhide in a crisscrossing pattern like some bizarre tennis racket.
"Wow," breathed Georgie. "This looks a bit like its own summer camp."
"You don't see any newer snowshoes, do you?"
"These old ones will be fun. Let's try them."
"I don't know," said Madelyn. She already knew she'd say yes if Georgie pressed her. But she was also pretty confident that the newer style of snowshoes would be far more effective for their outing. No sense making today harder than it needed to be. She needed to conserve some energy for bravery.
Then again...
Georgie shook her head and grabbed a pair of the old school snowshoes, placing her boots on them and lacing them up before Madelyn could say anything further.
"How the fuck does this work?" said Georgie, laughing at herself as her mittened hands struggled to tie the rawhide straps around her feet and ankles. To Madelyn's eye, it appeared unlikely that the snowshoes would be particularly secure on Georgie's feet, but she knew no better way than what Georgie was trying.
"I have no clue," said Madelyn. She took another pair from the shed and tried to strap them onto her feet. She had no desire to snowshoe through the forest and then have them fall off, leaving her stranded in deep drifts.
With the best of their abilities combined, they managed to get snowshoes strapped to each of their boots. A few deep breaths later, Madelyn was ready to head out.
"Where are we going?" she asked Georgie, who was staring off at the thickly snow-covered road past the cabin. Madelyn wanted to walk along the forest edge rather than the road, the better to appreciate nature. "Here?"
She pointed to a passage through the trees that led from behind the firewood lean-to out towards a thicket of firs. It was just wide enough for their snowshoed feet to tromp along without getting caught in the underbrush.
"Sounds good."
Madelyn led the way, surprised at first by how much more difficult snowshoeing was from what she'd pictured. In her mind, she'd assumed that having snowshoes on made you able to walk on the very surface of the snow, light-footed and agile like Legolas from Lord of the Rings. The reality was that you still sank into the snow, just not as far as with regular boots. It wasn't long before Madelyn was breathing heavily and drenched in sweat.
The tallest branches above Georgie and Madelyn sheltered them from the snow so that fewer flakes managed to float down to where they walked. In that hushed environment, the only sound left to them was each trudging step, their own breath, and the rush of wind through the trees. Time passed in tiny increments.
"This is really beautiful," said Madelyn, finally. It had been at least ten minutes of reverent silence, the surrounding woods so vast that it felt wrong to penetrate that quiet with their voices, their human thoughts and woes. Georgie murmured a wordless agreement and then continued to walk.
They reached a clearing sometime after that, past a run-down fence that may have marked the end of the cabin's property. The small, flattened space nestled within the trees seemed sacred, just their own. Madelyn snowshoed her way to the side so that Georgie could enter the circular area to witness what Madelyn had just come upon: untouched depths of snow, bounded by impossibly large evergreens bending underneath the weight of their snow-burdened branches.
In the center of the clearing sat a young, spotted fawn.
Madelyn held a mitten up to her lips as if to shush Georgie, but she needn't have. The reverent silence with which Georgie approached the clearing showed she had seen the fawn. It was surprisingly small, curled up around itself to conserve warmth. Already, a layer of snow shrouded the fawn’s coat—it had been sitting there long enough for a dusting of snow to cover it.
The fawn's soft brown eyes blinked at them, seeing the intruders to the space, but it was too timid to act without a parent. So Georgie and Madelyn stood there, wordlessly watching the creature breathe while snow fell all around them, coating the fawn in an ever-increasing cover.
6
Madelyn wasn't sure what to do. The fawn quivered in the winter air for a minute, maybe longer, and though Madelyn was beginning to feel the cold, she wasn't certain she could turn back without feeling guilt about the animal.
"Should we take it back to the cabin?" she whispered to Georgie, afraid of startling the fawn.
"What? Why?" asked Georgie, staring at Madelyn as if she'd just suggested they teach the fawn to speak German.
"It looks cold, doesn't it?"
"Yeah, it's winter. I'm sure it is cold. But we can't take it back. First of all, how would we even bring it to the cabin? Second, it has a family. Its own kind, you know. If you take wild animals away from what they know, they're screwed. It'd die when we released it."
"But Georgie, maybe it'll die without our help," said Madelyn. She heard the rising sadness in her voice and willed herself not to sound like such a bleeding heart. Georgie often made her feel like it was illogical to have so much empathy, but Madelyn knew it also was part of what had drawn Georgie to her in the first place. They both felt deeply, even if Madelyn was the only one to show it.
"Tough," said Georgie. She turned back, facing the trail to show she was ready to leave. Madelyn's jaw clenched involuntarily, and a wave of nausea rushed over her. The fawn was helpless and alone in this storm. At least she and Georgie were staying at the cabin together—they had support.
"Really?"
"Yes, really. If we touched that fawn now, if we could even get to it before it ran away, its mother would reject it. We’d be dooming it far worse than leaving it alone."
Madelyn's shivering had started some chain reaction in her body, a rogue force taking over her senses before she could tamp it down. While she stared into Georgie's eyes, tears built in her own.
Don't make a scene about a baby deer, Mads.
But Georgie's stubbornness, her rejection of the idea took on a larger meaning in Madelyn's mind. It wasn't a rebuttal of the proposal to rescue the fawn, but instead a repudiation of Madelyn herself. Of vulnerability and openness. Madelyn blinked aggressively, trying to stop the tears before they could start flowing.
"Seems sad is all," she said, managing to sound like her throat wasn't constricting with emotion. She was impressed with herself. Concealing negative feelings wasn't her forte.
Georgie knew Madelyn too well to skim over the obvious way she was shutting down and bailing out of the conversation. It was normal for Georgie to be taciturn, not Madelyn. In the conversation's pause, Madelyn tried her best to smile at Georgie, to show her that she wasn't shaken by the prospect of leaving a baby deer alone in a snowstorm, but it failed.
Georgie saw what Madelyn was trying to hide, and she wavered.
"We can't bring the fawn with us, Mads. I'm sorry." Georgie's voice was softer, speaking gently to Madelyn as if Madelyn were also a shivering baby animal. Georgie's mittened hand reached out and patted Madelyn's arm. Madelyn watched it happen like it was in slow motion, a gesture that was welcome but alien all the same.
"Ok," said Madelyn. Her scarf muffled her voice, but the sentiment was clear. The two of them turned back to the trail and waded through the churned-up snow to the cabin. Their return journey was even more quiet than the snowshoe out to the clearing. Flakes still fell around them, tumbling from branches when the wind blew just right, and Madelyn took pleasure in seeing her breath puff into the chilled air.
She hoped the fawn wouldn't succumb to the cold. Maybe its mother was waiting in the trees outside the clearing, ready to return to its baby when the human intruders left. Madelyn had to think that was true, because the alternative depressed her too much. The mental pi
cture of those huge, softly liquid brown eyes staring at her was etched in her mind.
Back at the cabin, stripped of their snowshoes and bulky winter gear, Madelyn's angst reared its head again. She saw the casual lines of Georgie's outfit and wished she'd been more assertive about what she wanted. Not just with the deer—with everything. Her plan had been to tell Georgie about her feelings over a nice glass of wine at dinner, or maybe curled up with blankets by the fire while they drank hot chocolate.
The storm was changing all her plans.
Before Madelyn could reconsider her brashness, before she could even think about what it would mean coming on the heels of a strangely emotional disagreement about a fawn, she spoke. Georgie's back was turned as she brushed snow from the front of her jeans.
"I'm in love with you," Madelyn said. The words she'd rehearsed in front of the bathroom mirror for months now. The recipient, as always, Georgie, short hair tousled from exertion in the outdoors, shoulders rugged and completely impossible to read. But Madelyn hadn't thought about the way her stomach would liquefy in response to her confession.
She hadn't pictured—at least not accurately—how her heart would pound violently, sickeningly in her chest. Each reverberation shook her ribcage to the point where she could very well have been convinced she was having a heart attack. Logic dissuaded her of that notion, but this was a time of emotion prevailing.
At least for Madelyn.
She willed Georgie to turn. To respond.
Say anything, anything at all. It would be better than silence.
Georgie continued to wipe her hands over the front of her jeans, continued to stay facing away from Madelyn. If the signs in her own body hadn't reminded her, viscerally, that she'd just said the words she had needed to for oh so long, Madelyn could have thought that this was just another moment. Another part of a cabin trip, like the trips they'd had for years prior.
There had been no perceptible reaction on Georgie's part.
"Georgie?" said Madelyn. She couldn't bear the silence. It was already a far different response from the one she'd hoped would happen: that Georgie would smile and burst into some form of shy but happy grin, free to respond in kind with love.
