Snowed In

by Jenna Bayley-Burke

  “See?” Amy unbuttoned her peacoat like they were staying. “All is right again. Now go put on some clothes so we can get to the store before they run out of white towels. Taylor’s blue towels have got to go. I don’t trust towels that can’t be bleached.”

  Marissa shook her head. “I can’t go shopping.”

  “Sure you can,” Taylor said as she unwound her scarf. “Throw on some leggings and boots and we’ll be there before they run out of coffee and doughnut holes.”

  “Go ahead without me. Let me write you a check for the TV. How much do I owe you?” How exactly could she explain she had a man in her bed she’d rather play with without actually divulging there was a man in her bed? Because these girls would never let it go, they’d want to know everything and then it would be open for dissection once the relationship went south.

  “The TV is a gift, and it was wicked cheap. Less than I would have owed you for the room.” Christa smiled and placed a hand on her hip. “But I made Jerry pay for the whole thing because he got to share it with me.”

  “You can’t buy me a TV.” She wished her purse weren’t in her bedroom. And that she carried more cash. There was no way her wallet held enough to cover the cost.

  “I already did. Say thank you.”

  “Thank you, but—”

  “You’re welcome. Now put on some pants and let’s go shopping.”

  She shook her head. She wasn’t leaving, no matter what they said. Scott had driven three hours to be here and spent the night cramped in her tiny bed. She wanted nothing more than to nestle in with him here, in her apartment, for a few days.

  “Oh!” Taylor exclaimed, picking up the empty wineglasses. “You have a man here!”

  “What are you talking about?” She tightened the belt on her robe and hoped she was a better liar if she didn’t try to make eye contact.

  “You sleeping late, two wineglasses, and this.” Amy set her boot on top of Scott’s backpack.

  “That could be mine.” She eyed the wine bottle and wondered if she should start drinking now. It was black out, technically still nighttime.

  “It’s camo,” Christa added.

  They had her there. “Okay, fine. I don’t want to go shopping.”

  “Come on, chicks before dicks.” Amy smiled wide. “You can’t be mad at Christa for doing it if you’re going to do it yourself.”

  “I’m not mad at Christa, and this is not the same thing. She put me out in the cold so she could get laid. I’m passing on a white sale.”

  “Black Friday is a tradition.” Taylor took the wineglasses to the sink. “Didn’t you wear him out enough for him to sleep the morning away? You’ll be back after brunch.”

  “No. I would say I’m sorry, but I’m actually not.”

  “What happened to chicks before dicks?” Christa’s pout returned.

  “Not this dick.”

  Taylor gave her the side-eye. “He can’t be all that special if we don’t know him. Wait, do we know him?”

  “No.” And they probably didn’t, not really. Though they’d all been at the wedding and had seen him standing up with Matt.

  “Then we have to meet him.”

  “No, thank you.” She stood in front of her bedroom door. She wasn’t a violent person, but she’d knock a bitch out before letting any of them ruin her weekend.

  “We’re not leaving without something. A name, a dirty detail, something.”

  “Tay’s right. Dolls before balls.” Amy glared, her pom-pom hat ruining her attempt to be intimidating.

  “Hos before bros.” Christa offered.

  “I’m not a ho.” Taylor did her best to mock offense.

  “Fine, Venus before penis.”

  Marissa shook her head. “Not this penis. It’s magical, like a unicorn. And none of you hos are getting anywhere near it. Now scoot.” She shooed them toward the door with her hands.

  “Oh.” Amy’s eyes widened as her mouth formed the syllable.

  “Hi, Scott,” Christa said, waggling her brows like this were some kind of joke.

  Marissa cringed, knowing he must be standing behind her in the doorway. She prayed he’d put on pants. The heat of him surrounded her as he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around her waist. “Say goodbye, Marissa.”

  “Goodbye Marissa,” Taylor offered with a wiggle of her fingers as her friends filed out of her apartment, their laughter erupting as soon as they closed the door.

  “Damn it.” Marissa stepped out of his hold and marched to her kitchen, slamming her cupboards as she made a much-needed pot of coffee. She felt the weight of his stare, but she didn’t care to have this conversation, ever. She ought to have gone shopping, handled the third degree before the girls had time to craft and inquisition, and dealt with him later.

  “Explain to me why you’re pissed off. Because I’m missing something.” He stood in the entrance of the kitchen, his arms crossed over his chest, jeans low on his hips and feet bare. He had no idea what he’d done. Not on purpose, but she’d wanted to keep him to herself for as long as she could. Until she was sure.

  “Everyone is going to want to know details, and we don’t really have them. They’ll tell me what they think I should do, and what they’d do, and I don’t need the pressure.” She stared out the window at the street, dark and wet in the predawn hours. Even her coffeepot thought it was too early for this conversation.

  “If you’re not ready to talk about it yet, just tell them to back off.”

  “That’s not how women work. If I don’t share with them, they’ll make it up. These ladies analyze relationships by committee. You’ll become the focus of every conversation, and I don’t want to talk about how we’re different people, who live in different places and want different things.” She swallowed hard, trying to force back the emotion in her voice.

  “Like I said before, we have the same endgame. There’s nothing wrong with figuring it out as we go. Though, you could solve the distance thing if you come back with me. You wouldn’t have to deal with your friends for a while either.”

  “You need to stop with that. I have a real job. When one of your employees gets sick, you can find another one to fill in. There’s nobody for me to call. I am coordinating all kinds of things that you obviously don’t understand. You and I have a past that we keep pretending isn’t there.” She sighed, wanting to put this part off. Hell, she’d been avoiding this conversation since she climbed into his truck.

  “So stop pretending.” He rubbed at the back of his neck, his deep green eyes boring into her soul.

  “Once I do that, this whole thing unravels. And then you’ll go, and things between us will be worse than before.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not leaving.”

  She sighed and tried to stuff the feelings back in a box. “Let’s have a nice weekend, and then deal with the hard stuff. You didn’t drive all the way here to argue.”

  “If there is some big problem you think we can’t get past, then we should talk about it sooner rather than later. I don’t see anything we can’t get through. Tanya told me you applied for a job at Matt’s hotel, so distance won’t be an issue anymore.”

  Marissa leaned against the counter, gripping it in her hands as she faced him. “I didn’t apply, she submitted my résumé.”

  “She’s sure you’re going to get it.” He smiled, because he didn’t understand how little that mattered.

  “Turning in a résumé is not the same thing as a job offer. Besides, I have a career. I like my company, there are growth opportunities to move up within the corporation. I enjoy what I do. It doesn’t get any better than that.”

  “But it’s in Portland, and I’m in Bend, and you think long-distance relationships don’t work. Getting a different job is the perfect solution.”

  She shook her head. He didn’t get it, and she didn’t know how else to say it. “I don’t like the idea of long-distance relationships. I don’t know how to get to know someone better if you only see them once
a month. I’m trying to give it a shot, but you keep trying to push our relationship faster than I’m comfortable going. I want to date and have occasional weekends while you’re telling me to move in. I can’t do it. I live here.”

  He glanced back at her living room and then at her. “Come on. You don’t live here. The apartment is empty. I can put everything in the back of my truck and have you home before dinner.”

  Her throat tightened, knowing what her life must look like to someone like him. “Everything here is mine. It may not seem like much to you, but it’s what I need. No one gave me anything. Except the TV, but I earned that.”

  “You want me to believe you’re attached to staying, but all I see is a woman who could pick up and go at a moment’s notice. And Tanya’s in Bend, plus I don’t think you’re even close with the friends who were just here. You haven’t even told them about us.”

  “Because I don’t want to hear what they have to say.” She pushed her hands through her hair, her stomach starting to pitch and roll. This part would have been so much easier over the phone. How could she make him understand that no matter how much she loved him, she couldn’t base her identity on him. On anyone but herself.

  “If you don’t want to hear their opinions, then why do you care what they think? Sugar, you’re not making sense here. I’m trying to make this all easier on you.”

  “You’re not, though. These women are family to me. They were there when I had to start over. They know how hard I had to work. Can you just see this from my side for once?”

  He shook his head like she was the crazy one. “I’m trying to, but I am not following why being together is some big secret and why you don’t realize moving to be with me solves your long-distance relationship worries.”

  “You want more from me than I have to give. My work schedule is all over the place, and you want to know when we’ll see each other. There’s at least six months of the year I’m never going to drive to Bend and risk getting snowed in again.” She took a deep breath and let it go. Let it all go. “You want me to give up everything to be with you, when you’re not giving up anything.” She’d been swallowed whole by that mistake before, and she’d never be in that position again.

  “I can give you so much more at home than I can here. I can’t pick up and leave my businesses, my employees, my home. I’ll have to go back every week, which solves nothing.”

  “I have to be my own person, not Scott’s whatever. And if I run away from my life, that’s all I’ll ever be. I can’t think of a fate worse than that.” Her hands shook, so she gripped the countertop for support. She’d bolted that dependent door shut long ago. Nailed it closed. Burned it down.

  He didn’t make a move, though she craved some sort of argument, some kind of reasoning where he could prove her wrong. A riot of emotions sucker punched her. Love. Fear. Empathy. Self-protection.

  “If you give it some time—”

  “I have, and that’s the problem. After a few hours together I remembered how comfortable we are together, how easy it is to lose track of time when we’re talking.” He didn’t get it, and explaining it would expose the ugliest parts of herself. But maybe that ugliness was what he needed to accept why she couldn’t give up herself to be with him, couldn’t trust any man to be faithful from a distance. “It was easy in the aftermath of what Chris did to hate him. But it wasn’t black and white. I played a role in it.”

  “What he did wasn’t your fault.”

  “No, but I set myself up. I didn’t exist outside of him. I was going to marry him, have a dozen kids, and create the kind of family I thought would make me happy. It’s a little girl’s dream, only I tried to make it my life. Everything I did was full steam ahead so I didn’t have time to think about whether I still wanted that, or what Chris wanted. He needed me to get through college, and I needed him to get me out of that town. I was marrying him for the kids, kids we didn’t have yet. In the end, we were using each other. It took a lot of therapy to realize I let myself be the victim in that relationship. I trusted him with all the power, and he kept it all to himself. And you think I’ll get on that train again. But I know where it goes.”

  “I am not Chris.” He tilted his head and set his jaw.

  “I know. But you let him hurt me.”

  He stared at her, stunned in his silence. “We talked about this. You wouldn’t have believed me. But I was not going to let you marry him. That’s why he and I fought that morning, why I came to find you at the church. I wasn’t going to sit through that damned wedding. I wasn’t going to watch you sign up for a lifetime of his bullshit. I came there to tell you what I knew. Even if it meant you never spoke to me again.”

  “Yeah well, he beat you to it.” She’d wanted to say something for years, but it didn’t give her the satisfaction she’d thought it would.

  “Only after I beat the hell out of him. You thought Matt was the one who made him tell you. The only thing Matt did was keep me from killing him. Chris and I had fought for years about the way he treated you. And the morning of the wedding when I found him—” He rolled his lips in and shook his head. “He said you knew and didn’t care. And I couldn’t believe that. And that’s why I went to tell you. Because the only way I’d believe that is if you told me yourself.”

  “I thought he’d sent you for the ring.” Her chest went heavy, as if her lungs had deflated the way her argument just had.

  “No. I came for you.” He stared at her like she’d sprouted another head. Maybe she had. She certainly felt like she didn’t belong in her own body. He stepped closer, until she felt his warmth, smelled his soap and cedar scent. “I’m haunted by the way you screamed that day. I felt your heart breaking like it was my own. It hurt like, hell, it hurt like this.” He stared at the ceiling and shook his head before meeting her gaze again. “If I had it to do over again, I would have told you that first September, in that sports marketing class where you were so feisty about our endorsement assignment. Do you remember that?”

  She shook her head. Very few of her classes had stuck with her. She’d only earned a business degree because she’d needed to help Chris with his classes.

  “We were matching athletes with companies they’d be good spokespeople for and giving our reasons. Everybody presented a football player or basketball player and when it was your turn you stood up and said how disappointed you were that no one had mentioned a female athlete. The star running back of our undefeated football team made a comment that you were too pretty to be a feminist. And you turned and cut him down like a tree in your yard. You said something like feminism isn’t about being feminine, but about having the choice to be who you are. And by not considering female athletes for endorsement deals, we were robbing them of the opportunity to have a voice.

  “College athletes are treated differently. People don’t challenge them. But you didn’t care. And in that moment I wanted to know all about you. About how someone so young could be that sure of who she was. And I still see her when I look at you. Not right now, but when your walls are down and you are just being you. That’s who I want to be with. That Marissa would forgive me.”

  She stuffed down the swirling emotions and forced her composure up like a wall. If he saw a sliver of how his words had affected her, he’d think that girl still existed. “I never would have gone home with you if I hadn’t forgiven you. Forgiveness is the easy part. Earning my trust back isn’t something I can do in a week. I’ll get there, but you can’t put that on fast forward too.”

  “Don’t you see? That is another reason to come back with me. When we’re together and you’re feeling instead of thinking, we’re magic. We have to grab hold of the chance to be together. Don’t fight this.”

  Her perspective shifted so much she had whiplash. She was proud of what she’d managed to accomplish in such a short amount of time. She’d come so far from the panicked kid lost in a sea of debt. She was on top of her finances, living well by the standards she was raised with, though obviously
not by his. It would be an easier path to put her head down and follow him to Bend, let him take care of her, live the life she’d planned to as a girl. Have those babies she couldn’t see in her future now. She needed to be independent, but he wanted to save her. And she could save her own damned self.

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere.” He pulled his hand down his face, as if his frustration could be wiped clean. “Let’s take a break, and then—”

  “You should go.” The back of her throat went tight and hot, like it wanted to choke her before she said the words.

  “Marissa, I’m not leaving until we figure this out.”

  “The longer you insist on staying, the harder it’s going to be. We’re at a complete impasse here.” Their lives didn’t go together. She’d known that going in, had been right up front about it. But damn if it didn’t feel like she’d lost anyway. He hadn’t made an ultimatum about her moving yet, but if she stayed on this path, it was coming.

  “I don’t run away when life gets messy.” He lowered his voice and stepped closer. “I don’t understand why you can’t let yourself be happy. You’re the only woman I’ve ever seen a future with. What’s going on between us, it’s bigger than you think. It doesn’t go away because it’s inconvenient or scary. I was a boy, weak and trying to fit in. But I know where I belong now. And I know where you belong too.”

  He traced her lower lip with his thumb, pressing down to open her mouth. He leaned down, but she turned her head before he could brush his lips against hers. If they lit that fire again, he’d think it meant she’d changed her mind. And she wouldn’t.

  He stepped back, the heat of him moving away like a vacuum and leaving her chilled to the bone. She squeezed her arms around herself, trying to keep her heart from leaping out of her chest like some damsel in need of rescue. She didn’t need him, didn’t need anyone.

  “This really was just about sex to you.” His breath stuttered, his shoulders slumping. “Wow.”

  That wasn’t it at all, but if it helped him move on then so be it. She leaned against the counter and closed her eyes, wanting this part to be over. She had so little faith left, it just didn’t leap anymore.