Rugged

by Ava Bloom

  I blinked, thrown for a moment. I had been so deeply tuned into the feel of his lips against mine that I hadn’t thought for a second that this might not go all the way. But then again, I didn’t know which of my friends might be in our room upstairs. And Derrick…

  Well, he didn’t seem like a one-night stand kind of guy, the more I thought about it.

  I felt suddenly guilty. After all, I had been the one to start the kissing. But he had seemed into it. And he had been the one to ask me to dinner.

  I slipped out of his lap, and after one last lingering look, I headed upstairs on my own. I was in my room before I realized that I still didn’t have his phone number. So stop feeling guilty, Mallory, I told myself. Unless I actively sought him out at Joe’s, I probably would never see him again. It didn’t matter if I had initiated the kiss, if he hadn’t really been all that interested in me – or if he’d been holding back for other reasons, I thought, remembering what Sam had said to me.

  I was never going to see him again. I wondered why that thought left me feeling so upset.

  6

  Derrick

  It was busy at the Buy Lots when I got there to get some last-minute groceries. I had plenty of canned food stocked in the house already, plus I’d made a few batches of crockpot stews earlier in the month that were stored carefully in my freezer. I had candles and I had firewood and I had everything else that I really needed. There were just a few other “luxury” items that I might want if I was going to be stuck inside for a few days – beer, for one.

  “Crazy about the storm coming in, hey?” Charlie asked, pushing his cart up next to me as I debated which cheese I wanted that week.

  “Yeah, crazy,” I said to him. “Going to be some good skiing afterwards, I hope.”

  “You hope?” Charlie asked in disbelief. “They’ve updated the winter storm advisory – now they’re saying that we’re probably going to get something like three and a half feet! Even if we get half that much, we’re going to have a good day for skiing.”

  “Yeah, if the whole mountain doesn’t get closed because ski patrol is out looking for all the fucking yahoos who go out trying to get the powder before the storm stops dumping,” I grumbled. “You know it’s going to be a mess up there.”

  “Well, thankfully neither of us is on ski patrol,” Charlie said. “Anyway, what makes you think they’re going to be so bad?”

  “Do you know how many people I’ve encountered who couldn’t even hear me this year as I was two feet away from them – because they had their music turned up too loud, playing right in their ears?” I asked, rolling my eyes. “There are going to be plenty of holiday idiots out there who don’t realize that storms like this can be dangerous – who think that just because they’re still in-bounds, avalanches don’t exist!”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Charlie said, looking thoughtful. He shrugged. “But hey, survival of the fittest, right? Those yahoos get themselves killed, it just means there’s more powder out there for me!”

  I cracked a small smile at that even though I hated how irresponsible people could be about storms here. Every year there seemed to be more and more people who thought they were invincible, that the mountain couldn’t beat them.

  It reminded me of things that I didn’t want to think about, of missions that had nearly defeated me, of all the ways that I had learned that I wasn’t anywhere near invincible.

  I shook my head to clear it of those thoughts, though, said goodbye to Charlie, and finished my grocery shopping. Flakes were just starting to fall as I was on my way home. By the time I reached my house on the far outskirts of the other end of town, the flakes were coming down steady and fast, and the roads were already getting slick. I parked my car in the garage and headed inside, kicking snow off my boots as I went.

  Inside, I brought the fire back to life, breathing air into the coals. A couple logs on it, and it was shortly giving off a pleasant warmth. Not as pleasant as the warmth of another body curled up beside mine on the couch…

  I tried to banish that thought from my mind, but it was difficult not to think about the way Mallory had pressed her body up against mine on the couch. The kiss… Well, it had been unexpected, only not. It felt as though we’d been building towards it for the entire day, but still, when it came…

  I’d wanted to push her back towards the elevators, to have her bring us upstairs to her room. I’d wanted to push her down on the sheets, strip her bare, kiss every soft inch of her skin. Since then, I’d imagined her in a variety of ways: twisting against the sheets as I worked her over with my mouth, crying out my name as I thrust into her with my thick member, hands twisting in the sheets as I slowly teased her, her hips moving helplessly as I pushed deep into her from behind…

  I didn’t know why I was so hung up on this one girl, but I couldn’t seem to get Mallory out of my mind. Between her curves and our conversations… Well, she was exactly the kind of girl that I could picture myself in a relationship with, if I was ever going to have a relationship.

  And weren’t those dangerous thoughts.

  Still, I couldn’t help wishing that I’d taken things further. But relationships never turned out the way I wanted them to, even with people who were going to be in town for longer than one or two more days.

  I tried to push the thoughts out of my mind by giving myself something to focus on: chopping some firewood. It wasn’t something that I really needed to do: I had already stocked up inside in preparation for the storm. But at the same time, you could never have too much.

  I swung the axe, easily chopping through the log in front of me. Soon, I fell into the rhythm of my swings, amassing a small pile of wood. I began to carry it inside. As I was carrying in the final bundle, I thought I heard something. I paused, straining my ears to listen. For a moment, everything was silent. Then…

  Was that voices? But no one lived that near to me that I should be able to hear them. And especially not in a storm like this. Whoever it was, they should be inside, staying warm and waiting for the storm to pass. Already, it was getting difficult for me to see my house, and I was only about ten feet away from it. And I knew where it was. I couldn’t imagine just wandering around in the woods in weather like this; you’d be lost almost immediately.

  I continued to linger there, wondering if I’d really heard voices out there. But no, there was nothing else – probably it had just been a trick of my mind, the wind whipping through the trees or my loneliness speaking out.

  I shook my head and started back towards the door. But then, I heard the same sound again.

  My curiosity got the better of me. I knew that if I didn’t try to see if there was anyone there, I would spend the rest of the storm wondering. Whoever it was, if there really was someone there, they might need help. That might be exactly why they were calling out like that.

  I shuddered, remembering the last time I’d heard voices in desperation, crying for help. It had been during my deployment, and –

  I took a deep breath, counting to ten before letting the air slowly out of my lungs. I didn’t want to go there now. I couldn’t go there now. There was someone out there; I was becoming more and more sure of it, the more I replayed those sounds in my head. If I didn’t help them, it would haunt me forever.

  I dropped the bundle of firewood outside the door, tied a rope between myself and the house, and headed off into the rapidly growing snow drifts.

  7

  Mallory

  “Come on guys, I swear it’s going to be fun,” Jane pleaded. The rest of us all sighed.

  “Jane, cross-country skiing is basically like hiking,” Katie groaned. “You’re just walking.”

  “It’s more like skating,” Jane insisted. “But you can go to places that you couldn’t skate, where there’s no ice. It’s amazing, trust me.”

  “Trust you?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at her. “You told us you haven’t been cross-country skiing since you were eleven!”

  “And if my eleven-year-old se
lf thought that it was fun, then I’m sure we’ll all love it,” Jane said stubbornly, folding her arms across her chest.

  For me, it wasn’t really about the cross-country skiing at all. This week was about Jane, more than any of the rest of us, and she hadn’t really put her foot down with too many of the activities. This was one of the few things that she really wanted us all to do together.

  The problem was, she wanted us to be gone for the whole day, and I had a meeting that I really should conference into at three. If I missed that, who knew what could happen without me.

  Still, it seemed like everyone else was caving in.

  “We can at least give it a try, I guess,” Megan said, even though she still didn’t sound convinced that it would be any fun at all.

  As one by one everyone else agreed, I finally sighed. “All right, all right,” I said. “We’ll go cross-country skiing today.”

  “Bad news,” Vicky said, looking up from her phone. “The nordic ski place is actually closed today. Sorry, Jane, but it looks like we’re going to have to find a different plan.” She paused. “I mean, we could go tomorrow, but I know you have the spa day planned…”

  Jane made a face. “I really want the spa day to be on our last day here,” she said. “And besides, it wouldn’t make much sense for us to go have a relaxing spa day today, just to turn around and do a big workout cross-country skiing tomorrow…”

  “So maybe we should just nix cross-country skiing entirely?” Hillary asked hopefully.

  “We don’t need to do that,” Katie said. “It can’t be too hard to just go off into the woods and make our own trails, right? I’m sure we can find a place to rent the skis and whatever we need. And there are plenty of hiking trails around here, I think.”

  “And there’s enough snow, too,” Jane said, already sounding excited – and inwardly, I was cursing Hillary for coming up with that as a Plan B.

  “I don’t know, Jane, doesn’t that sound kind of dangerous?” I asked. “I mean, wandering off in the snow, when we have no clue where we’re going…”

  Jane shook her head. “We’ll leave tracks in the snow behind us,” she pointed out. “So if we get really lost, we’ll just follow them back. But you know how it is around here; you can see the town from pretty much anywhere. It would be pretty hard to actually get lost.”

  There was a little more debate, but finally, Jane put her foot down, and we all agreed to go along with her, at least for the morning. We rented gear and set out – and once we were going, I had to admit that it was kind of nice, being out there. Very peaceful, just the sound of our skis against the snow and the occasional chatter or laughter. We climbed up a gradual slope until we could see down around town.

  “Let’s stop here for lunch,” Vicky suggested, and we all agreed.

  As we ate, it started to get colder, and by the time we were finished, the first snowflakes were starting to drift down.

  “Uh oh,” Katie said. “We should probably start heading back. Judging from the way those clouds look, we’re in for a pretty bad storm.”

  “It can’t be too bad,” Hillary said. “We would have heard if there was a big storm headed our way, right?”

  We all exchanged glances. “I haven’t really kept up with the news while we’ve been here,” Megan admitted, and everyone else nodded.

  “What about you, Mallory? You’ve been doing so much work – you must have seen something about the weather while you were at your computer.”

  I rolled my eyes. “When I’m at my computer to do work, I do work,” I told them. “I don’t just sit there and browse."

  “Are you sure you haven’t seen anything about the weather?” Jane asked.

  I shrugged. “If I did, I guess it didn’t seem important.” I gritted my teeth. “I would have expected you to look before you planned something like this.” My tone was sharper than I meant it to be, but with the frustration of not being able to make my meeting… Yet again, it was one of those times when my friends just didn’t seem to understand the importance of everything that I did for my job, all of the responsibilities that I had.

  “I planned for us to be at the Nordic center,” Jane said defensively.

  “Guys, before we start bickering, maybe we should actually try to get back?” Megan interrupted.

  We all looked at one another and nodded. At this point, it didn’t really matter who was supposed to check the weather. We just knew that we needed to get back to the hotel before things got any worse.

  What we hadn’t thought about, on the whole walk up the mountain, was what it would be like to go down the mountain. None of us were very experienced nordic skiers, after all, and a steady incline on the way up meant that we were going downhill practically the whole way back. Every time I picked up a little speed, I started to panic. These skis didn’t want to stop the way that normal skis – downhill skis – did. It took a lot of effort to get them to turn at all, and they felt shakier, more unstable.

  I did a lot of falling, just trying to keep my speed under control – and so did the others.

  “Shit!” Vicky suddenly swore, kicking her ski off. At first, I thought she was just so frustrated with this that she’d decided to go the rest of the way on foot – but then I saw the real cause of the expletive: she had somehow managed to break one of her skis, probably hitting a rock the wrong way, going too fast.

  We all gathered solemnly around her and the broken ski. The snow was really beginning to fall now, fat flakes drifting down onto our noses and cheeks. I was still pretty warm, but I knew I wasn’t going to stay that way if my clothes soaked through – and they would do so in, I knew. It was only a matter of time.

  “Maybe we should all go on foot?” Megan suggested. “I don’t know about you guys, but I feel like my muscles are pretty much done with cross-country skiing anyway. And we don’t want to get separated.”

  “Or hurt,” Hillary said, already taking off her own skis.

  There were murmurs of consent around the group. I kicked off my own skis, not saying anything. Inwardly, I couldn’t believe how foolish we’d been. Shouldn’t you need to have some sort of guide to do something like this? We didn’t have any idea what we were doing. We should have at least asked the guys at the rental shop to recommend an easy route for us.

  Town seemed far away still, from the snatches of it that we caught through the trees as we trudged along. And we were sinking into every snowdrift now, making it slow work to get anywhere. And challenging, too, if you were towards the front of the line. Everyone else could just follow the tracks that you left behind, but if you were at the front of the line – and we were all taking turns – you spent a lot of energy digging yourself out of each and every hole.

  Another poor point of planning: we hadn’t brought enough water with us. Everything that we’d brought, we had finished at lunch, and the longer we trudged along, the hungrier and thirstier we got.

  “Do you think anyone lives around here?” Jane asked finally, as we took a break. She looked cold too – clearly her light sweater and coat weren’t doing enough to keep her warm. Then again, my jacket, although warmer, wasn't really helping me at this point: it was nearly soaked through, and the inside was damp as well where I’d sweated with exertion. I knew we were all quickly on the way to shock from the cold and damp, and we needed to figure out something else. We weren’t going to make it back to town like this.

  “Help!” I cried, wondering if there was anyone out there to hear me. Why had we so stupidly wandered away from town? “Is anyone there? We need help!”

  The other girls joined in quickly, until we were all yelling half-hysterically, still stumbling along in the direction from which we’d come.

  At least, I thought it was the direction that we’d come from. Our tracks had long since disappeared with all the fresh snow dumping down on us, and I had only a vague idea of where town was from our current position.

  “Help!” we all began to scream in panic.

  Suddenl
y, I heard a strangle rumbling – it sounded almost like a train? But we should be miles away from the nearest train tracks. Could they even run trains in weather like this, or would it be too slippery on the tracks?

  I looked to my left and saw something out of a horror movie: a huge cascade of snow tumbling towards us down the ravine that we were in. I stood stock-still for a long moment, just staring. Then –

  “Run!”

  We all went as fast as we could towards the trees behind us, tramping along the path that we’d already made. Then we huddled together, watching as the snow continued crashing down the mountain. I swallowed hard, barely able to catch my breath.

  “Is everyone okay?” Megan finally asked.

  We all nodded; most of us were still too breathless to respond.

  “What are we going to do?” Jane asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

  We all looked at one another, and it was clear that no one had a clue. We weren’t survivalists. We lived in San Francisco. The most we had to survive was the fog and the morning’s commute.

  8

  Derrick

  I walked around trying to hear the cries for help again, but I couldn’t seem to pinpoint the direction that they were coming from. Whoever it was, they were clearly still moving – and I was pretty sure they were zigzagging. Maybe they were really injured and couldn’t stand up straight anymore? But the more I heard the cries, the more I realized that it was more than one person there. The chances of all of them being hurt – and all in the same way – were pretty slim. They wouldn’t all be staggering around.

  So they were panicking. They didn’t know where they were, and they were woefully unprepared for the storm. They were panicking, starting to realize the dangers of being out there, and they were scared and yelling for help.

  Then, I heard something else. I froze, even though I knew that the avalanche couldn’t be coming at me given that I was still well inside the trees. Where could it be…