Cabin Fever

by Annabelle Costa

  “No, it’s just…” He gets control of his laughter, but he’s still smiling. “It’s not what I expected you to say. It’s the last thing I expected you to say.”

  “My brother Drew and I used to build them when we were little kids.” I smile to myself at the memory of that happy, simple time in my life. Not that my life is bad—I’ve got a job I love, which is more than most people can say. But running my own business is stressful, and my love life was a string of disasters until Chase came along, so it’s hard not to long for a time when all I had to worry about was catching the school bus in the morning. “Drew and I would go out to the park by our house every time it snowed. He did most of the work, actually. But… it was really fun. I never do anything like that anymore.”

  “Yeah.” He cocks his head at me. “Me either.”

  He ambles over to his dresser, digs around for a moment, then comes up with a pair of black waterproof gloves. I take them from him, his thumb just barely brushing against my hand during the exchange.

  “Have fun,” he says. “Remember, if you put the old silk hat on his head, he might come to life. So be careful.”

  I roll my eyes. “Yeah, yeah.”

  I have to admit, there was a tiny part of me that was hoping Jake might offer to come outside to help me build the snowman. It’s always more fun with another person—as a kid, I never would have considered it without Drew. He was determined to build a bigger snowman than any other kid in the park, and if he saw one rivaling ours, he’d challenge the other kids to a snowball fight. And that’s when the real fun started.

  Drew. God, I hope he’s able to lead a search team out to find us.

  When I get outside, all bundled in my Thinsulate coat, my beret, my red scarf, and Jake’s gloves, I’m not entirely sure where to begin. Truth be told, Drew always did most of the work. But the basic idea is you have to make a base of a large ball, followed by a medium-sized ball, then a small ball for the head. Easy peasy.

  I start scraping together some fresh powder with my gloves. It seems to pack well, but it’s hard to form it into a ball. Maybe I should have a shovel. Then again, Drew never used a shovel.

  “Christ, do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

  I straighten up. Jake is standing behind me, just as bundled up as I am. He’s squinting into the blindingly white snow with his good eye and shaking his head.

  “I thought you said you built snowmen all the time,” he says accusingly.

  “It was a long time ago,” I say defensively. “And my brother used to help me.”

  Jake looks down at the pathetic little pile I made on the ground. “I’ll say.”

  I huff. “Are you just going to stand here being a jerk or are you going to help?”

  “Standing here is much more fun.”

  I give him a look.

  He sighs and limps through the snow until he’s right next to me. “All right, you’re obviously not going to be able to do this without my help.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But I expect you to do your share of the work. No slacking just because I’m here.”

  “Of course not.”

  He nods, his brow furrowed. “All right, the first thing you have to do is make a snowball.”

  We each pick up a handful of snow and form it into a spherical shape. He checks out my snowball to make sure it’s all right, which I find mildly insulting. I know how to make a snowball, for God’s sake.

  “Good,” he says. “Now you want to add snow to your snowball until it’s too big to hold. That should happen pretty quickly for you.”

  I roll my eyes, but do as he says. He does the same, although his gets much larger than mine.

  “Great job,” he says. “Now what you want to do is put your big snowball on the ground and roll it so that it picks up more snow.”

  I remember this now. I remember Drew rolling a ball in the snow until it got really giant, then he’d look back at me with a toothy grin.

  This snow rolls very easily. I’m not quite as quick at it as Jake, but I manage to roll a pretty decent-sized ball. Mine could easily be the torso with Jake’s as the base.

  “Nice.” He nods in approval at the size of my ball. “You’re a natural at this. If the catering business doesn’t work out, you’ve got a fallback career.”

  “You’re not so bad yourself,” I say. “In case the living out in the woods and never interacting with other human beings thing doesn’t work out.”

  For a split second, a sad look comes over Jake’s features. I’m not sure what that’s about, because the last time it came up, he seemed perfectly content to have no contact with the outside world. But before I can say anything, the look quickly passes.

  “Okay,” Jake says. “Now you’ve got to put your ball on top of mine. Remember: lift with your legs, not your back.”

  Damn, I’d been hoping he’d lift the smaller ball on top of the larger for me. Oh well.

  I bend down, trying to get a grasp of the ball of snow. Even though it’s smaller than his, it’s still pretty damn big. And heavy. But if I could just get a good grip on the bottom of it, I could probably… maybe I could…

  “Do you need help?” he asks me.

  I don’t want him to have yet another excuse to call me “Princess.” I’m lifting this snow torso if it’s the last thing I do. “No, I’m good.”

  “Okay, this is painful to watch.” Jake gently pushes me aside. “Let me do it.”

  And then he lifts the damn thing up like it weighs nothing.

  I roll out the snowman’s head, while Jake goes back inside to find stuff to make up the face. I do manage to lift the head all by myself and get it on top of the body, just as he emerges from the house.

  “Oh, hey,” he says. “You lifted that all by yourself! Good for you!”

  I glare at him. “Did you find our snowman a face or what?”

  He holds up a really old, dried out carrot and two small pieces of charcoal. “Eyes and nose.”

  “What about a mouth?” I ask as he adjusts the charcoal pieces on the face.

  “I guess our snowman is the silent type.”

  I draw a happy face with my gloved finger, although it’s crooked because the gloves are so big on me. Then I step back to admire our handiwork.

  “This is pretty good,” I say. “I feel like I should have taken notes. In case I want to teach my children how to build a snowman someday. You know?”

  He snorts. “I don’t think I need to worry about that one.”

  I dust a little snow off my pants leg. “Why not? You don’t want to have kids?”

  He rolls his good eye. “This lifestyle isn’t exactly amenable to children.”

  “Well, you could move slightly closer to civilization in the future. I mean, if you wanted.”

  His lips form a straight line. “No.”

  “So there’s no way you’d ever—”

  “No.” He cuts me off before I can even get out the sentence. “No chance.”

  Well, fine.

  “Anyway.” Jake circles the snowman, avoiding looking at me directly. I can tell he’s desperate to change the subject to anything besides the reason he’s chosen to live in the middle of nowhere. “We should probably name him.”

  “Name him?”

  “A snowman isn’t a snowman until you give him a name.”

  He sure has a lot of opinions about snowmen. “I don’t know,” I say thoughtfully. “I need to think about it.”

  “This isn’t like naming your child,” he says impatiently. “It’ll probably be melted or smooshed in a few days. There’s no wrong name.”

  “All right, all right.” I start to chew on one of the fingers of the glove before realizing they’re not my gloves and I shouldn’t be chewing on them either way. This is how my fingernails get shredded. “How about… Porky?”

  “Porky?” He frowns at me. “I know I said there was no wrong name for a snowman, but I think you’ve found it.”

  I glare at
him. “Porky Pig was always my favorite cartoon character, and you said I could name him. So that’s his name.”

  “It’s a ‘he’?” He points to two bumps on the circular torso. “I was sure this was a girl snowman.”

  “Snowman, Jake.”

  He grins at me. “Snowwoman.”

  I scrape off a chunk of the protruding snow. “You happy?”

  He scrapes off the other “snow-boob” and forms it into a bulge on the lower third of the snowman. “That’s better.”

  “Oh my God.” I take the snow-boob I’m holding and throw it at him. It hits him in the shoulder and he widens his left eye in surprise. “You deserved that.”

  “Wow. You’re really going to regret that.” Jake bends down to scoop up some snow. “I may not have as many fingers as you do, but I’ve had a lot of time out here, practicing throwing snowballs. And now I’m going to put it to good use.”

  I start to make a run for it, but his snowball hits me square in the shoulder. For a moment, I get this dizzying sense of déjà vu as I remember the snowball fights I got into with my brother when we were kids. I remember how happy I used to be back then. Life seemed so uncomplicated when I was a kid. I miss it. Maybe Jake has the right idea, living out here with no electricity or phone lines.

  Jake ducks down to scoop up more snow and I do the same. This is so on.

  Chapter 10

  Jake pummels me, although I’m fairly sure he’s taking it easy on me. If he wanted, he could have thrown a snowball hard enough to take off my head, and since I manage to maintain my head, I assume he’s been going easy on me. He definitely gets in a few good shots though. But then again, so do I.

  After a good half hour of this, my nose and fingers feel frozen, my socks are drenched, and my hat fell off and is lying somewhere in the snow. I form one last ball, which I hurl at Jake with all my might. It hits him square in the face. Naturally, I was aiming for his shoulder.

  “Jesus, you’re out for blood.” He wipes snow off his cheekbones. His eyepatch goes slightly off-center for a moment, but he quickly fixes it.

  “You’re soaked, you know,” I say. “And you’ve got snow all over your coat.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do.” I step toward him, even though I risk getting hit with another snowball at close range. I brush some snow off his coat. “What do you call this?”

  “Snowman droppings?”

  I laugh and shake my head. “You know what? This was really fun.”

  “Yeah,” he agrees, blinking as if surprised. “It actually was.”

  I’m close enough that I have to look up to see his face now. He looks down at me, blinking ice crystals from the eyelashes of his good eye. His beard casts a shadow over the lower half of his face.

  God, why does he have to be so freaking sexy?

  “We should probably go back inside,” he says, breaking the spell. “It’s starting to get dark. And you’re soaked.”

  He’s right. My hair is dripping ice water. I follow him back into the cabin, and I’m starting to shiver. I would give anything for a hot shower. I don’t know how he does it out here. I think the lack of hot water is worse than the lack of electricity.

  Jake limps over to the linen closet and rifles through it until he pulls out a towel for me. It occurs to me he must do his own wash without the benefit of a washing machine or even hot water. That must be quite a task. I’ll bet he doesn’t get bored out here.

  I wrap the towel around my hair and my shoulders, trying to keep my teeth from chattering. “How about soup for dinner?”

  He nods. His hair is damp from the snow, and again, the effect is really sexy. I need to stop thinking this way. Even though I’ve broken up with Chase, Jake is a random guy in a cabin who I’m never going to see again. I’m not a one-night stand kind of girl. “Yeah, I got plenty of soup.”

  I check out the pantry and he’s right—he’s stocked with two shelves packed to the brim with soup. Chicken noodle, beef stew, chicken and dumplings, chicken pot pie, beef and vegetables, tomato, onion… he must have soup at least once a day. I can’t even imagine having canned soup as one-third of my meals. The salt content alone would probably give me a stroke.

  “You know,” I say, “we could make it a little tastier with a few tweaks…”

  His face lights up. I’ve been cooking a long time for a lot of different people, and I have to say, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone so excited by my cooking. I guess I shouldn’t be too flattered, considering he’s been eating food from cans for the past few years. Still, it’s nice to be appreciated. Chase would rather have takeout than my cooking.

  I grab a bunch of cans from the pantry, including stewed tomatoes, green beans, beef stock, and refried beans. Jake watches me carefully, as if memorizing every step for later.

  “Can I help?” he asks. “I can do anything that doesn’t involve too much… um, dexterity.”

  I look down at his fingers when he says that. He ducks his head down as he stretches out what remains of the fingers of his left hand.

  “You seem to be able to manage okay with most things,” I comment.

  He nods. “I’ve taught myself to compensate. But it definitely makes things harder. And I realize it’s not… you know, nice to look at.”

  “I don’t mind,” I murmur. “It’s just a few fingers, right?”

  I want to ask him what happened to him. How did a guy so comfortable with the outdoors end up with a case of frostbite? And what about his noticeable limp—what caused that? Also, you don’t lose an eye to frostbite. Something really bad happened to him, but I have a feeling it would be easier to get him to cook a gourmet meal than to get the story out of him.

  “So the trick to making perfect soup is you have to be patient,” I tell him. “You want to simmer it a long time and keep tasting. And make sure you season properly.”

  “Right.” Jake grabs the salt shaker and I flinch. I yank it out of his hands. “What? You said to season it!”

  “Stuff that comes out of a can is really salty already,” I say. “You are not allowed to use this without my permission. Got it?”

  “All right, all right!” He grins at me. “Are you always this bossy when you’re cooking?”

  “Yes.” I may as well be honest—I take great pride in my food, so I want to make sure everything comes out perfect. “But it’ll be worth it. I promise.”

  I give Jake the task of stirring the soup intermittently, while I chop up some bacon I find in the fridge. I love food, but if I absolutely had to pick a favorite food, it would be bacon. I subscribe to the theory that everything is better with bacon. If I wrote a cookbook, that would be the title: Better With Bacon.

  “Doesn’t it smell insanely good?” I say as I lean over the pot of soup, allowing the aroma to waft into my nostrils. Jake gives me a funny look, and my cheeks grow warm. “Sorry. I just love food. Probably too much.”

  “No, that’s…” Jake gives me a crooked grin. “I respect that. I really do.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet…”

  “No, I really mean it. My mom… she loves to cook too.” Jake gives the pot a stir, a distant look in his eyes. “Bake, actually. She has this chocolate cupcake recipe that’s better than anything you could get in a bakery. I told her she should go into business for herself, but… well, she’s not like you.”

  I look up from the bacon pieces in front of me. “What does that mean?”

  “I mean, she didn’t want to take a risk on something she loved.” He dips a spoon into the simmering broth and blows on it. “She spent her life as a receptionist, and… well, there’s nothing wrong with that, but it wasn’t her passion. I always thought she should have gone for it with the baking. I mean, her table always sold out first at the school bake sales.”

  I smile to myself, thinking of a school-aged Jake at a bake sale, touting his mom’s cupcakes. “Are you an only child?”

  “Yeah.” He takes a sip from the spoon. “They wanted m
ore kids, but they couldn’t have any. So it was just me.”

  “They must miss you a lot then.”

  His dark eyebrows bunch together. “Yeah, but—”

  “I mean, you said you don’t talk to anyone in the outside world. You don’t even have a phone, right?”

  He places the soup spoon down on the counter and the clang it makes reverberates throughout the room. “So? What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” I say quickly. I don’t want to get him riled up, and maybe this is all none of my business. Okay, it’s definitely none of my business. “I was just making conversation.”

  Jake glares at me for a good thirty seconds before he goes back to tending the soup. The soup probably doesn’t need quite this much attention, but I like having him next to me. And it’s warm by the stove—he’s just as wet and cold as I am.

  We do our tasks in silence for the next fifteen minutes or so. I get the bacon in a frying pan, and Jake steps aside to let me work. He watches the bacon sizzle in the pan.

  “I miss my parents a lot,” he says out of nowhere.

  I look up at him. There’s a sad look on his face. “Do you ever see them?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Why not?”

  He closes his good eye. “It’s complicated, Natalie. But… they know I love them. They understand. So…”

  He reaches out with his good hand to stir the soup. I wish I knew what brought him out here. I’d give anything to know. Why would a person leave their family and friends and live out in the wilderness?

  The only thing I can think of is that he’s running from something. And there’s no chance he’d tell me what it is.

  “By the way.” He glances up at me. “You can have my bedroom if you want tonight. Like you saw, it’s just a twin mattress on the floor—not particularly comfortable—but you can have it. I’ll take the sleeping bag.”

  I’m oddly touched. I don’t want to take his bedroom, but at the same time, I’m still achy from sleeping on the floor last night.

  “Okay,” I say. “I appreciate that.”

  “No problem,” he says, and he goes back to stirring the soup.