by Gray Gardner
“No, no, no! Shit!” she shouted, on her hands and knees. She searched through the powdery snow desperately as more snowballs sailed at her red pea coat. How did this happen? He was about to give up his location and meet her! More hard snow pelted her.
Someone suddenly grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to her feet, then carried her over to the waist high wall in front of the chapel and dropped her behind it.
“Dr. Thomas?” she asked, as snow slapped against the church behind them, leaving powdery white marks on the red brick above their crouching bodies. What was he doing there?
“I was leaving the concert hall and got creamed in the middle of the Senior Snow War. Then I saw you and didn’t feel so sorry for myself.” He grinned, as snow sprinkled on his head from exploding snowballs. His face was lit up, his smile genuine and his curly, copper hair wild.
“Thanks,” she sarcastically replied, trying to peer over the wall and find where that fucking cell phone might be. Snow flew at her face, so she quickly ducked back down and groaned in frustration. And why was he smiling? And why did it make him look even more handsome?
“You okay?” Dr. Thomas asked, thinking about her performance an hour earlier. She had been so nervous-looking, but ended up playing beautifully. He wondered if she’d been a concert pianist at her real high school. He smiled over at her. No way she was sixteen. She had to be at least twenty-one, maybe even twenty-two. He could see right through her.
“What’re you smiling at?” She grunted, trying to pull her coat so it wasn’t twisted around her body. “I’m soaking wet!”
“It’s a snowball fight.” He nodded, enjoying watching her squirm a little bit, though he did feel a little bad about the red mark on the side of her face. Must have been an icy snowball.
“Yes,” she replied. “But you don’t have to wear a drafty skirt and paper thin socks in this kind of weather, do you?”
He noticed the school uniform under her coat as more snow rained down on his head from the snowballs smacking against the wall. Her little legs did look kind of blue. Then he heard voices approaching.
“Time to move,” he said, standing and grabbing her coat sleeve, pulling her around the church as snowballs pummeled them.
George was not happy that he was dragging her around campus, but she also was ready to get away from the stupid snowballs. When they finally stopped running they were underneath a large tree and surrounded by open space. They’d be able to see an attack if it came.
For the moment, they were completely alone.
“We should pack some snowballs in case the fight heads this way,” Dr. Thomas said, leaning against the tree and catching his breath with a crooked grin. He was having fun.
George was not. She wanted to find that phone and she wasn’t ready to be so close to Dr. Thomas yet. Close proximity meant she could smell whatever awesome scent radiated off of his tall, athletic frame. “This is stupid! I don’t have time for this!” She turned and started walking away through the half a foot of snow.
“You don’t think this is fun?” he called, packing snow. How come he enjoyed teasing her so much? He felt so young at that moment, like he was in the middle of a schoolyard crush.
“Fun?” she asked, pausing. “If I had my snow pants and was on Christmas break, then maybe! As it is, I’m freezing my ass off out here, the sun has set, and I have a million things to do!”
Dr. Thomas sighed as he realized how tense she was. He’d never noticed it earlier, but he thought that maybe something as harmless as a snowball fight would help. And he couldn’t help but wonder as to why she was so tense. Did she have deadlines, just like him? An editor breathing down her neck?
The snowballs piled up as he continued packing them. No kid could resist a snowball fight. Though, he now knew she wasn’t a kid. The cute little liar. He heard her scream and looked up, expecting to find the rest of the kids closing in on them. They’d have to run again.
No one was there. Not even Jane. He took a step forward as the daylight quickly disappeared and called for her.
He took another step forward and heard a crack. His eyes peered down at his brown shoes. Oh God, he knew where they were. Penway Pond. He rushed forward without thinking and finally fell to his knees in front of a black hole, reaching desperately into the icy water and feeling around for her. Nothing. The ice cracked around him.
He took his coat off, kicked at the hole to make it bigger, and leaned in head first. The icy water practically paralyzed him, but he had to find her. There wasn’t a choice in the matter. He felt around in the dark depths of the pond, sweeping past roots and weeds and gushing in and out of the mud until a little hand grasped at his sleeve. He wrapped his hands around hers and pulled back with everything he had. The ice continued cracking underneath him, but he pulled as quickly as he could, scooting backwards to dry, hard land.
She gasped for air as he leaned back on the snow, her drenched body shivering on top of his. Her face was blue, her lips were black, and she could hardly open her eyes. He hurriedly sat up and wrapped his tan coat around her, scooped her up, and trekked through the bright snow in the dusk as fast as he could. They both had to get out of those wet clothes before hypothermia set in.
He tried to keep thinking about what he had to do next and not about how she’d almost drowned. He couldn’t think about that. It was the moment he realized it was time to start owning up to his feelings about her. He liked her. He had to have her in his life. That was his new reality.
He burst through the door to his house and crashed to the rug in front of his fireplace, quickly flipping a switch and turning it on. She lay on the floor next to him, her body jerking around from muscle spasms as she turned her head from side to side, trying to speak to him. Mud streaked across her face and his hands as the fire crackled behind him.
“It’s okay,” he calmly said, unwrapping his coat from her body and beginning to peel off her red one. His hands were shaking and numb, so he pulled off his button down and t-shirt, tossing them aside as he worked on her. The warmth from the fire helped him think a little clearer. “Jane? Jane, can you sit up?”
Her teeth were chattering and her lips were purple in the firelight. Her red hair stuck to her forehead as she tried to curl up and keep warm, but her muscles were jerking so violently that she couldn’t.
“Jane, listen to me, you’ve got to get out of these wet clothes,” he said, sounding a little desperate. He wasn’t sure if the right thing would be to let her fumble around with buttons and zippers when she couldn’t even feel her own fingers or to simply strip her clothes off of her right there.
These were not the kind of circumstances he’d hoped for when he finally got to see her naked.
George opened her eyes as an orange and yellow-ish blob danced in front of her face. She brought her hands up from inside the stifling cocoon of blankets and rubbed her eyes so that she could get a better look. It was a fire. Where was there a fireplace?
She tried to sit up but her entire body was constricted in thermal blankets. She kicked and pulled and was finally able to push up on her elbow. Oh no.
Dr. Thomas’s living room. And there he was, not two feet from her, wrapped up snugly on the floor right behind her in the dim light. She grimaced as she thought of something else.
Looking down, she realized that the white t-shirt she was wearing was not her own. She pulled the blankets down and looked further. Definitely not her plaid boxer shorts, either. Mother fucker.
She frowned as she looked over at him. She wanted to be furious with him, but he was only trying to help her. Regardless, now he’d seen her without any clothes on, only her tiny white underwear and bra left on. This was so not the way she imagined it going down. Some wine, good food, great conversation, then maybe she’d let him take her clothes off. But falling into a frozen pond? Damsel in distress? Hypothermia? Lame!
Now everything would be awkward. After all, she was supposed to be his student. Weren’t there laws against this?
Her head pounded as she tried not to think about it too much, and when she looked over to the hearth she found a little cup of water and two aspirin. She quickly took the pills and lay back. She’d just rest for a second before she snuck out. Half-drowning in freezing water was tiring.
Dr. Thomas caught his breath and quickly sat up. The morning sun was shining brightly through his French windows and he’d momentarily forgotten what day it was. Then he remembered.
Looking down on the floor next to him, he saw Jane, finally sleeping peacefully. The first thing he did after getting her out of the wet clothes was wrap her in blankets and call his friend in the trauma center at a hospital in the city. His friend had told him what to do and what to watch for, and reassured him that she’d probably be all right since she hadn’t been under too long and hadn’t choked down any water.
He’d worked hard on getting her temperature back up and her circulation going. He’d dressed her in dry clothes, rubbed her feet, legs, hands, and arms, and finally wrapped her up like a caterpillar in front of the fire. He’d even gotten a wet rag and wiped the mud off of her face. She stopped twitching and closed her eyes shortly after he pulled her back into him and spooned her, sleeping with deep, steady breaths.
He knew he’d been scared before, but this was a panic he’d never felt in his entire life. He stayed up with her as long as he could, then fell asleep on the floor next to her. He was glad she was sleeping beside him that morning, even if it was on the floor in separate blankets. It was… comfortable.
Slowly, he crept around her and headed to the kitchen. Sunday morning breakfast was always a big deal in his family, so he always prepared them out of habit. He was excited but for some reason he couldn’t explain, a little nervous when he saw Jane stirring.
“Oh shit,” she mumbled, pushing up on her elbows and squinting in the sunlight. She’d slept a little longer than she wanted. And why did it smell like a diner?
Finishing off the water he’d left next to her, she slowly pushed up and sat on the floor, frowning as she tried to see what was going on over in the kitchen. Dr. Thomas suddenly appeared, smiling, as usual. Her stomach twisted a little. Good God, why did he always look so good?
“Are you feeling okay?” he asked, kneeling next to her and holding her arm as she stood up.
“Yes, thank you,” she replied, her voice hoarse. Then she licked her dry lips and looked up at him. “And, thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me,” he replied, leading her over to a leather bar stool at the long white marble kitchen counter. “I was just so, well, scared.”
She nodded as he helped her into the stool. “I was, too. Good thing you’re an army medic, huh?”
“I called the groundskeepers and told them to mark the pond as off limits. Someone could really get hurt,” he said, dumping something that was sizzling onto a plate.
It really smelled good in his kitchen. George rubbed her head and realized that every muscle in her body was aching. She also realized how lucky she was that he was not only around, but brave enough to dive in and get her.
“Pancakes, eggs, and bacon.” He grinned, setting the plate down in front of her. He realized she looked pretty cute with her hair sticking out every which way and hanging in her face.
She stared at the plate as he looked at her. He’d made her food? She couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. She tentatively took a bite.
“Wow,” she mumbled, mouth full. “You learned how to cook from your mother.”
Dr. Thomas paused in the middle of fixing his own plate. How in the world did she know that? Everyone else he cooked for assumed that he’d taken extensive cooking classes. Or was just a sheer genius. Which he was.
“How did you know that?” he asked, setting his plate down and sitting on the bar stool next to her. How did she always seem to figure him out?
“Because this is how moms cook,” she said, food stuffed in her cheeks that had now returned to their pink hue. “Bacon grease and butter. Bad for your health but great for your state of mind.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” he nodded, turning back to his plate. A good breakfast could make for a great day, his mom had always said.
He poured her some coffee as he topped off his own, then was startled as she shuffled over to the sink and began doing the dishes. He didn’t know any sixteen-year-olds at the school that would do that. In fact, he’d had many over for faculty-student dinner parties and none had ever even offered.
“It’s going to warm up this week,” he said, opening the dishwasher as she feebly rinsed off a plate and handed it to him. “That means we’ll have soccer practice.”
She sighed and looked over at him. “Dr. Thomas, I don’t want to play soccer.”
“Too late now.” He grinned, taking another plate from her hand as she stared him down. “I’ve already gotten it added to your schedule as your PE credit.”
George squinted her eyes as she looked over at him. He was loving this a little too much. She turned the water off in the sink and held her arms out, his large undershirt and boxers hanging off of her body.
“I could quit if I told the dean you dressed me up in your underwear like a doll!”
He closed the dishwasher and took a step towards her, feeling much better about getting close to her. He placed a hand on her chin. “And then I could tell him about all of the times you failed to meet the standards on your homework and quizzes, the cell phone infractions, the sneaking out, and of course, your very bad language. And his way of disciplining is much harsher than mine.”
Her mouth dropped open as she stared up at him. She couldn’t really come back with anything after that. She slapped his hand off of her chin and stumbled out of the kitchen, stiffly walking back to the fireplace.
“Where are my clothes?” she snapped, lifting the blankets from the floor and throwing them to the side.
“In the dryer,” he said, casually finishing up in the kitchen. He found that he liked making her mad. She had quite a temper.
“Where’s the dryer?” she called, looking back into the kitchen.
“Give me two seconds and I’ll get them for you.”
She huffed and looked down at her legs sticking out underneath the large boxers and the t-shirt draped over her shoulders, hanging almost to her knees. This was all very humiliating.
Dr. Thomas returned with her uniform and she darted into the bathroom. She quickly changed and was buttoning her coat as she returned to the living room. There were so many things she wanted to say, and she could go with gratitude or tartness. She looked at the floor, then to the side, then finally up at him.
“Thank you. For everything.” Gratitude.
“You’re very welcome.” He grinned, as her cheeks flushed, and she handed over his folded t-shirt and boxers. Christ, she was adorable.
“Goodbye,” she quickly said, hurrying out of his house and practically running back to the concert hall and chapel. She didn’t want to stay and chat.
She pushed his gallant rescue to the back of her mind as she found her soaking backpack on the snow, right where she’d left it. What now?
She pulled her keys out of the front pocket. This was an emergency.
“You look like shit,” Darby frowned, leaning back in the cushioned chair of the tea room in the hotel lobby. She and Peterson stayed there whenever they were in town, so when Jane called in a huff she recommended the three of them meet there immediately.
“She almost drowned and froze to death at the same time!” Burton loudly whispered, leaning over the table.
George closed her eyes and mumbled, “That’s not the worst part.”
“What’s worse than almost dying?” Burton asked.
She opened one eye and looked at her friends. “I was in danger of getting hypothermia so he had to take my wet clothes off.”
“Oh my God, he saw you naked!” Darby squealed, as George hid her face in her hands and Burton smiled as the people sipping thei
r coffee glanced over at them.
“Wow, what a moral dilemma,” Burton replied, shaking her head. “I mean, on the one hand, he’s just rescued you from the pond and has to save your life by removing your wet uniform, and on the other he’s supposed to be your teacher and undressing you in the privacy of his own home has to be illegal—even in Virginia!”
George groaned and let her forehead hit the table.
“Well, you know what has to happen next,” Darby nodded, eating a scone. “You have to see him naked now.”
“I am not trying to see him naked!” George snapped, lifting her head up.
“Why?” Darby and Burton asked at the same time.
“At least,” she sighed and said, “not until I finish what I’m supposed to do.”
“You’re supposed to let yourself be happy, too,” Darby nodded.
“I know, but I’m just going to have to wait and see,” George said, sipping her coffee. “Once he finds out what I really am, he might not want to ever see me again.”
“How will you ever know unless you go for it?” Burton asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Life’s too short to be a pussy,” Darby said, turning her head and holding her cup up to the other patrons who were staring. “Did you get all that?”
George shook her head and leaned back in her chair. “You’re right, I know you’re right. I feel like I got hit by a truck, but I can’t stop thinking about him and how great I feel when I’m around him. He has to know by now that I have feelings for him.”
Burton and Darby smiled over at her.
“Jane, here’s what you do: you bust your supplier, you save your job, and for God’s sake, you ask out that beautiful, beautiful man,” Burton ordered, nodding her head.
“For shiz,” Darby agreed, mouth full.
