Naughty or Nice

16. Henry

16

HENRY

DECEMBER 19

I t’s still dark when we wake up to Rora’s alarm blaring beside the bed. She groans, burrowing her face against my chest like that will somehow muffle it.

“Should I snooze?” I ask, reaching for her phone.

Rora, I’ve learned, is an alarm snoozer: she sets her alarm an hour earlier than she actually needs to be awake and snoozes it every ten minutes. I’d hate it if it didn’t mean an hour of cuddling every morning.

Rora sits up, her hair messy. She smooths it down, grumbling, “Not today. We don’t want to miss it.”

She doesn’t elaborate, and I immediately forget what she’s talking about when she climbs out of bed. She closes her eyes and stretches, not a scrap of clothing to be seen. The last of the firelight illuminates her body, but it’s not nearly enough.

I fumble with the battery-powered lantern on the nightstand until it lights up the room. Rora opens her eyes, catching me watching her.

“Enjoying your new hobby?”

“Havin’ the time of my life,” I say, yawning and reaching for her. “Can’t we stay in bed a little longer?”

Rora steps out of my reach. “Nope. Trust me, it’ll be worth it. Come on, we probably have enough time to make coffee.”

She resets the fire and sets a pot of water on to boil while I rummage around in the cabinets for coffee cups and a French press. We bundle up in sweaters and thermal socks, and Rora pours the coffee as I drape a blanket over the bench on the porch so we don’t catch hypothermia while we’re doing whatever it is we’re doing. It’s a covered porch, so it’s mostly snow-free, but it’s cold as all get-out.

It’s still dark, but Rora wasn’t kidding; the view is gorgeous. Majestic mountains command the horizon. There are miles and miles of fluffy snow-covered plains between the cabin and the mountains in the distance, clusters of shadowy evergreens dotting the landscape. Everything is still and silent, except for the soft rustling of the pine needles in the nearby copse of trees. The air is so fresh it stings my nose, bitterly cold with the comforting scent of pine and snow.

“Shit, it’s freezing,” Rora says, exiting the cabin. Her camera dangles from her neck, and she has two steaming coffee cups in hand. She passes me one and takes the spot on the bench beside me.

“What are you doing?”

“Sitting down.”

I set my coffee on the deck, then pat my lap. Rora rolls her eyes, but they twinkle as she settles on my lap.

“If my lap is here, that’s where you should be sitting, baby,” I murmur, brushing the spot behind her ear with my nose. She smells smoky and sweet and fucking perfect.

Rora squeals, jumping as I brush a ticklish spot. “You really are into the whole Santa thing, huh?”

“Not nearly as into it as you are.”

She gasps, pulling back to give me a mock glare. “How dare you.”

I laugh, wrapping my arms around her. My coffee is almost definitely turning icy cold as the seconds tick by, but I’d rather hold her than drink it.

“It’s pretty magical, right?” she says, nodding toward the mountains in the distance .

I look up, expecting the same landscape I was staring at just moments ago.

But I now understand why Rora wanted to get up so early. Light crests the peak of the tallest mountain, ribbons of hazy pink and yellow streaking across the sky setting the face of the mountains ablaze. It’s the most beautiful sunrise I’ve ever seen, like someone has splashed watercolors across the horizon.

“It’s incredible.” It comes out in a whisper, the view stealing my voice.

Rora leans into me and I turn away, watching the colors of the sunrise flickering in her eyes. Fuck. Now, it’s the most beautiful sunrise I’ve ever seen.

“It’s easy to forget everything up here,” she says softly, placing a hand over mine. “It’s like you’re just a smudge on the landscape and nothing else matters. Time just … stops for a second. Everything stops.”

She has the same blazing look on her face I’ve noticed when she catches the perfect shot, and I wonder if time stands still for her when she’s behind the lens, too. Anytime I see it, it feels like peering behind the curtain and seeing a part of Rora that only slips out when she’s truly in her element.

“Thank you for sharing this with me,” I tell her, brushing a finger over the apple of her cheek.

She looks away from the sunrise, meeting my gaze. Whatever expression she sees on my face makes her eyes widen a fraction. She swallows. “I find myself wanting to share everything with you,” she says, so softly that even the rustling pines are louder. “And up here… I don’t know, maybe it’s stupid, but I feel like I can here. Like we can just be here, in this moment, and we don’t have to think about what happens when we go back.”

I get it.

My brother. Our jobs. Our expiration date. It all seems so trivial here.

“Do you have a place like this?” Rora asks. “Somewhere you can just be?”

“There have been a lot of places—a lot of moments—but I don’t have one particular place.”

She twists in my lap so she can look at me properly. “Then tell me about your favorite moment. Other than this one, obviously,” she quips.

“Obviously,” I joke back, even though it’s not remotely a joke. This place, this moment, just shot to the top of my list. There’s only one other moment that comes to mind, but telling her…

She must see the uncertainty on my face because she prods me in the chest and frowns. “Tell me.”

“It’s going to sound like a line,” I warn, but she just rolls her eyes, gesturing for me to go on. “I was nineteen, and it was my first time out of the country. My first time out of Texas, actually. It was a three-week research trip one of my college professors organized, and I was one of only two lowerclassmen picked to go.”

“Where’d you go?”

“The Scottish Highlands,” I tell her, smiling as I remember how fucking excited I’d been just to go on an airplane. “It was the middle of November, the lowest temperatures I’d ever experienced, but I couldn’t sleep one night, so I went for a walk around our campsite and I saw the aurora for the first time.”

Rora barks a surprised laugh. “Seriously?”

“Mm-hmm. It was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen, and I just felt this moment of complete peace.” I close my eyes, remembering the feel of the damp, freezing Scottish air on my face. “Twenty-eight years later, and I still remember it like it was yesterday—November, wearing my favorite hand-me-down GAP sweatshirt.”

When I open my eyes, Rora’s brow has furrowed. “November twenty-third?”

“Yeah. Why? ”

She tugs her bottom lip between her teeth. “It’s quite the coincidence, is all. November twenty-third, twenty-eight years ago—the first time you saw the aurora, and the day I was born.”

There’s no way . “Are you fucking with me?”

“Nope,” Rora replies, shaking her head and fighting a laugh at the shock I can feel written all over my face. Better shock than everything else I’m feeling; my mind screams at me that there’s been a thread of fate tying us together all this time. A cruel fucking thread, all things considered.

“That’s some coincidence,” I agree, hoping that she can’t see just how much it’s tearing me up.

Rora settles back against my chest, and we sit in a comfortable silence, watching the sun’s crescendo. The wild expanse before our eyes calms me down. I grab my coffee from the deck and sip—ice cold, but caffeine is caffeine.

We didn’t bring our phones outside, so I have no idea how quickly time passes as we cuddle and watch the world go by. It’s a perfect moment—one I already know I’m going to cling onto for as long as time allows me.

“Hey, sugar?”

Rora tilts her head back to look at me. “Hmm?”

“My memory isn’t what it used to be?—”

“You are getting on in years. It happens to the best of us. Well, not me yet, obviously.”

Lord have mercy. I cover her mouth with my palm, feeling the corners lift below my hand. “Are you done?”

Rora responds by running her tongue along my palm, her green eyes twinkling mischievously. She squeals as I pull my hand away and wipe it on her cheek. “Okay, okay, I’m done.”

“As I was saying, I want to remember this moment.”

A little of the sparkle disappears from Rora’s eyes as the unspoken “when we leave” settles between us.

I run a finger along the edge of her camera strap. “Will you take a picture of us? ”

Rora inhales and sits up. “I’d like that. Something to keep.”

Something to keep . Because we can’t keep each other.

She unwinds her camera from around her neck and turns it on. Her tongue pokes out the side of her mouth, a look of concentration on her face as she messes with the settings. I assume it’s still set up for shooting inside the grotto, and it’s a hell of a lot brighter out here.

She holds the camera out and then pauses. “You have longer arms.”

Rora flips out the screen before handing it to me. Somehow, it’s the first time I’ve held Rora’s camera, and holy shit, it’s heavier than I expected. No wonder her neck is always sore. It has to be at least five pounds.

I hold it out until we’re both visible on the little screen and hesitate with my finger on the button. “I say this with the utmost respect for your craft, but do I just … push the button?” I know photographers who complain about constantly being asked if that’s all photography is by people who think anyone could do it with the right equipment.

Rora laughs, a soft, twinkling sound that settles deep in my bones. She so rarely does it.

I think I fall in love with the sound a little more each time .

And I’m going to do myself a favor and pretend that thought didn’t just cross my mind.

“Yeah, it’s all set. Just push the button,” Rora says.

She looks at me with the twinkly almost-smile her eyes do so beautifully, and I press the button without thinking twice. The shutter sounds, and Rora’s head snaps around.

“I wasn’t read—” Her protest dies on her tongue as the image preview appears on the screen. It’s gone as quickly as it appears. I barely see it, but Rora must be used to taking in images in a split second.

“We can retake it,” I say, but she shakes her head.

“Let me see. ”

I hand the camera back, and Rora brings up the picture, holding the screen out for me to look. Our cheeks are rosy red, and there’s snow in my beard and in Rora’s hair, but those things fade into the background as I take in the look between us, the energy between us. Rora is looking at me with bright eyes and the slightest curve to her lips, like she’s mapping every inch of my face. It’s my expression that makes my breath catch in my throat, though. Because I’ve been photographed with a lot of people in my life, and I’ve never looked at anyone like that.

“Do you have a place like this? Somewhere you can just be?”

I can see it on my face on the tiny screen; I found it. And it turns out it’s not a place after all. It’s her.