Snowed in for Christmas

Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

Jett

WE DRAG OURSELVES OUT of bed eventually and clean up with towels and freezing cold water. It’s miserable, but laughing my way through it with Ben makes it a little better. We splash the water pooled in the sink at each other, shouting in outrage at the icy chill. Then we pile on every bit of warm clothing we have and shuffle downstairs.

Ben believes we can start a fire without burning down the whole house. All I know is that I can see my breath every time I breathe, so I go along with his plan. He puts his winter gear back on and trudges into the backyard in search of dry wood.

“I can come with you to help,” I say.

“Absolutely not,” he snaps.

His gaze is unexpectedly hard, his jaw set and firm. The steel in that look roots me to the spot and sends a trickle of warmth into my belly.

“You don’t have the proper gear for it,” he says. “And we don’t know when we’ll have hot water. If you get soaked through by the snow again, we might not have a good way to warm you up.”

“I can think of a way,” I say, raising one eyebrow and shamelessly looking Ben up and down. He might be bundled up in jackets and boots, but now I know what that body he’s hiding looks and feels and tastes like. There’s no more concealing the truth from me.

Ben straightens, knocked off-balance, but he recovers quickly and jabs his finger at my chest. “No.”

He leaves through the back door, tromping through the snow toward a shed in the far corner of the yard. I stand at the door shivering and watching him. We let our candles burn down last night. I should probably do something useful like finding more of them for tonight, but instead I keep watching him. I never noticed before how efficient he is. He doesn’t waste time, his own or anyone else’s. He doesn’t pity himself for having to go out in the snow. He simply stomps through the yard and gets the job done. Because it needs to get done and that’s all there is to it for him. I might try to weasel my way out of a chore like this, might try to put it off or convince someone else to do it for me, but not Ben. If he deems something is worthy of his time, he goes at it head first, no fear, no hesitation, no whining.

I never realized before how much persistence and determination that must take. I wrote him off as a boring nerd, but as he struggles through the snow with a bundle of firewood in his arms, he starts to look a whole lot more like strength itself.

I open the sliding door for him when he returns. He stomps his boots on a mat by the door, but he can’t help tracking some of the cold in with him. Together, we find the driest logs and set them in the fireplace. It doesn’t look like anyone has used the thing in quite a while, but at least it’s clean. It takes several matches and help from both the lighter and bits of newspaper, but eventually we get a few logs crackling. With the sun streaming in through the back doors and both of us warm in our sweatpants and beanies and sweaters, the living room quickly goes from bitterly cold to downright cozy.

Ben makes peanut butter (no jelly) sandwiches. Not luxurious, but we don’t have much choice when we can’t use a stove or microwave or any other appliance. He cuts up an apple as well, and we dip the slices into the jar of peanut butter as we sit on the living room floor as close to the fireplace as we dare and play Scrabble.

“I can’t believe we’re actually playing this,” I say.

“They didn’t have much else here,” Ben says as he rearranges his letters.

He’s destroying me, of course, though it certainly doesn’t help that I’m barely paying attention to the game. Mostly, I’m watching Ben’s lips part so he can take another bite of apple. I’m watching his careful, elegant fingers moving tiles around. I’m watching his eyes behind his glasses, so focused and thoughtful as he contemplates his next word.

“Ha! Got it,” he says.

He lays out seven devastating letters, attaching them to a “c” I didn’t think anything of leaving hanging out at the end of a word.

“Quixotic,” he says. “That’s … 52 points.”

“What?” I shout.

“The word itself is worth 26, but I’m on a double word score.”

“That’s… You’re cheating. Is that even a real word?”

“Of course it’s a real word.”

“Define it.”

I should have known better. Ben snorts, not thrown off in the slightest.

“It means unrealistic, impractical, overly idealistic,” he rattles off.

He smirks at me, the implication clear. My heart judders as I realize he’s messing with me. Ben is joking with me. On purpose. He’s even smiling about it.

I flip the board abruptly, sending Scrabble tiles flying across the cream-colored carpet. Before he can complain, I pounce, shoving him to the carpet and perching on all fours over him. Ben lies under me blinking, a slice of apple caught between his fingers. I bend down with deliberate slowness, closing my lips over his fingers to steal the apple.

“Hey, that was mine,” he protests weakly.

I chew quickly and swallow. “If you hurry, I bet you can still taste it.”

I bend down to kiss him, and, incredibly, Ben rises to meet me. He licks into my mouth like he means to find any stray bits of apple I didn’t manage to swallow, and I open up to let him. In moments, the Scrabble game lies forgotten as I sink down atop him, chasing his lips until I’m pressing him into the carpet. His arms hook under mine to cling to the back of my sweater, one knee rising to cage me in.

I know we stopped doing this at some point between last night and now, but it’s starting to feel like if circumstances don’t intervene, our lips will never part for long. They must have so we could build the fire crackling beside us, but I struggle to recall any moment in the past twelve hours that didn’t taste like him.

I prepare to go in deeper, to claw all this heavy clothing off him, when a vibration in his pocket stops us dead in our tracks.

When I push up on my hands to look down at him, Ben’s eyes are as wide as mine feel. We scramble off of each other and he digs for his phone, but pauses to catch his breath before answering (and yes, I do find that a little gratifying, even in a moment like this).

“Dad?” he says, and for some reason my stomach plummets into my feet.

For a breathless moment, I sit there watching him. He’s pale, throat bobbing as he swallows.

“Yeah, he’s here,” he says. “We were … playing Scrabble.”

Jesus Christ. This is really happening. The world outside this snowed in chateau bears down on us like an avalanche. Ben shoots me one quick, panicked look. That’s all the warning I get before I have to pull myself together as he scoots close and holds up his phone.

Both of our parents smile back at me.

“Hey, Jett,” my mom says.

She’s crowded in beside Paul, Ben’s dad. They peer at Ben and I through the phone like they expect us to have frozen to death already. Red rims Mom’s eyes; Paul is gray and haggard, like he hasn’t slept the whole night.

“How are you?” Mom says. “Are you okay? Do you have power? We didn’t realize until this morning that it went out. Why didn’t you call?”

“There was nothing you could have done,” Ben says. “I’m sure it’ll come back soon.”

“It could be out for days, Benjamin,” Paul says. “What will you do?”

“It’s okay, Dad. We found candles. We built a fire. We might be a little smelly, but we’re not going to perish, I promise. We have everything we need.”

“It must have been freezing overnight,” Paul says. “How did you keep warm?”

Ben shoots me a frantic look. For all his cool competency in other arenas, he’s not a liar, almost to a fault. He’s been feeding our parents a version of the truth, and I know it’s because he’s incapable of doing otherwise. At the same time, there is absolutely no version of the truth we can tell our parents in this moment. We stayed warm by fucking. In my bed. In the house our parents rented because they’re dating and wanted to spend Christmas together with their kids.

“There’s actually, like, a ton of blankets in this place,” I say, stepping in to save Ben. “We pulled out everything we could find. I was sweating by morning.”

Ben shoots me a glare at the “sweating” comment, but he can’t exactly lay into me about it with our parents literally watching us, so I suffer nothing worse for the moment.

“I knew this was a terrible idea,” Mom mutters.

“Not now,” Paul says, low, under his breath, in a tone that suggests this is far from the first time they’ve had this fight.

“Do you have food?” Mom says louder.

“Yes,” Ben says. “I told my dad about the inventory. I’m still keeping track of everything. We’re fine. I went out to get firewood today—”

“In that snow?” Paul cuts in.

Ben ignores him and pushes on. “—And it looked like it was starting to melt. There was some dripping off the trees. I think the worst is past us. If this sunshine holds, we’ll be able to dig our cars out in a few days. Worst case, we can always sit in one while it runs and blast the heat, but I don’t think we’ll need to resort to that. Does the weather report say anything promising? I didn’t want to waste my phone battery.”

“It does,” Paul says. “Exactly what you said, basically. The snow should start melting today. The pass should open soon. We’ll be able to reach you in a couple days.”

“Help is on the way,” Mom agrees. “We’ll bring all the hot chocolate and pizza we can carry. With any luck, we’ll make it before Christmas.”

“But we shouldn’t waste any more of your battery,” Paul says. “Stay warm, okay? This nightmare is almost over. Before you know it, everything will be back to normal.”

A day ago, this news would have been everything to me. Today, my heart crumbles like the snow melting off the trees outside.

The second our parents are here, whatever started between Ben and I last night ends. We can’t keep on like that with our very, extremely dating parents in the house.

Ben hangs up, but I’m already looking past him at the snow melting outside the glass doors. I couldn’t wait for that shit to disappear a day ago. Now, it feels like it’s taking something with it. The sun is banishing not just the snow, but this small, scared hope that burrowed itself into my chest somewhere along the way.

I start to rise. Ben grabs my wrist. When he looks up at me, I see all my own despair dancing in his eyes.

“Jett,” he says.

I don’t want to talk about it. It’ll make it too final, too real, and I’m not ready to face that yet.

I tug myself free. “Need a minute,” I say.

He doesn’t follow as I head toward the front door and that stick I left beside it after he towed me in out of the snow. I head outside and sit on the front step, ignoring the biting wind. Then I pull out my knife and continue scraping it against the stick, working out my frustration with every bit of wood I peel away.