I smacked him hard against the chest.
“See? Blister’s way better.”
He reached for his coat before my words stopped him. “Thank you, but I really don’t need your help. When I come back, I’d be happy to implement the no talking and ignore each other plan.”
His body stilled. I opened the door, feeling his eyes on me. I stepped outside, closed the door, and immediately slipped on the black ice. If Chase heard my yelp of alarm, he wisely kept the door shut. Though I didn’t look back to see, it wouldn’t have surprised me to see him laughing at me from the window. The fall stunned my entire central nervous system and had me gasping for air for an excruciating ten seconds. The pain hit, shooting sharp jabs directly up my leg and back. A few minutes and a few choice words later, I was standing, gingerly making my way across the snow-covered black ice and onto the driveway; what was left of it anyway.
To my left was a mountainside forest, littered with trees that were now covered by ten inches of snow. To my right was a sharp drop off into who knows what. It was clouded over with fog, and with the mountains in the distance and the trees next to me, even with my sour mood at present, I couldn’t fail to take notice of the beautiful winter wonderland before me. I almost wished Chase had come with me so he could see it himself. Almost.
At a bend in the road, I moved to step around what looked like the after effect of an avalanche. A large pile of snow on my left felt like it went a mile high, as it lay against the mountainside.
Great. Avalanches. Now there was no doubt that, once I got my food and luggage, this would be my last excursion into nature before I left in a week. The snow crunched beneath my feet while I walked the trail, lost in thought.
I stopped short. I looked around and then back up toward the cabin. Where was my car? I knew I hadn’t walked beyond this point last night. I remembered passing the Smokey the Bear sign in my car. It may have been the trigger for the downward spiral that led to thinking about Bigfoot. I looked around, confused. Had it slid off the side of the road? I moved carefully next to the cliff and peered over the edge. Fog and treetops were all that greeted me. I checked for tracks, but that proved useless as the snow had covered up any tracks that would have been made.
My confusion at this point began to ebb into full blown panic mode.
Where was my car? Sure, it was just an old Corolla. It definitely had no business traversing up a mountainside during one of the biggest snowstorms to hit Idaho in twenty years, but it was all I had. What was I supposed to do? Besides, it had gotten me pretty close. I couldn’t afford another car, and insurance wouldn’t pay out enough to avoid a clunker. My breathing became shallow and sharp, piercing my throat in the cold. Could someone have stolen it? My eyes travelled back toward where the cabin sat, just behind the bend. I briefly wondered if Chase had moved it to play a prank.
No. It couldn’t be Chase. He had been genuinely surprised to hear I had a car down the road.
Frustration welled up as tears in the corner of my eyes. “Stop it, Penny,” I told myself, as I dabbed at my eye with my coat sleeve. There was really only one thing to do at this point, and part of me would rather die than grovel. I turned and stalked up the driveway once more, mourning the loss of my pajamas and boxes of probably very frozen bread, mac and cheese, and cereal, even more than my car. I hoped Chase brought more food than he thought, and I hoped he thought I was kidding about ignoring him.
Ha. Ha. What a kidder I was.
I rounded the bend, the cold really settling into my lungs at this point, giving the avalanche a wide berth before moving past.
Then something dawned on me. A bit slowly, but I’m only thankful it occurred to me before I did the walk of shame back to the cabin. With a sharp gasp, I whirled around and stared at the mound of snow piled on the roadway.
“No, no, no.” I muttered, even as my head told me, yup; this is exactly what you think it is.
I approached the pile and gave it a kick with my foot. A small snow slide revealed a section of a black rubber tire. It took me ten minutes, approximately seventeen swear words, and a new winter coat of snow plastered to my body, before the side of my car was dusted off to the point where I could attempt to open the door.
That’s exactly what it was; an attempt.
So much more swearing. This time it was encased with grunting, pulling, and jamming my big toe after an extremely frustrated kick to the car. I needed help. Although I knew Chase would help me, I couldn’t stomach the thought of asking him after what I had just said to him.
A fine time to start being a feminist.
I admitted defeat a full half hour after I set out on my journey. My next plan included slipping into the cabin, and nonchalantly slipping back out with a big jug of steaming hot water to pour over the car handle and seams of my door. It had to work. I would not be at Chase’s mercy.
Thankfully, he was nowhere in sight when I re-entered the cabin. I rummaged through the kitchen cupboards before finding an old plastic pitcher. I ran the faucet for a minute before thick, hot, steam filled the air. After filling it as full as I dared, bearing a treacherous journey back down the hill, I set off slowly, but anxiously, toward the door. I had just made it when Chase’s voice made me pause.
“What are you doing?”
Dang it.
I casually turned toward him, not quite meeting his eyes, and said, “just planning to enjoy a nice jug of hot water out on the porch.”
He stared at me as though he were mentally counting backwards in his head, before striding to the coat rack, jamming his arms through his heavy Carhartt coat, and pulling on his boots. He opened the door and motioned me ahead of him through the doorway. “Where’s your car?”
I pointed down the road and followed a few careful paces behind his impatient stride, grunting every time the hot water sloshed on my body. The heat from the water seemed to evaporate instantly into ice on my hands. How cold was it?
Chase stopped abruptly as we came around the curve, and he took in the sight of my car. I must admit, even the second time seeing it, it looked really bad.
“Kiss it goodbye.”
I stopped next to him, putting one of my frozen hands inside my pocket for warmth. “What? No way. I’m going to—”