“Last night I had bourbon in my belly.”
“Just waddle over and fall on,” Gabe suggests, his eyes crinkling. The man finds my suffering entertaining.
I sigh dramatically. “I’m going to die on this thing, and my tombstone will read, ‘He was right about the cold all along.’”
I manage to swing my leg over and settle behind Gabe. My layers make it impossible to wrap my arms fully around his waist, so I’m forced to grip the sides of his jacket instead.
“Ready?” he asks, the engine rumbling to life beneath us.
“No,” I reply honestly, but tighten my grip anyway.
As we pull away from the cabin, I glance back one more time. Melody stands at the window, coffee mug in hand, watching us go.
I give her a ridiculous wave with my puffy gloved hand, nearly unbalancing myself in the process. She smiles and waves back.
Oscar Wilde once wrote that “to expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.” Well, I’m thoroughly modern, and I’m definitely experiencing something unexpected this holiday season.
7
Melody
After three hours of emergency spreadsheets and one conference call where I had to explain to Marcus how to use the “sort” function, I’m ready to strangle someone with my laptop charger.
Preferably Marcus.
The man has an MBA but can’t figure out how to alphabetize a column. This is my vacation, damn it. V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N. A magical time when normal people don’t work. But here I am, hunched over my computer like some corporate goblin, hangover pounding against my temples while my boss three hundred miles away holds my sanity hostage.
“Melody, I need the Q4 projections recalculated using the new metrics,” Marcus demands through my phone speaker.
I close my eyes and count to five. “Those are with Janet. I sent them to her before I left.”
“Janet doesn’t organize things the way you do.”
Translation: Janet doesn’t take his verbal abuse with a smile.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I really need to step away from my computer. My eyes are crossing.”
The silence that follows tells me I’ve committed a cardinal sin in Marcus-land: prioritizing my human needs over his immediate demands.
“Fine. We’ll continue later.”
He hangs up without saying goodbye—classic Marcus move—conversation over when he’s done talking.
I slam my laptop closed with force.
I need fresh air.
I pull on my boots, coat, hat, and gloves, and burrow into layers of wool and down. The cold air slaps me in the face when I step outside, but it’s exactly what I need—a shock to the system that momentarily distracts from the anger and hangover still duking it out for dominance in my brain.
I walk along the street to the end of the road, following the same path I took last night. A car with a pine tree on its hood passes by, and the friendly passengers wave at me.
This is what I needed.
It’s beautiful out here. Peaceful. The kind of quiet that makes city dwellers like me uncomfortable at first, then addictive. No car horns, no neighbors arguing, no lights buzzing. Just snow, trees, and sky.
Perfect Pines comes into view at the end of the road.
To my right, several cars are parked in a makeshift lot. I follow the path deeper into the property. There’s the large fire pit where I lost all of my dignity last night, and a little farther behind it, the small white cottage, complete with lace curtains visible through frost-edged windows.