Snowed In

“Then don’t shoot the cook. It’s all I could find.”

I watched like a hawk as he separated the food into four equal portions. We ate it directly from the wide brass receptacle, scooping it with our fingers, wolfing it down even though it was piping hot.

It was the best fucking thing I’d ever eaten in my life. Ever.

“We got any more of this?”

“Yeah sure,” Boone joked. “Down in the pantry, right between the steak and the lobster tails.”

I almost went back at him. Almost. In the interests of camaraderie, and having just shared the same girl in some mind-blowing sexual quadrangle, I kept my cool.

“There’s a little more downstairs,” he finally admitted. “But not much. I have no clue how old this stuff is, by the way. The labels on the bags were so ancient they’d rotted off.”

I chuckled. “Probably for the best.”

“That’s what I thought too.”

Somewhere behind us, Morgan sighed softly. We glanced at her together, then back at each other.

“So…” I exhaled, addressing the elephant in the room. “Last night…”

Boone squinted back at me. “What about it?”

“What about it? Are you serious?”

“I thought we agreed we’d let her decide,” he shrugged.

“We are.”

“So what’s the problem?”

I started to say something then stopped, biting my tongue. To be honest, I didn’t know what to say. Somehow I wanted to resolve everything right now, to make everything clear and understandable. It was the way I worked. I needed order, structure, start and end dates. I hated leaving things unfinished.

But Morgan…

I thought it would be easy, after the way things started between us. I’d gone down the mountain after her, and I’d gotten her too. Nevermind the avalanche. Nevermind that we were trapped here indefinitely. All that mattered at the time was that we’d be stuck here together, and as byproduct of that happy accident, we’d grow closer together as a result.

And then Jeremy.

And then Boone.

“So when she gets up, we say nothing?” I asked. “We just go on like last night never happened?”

“Oh it happened,” said Boone, licking the last of the rice from his fingers. “No going back on that.”

“But—”

“Listen, I know you want an answer right now,” Boone interrupted. “Like last night was some sort of competition between the three of us, and a winner needs to be declared. But trust me, that’s not how things are. That’s not how she works.”

I glanced at her again, her pretty face framed imperfectly by a wild mane of sleep-tossed hair. She looked even more beautiful with her eyes closed. Peaceful and serene and—

“If you push her now,” Boone went on, “she’s going to freak out again, and rightly so.” He put the bowl or cuspidor or whatever it was back down on the mantle. “Right now, she needs us all. And if the weather doesn’t get any better, and they give up all hope of rescuing us? We’re gonna need her even more.”

He pointed to the opening, which wasn’t even an opening anymore. It was a smooth wall of snow now. Unscarred, unbroken. Just a lighter color patch of snow than the rest of the stuff spilling in from every shattered window and broken doorway.

“Fuck.”

‘Yeah,” Boone agreed. Just outside, the wind was shrieking more loudly than ever. “My thoughts exactly.”