I want to make eyes at Serena over Greg’s catch up stories, over his open fire cooking. But before long, it really does feel like we’re all just pals again.
Roasting hot dogs and sipping hot chocolate while Greg embarrasses me with stories from our youth and me with just as many about him.
“I had no idea you two were that close,” Serena announces after a few hours, stifling a yawn.
“We were,” Greg adds, shooting me a fond but almost distant look.
“We still are,” I affirm. And raising my hot chocolate we both drink to that fact.
He is my friend, brothers we swore to be, long ago.
I wonder if he could take the same oath under different circumstances though.
“It’s late,” I tell them both, realizing we’re in the middle room still. The one I was supposed to swap with Greg.
“Just let’s keep the doors open,” Greg offers. “Make three rooms one to get some of this heat into them so we can all sleep since you have the biggest fireplace. I’ll chew out management in the morning about their hot water.”
My eyes lock on Serena’s for the first time since we all sat down, Greg starts to clear up and opens both doors, linking all three cabin rooms into one.
The draft is noticeable, but in a few minutes and after I put another three logs on the fire, I can tell we’ll all sleep warmer for it.
As if I need a fire.
As if I need logs.
I have the tinder of my heart and groin right in front of me.
The fire roars to life, popping and hissing which prompts Greg to move the screen over it.
“G’night sweetie,” he says to Serena, jutting his chin towards her room.
His own way of telling her to go to bed. Even though she’s an adult.
“I can take the other room if you want Greg,” I tell him once I see her door close halfway. Seeing it in his eyes. That little glimmer of doubt, confusion mainly. The very same not sure look I probably had myself on the way up here.
“D’ya mind?” he whispers, cocking a brow.
I stifle a chuckle and a yawn of my own.
“No, ‘course I don’t buddy,” I tell him, meaning it.
Knowing his daughter is mine already. I’ve staked my claim and I know who she belongs to now.
It’s just a matter of time or chemistry, physics… whatever.
I can sleep sound for at least one more night knowing that Serena Blaxhall actually wants me. All doubts dispelled from my mind, and hers too.
I think we’ll both sleep better knowing we at least have the other waiting for us both to wake up to.
Even if her dad is in between us.
It’s like a relief to just know. Y’know?
Quietly and in the half-dark, just like old times, we find ourselves shuffling our things and moving blankets, bidding the other goodnight.
I’ve forgotten how close we used to be. How we used to tell each other everything. Every single thought as kids, even as teenagers.
This one burden though, it’s my own. Because I know it’ll break him.
But I know it’s the truth and I have to bear it without him for now.
“G’night, Greg,” I whisper at the doorway, watching him settle onto the huge couch not even needing a blanket as he sighs loudly.
“Night,” he finally murmurs.
Looking opposite, I can see a shining pair of blue eyes in the semi-darkness, staring over to me from her own doorway.
Serena.
I feel my heart go, almost canceling out everything I’ve just told myself to hold off against. But when I see those eyes…
When I see the blue-moonlit form of her body against the dark as she quietly opens her door wider, naked before me.
Knowing her dad’s face is turned in the opposite direction. I can only nod.
Almost in unison, we mouth the word ‘After’, and staring at each other so long it takes her dad to ask me one more time if I’m alright before I dare turn away; I crawl into a slightly warm but lonely bed.
Hopefully for the last time in this life.
Wondering again, just how… how I can get the two of us alone together long enough to claim Serena as my very own once and for all.
It doesn’t take long before I can hear the heavy sighs and eventual deep sleep breathing of Greg in the next room.
The fire pops and hisses sometimes under a load of surface-wet wood.
But all I can see, whether my eyes are open or closed is the image of Serena’s wet and naked body falling into my arms before I kiss her.
As if it was almost a dream.
A waking dream I wish I could repeat. One I feel compelled to repeat.
But the silence from the other end of the cabins, her absence from my bed is the one thing I focus on until I hear the fire dying down in the next room, hours later.