Kiss Her Once for Me (78)

“Okay.” Jack pivots, still firmly in problem-solving mode. “I’ll call them and see how to turn the water back on.”

She fishes her phone out from the depths of her snow pants, and her face falls as soon as she stares at the screen. “No service, but I’m sure there’s Wi-Fi.”

There is not Wi-Fi, but there is an old rotary phone half hidden by a stack of National Geographic magazines from the nineties. We call Katherine, who spends a good five minutes weeping about our imminent deaths before Jack reassures her we’re fine and safe and asks for the Singhs’ phone number.

The Singhs, of course, don’t answer.

“Katherine is right,” I say. “Death does seem like the only natural conclusion to this night.”

Jack’s shoulders deflate, and she drops her head into her hands. It’s clear she’s run out of ways to try to spin this. It’s freezing, we’re starving, we have very little heat and no water and (what is somehow the least of our worries) only one fucking bed. Even the unflappable can be flapped in circumstances like this.

Jack’s falling apart, but for some reason, I feel a sudden rush of calm. I take a steadying breath. This is not the worst thing that has ever happened to me. It’s not even the worst thing that has happened to me this week. We can figure this out. “There’s a fireplace,” I say sagely, “and that means there must be firewood.”

Which is how we find ourselves, five minutes later, standing a few feet from the back porch. Me holding up the flashlight on my phone, Jack holding an axe, a wedge of wood propped in front of us. There is a pile of wood against the side of the house, covered with a tarp. They’re all big, hulking pieces, none of the small stuff we’re 80 percent positive you need for starting a fire, though neither of us knows for sure.

“How have you never chopped wood before?” I ask her as she grips the axe with an uncharacteristic lack of confidence.

“When would I have chopped wood before?” she practically shouts. Her panic hasn’t faded yet, despite my genius plan to start a fire. “I had a very privileged upbringing!”

“But you wear so much flannel.”

“Everyone wears flannel! It’s Portland!”

“And the Carhartt jacket.”

“What is your issue with my jacket?”

“And I’ve heard you talk about building a chicken coop.”

“With a table saw.” She brandishes the axe in my direction. “And why am I the one who has to chop the wood?”

“Because you are the butch lesbian.”

She glares. “That’s all I am to you, isn’t it? A butch lesbian stereotype.”

“No, you’re very complex and multifaceted, but your arm muscles are objectively bigger than mine, so you’re just going to have to do the stereotypical thing here.”

“Okay. Okay,” she mutters, psyching herself up. She sets down the axe for a minute and peels off her bulky ski jacket so she has better range of motion. This reveals the stereotypical flannel she has on underneath. “Oh, fuck you,” she says before I can comment. Then she raises the axe above her head.

“Wait!” I call out. “Your hands! I think you should space them out, like on a baseball bat. I’ve seen that before.”

Jack repositions her hands on the axe handle, then raises her arms again. I take a step back and watch the forceful arc of the axe as it collides with the chunk of wood.

And oh. Oh my goodness.

My free hand clutches at my throat. The whole lumbersexual thing suddenly makes perfect sense because good lord. Watching Jack chop that piece of wood in half is the single most arousing thing my demisexual brain has ever witnessed. Even though her muscles aren’t visible through her flannel, I can somehow sense the way they ripple, the tendons in her neck straining, her hands flexing against the handle of the axe. Some primal instinct in me says, This one could build you shelter.

I press my legs tightly together and clear my throat. “That was… good.”

She rolls her shoulders, and I stifle a whimper. This night will definitely end with my death.

She kicks aside the two newly cut pieces of wood and grabs another from the stack. I tell myself not to watch, but of course I do. She moves with such purpose and determination as she lines up the wood and raises the axe. I’m not sure if I want her, or if I want to be her, and I think it might be a little bit of both as she slices through another log.

The axe clatters to the ground as the two halves split, and Jack grabs her shoulder and winces.

“Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She clenches her teeth. “I have an old shoulder injury from kneading dough that flares up sometimes.”

I cannot abide that sentence. “From kneading dough?”

“Fuck. You.”

“I’m sorry, but you have some kind of baker’s tendonitis.”

“You’re the absolute worst human,” she seethes. “Why am I always getting snowed in places with you?”

I’m not sure how genuine this hatred is (I would guess at least 50 percent, given our present circumstances), but I smile at her anyway. “Here.” I hand her the cell phone and pick up the axe. There’s a meager amount of porch light reaching us, and she immediately points the phone down at where the axe is loosely gripped in my hand. Jack puts another piece of wood on the chopping block, and I choke up on the handle.