Chapter 4

Chapter Four

I ’m going to die from pneumonia. It’s cold. So cold.

The illusion of falling asleep, cradled by a warm, furry body hug, has been shattered. Where the hell is Ronny? Why is it still dark?

Maybe I dreamt the entire thing. Am I’m in some feverish state in my bed at home, trapped in a bizarre dream?

Soft footsteps approach like stocking-clad feet on a hardwood floor. “Ronny?” a distraught-sounding voice that sounds like mine calls out.

“I’m here.”

Rolling in my cocooned state, I squint through the dim moonlight coming through the windows. The wind is still howling outside. My teeth are clacking together like someone is tapping out Morse Code with my incisors.

Ronny tucks his bare legs back into the sleeping bag. I’m not dreaming. We’re still in hell. Together. And the temperature feels like it dropped another twenty degrees.

“Where did you go?” I demand, yanking him to me like an emotional support teddy bear, fumbling a hand behind him gracelessly to zip out the cold. I don’t care if it catches one of his ass cheeks or if I look desperately shameless. “I’m f-freezing!”

“Sorry. I had to take a leak. Shit. You’re shaking like a leaf.”

Panting, I gulp for air through my shivering, grappling him any way I can. He is my lifeline. Siphoning every bit of body warmth from him like a parasite can’t be helped.

“Th-that’s the d-dumbest expression I’ve ever heard. Leaves don’t sh-sh-shake. They fl-flap in the…wind. I’m shaking like a ma-ma-raca. Listen to my teeth.”

Baring what probably looks like a psychotic smile, I demonstrate my involuntary chattering. It’s now that I realize he’s accepted my hug attack, his arms wrapped around me. His palms rub up and down my back, creating soft friction, socked feet rubbing against mine.

Did I jam my thigh between his or did he?

“Y-eah. That’s quite the performance you’ve got going on there,” he laments, but his expression belies his quip, face full of empathy. “Give it a minute. We’ll warm you back up.”

“D-did the space heater go out?”

Even as I ask to deflect from my neediness, I hear its soft hum behind me. Shit. I was not built for Minnesota.

“No. Still kicking. You probably lost heat when I got up. Sorry.”

“No, I think it must have d-dropped like t-twenty degrees in here.”

“The thermometer on the wall says it’s forty.”

Seriously? That’s the same as when we went to sleep.

“Fuck! I hate Minnesota,” I grumble, burying my cold nose in his sweatshirt. “How are you n-not shivering? Are you s-supe-superhuman?”

His puff of breath makes his chest expand against my face. He’s…cradling my melon under his chin.

“Hardly,” he chuffs, grazing a thumb through my hair.

I realize now that I forcefully pretzeled myself to him, which screeches my violent trembling to a halt. I’m clinging to him like a leech, and he’s… petting me .

And… it feels nice.

“Wh-what time is it?” I stammer, hoping he doesn’t know it has nothing to do with the temperature.

The fingers in my hair unweave themselves, leaving behind an odd sense of loss. His forearm twists against my back as he looks at his watch.

“Three-fifty.”

Why the breath I let out feels like one of gratitude that it’s not yet morning startles me. I just don’t want to move right now after that unpleasant wake-up. It would be preposterous to be happy about preventative cuddling with a co-worker one barely knows.

“Guess we should try to go back to sleep,” I wager.

“Yeah. Probably best.”

Except, the contours of his body pressed against mine overpower every attempt at willing sleep to return. The silence is the loudest I’ve ever heard. It’s filled with the hum of the space heater, howling winds, and the rasp of Ronny’s breathing in my hair. The strong thump of his heartbeat against my ear teases me with thoughts that it sounds rampant because of me.

“So…Trent,” his asks curiously, breaking through the bizarre white noise.

“What?”

“You never said who this Trent guy is—the reason you want to take a date to your family Christmas.”

I didn’t consider the prospect that Ronny might not actually be tired or cold. I’m basically keeping him prisoner with the death grip I have on him. As much as I don’t want to talk about this topic, I feel obliged to provide him with some form of entertainment if it buys me his body heat. The hair-stroking thing isn’t bad either. It’s…kind of soothing. He’s probably just doing that thing where people need to use their hands when feeling idle.

“What, uh, did he do to make you feel like you need to arrive as a unified front, if you don’t mind my asking?” he continues.

Snorting, I’m glad he can’t see me roll my eyes. I’d like to think I’m a mature man who doesn’t roll his eyes or throw hissy fits about the weather, but the past nineteen hours have been an ugly mirror.

Fuck it. Complaining is all I have left.

“What hasn’t he done,” I grouse. Sighing, I close my eyes to get through my embarrassing tale of jealousy. “He’s my perfect-in-every-way cousin. He came out first after I’d confided in him months prior that I was gay. His parents threw him this extravagant coming-out party like a toddler who’d learned to walk twice. But that was just more icing on the cake. No matter what I did, even when we were kids, Trent did it better. I started woodworking in my grandpa’s shop when I was ten. Trent started a non-profit for local shelter dogs. I got into U of I. He got into Harvard. I worked two jobs through school and bought myself my first vehicle, which I was really proud of. He got some free test model from the company he was interning for and carried on about how it was eco-friendly over an entire Thanksgiving dinner, like every time his ass hit the driver’s seat, he was willing plastic to be removed from the ocean. He married the perfect man, has the perfect house, and the perfect vacation house. I don’t have a single memory of him not showing off the latest gadget no one else heard of yet, like he’s got some secret connection with aliens from another galaxy. And the stories—there’s always a tedious story about his world travels to exotic places and the five thousand friends they have all over the globe.”

“And… you feel like you need to look coupled up to compete with his claimed successes?”

“No! It’s the principle of the thing—that I can be happy. That maybe some people choose to work blue-collar jobs in non-exotic places and don’t save the planet or have a passport because they want to. That I’m not defective just because I don’t have a celebration every time someone likes a social media post about a frappe with a heart in the froth that I drank on the coast of France with my rich husband. That I can just be a normal everyday person, and someone will love me for who I am, and that’s…okay. It’s… just as okay and special as matching monogrammed couples’ sweaters by Versace .”

“They wear matching monogrammed sweaters?”

“Once,” I sigh dejectedly.

I now feel worse. He can have his body heat if I can take that all back.

“ Once sounds like enough. Geez. I thought my family could be too much.”

His surprising understanding of my predicament isn’t a response I know how to process. It’s like I lost the rest of my clothing with that humiliating tirade, but I no longer feel naked.

“What’s wrong with your family?”

“Nothing. There’s just a lot of them, which makes them…a lot.”

“Lots of Carmichael cousins?” I venture, happy to turn the conversation away from me.

“More than I can count; I have six nieces and eight nephews.”

“Holy crap. How many siblings do you have?”

“Five brothers; two older, three younger.”

There are five more Ronny’s out there? Why does that feel like something the world should know about? Six virile-looking men with thick midnight-black hair, mischievous smiles, and firm, quarter-bouncing asses.

Shaking away the mental image, I remind myself that this new, slightly tolerable side of him is likely a fluke. Thus, the brothers may be flawed, too.

There. I feel better already.

That explains some of his snark, though. Fortunately, I’m an only child. After a lifetime of experiencing my cousin Trent, I’m grateful for it. Imagining having five siblings makes me shudder. The squabbling must have been endless. I bet his mother had to drink heavily.

His palm makes a few more passes along my back. I never imagined being too warm while I was stuck here, but this might do the trick.

“That, um… must have been a busy household growing up,” I offer.

Chuckling, he doesn’t cease the soothing glide of his hand. Being touched by someone who sounds like they’re in a good mood is a cruelty my mind doesn’t need to experience.

He’s not in a good mood because he’s touching you , Marshall. Get your frozen thoughts out of the self-pity holiday gutter.

“You mean my parents were busy, as in busy doing things, or busy because of all the people under one roof?” he asks coyly, making me realize my poor choice of words. “I suppose you’re right on both counts.”

The sounds of the room and the storm fill the silence that follows. Gingerly, I retract my hand from his broad back, slowly skirting it around to fold against my chest. To make it not so obvious, I take a stab at productive chitchat.

“Do you think the snowplows are out yet?”

“Mm. Maybe, if there’s no black ice on the roads. I doubt they’ve made it to country roads, though, yet. They probably have their work cut out for them, keeping the highways and county roads cleared first.”

When I don’t offer a response, his hand strokes my hair again. Do I sound worried? Is he… comforting me? I’ve spent my life being self-sufficient and the last few years worrying about my mother. Comfort is a dangerous drug I don’t need a hit of. It doesn’t exist outside of Mom’s mothering. She supplies me with what little I need.

“I’m sure the storm will quit soon. It sounds like it’s dying down a bit,” he adds, and I swear his finger just traced the shape of one of my curls. “It’ll warm up when the sun rises and starts melting the snow, then the world will get back to functioning again.”

His sage reassurance plants a root of sadness in my chest. He said ‘ functioning ,’ but I know he’s referring to the hustle and bustle of life. In the grand scheme of things, I know my situation isn’t like a hiker stranded on a snowy mountain who walks away with a new outlook on life after their harrowing experience. Someone will come for us, or the cabin’s trail will be cleared so we can walk out to the main road and flag down a ride into town. I won’t perish. Yet, a moment of soul- searching tells me this happened for a reason, that I should take something away from it.

I’ve become a bit of a robot. Work, check on Mom, carve in the wood shop behind my house. Repeat. There’s nothing else. Have I been hiding from living?

Maybe I’ll get a passport and take Mom on a trip. I could join some kind of club or see if the high school needs a guest speaker for shop class. I should do more than just function. If I don’t, what else will I have—days blurring into one another until Mom eventually passes, finally reunited with Dad? I’d like her to leave this earth knowing I’m as happy as I claim to be. She doesn’t elaborate, but I can read between the lines each time she asks me if I’ve met any eligible men since relocating.

“Yeah,” I concur softly and close my eyes.

Maybe the school’s shop teacher is into guys who are squishy-in-a-few-places with a solid work ethic. Maybe the county has a woodworking club with an affable lumberjack who would be down to help me decorate my craft mall stand. Maybe…