“Do you go off script at work too?”I said.
“If it feels right.”He put hot chocolate in the cart, and his arm slid along mine, and even though we were both wearing coats, I got chills.
After we’d loaded the food into the car, I drove us to the cottage.It was deep in the woods down a gravel road.Private.Just like I wanted.It didn’t have a real address, only a fire number at the end of the driveway.I backed the car to the front door and popped the trunk.The door key was hidden in a magnetic box under the porch.I let us in.The place was smaller than it looked in the photos.
“It’s cold in here,” he said.
I didn’t notice the cold much.Growing up in Timmins, I was used to it, but Eddie, being a Toronto boy, wasn’t.I turned the thermostat up.
We brought the groceries in first.The kitchen was super old.The countertops were cracked and stained, the microwave and stove looked ancient, and the fridge was making a loud humming noise.The kitchen was open-plan with the living room, which was good, or it would have felt claustrophobic, like a bear’s den.
I took the box of last night’s appetizers from him.“I’ll put them in the oven, and by the time we’ve unpacked, they’ll be done, and we can have lunch.”
We spent an hour unloading the car.I got the roll of bedding last and carried it over my shoulder into the cottage to the bigger bedroom, and I made the bed.Then I realized why I’d left that till last.Because this meant it was showtime.I heard him come into the bedroom.He took off his jacket and hung it over the back of a chair, then he sprawled on his back across the bed in front of me.He grabbed the front of my coat, pulled me down, and kissed me.
“Fuck,” I said.
“What?”
“The apps.They’re gonna burn.”
I got up and ran to the kitchen.I turned off the oven and opened the door.Smoke billowed out.I looked for an oven mitt but there were only skimpy dishtowels in the drawers, so I grabbed a mitt out of my coat pocket and used that to pull the cookie sheet out of the oven.Mistake.The metal burned me right through my mitt, and I dropped the cookie sheet onto the stove.
I pulled the mitt off, held my hand under the tap, and turned the cold water on.My fingertips felt like they’d been skinned.The apps were black around the edges, but salvageable.
He came into the kitchen.
“No oven mitts,” I told him.“Tried using my actual mitts.”
He went looking for plates and found a couple of old, chipped ones in the cupboard.He picked up the apps with his fingers, loaded the plates, and put them on the table.By then, my fingers were numb, so I turned the tap off and joined him at the table.I ate with my good hand.
“You okay?”he said.
“Yeah, it’s not that bad.”
It wasn’t much of a lunch, but we were too hungry to be picky since we hadn’t eaten for a few hours.Afterward, we washed up.
“You want to go for a walk?”I said.
“Sure,” he said.
I wasn’t stalling.I just wanted to scout the location and pick out a good place to propose.He got his jacket from the bedroom, and then we went out the back door of the cottage.A path led into the woods, wide enough for us to walk side by side, so we held hands.My fingers didn’t hurt as much when he was touching me.We saw one cottage in the distance through the trees, but it looked vacant.The path went up a steep hill, and he got tired, and I was pulling him up behind me.He wasn’t in good shape.
“Hop on my back,” I said.
“What?”
“I’ll carry you.”
“You can’t.”
“C’mon.Get up.”
He climbed up onto my back, and I carried him up the trail.I figured I had twenty pounds on him.He wasn’t easy to carry, but I liked feeling his weight on me.When we got to the top, he slid off my back.
“You’re stronger than you look,” he said.
“It’s core strength.”
