The thing is, when you have the best sex of your life, you have to tell your best friend about it. Details must be discussed and verified for posterity so that someday, when the two of you are drinking mai tais in your poolside nursing home and slathering SPF onto your suspiciously wrinkle-free faces, you can reminisce accurately. It’s why I find myself feverishly typing words like “five times” and “vaginal orgasm” and “FIVE TIMES” in an email to my sister the next day, when I should be working.
I know I’m not supposed to contact you, but this seemed like a force majeure situation if there ever was one, I type out.Counting down the seconds until I see you again!
I look over my email, making sure I’ve left out just enough to tempt her into writing me back. I know it’s a long shot, but Ireallywant to talk to my sister. More than anything, I need her to tell me to stop panicking about sleeping with a man who makes me feel things I thought died, decomposed, and scattered to the four winds when I slid off my engagement ring.
A prickle breaks out under my arms, threatening nervous sweat, and I look up from my computer to gaze out the front windows. I can see Forrest in the distance, plowing the biblicalamount of snow that dumped on us last night. This morning he had to build a snow ramp to get us out of the cabin with the snowmobile. Not that I really wanted to leave.
Spending the night with him redefined the Snowed In trope for me, even though I thought I’d written the book on it. Two, actually. I learned that in between the pages of sheet-grasping pleasure, the smaller details hit even harder. Like the way my feet fit perfectly on the tops of his. Or how the weight of his arm in the crook of my waist feels like a missing body part returned at last. I’ve learned the smell of his skin when he sleeps, and the scratch of his voice when he wakes me up with a rough and quiet “Need you.” And I’m ruined for it all. Ruined for him and the thought of him following me back to L.A. so that we can do what we did last night, every night, in perpetuity, or else.
Oh my God, I need help.
Like the answer to my prayers, there’s a ping in my inbox, and I lift my head out of my hands, where I’ve been trying to deep-breathe some rational boundaries into place.It’s Savannah.I click and am almost bludgeoned by her use of all-caps.
MARGOT OH MY GOD OH MY GOD YES!!! FORCE MAJEURE ACKNOWLEDGED UNDER THE TERMS OF COITUS SURPRISUS!!!
I know I shouldn’t give in to this very obvious trap (well played, sister), but can we talk?? I have the satellite number to North Star Lodge, so be waiting by the phone in five minutes, okay?
I get up so fast, the rolling office chair hits the bookshelf behind me. I begin searching around the lodge for a telephone like I’m Indiana Jones in theTemple of Doom. I’ve slung myself halfway across the room when there’s a ringing sound, and I turn to see that, naturally, the phone is right next to the bookshelvesI’ve been sitting in front of for weeks. I break into a run, grabbing the receiver off the hook with a breathless “Hello?”
“Margot!”
“Van!”
“Margot!
“Van!”
We’re shouting at each other, and tears are free-flowing down my face at the sound of my sister’s voice—a sound I’ve missed more than I even realized.
“Stop crying, youknowI can’t handle it when you cry!” Savannah says with a wet sniff.
“Oh my God, I’ve missed you, Van,” I say, pressing the plastic to my ear as tightly as I can.
“I’ve missed you too! You havenoidea the kind of self-control I’ve had to have. Taylor dropped her newest rerelease, and Cooper hasnoappreciation for her early work. I’ve had to choose all my merch completely alone!”
“I can only imagine the hardships you’ve endured,” I say, but I’m grinning ear to ear. She sounds healthy, and a cold coil of worry is unwinding slowly in my stomach, releasing my shoulders down my back.
“That’s right! Unlikeyou, cozied up with your mountain daddy!”
“Oh my God, please never say those words again,” I beg. “And isn’t Cooper with you? Don’t even pretend like you two haven’t been taking full advantage of my absence. I’m buying a black light when I get home.”
“Ew, Margot, inappropriate.”
“And #8216;mountain daddy’ is appropriate?” I’m laughing, practically radiating endorphins.
“It’s exactly accurate! Now spill. Did he or did he not tie you to the bed with a flannel shirt?”
I laugh again, thinking about everything we did last night, and my weird, embarrassed giggle somehow morphs into a sigh.
“Wait. Wait, wait. Did I just hear a wistful sigh of longing?” Savannah says, instantly alert.
Because I can’t help it, I do it again. “Maybe?”
“Oh my God, Margot. Do you actually like this guy?”
Like? It seems like such a tiny word for the equally terrifying and stupid tornado of feelings in my chest.
“I’m trying not to, Van. I’m really trying. And it shouldn’t be that hard. He’s so grumpy, and so sure he’s right about everything, and so annoyingly competent and caring, and he’s adoctor, for the love of God. You can’t even get a more basic trope, right?” I bite my lip, but I’m unable to hold in the next sentence. “But he got meavocados, and they’re, like, impossible to get here, Van.”
