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“I’m Daphne, by the way,” I said carefully.
He looked at me, his eyes wary, then returned to tending his fire. “Xander.” He said it as though he didn’t even like the word, and I wondered about his own reasons for being alone in the woods like this, but it was clear he didn’t want to talk, so I put aside my questions and just huddled down into the massive coat.
Once the fire was built up to his liking—which I appreciated immensely as the heat began to reach my frozen form—he turned to look at me again. “Tell me everything,” he demanded, squatting again and reaching into the backpack beside me. He came out with what looked like a short coffee mug, then made his way back to the fire and retrieved the kettle.
Not bothering with a mitt or anything, he plucked the kettle off the tripod and poured its steaming contents into the mug, then proceed to hand it to me.
Cradling it in my still frozen hands, I brought it to my nose and took a sniff, my eyebrows jumping sky high when I did.
“Tea?”
He only nodded, but my heart clenched with a memory, a moment that now seemed bittersweet, but at the time had made me feel like I was flying.
“Talk, girl.”
And so, I did, telling Xander my story, hoping that even if he didn’t have a phone or a car on him, he would be willing to help me get to one.
But even as I talked, retelling the tale of the worst day of my life, my mind wandered back to another night, in another state, where I had clutched another mug of tea like it was the sweetest ambrosia.
