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“What?” I call back, leaning off the porch to see if I can see what he sees, but he’s slightly out of view. I step down into the snow, hoping the hunting boots keep my legs from freezing.
“Fucking firewood!” Alex cries out, exposing a massive stack of wood alongside the cabin. “And I just spent the last hour trying to chop some with this fucking rusty axe.”
I walk over to meet him, gingerly stepping in the tracks Alex has already made to avoid having snow spill over the tops of the boots.
“Laney, what the hell are you doing?” Alex asks me when I reach him, his arms loaded down with a large pile of firewood.
“Coming to help you,” I reply, shrugging as if it’s totally natural for me to be standing in the snow wearing a flannel shirt and oversized hunting boots.
He laughs at my response, and I’m starting to wonder if maybe we should be laughing more. All I feel like doing is crying and wallowing in the awfulness of what is happening to us. Alex seems to be way more optimistic or maybe he’s just trying to stay strong for me.
I hold out my arms and Alex transfers the logs from his arms to mine, shooing me along, while he grabs more.
“Head on in and put those in front of the fire. We’ll need to dry them out to use them. I’ll grab more which should get us through till tomorrow and we can just add this to our routine. Grabbing logs every morning and drying them out.”
He talks like we’re not going to be rescued any time soon and something about it angers me. It’s been one day, and I swear I don’t think I’m going to make it a second day. I’m exhausted and cold and hungry and I want a fucking hot shower.
And here’s Alex, smiling and talking about drying out firewood and me making breakfast and washing up with a pot of boiled water and an old dishtowel.
“It feels like you don’t give a shit that we’re trapped out here,” I yell as soon as he comes through the door. I catch him off guard and he stops in the doorway, watching me, his brows narrowed, his face a wash of confusion.
“What the hell are you talking about?” He’s shaking his head, like he’s trying to make sense of what I’ve just said.
“You’re all like, ‘make breakfast’ and you’re out there chopping wood and acting like this is some fucking TV show and we’re going to win a million dollars at the end.” I suck in a hard breath, exhaling hard but it comes out ragged with a low whimper of a cry about to spill out.
“I don’t want to wash my hair in a cooking pot and I don’t want to eat two year old canned food and dried pasta. I want to go home.” And now I’m crying, blaming Alex for all of this, once again, as if any of this is either of our fault.
Alex closes his eyes as he wets his lips and takes in a long slow breath, exhaling hard. “I’m trying not to yell back at you,” he says through clenched teeth. “I’m trying to remind myself that you’re stressed and scared, but fuck me, it’s hard. You think I want to be here too? You think I want to chop wood in the fucking snow while it blows back in my face making me wonder if I’m going to die of hypothermia while you’re inside by the fucking fire? Stop being so fucking negative, Delaney because it’s getting old, and we’ve only been here for one day. We could be out here for a fucking week or a month. I don’t know, but I do know that us screaming at each other isn’t working.” Every word he says is controlled, but his voice gets louder until we’re both fighting over absolutely nothing.
“I found some oatmeal!” I shout, stomping over to one of the cabinets. I whip it open and chuck the container at Alex. It hits him in the arm and lands on the ground with a thud, rolling back over to me.
“I’m going to go back out and get some more wood. While I’m out there, I’m going to ignore the fact that you lost your shit on me,” he says, attempting to remain composed, on the verge of yelling back at me again which I totally deserve. He drops the pile of wood on the floor by the door, yelling at me, “Find yourself some fucking pants!”
I jump when the door slams, bouncing back when it hits the doorframe. This fucking cabin is on its last leg, but it’s all we have, and Alex is right. I’m behaving like a spoiled child. He should have thrown the oatmeal back at me.
I wipe at the tears drying on my cheeks, and I pick up the oatmeal, setting it down on the small table in the middle of the room. I do what Alex said, I look for some pants. Under my ski pants I was wearing a pair of hot shorts which have now doubled as underwear.
I begin to pull out the drawers of the dresser where I found the socks, coming across several pairs of pajama pants, jeans and gray sweatpants. There are also a few pairs of boxer shorts, a bonus for Alex since now he’ll have clean underwear.
I pull everything out, placing it on the top of the dresser, once again, taking stock of what we have available to us. Should we need to hike out of here, we do have our ski gear, but could we even hike in ski boots anyway? The hunting boots are far too big. But all of this might not matter if we have to find our own way out of here.
I pull on a pair of pajama pants, tying them as tightly as possible and then rolling them at the waist so they stay up. The whole time all I’m thinking about is how embarrassed I should be by my behavior. I keep cycling back and forth between feeling like my life is falling apart and realizing I need to get my shit together.
Alex comes in, another stack of wood in his arms. He walks over to the fire and sets it down in front, opening the door to allow more heat to get to it.
“You’re lucky I didn’t trip over that pile of wood by the door. You could have at least moved it,” Alex growls, clearly still angry at my most recent outburst. “You getting your period or something?” he now says and I can’t stand how fucking cliché his question is.
“No, Alex, I’m not getting my fucking period. I have an IUD and I don’t really get my period anymore for your information. I’m fucking miserable and you’re the only one here to take it out on.”
“Bam, at least you can fucking admit it now,” Alex hisses, shoving the pot onto the top of the stove, glaring at it as if he hopes it boils quickly. “Glad you found some pants.”
We’re a fucked up mess.
Neither of ussays anything for at least two hours. Alex is passed out in front of the fire and every once in a while, I go over and throw on another piece of wood. Keeping the fire going is pretty much our only pastime. We have a container of matches, but using them up to continually re-ignite the fire is not the best use of them. Or at least it feels that way.
I wrap one of the blankets around me, my stomach growling so loudly I worry it will wake Alex up. We haven’t eaten anything besides one can of tuna that we split between us last night before we went to bed. It’s not like we’re starving, but when there isn’t much else to do, thoughts of food creep in.
I climb onto the bed, leaning back against the wall, I close my eyes, trying to chase away the hunger and my angry thoughts. I count the number of times I’ve reached for my phone since we’ve been here, finding my dependence on it kind of scary.
