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“Didn’t fuck her?” he scoffed. “Oh, so was the garland for me? You shouldn’t have.” The sarcasm dripping from his words was thick enough to choke on, but I knew I had to keep my cool for this conversation to go anywhere positive.
“Yes,” I said, figuring honesty was the best policy here. “Jenna and I slept together.”
“No shit, Gabe,” he said. “Did you even wait five minutes after I drove away?”
“What?” I asked. “You know me better than that.”
“Do I?” he asked, his voice much higher than usual. “Because the Gabe I know doesn’t go afteranyone, let alone naïve young girls, and definitely not his friends’ sisters.”
“I didn’t ‘go after’ anyone,” I said, walking past the snowman to the shed, where I’d broken the handle. “Believe me, when we got snowed in, I was ready to venture out into the snow alone just to get away from her.”
“Hey,” Dean said, his anger suddenly taking an odd turn. “Don’t be a dick about my sister.”
“Deal,” I said, putting my hands in the air like I was surrendering. “I have no intention of saying anything bad about her anymore.”
He looked like he was torn between wanting me to be nice and wanting me to not have had sex with Jenna, but whether fortunately or unfortunately for him, both of those were exactly what he was getting. His mouth opened and closed like he couldn’t decide what to say.
“Look,” I said. “It’s not like anything was planned.” I pointed to the shed. “You might want to mark that down. I had to break into it to get the wood to fix the window, and to collect some canned goods since we didn’t exactly have a lot of food.”
“Don’t deflect,” he snarled.
“I’m not,” I told him. “It all matters. The window broke the first night when we were still not getting along, but we had to work together to come up with a solution. Not to mention, with the heat out, we had to spend a lot of time together in order to be warm.”
“So, what?” he demanded. “You just started talking about how much money you have to mesmerize my sister and lure her in?”
“What?” I said, unable to prevent myself from laughing at the ridiculousness of the question. “No. Come on, Dean. Think about it for a minute. Jenna’s a smart woman. She already knew I had money, but that wasn’t even a point of conversation except for how it related to the fact that I was a workaholic with no one in my life but you.”
“And you used that connection to get close to someone young and impressionable so you could seduce her.”
“No!” I said, finally getting frustrated enough to yell. “Dean, you know me. You know I’m not some predator. And I’d neveruseour friendship for anything. I honestly didn’t mean for any of this to happen, but it has, and honestly, I’m so happy it did.”
“You’re happy?” he demanded. “Yeah, I bet you are.”
“Dude, stop,” I said. “Listen to what I have to say before you make assumptions and get all up your own ass.”
“Fine,” he said, sitting on the stump I’d cut wood on the first day and spreading his arms in a gesture of faux goodwill. “I’m listening.”
“We had to work together. We had nothing to do but talk and… Jenna’s amazing.”
“I’m aware,” Dean interjected. At a glare from me, he rolled his eyes and waved for me to continue.
“I don’t even know when the feelings started, but I swear to you, it happened very organically. Just through conversation and spending time together. I got to know her better than I’ve known most people, and we both realized we had this incredible connection and chemistry—”
“Please,” he said with a look of disgust. “Please do not tell me about yourchemistrywith my sister.”
“Fine,” I said. “Well, she took care of me that first night when I was half frozen after fixing the window, and I took care of her yesterday when she got hypothermia—”
“Shewhat?” he said, looking toward the house. “How did that happen?”
I looked up at the snowman and gestured to it, then pointed to the front yard. “Turns out your sister sucks at throwing snowballs. But she’s really good at talking someone through saving her life.”
Dean shook his head.
“I just don’t get it, man,” he said. “Shehatedyou. How did that change?”
“I guess I succeeded in fixing that first impression. Dean… I’m really falling in love with her.”
“You can’t know that,” he said, suddenly angry again. “It’s been three days.”
