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Kara shifts again, and I raise my head. “Are you okay?”
She sighs. “I’m so sorry. I should have warned you; I’m not a great sleeper. I’m not used to sleeping next to someone, plus these pants...”
I sit up, pushing the comforter down and rubbing my eyes. “What’s wrong with my pants?”
“I just...they’re joggers with narrow ankles, but they’re also like eight inches too long, and I can’t roll them up, so the fabric just bunches around my feet. I’m not used to pants in bed.”
“What do you normally wear?”
She’s silent, but in the soft glow of the light from the window, I can see her grinning. Maybe I don’t want to know.
“I’m not used to pants in bed either,” I confess. I’m wearing a similar pair to what I’ve lent her.
Kara sits up, and we both push back to lean against the headboard. “I hate when you are so tired, but you can’t sleep for stupid reasons. This happens to me all the time.”
“You’ve had a busy week and a stressful day. Being stuck with strangers would be hard, even when it’s not paired with missing out on your family time.”
“And the storm of the century.”
“And having to share a bed.”
“And stupid pants,” she adds with a chuckle. Then she gets serious. “Would it be terrible if I took them off? I’m wearing underwear.”
My mind immediately goes to the black thongs I laid out on the drying rack, and my throat gets dry.
“You can take your pants off too,” she says casually as if it’s a totally normal thing to say to your client in the dark, whom you have to share a bed with.
But if it helps us sleep...
“Okay,” I agree.
We both rustle under the duvet, and there’s a thump against the carpet as first my pants and then hers hit the floor.
“Ahhh...” Kara settles onto her back. “So much better. Good night, again.”
“Good night.”
I must fall asleep because a noise wakes me up sometime later. I prop myself up on my hand, facing the room, and listen.
It’s the wind howling ferociously.
A soft voice comes from behind me. “This must be the storm.”
I look over my shoulder. Kara stands at the window on her side of the bed. She’s pulled the curtain back, and an ethereal light radiates in. Her legs are exposed, but the shirt I gave her falls to mid-thigh. Her arms are crossed, and when I meet her gaze, she holds it for a few seconds before turning her attention back outside.
I kick my legs over the side of the bed away from her and stand at the window on my side of the bed. I gently pull the curtain to the side and look out.
It’s white. A swirling, dancing vortex that audibly bites at the window, at the house, at the night. The glass shakes in the frame, and I can feel the building sway with the pull of it.
I glance back over at Kara. “Have you been up long?”
She shakes her head, still staring outside. “Just a few minutes. It’s wild.” She lifts her chin to the storm.
“Have you ever seen a storm like this?”
“A few. Never this early in winter, but sometimes in January or February, we get an absolute dump of snow. I remember having days off of school and the pictures that circulated—snowmen drag queens being built in Hell’s Kitchen, people bundling up and snowshoeing in Central Park, the old men throwing snowballs. Once, my parents even broke out their old dzhezve—a copper coffee pot—and made traditional coffee.” She pauses for a moment. I’m watching her, but she’s watching the storm. “I haven’t seen that pot since. They might have given it away.” She turns to look at me. “What about you?”
I look outside again rather than meet her gaze. “We had a storm like this a few decades ago. They called it the storm of the century back then too.”
