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“It’s not meant for two,” I agreed.
“What are you having then?”
“There’s some yogurt in there,” I said, shrugging.
“That why there’s no fat to pinch on you?” he asked oddly, going into the fridge, pulling out the yogurt… and two pears. “You don’t eat?”
“I eat,” I objected, not wanting anyone to think I was starving myself. I didn’t do that. Sure, when I was stressed, I had a tendency not to eat much, but I always ate something.
“You ate your salad, and poked at the rest of your food. This morning, you’re making me eggs, but eating yogurt,” he recalled as he sliced up the pears, putting them pointedly on two different plates.
“I don’t like big breakfasts. It makes me feel slow all day. Besides, you don’t have any fat to pinch either.”
“Yeah, ’cause I’m all muscle,” he supplied, daring me to rebut him. And there simply was no way to do that. He was very solidly built.
“Yes, and you need to maintain that muscle with all this protein,” I agreed, folding the omelet over, then sliding it onto the plate he was holding out. “I don’t. What?” I asked when he took his plate and sighed out his breath.
“Arguing over fucking diets,” he said, looking down at his plate, his voice making it sound like it was the most absurd conversation two people could have.
Feeling awkward, I silently ate my yogurt and the pear he forced on me. I drank my water, wishing it was coffee, wondering if there was a way I could make that without electricity.
“Alright,” he declared, the scrape of his chair across the floor making me jerk upright. “I am heading out. If you’re looking for something to do, you can start moving the food out into the snow.”
“No problem,” I agreed, feeling like it was the least I could do. “Will you be in for lunch?”
“If you’re making something.”
“Then you’ll be in for lunch,” I agreed, taking his plate, and going to the sink, piling it in. “Oh, water,” I remembered, looking over at him.
“I’ll bring in some buckets. Got a dozen of them laying around.”
“Okay, thanks,” I agreed, giving him a small smile.
“And if the fire starts to look low,” he added, moving over toward where it seemed to be crackling happily still, “just throw a log on it. But layered. Don’t smother the flame.”
“Got it,” I agreed, but I wasn’t as confident as I sounded. I would figure it out.
“Be back in a couple hours,” he told me, then grabbed his tan jacket, and was out the door. He came back ten minutes later with three giant buckets of snow which he dragged near the fire to melt.
I washed the dishes with the snow water, doing so more carefully than I had ever washed something before, conserving as much of it as possible, before I located a pitcher in a cabinet, filling it, then bringing it into the bathroom with me, intent on attempting a ‘whore’s bath,’ and brushing my teeth.
It was strange how easily things like this could come to you, this ability to adapt, to be able to live without comforts. By the time I came out of the bathroom, I was clean everywhere but my hair because that seemed to require some ability to be a gymnast to pull it off, and dressed in a pair of thin off-white linen pants and a heavy knit gray sweater.
After digging around in my bags for about ten minutes, I realized something that had my belly sinking a bit.
My contacts must have been in one of my other bags.
And I couldn’t leave the ones in my eyes anymore.
No one, save for my eye doctor himself, ever saw me with my glasses on. My giant black-framed glasses that swallowed up a big part of my face.
On a sigh, I did what needed to be done, reaching up to pile my hair on the top of my head, thinking it would distract from the fact that I could swear the roots were looking a little greasy.
With that, and nothing else to do with my time, I grabbed my sketchpad and colored pencils, going back to the living room to lose myself in some drawing in front of the fire.
“What happened to you?” Gunner’s voice boomed into the space that had been silent except for the cracking of the logs that I had successfully managed to keep going despite my doubts, making me jolt, my head whipping over to where he was standing inside the door, looking at me like I had sprouted another head.
“I’m sorry?” I asked, brows furrowing.
“Couple hours ago, I left Miss Blythe-Meuller. Who is this?” he asked, waving a glove-clad hand at me.
“Oh,” I said, having been so lost in my own world that I had forgotten. My hand moved up, touching the side of my glasses. “Yeah. My supply of contacts must have been in one of my other bags,” I told him, trying to feel as dismissive about it as the shrug I gave him implied.
