“I think we should pull over here,” Conor said as he peered at the exit sign in the distance. “It’s only getting worse. We can sit for a while and see if the storm’s going to stop.”
We made it to a SuperAmerica gas station, where several other cars had pulled in to assess the situation. I went inside to buy us a few sodas and asked the clerk what the roads looked like, going north. “They’ve got a foot already in Duluth,” she said. “Lots of cars are stuck, and there’s this real icy section where people are going off the road, near Hinckley.”
That did not sound good. I pulled out my cell phone and called Jones, but she didn’t answer. I hoped she’d made it okay. I left her a message, then called Emma. She was already at the cabin with Donny, her latest, and Crystal and Eric were there with them. They had had a much shorter drive to the cabin, and they’d left home before the storm, so they were already settled in, sitting by the fire and watching the snow come down.
“Kirsten, it’s okay, you can admit it,” Emma said. “You didn’t find a date for the weekend. Come on up anyway.”
“I’m serious!” I said. “We’re stranded.” I looked out at Conor, who was scraping the ice off the windshield because the truck’s aging defroster was overwhelmed.
“Wait—here’s Jones! Hey, you made it!” I heard everyone laughing and talking, and then Jones picked up the phone.
“Where are you, Kirst?”
“We’re trying to get there, but the roads are awful,” I said.
“You are cursed, Kirst. You realize that.”
“I know. We’re going to stay here for a while until it stops snowing and sleeting and whatever else. Hopefully we’ll make it later tonight, or else tomorrow.”
“You and…?”
Just then, Conor walked into the store, shaking the snow off his jacket.
I’d kept the secret this long. Why not a few more hours? “See you tomorrow, for sure. Okay?” I said to Jones. “Bye!”
Conor and I left the gas station shop and ran to the pickup truck. Just before we got in, I made a snowball and quickly tossed it at him. It was the perfect snow for making snowballs—wet, heavy and easy to clump together. We circled the truck, and the gas pumps, hiding out, tossing them at each other. Soon other people got out of their cars and joined in—soon the entire gas station was filled with people hiding behind their cars and pelting whoever dared come out from behind their car to walk into the shop.
We were laughing so hard when we finally got back into the truck to warm up. “Well. Should we settle in for the night, or what?” Conor asked.
“I guess so,” I said with a shrug.
We had our sleeping bags in the back, under the truck cap, and Conor made a little nest with blankets and some of our clothes.
We climbed in together, and snuggled up close. As I was lying there, trying to fall asleep, I scraped a little part of frost off the window. K + C, I traced with my fingernail. Then I drew a heart around it.
“Are you seeing things again? Hearts in the ice? Like you saw hearts in your lattes?” Conor teased me.
“Did you, or did you not, intentionally make a pattern in my coffee that morning?”
“I did not,” Conor said. “But I take full credit for it anyway.”
“That is so like you!” I giggled as Conor pulled me over toward him, taking a chunk of snow out of my hair.
“I can’t believe we’re spending the night in the truck,” Conor said. “I’ve never done something like this before. Well, except for the time I ran away from home.”
“When was that?”
“When I was sixteen. I got so mad at everyone that I just left, you know? The problem was, I forgot the sleeping bag and blankets part.” He snuggled closer. “It was February.”
“You went home. End of story,” I said.
“No, I made a snow mattress,” Conor said. “You know, the way animals do? If you lie on the snow it’s really warm.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “I think I’m just going to take your word on that. For a change.” I turned slightly so that I was lying on my back. “Though it would be cool to lie outside and look at the stars right now.”
“Yeah, but it’s still snowing,” Conor said. He turned over, too, and we laid side by side, holding hands. “So…what’s it going to be like tomorrow?”
“We’ll have to see, I guess,” I said.
And then I fell asleep, cuddled next to Conor, completely toasty warm in the cold truck in the middle of a snowstorm.
Chapter 22
“You made it!”
“Kirst!”
“She’s here!”
Everyone screamed as Emma opened the door and Conor and I walked into the log cabin—which was actually more like a big lodge—the next morning.
Well, maybe not everyone, maybe just the girls shrieked. In any case, I felt like a celebrity.
Emma, Jones, Keira and Crystal all gathered around me in a hug. “That’s not Sean,” Jones whispered in my right ear, as Emma said, “Isn’t that goalie guy?” in my left.
I cleared my throat as we separated and said, “Conor, this is everyone. Everyone, this is Conor.”
Fortunately, nobody gasped. At least not that I heard.
Tyler and I exchanged polite nods in greeting, and I said hi to Emma and Crystal’s boyfriends, Donny and Eric. It looked like Jones had come by herself. I admired her for that. Not that I wanted to trade places with her right now, because I was very happy I’d brought Conor along. Maybe I’d started off with the wrong intentions—finding a guy just to bring here—but I’d ended up with something—someone—great.
“Oh, no!” Crystal suddenly cried, and she rushed back to the large, open kitchen. I thought I saw a little smoke coming from the stove, but I ignored it as we sat down on the rustic furniture by the fireplace.
Keira brought each of us a mug of coffee, and everyone gathered around to hear about our trip.
“It’s so great you could finally make it,” Emma said. “Were you scared?”
“Us? No.” Conor shook his head. “Kirsten might have scared some people at the gas station when she started whipping snowballs at them, but—”
“You did what?” Tyler asked.
“It was boring. It’s called letting off tension,” I said.
Crystal came over with a big plate, stacked high with pancakes. “Help yourselves, okay? A couple of these are sort of burned, sorry,” she said. “That stove is weird. All of a sudden it gets really hot.”
We all loaded up some breakfast onto paper plates and sat back down to eat.
“Yum. We’re going to need this energy for when we go skiing—”
“And snowshoeing—”
“And hiking—”
“I don’t know if I should have maple syrup, or jam,” Emma said, tapping her knife against the table. “What do you guys think? I love syrup, but that raspberry jam looks really good.”
Jones looked at me and rolled her eyes. “Emma Dilemma. Have both. Okay? Just have both.”
We both cracked up laughing, and I saw Conor giving me a confused look out of the corner of my eye. Then I turned to him and saw that he wasn’t confused; he was trying to choke down one of the burned pancakes, and he seemed to be struggling.
“Fear factor: pancake edition,” he mumbled to me after he’d managed to swallow the bite.
Together we managed through our laughter to hide his plate under mine, and we shared the less-done pancake. Which, when you got to the center of it, turned out to be a little raw.