Page 116 of Snowed In

“Wh-what time is it?” I stammer, hoping he doesn’t know it has nothing to do with the temperature.

The fingers in my hair unweave themselves, leaving behind an odd sense of loss. His forearm twists against my back as he looks at his watch.

“Three-fifty.”

Why the breath I let out feels like one of gratitude that it’s not yet morning startles me. I just don’t want to move right now after that unpleasant wake-up. It would be preposterous to be happy about preventative cuddling with a co-worker one barely knows.

“Guess we should try to go back to sleep,” I wager.

“Yeah. Probably best.”

Except, the contours of his body pressed against mine overpower every attempt at willing sleep to return. The silence is the loudest I’ve ever heard. It’s filled with the hum of the space heater, howling winds, and the rasp of Ronny’s breathing in my hair. The strong thump of his heartbeat against my ear teases me with thoughts that it sounds rampant because of me.

“So…Trent,” his asks curiously, breaking through the bizarre white noise.

“What?”

“You never said who this Trent guy is—the reason you want to take a date to your family Christmas.”

I didn’t consider the prospect that Ronny might not actually be tired or cold. I’m basically keeping him prisoner with the death grip I have on him. As much as I don’t want to talk about this topic, I feel obliged to provide him with some form of entertainment if it buys me his body heat. The hair-stroking thing isn’t bad either. It’s…kind of soothing. He’s probably just doing that thing where people need to use their hands when feeling idle.

“What, uh, did he do to make you feel like you need to arrive as a unified front, if you don’t mind my asking?” he continues.

Snorting, I’m glad he can’t see me roll my eyes. I’d like to thinkI’m a mature man who doesn’t roll his eyes or throw hissy fits about the weather, but the past nineteen hours have been an ugly mirror.

Fuck it. Complaining is all I have left.

“Whathasn’the done,” I grouse. Sighing, I close my eyes to get through my embarrassing tale of jealousy. “He’s my perfect-in-every-way cousin. He came out first after I’d confided in him months prior that I was gay. His parents threw him this extravagant coming-out party like a toddler who’d learned to walk twice. But that was just more icing on the cake. No matter what I did, even when we were kids, Trent did it better. I started woodworking in my grandpa’s shop when I was ten. Trent started a non-profit for local shelter dogs. I got into U of I. He got into Harvard. I worked two jobs through school and bought myself my first vehicle, which I was really proud of. He got some free test model from the company he was interning for and carried on about how it was eco-friendly over an entire Thanksgiving dinner, like every time his ass hit the driver’s seat, he was willing plastic to be removed from the ocean. He married the perfect man, has the perfect house,andthe perfectvacationhouse. I don’t have a single memory of him not showing off the latest gadget no one else heard of yet, like he’s got some secret connection with aliens from another galaxy. And the stories—there’s always a tedious story about his world travels to exotic places and the five thousand friends they have all over the globe.”

“And… you feel like you need to look coupled up to compete with his claimed successes?”

“No! It’s the principle of the thing—thatIcan be happy. That maybe some peoplechooseto work blue-collar jobs in non-exotic places and don’t save the planet or have a passport because theywantto. That I’m not defective just because I don’t have a celebration every time someone likes a social media post about a frappe with a heart in the froth that I drank on the coast of France with my rich husband. That I can just be a normal everyday person, and someone will love me for who I am, and that’s…okay. It’s…just asokay and special as matching monogrammed couples’ sweaters byVersace.”

“They wearmatching monogrammed sweaters?”

“Once,” I sigh dejectedly.

I now feel worse. He can have his body heat if I can take that all back.

“Oncesounds like enough. Geez. I thoughtmyfamily could be too much.”

His surprising understanding of my predicament isn’t a response I know how to process. It’s like I lost the rest of my clothing with that humiliating tirade, but I no longer feel naked.

“What’s wrong withyourfamily?”

“Nothing. There’s just a lot of them, which makes them…a lot.”

“Lots of Carmichael cousins?” I venture, happy to turn the conversation away from me.

“More than I can count; I have six nieces and eight nephews.”

“Holy crap. How many siblings do you have?”

“Five brothers; two older, three younger.”

There are five more Ronny’s out there? Why does that feel like something the world should know about? Six virile-looking men with thick midnight-black hair, mischievous smiles, and firm, quarter-bouncing asses.

Shaking away the mental image, I remind myself that this new, slightly tolerable side of him is likely a fluke. Thus, the brothers may be flawed, too.

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