Page 139 of Instant Karma

“I’d suggest we go get pancakes,” says Quint, “but most diners probably require pants.”

I break into giggles and collapse into him, burying my face into his shoulder. If we’d been thinking last night, we would have hung our clothes up. They’d probably be dry by now, or close to it. But they’re still in the dryer, lying in a sopping-wet clump.

“Pancakes soundso good,too,” I say.

His arms encircle me. His lips press against my neck, right below my ear.

Pancakes are forgotten, along with everything else.

Until a few seconds later, when a door slams downstairs.

We both jump.

The sound must have awoken some of the animals downstairs, because there’s a short round of barks from the seals, squeaks from the otters.

Then we hear Rosa, yelling. “Quint?”

Quint and I exchange looks. A brief but deep disappointment passes between us before we disentangle our arms from each other.

“Up here, Mom,” Quint calls back as we both stand up and straighten our T-shirts and check the knots on our towel-kilt and blanket-gown, as we dubbed our makeshift clothing around three o’clock in the morning.

We hear Rosa jogging up the stairs. A bouncing white light precedes her, and when she arrives in the break room, she swings her cell phone so fast in our direction, it blinds us both. Quint and I throw up our arms, shrieking. We could be vampires faced with a sudden deluge of sunlight.

Rosa lowers her phone. “A tree took down some power lines up the road. I saw crews working to get it fixed. Has the power been out all night?”

“Yeah,” says Quint. “Went out not long after we got here.”

Rosa makes a sympathetic noise in her throat. “You poor kids! If I’d known…” She trails off, because, what would she have done differently? Sent out a search party for us?

“We’re okay.” Quint rubs his eyes. “Though we didn’t get a whole lot of sleep.”

“No sleep,” I amend. “We got exactly negative amounts of sleep.”

Quint snickers at this, which makes me giggle, too. Our sleepy minds finding something hilarious in this sentence.

Rosa looks between us, a little concerned.

“We’re fine,” Quint says emphatically this time.

“We’re great,” I say. And then I blush, wondering how much the wordgreatimplies about the night we spent together. Doesgreatautomatically suggest seven straight hours of confessions and truths and kisses? So. Many. Kisses.

And yet, somehow…

Not.

Enough.

Kisses.

“Have you been to check on the animals?” asks Quint, even though we both just heard her come in.

“No. I thought I’d better make sure you were both okay first.”

“Do you have a portable phone charger?” I ask, holding up my dead phone. “I should call my parents.”

“Afraid not. But you can use the phone downstairs.”

I frown. “The power is out.”

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