Page 45 of Stuck With Mr. Frosty

But I have to try.

He might be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I say, my voice getting louder as I storm down the steps and into the snow. The cold seeps through my slippers, soaking them quickly.

When he turns around, there’s a pained expression on his face. “I told you. I need to go back to work.”

“No. What you’re doing is running away. Why don’t you tell me what caused this change between us? Tell me what I did. Let me know what I can do to fix this.”

He recoils like I hit him. “There’s nothing to fix. We need to just let it go, Mia. Maybe we were wrong.”

“I think this moment right here is the only one I’ve been wrong about.” My voice breaks, the pain in my chest growing tighter. “Enjoy work.”

I go back inside, slamming the door behind me, blocking it and slumping against it. I bury my face in my hands, trying to take deep breaths. There doesn’t seem to be enough oxygen in the world.

Rosie pads out into the living room, rubbing the sleep from her eyes as I look up. “Do you want to tell me what’s bothering you, or do you wanna just sit and cry?”

“I’d tell you, but I don’t know if I just broke up with him or if he broke up with me, or if we’re still together and this is just a bump in the road.” I laugh, tears leaking out of the corners of my eyes rolling down my cheeks. “Honestly, I don’t even know if you could call it a breakup. How does something end when it never even really began?”

“Okay. How about you take a deep breath, sit down, and tell me what happened?”

“I don’t want to sit and talk right now.” I wipe the tears from my eyes, tipping my head back and looking at the ceiling until the feeling of needing to cry slowly fades. It’s a trick I got good at while Mom was sick. “I just want to try and forget this entire night happened.”

“I heard him say that he thinks you’re here just for a good time.” Rosie sits down on the couch and pats the cushion beside her. “We all know that’s not true, so why don’t you come over here and tell me what prompted the argument?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know. He’s been avoiding me since yesterday. I tried to talk about it with him today, but you just saw how that went. Apparently, he’s back to thinking of me the same way he was at the start of the season. I don’t know how he got there. I thought things were good between us. I mean, yeah,I got an offer to teach at school, but I was thinking of rejecting it. I haven’t even told him about it yet because I don’t know what I’m going to do. There’s part of me that thinks that I should be traveling the world and seeing it. Then there’s this other part that’s thinking about settling down. Even considering wanting to do that with him.”

“Does Aiden know that?”

“He was going to. I haven’t had the chance to tell him yet. Every time I’ve tried to talk to him over the last day, whether it’s through text or the few times I’ve seen him in person at the resort, he always shuts me down or ignores my message. Sometimes he walks away.”

“Well, the end of the season is a few weeks,” Rosie says softly. “Maybe he’s just preparing himself.”

“I don’t think I’m ready to prepare myself.”

“Well, then maybe you need to make him see that as well.”

I slump on the couch beside her, my head pressed back against the cushions as I stare up at the ceiling. This time I can’t will the tears away like I’ve willed them away every other time.

“Sometimes we don’t get choices about these things.”

“I know, but I’m not ready for this to end.”

“In that case, I think you need to go get out of this cabin and chase down your man.”

CHAPTER 18

AIDEN

Honey is sleeping in the search and rescue station while I sit on a cot looking out the window. Snow is falling and the stars are shining brightly over the trees. Well, at least the ones visible through the thick cloud cover.

Maybe I should have stayed and talked to Mia more. Maybe I should have told her that I saw the letter. We could have figured this out. But I’m not sure that there is anything to figure out at this point. She made up her mind about what she’s doing, I think. She and Rosie have been lurking around the cabin and whispering to each other. At least they were this morning when I stopped by.

Sure, it could’ve been about nothing, but it sounded like Rosie was talking about her plans after the season is over.

I should have known that this was never going to work out. I should have known that she would leave me because everybody else does. The kind of life I live is the kind where people just sit to the side and think that I’m wasting my time. That there has to be something wrong with me to make me want to move around all the time.

And the more I think about it, the more I know I won’t be happy following her and settling down. I would feel like I’m holding her back or forcing her to take me with her.

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