Page 48 of A Winter in Wonderland
I swallowed, searching his eyes with mine, wanting to ask him a million things like, How did he find out? What did I do wrong? Was he going to tell anyone? Did he think I was a horrible person? Instead, I ran my eyes over his elf costume, and said, ‘You’re not often here just asyou, though.’
‘That’s a fair point.’ He was interrupted by a snowball soaring over the tree trunk and landing in front of the open doorway. ‘We’ve gotta go. Do you want to hang out tonight?’
I paused, mid-scoop of a pile of snow. ‘What? Like a date?’
Another two snowballs pelted the ground before us. Our opposition were drawing in.
Josh stumbled over his words, checking back over his shoulder, keeping his voice low. ‘I, uh, I was just meaning we could grab a beer at the chalet, but, yeah—’
‘Oh, yeah, sure, let’s do that. That would be nice.’ I was so embarrassed, of course he hadn’t meant a date. I didn’t even want it to be a date, for God’s sake.
I reached out and grabbed an armful of snow, avoided his eyes, and whispered a final, ‘See ya,’ and left thekotato take off in the other direction from him.
That evening, after I’d showered, I resisted the temptation to crawl straight into bed and instead went down to the lounge, where Josh was waiting with two beers.
‘Hi,’ I said, joining him, curling into one of the tartan felt-covered armchairs while he occupied the corner seat of the sofa next to me.
He handed me a beer. ‘Hi. Any bruises from the snowball fight?’
‘Nothing to write home about,’ I laughed. ‘You?’
Josh shook his head. ‘No. I’m sure I left some on other people though.’
‘Of course you did,’ I snickered.
He leant forward, dropping his voice, and said to me, ‘Listen, I’m sorry if I put you on the spot before or made you feel uncomfortable—’
‘No, no, it’s fine,’ I said quickly, glancing at our fellow Love Adventuring Laplanders scattered around within earshot. There could be no gut-spilling tonight.
‘OK.’ He looked like he wanted to say something else but was trying to choose his words carefully. ‘You know, though, I’m not going to … ’
‘I know,’ I said. I knew he wouldn’t tell anyone, I trusted him.
‘And not just because, you know, I wouldn’t, you know,expectanything—’
‘Oh God, no, Josh, I know, it’s fine.’ I couldn’t help but chuckle a bit. It was kind of sweet how much he was trying to get his point across. But I did need him to shut up now, so I changed the subject. ‘Tell me about working as a surgical nurse in Seattle. Is it just like being inGrey’s Anatomy?’
‘Just like it. I’ve not personally been on shifts during quite such dramatic stuff, but I did get to help pull glass out of a guy who streaked through a movie set once and crashed into a prop window.’
‘Whoa.’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘Was the glass … ?’
‘Oh, it waseverywhere.’
‘Being an elf in Lapland sounds a million miles away from your usual job.’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘There’s definitely less blood and cursing, but probably about the same level of dancing.’
I laughed, which made him smile though he tried to hide it with a sip of his beer. ‘Tell me about you; what did you do before you came here?’
‘I did … a few things. I used to have a design job I really liked but there were redundancies, so, you know. Since then I’ve not really landed on anything. I’m trying a bit of everything, I guess.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like … ’ I thought back over the previous year. But, if I was honest, I’d been pretty passive. I couldn’t really claim I was ‘trying’ a bit of everything, it was more like I was ‘agreeing to’ a bit of everything. ‘Mainly office jobs, a bit of retail.’
‘Does it feel like a big change now to be working outdoors all day?’
‘It does. It took some getting used to, but I do quite like it,’ I admitted. ‘It feels … hmm. Creative? Is that the word I’m searching for?’
