CHAPTER 10 - ALEX
I woke up the next morning and stayed in bed a lot longer than I was used to. Part of that was the light hangover, but in truth, it was because my bed here was more comfortable than any bed I had enjoyed in years. Of course that wasn’t the entire story, though.
I didn’t want to get up because I couldn’t face Naomi and what we’d done together last night. I didn’t know what had possessed me to go to her room that late, and once I saw her standing in the doorway, a question on her face, something had taken me over and I had done what came naturally.
It had been amazing. Just a few minutes, but a few life-changing minutes. Even now I could feel her body, smell her scent, all over me, assaulting all of my senses. I wanted more; I needed more.
And I knew she wanted more, needed more, too. That was clear on her face and the way her body arced toward mine when I touched her. There was no confusion there.
So why had I stopped? Why had I locked up like that? Why did I get up without saying a word and hightail it out of there, back to the safety of my own room, even if that room was just 10 feet away from her’s?
None of this made any sense.
I turned to look out the window and saw that the blizzard outside was just as strong as it had been last night, covering the overcast day in snow and making everything out the window almost blindingly white. I couldn’t stare out there too long before my eyes started to hurt, so I turned back, rolling inward till I faced the door to my room.
I lay there wondering just what had stopped me from undressing Naomi and taking her right there, when we both wanted it so badly.
After a while I began to feel like there was something in the back of my mind telling me that this was a mistake, that getting closer to this girl was all going to go to waste because as soon as this storm cleared out we’d be on our way back to our own very separate, very different lives, and that nothing would come of anything we created while here.
Was that what stopped me? Was that what kept me from going all the way with her?
I liked sex just as much as the next guy, but I had gotten past the point of sex for its own sake - I’d had encounters and relationships like that enough to last for a couple lifetimes at least. Maybe I was turning over a new leaf? Looking for something more real?
And I wasn’t going to find it with Naomi. We were too different. We just so happened to run into each other after some crazy circumstances, and when that temporary glitch in the system corrected itself, we’d move on and things would go back to normal.
That all made sense. And if that made sense, then staying away from her made sense too — at least in the…taking off our clothing sense. I didn’t want to hurt her in case she thought this was more than it was.
The only way I could be sure not to do that was to stay away. Even if everything in my body shouted at me to go back to her room, apologize, and jump into bed with her like nothing wrong had ever happened.
She was just some college girl, Eames. She hadn’t seen what I’d seen, and she couldn’t understand the life I lived. There was nothing more for me with her.
Even now, as I lay in bed thinking about her, I could feel my body responding as if she were there, or just out of sight but coming back into view any second now. She was like a narcotic — and I was already addicted after just half a dose.
I couldn’t even imagine what a full dose would do to me. But I also knew that I couldn’t afford to find out.
I tried not to look at the clock as I lay in bed, but the blinking colon between the hour and minutes number kept drawing my eyes back to it, and before long I just watched the numbers slowly tick upward and then rollover back to double zeros as the hour changed.
I couldn’t stay in here forever. We must be running low on firewood by now, and as impressed as I was that Marty had managed to cut enough to get us this far, I wasn’t about to laze around in bed while he put more backbreaking time in the cold to work getting us more fire wood.
I wrenched myself out of bed and got ready, my mind still churning over what to do about Naomi. I could feel the pull of her from my room — ever since I’d happened upon her in the wreckage of the bus I had felt this almost magnetic attraction to her.
I’d tried to resist it, but for all my strength I’d shown up to her room in the middle of the night to fool around before I inexplicably thought better of the whole thing.
I was acting totally out of character, and I didn’t like it one bit. I was being childish and I had to sort myself out, and pronto. I hated feeling this way, especially over a girl.
I finished pulling on some fresh but old clothes and lacing up my shoes, looking forward to getting outside and putting in some hard physical labor — the kind of thing I’d learned was sometimes the only way to calm my overactive mind.
I hoped cutting some wood would at least temporarily erase the memories of Naomi’s fervent kisses from my head. I wasn’t optimistic, but it was worth a shot.
As soon as I stepped out into the hallway, though, my resolve crumbled. Her closed door stood there like a monument, unmoving, calling to me. I didn’t even hesitate for more than a few seconds, I knew what I had to do.
I had to apologize. I had to tell her that it had been a mistake to come into her room and that it wouldn’t happen again — that there couldn’t be anything between us. It sounded so simple, those words, but I knew that getting them out, actually saying them to Naomi would be anything but easy.
As soon as I knocked on the door, though, I was committed to at least trying. I held my breath, trying to hear if she was moving in there. It occurred to me how much stock we all put into doors and their power to wall us off from things we don’t want to come in contact with, despite how flimsy they were in most cases.
No answer, no shuffling, no movement of any kind. Maybe she was still asleep? Considering how late we’d been up, and how I’d left her, that made sense, but I also knew that I’d basically slept away the morning and I doubted she’d done the same.
I knocked again, just to make sure. Maybe she was in there and just really good at pretending like she wasn’t. Maybe she was just really, really mad at me. That made sense too.
I knocked a third time just to make sure, and got nothing. Well, if that’s the way she wanted to play it, then I was OK with that. Maybe I’d give her a little time to simmer down and then try again.
At least my heart was in the right place, right? I was trying to apologize! I didn’t know how I could make it up to her, but I could sure as hell tell her things had gotten out of hand.
I took one last look at her door and went down the stairs, thinking maybe I’d see her in the living room, dining room, or even the kitchen. No dice, and no one else around. I started heading down the corridor to where I assumed Marty and Clara’s rooms were, and probably the furnace and all the tools.
I could feel my fingers curling, itching to get back to work - I’d kept plenty busy at the cabin by the lake, which felt like an eternity ago, even if it was just over 24 hours before now.
“Hello?” I called out, finding the house eerily silent, reminding me of when Naomi and I had come in together yesterday and thought the place was abandoned. “Anyone here?”
“Alex!” came a voice further down the hallway — it was Marty. “Well, good morning to you!” Marty stuck his head around a doorway off to the right. “Ready for some breakfast?”
“Sure am,” I replied, stomach churning at the thought of Clara’s take on breakfast. “And I wanted to see if I could help out with the firewood in the meantime.”
“Sure! That sounds great. I was gonna do it myself, since we’re using a little more of it now, but always happy to have the help. Come on back here and I’ll get you set up.”
I followed the sound of the voice around the corner and saw Marty standing there, staring at an old chest of drawers. He cradled an old teakettle in his hands, and it looked like he was trying to decide where to put it. He finally picked a spot and set it down, rubbing his hands together with a purpose - I could tell he was massaging his fingers. Catching me watching him, Marty smiled wryly. “These joints don’t work like they used to,” he said.
I nodded. “Let me help.”
“Yeah, follow me.” Marty turned and I walked behind him down the hall. Before long we came to the end and Marty opened the old door in front of us. We emerged from the inn in a shed with the opposite side open, and the snow threatening to roll right up to the doorway.
“Better put on one of these old jackets first,” Marty said, handing me an old brown jacket hanging from a set of pegs just inside the doorway. “Otherwise you’ll fall apart out here, even while working up a sweat.”
I took the jacket and pulled it on, zipping it up and tensing my body up as the fabric quickly warmed up around me. I nodded at Marty and he chuckled, giving me an approving look over.
“The axe is over here,” Marty said, walking to the right and pulling a long axe off its pins on the wall, before turning back and handing it to me with both hands. I took it, and followed Marty’s gesture toward the other side of the shed, where there were cylinders of wood stacked up in shelves along the wall. “We have a kid who comes by every month or so and delivers the wood, but I like to chop it myself, you know, just to keep the old muscles moving.”
I stared back at Marty and he grinned, touching his biceps. “The old lady, she likes it when I stay in shape,” he said before erupting in laughter that echoed throughout the shed.
I couldn’t help but join him. “I’ll bet,” I said, when I could get the words out. I hefted the axe and pointed back to ward the racks of wood. “I think I got what I need here. Just do it all?”
“That would be great, young man. That’ll last us another couple weeks at least.”
“Happy to help, after all you two have done for us.” I paused. “That reminds me, please thank Clara for all the food she made us last night.” I patted my stomach. “I haven’t eaten that well in years.”
Marty waved. “She’ll be thrilled to hear it.”
I pulled the first block of wood from the top rack and set it down on the cutting platform in front of me and leaned back, ready to take my first swing. I heard Marty walking to the door.
“Hey Marty, one thing.”
He paused. “Yeah, sonny?”
“You see Naomi at all this morning? She wasn’t in her room.”
Marty looked up, facing away from me, in that way people do when they’re trying to remember something. “Naomi…” he trailed off, turning toward me, his face tense. “Oh yeah!” he brightened. “She said she was going out to get something.” He opened the door and left.
I turned back to the wood, staring down the block I was about to split in two. I took a practiced swing, remembering all the times I’d split firewood all around the world.
It clicked for me the moment the head of the axe hit the block, cleaving it neatly into two roughly equal parts. I almost relaxed my grip on the axe as the realization hit me.
“SHIT!” I shouted to myself, even louder than Marty’s laugh. The blizzard outside the shed didn’t respond to me, as if I was shouting into an abyss and the abyss didn’t think what I had to say was even worthy of reply.
I dropped the axe to the cold, hard, ground with a clang as the metal of the head hit the carving platform, making my teeth ache.
Naomi was going…to get something. In this weather? Where could she have gone?
The bus.
That was the only place.
I pulled open the door and raced through the inn, startling Marty as I ran by him still puzzling over where the teakettle should go. “Whoa there, sonny!” Marty shouted as I careened past him. “Where you off to?!”
“Naomi’s out there!” I waved off toward the general direction of the bus. “She’s gone to get something from her bag!”
Marty sounded confused behind me. “Now why would…” he trailed off as I turned a corner and couldn’t hear him anymore.
I stopped in the foyer and pulled on my shoes as quickly as I could, scooping up a hat and gloves but only getting the former onto my head before running out the door.
All around me the wind battered me back and forth, hitting me with freezing cold while being eerily silent at the same time.
As soon as I got down the steps I couldn’t run anymore, the snow was too deep, but I made a good attempt as I set off toward the bus.
The snow coming down was so heavy that the path of the footprints in front of me was already tough to follow.
Shit. I was already too late.