The bathroom door opened again, and Natalie walked out, drying her wet hair. Seeing her, I realized I hadn't even started making breakfast yet. No, I had been thinking about the pros and cons of fucking her.
"Hungry?" I asked her, clearing my throat. If she knew even half of what I thought about her, she’d have grounds to call the fucking cops.
"Not really. I could use some coffee though," she said. I filled the percolator to give me something to do that wasn't staring at her. She started talking, telling me about the weather, talking about the temperature. I barely heard her trying my damnedest not to embarrass myself in that kitchen. There could never in history have been a worse time to get hard. She headed up to the loft briefly, and the coffee was ready by the time she came back down. She walked over to the deck and opened the door instead of sitting after I handed her her mug.
"How much land do you have up here?" she asked, looking outside. The cabin was warm compared to the air that blew in from the open door.
"An acre or so," I said. I wasn't sure of how much exactly. I knew now that I should have paid more attention to my realtor telling me this stuff, but I hadn't. It was good luck and intervention that had gotten me this far because none of it had been common sense.
"Have you gotten a look at the rest of the property? You could probably do something with it." I walked over to the open door and looked out of it with her. Snow, snow, and more snow. At least it wasn't falling though, and the wind didn't seem to be too bad.
"Do something like what?"
"Whatever you want," she said with a shrug. "Put more buildings up. Add to the cabin. Raise chickens."
"Chickens?"
"Yeah. Raise animals and plant your own vegetable patch so you never have to go into town again."
"I don’t know about all that," I said, looking around. Some people had to live like that, I knew, but as much as I had been here for a little while already, I couldn't tell whether I still would be a year from now. Not even a month from now. There was all the bullshit with the company, but even if that wasn't on the table, I didn't know whether this was it for me. I liked the solitude and relying on myself, but I already knew what I would potentially be missing out on if I stayed here.
"Growing up, my mother baked all the bread that we ate," she said. "We ate eggs from her chickens, and when she got her goats, we stopped buying milk from a neighboring farm." She had told me that her parents had done the homestead thing. The thought was cute, but it was just me up here. If you had a family, I could see the appeal, but how many damn eggs did I need? It probably saved money and the hassle of driving into town, but I didn’t want that, I soon realized. There was a fine line between what I wanted and being a hermit. I didn’t mind going into town; I just wanted the option to get away from it when I needed to be.
"Did you ever want to do that?"
"No," she said hastily. "My parents wanted a big family that they raised knowing how to live off the land. It was rewarding to them to live that way. For me..." she trailed off.
"You like your milk pasteurized and your eggs from a store?" I asked. She smiled slightly.
"Yeah, but I wanted to see whether there was more. They loved their small town, their ranch, their neighbors and animals, all of it, but it was theirs. I wanted to see what I wanted." I could understand that. She had left her home to find her way, and she had. I had my life planned out for me. I didn't have that option. Well, I never thought that I had it. If I sold out of the company, then I could do whatever I wanted. I could stay here, leave, go back to school, anything. I had never had that kind of freedom, I realized. It had never been an option for me. ‘Til now.
"I was thinking about shoveling today," I said to her.
"Yeah? Do you want help?"
"I only have one shovel," I said, closing the door to the deck.
"Then we can take turns," she said. We ended up agreeing that she'd take the snow that had blown onto the deck and the porch, and I would do the driveway getting enough snow out from around our cars to reduce the amount of ice that would end up forming. The cover was more than a foot deep. I concentrated on freeing our cars and moving as much of the loose snow as possible. The more we let pile on, the worse it would end up being in the end.
A little more than an hour later, Natalie was coming down the stairs with a cup of hot coffee for me. We took a break and started talking as I had my coffee. Five minutes turned into ten, then into twenty, then we were walking around the back of the house to see more of the property. I couldn't wait to see what it looked like without all the snow. Maybe I would be here when it warmed up next year. The place was mine; I could come up here whenever I wanted.
And she could too, I thought. You know, if she wanted to. She could visit if she wanted to come by, take a few days off from time in the city. I didn't know what I wanted. I had come up here to figure it out, but I did know that whatever happened, I didn’t want to stop talking to Natalie. These were special circumstances. I knew that she wouldn't always be around all day whenever I wanted to see her so we could talk, but she was here now, and while we had the time, I was making the most of it.
"Ugh, it was a nightmare," Natalie said, responding to my question about what it had been like growing up with four older brothers.
"Do they know you feel like that?" I asked, laughing.
"They probably felt the same way having a whiny little sister who wanted to play with them but couldn't keep up."
"So what di
d you do?"
"Told on them," she said, smiling a little. "Oliver is just a year and a half older than I am, so he always got stuck playing with me when Aaron, Marc, and Derrick didn't want to. I used to get so sore when they made fun of me for being a girl; I didn't wear dresses or makeup ‘til after I went to college."
"Stop it."
"I swear," she said, "if you saw a picture of me in high school, you wouldn't recognize me. I had the Arya Stark haircut ‘til I was eighteen."