I check the time on my phone. Twenty minutes. Time for a search party.
I pull on my gear and trudge out to the woods. “Taylor? You okay?”
“Fine,” she calls. I’m about to cross the tree line to go to her, but she says, “Stop!”
I freeze, eyes darting around. “Is there a bear?” It’s almost a whisper.
“A bear? What? No. They sleep in winter.” She stops about six feet from me. “But look.”
I follow the direction of her pointing finger. “Yes. Those are nice trees.”
“See that weird poofy ball of green with white berries?”
“Oh, yeah. Mistletoe.” Excellent.
“It’s all over the trees in here.”
“I love this forest,” I say in a reverent voice.
She rolls her eyes. “Why are you here? I told you no search parties.”
I think about this. “Okay, how about if I missed you?”
“Did you?” She trudges toward me.
“Now and for four years.”
“Same, maybe,” she says when she reaches me. “All right, wonderboy. Let’s go talk in the house.”
“Orrrr—just hear me out—we talk here.” I eye some mistletoe.
She plods past me, trying to step in my footsteps in the snow.
“Coming,” I say, falling in behind her.
She doesn’t wait until we’ve trudged all the way back to the house.
“What do you mean you have feelings for me?” she asks over her shoulder. “In your mind, what happens next?”
I’m not giving this answer to her back. This deserves a face-to-face.
She looks over her shoulder.
“I’m thinking,” I tell her.
We slog our way back to the cabin. She steals glances at me as we kick our boots against the backdoor threshold to knock the snow away. Inside, we hang up our snow gear again.
As she drapes her knit scarf on a hook, I know there’s only one answer I can give here. It’s an answer that deserves flowers and soft music, but she’s asking now, and I’ll give it to her now. I understand the cliff-edge feeling she described in front of the fire. My next words could be the landmine that ends everything, but I find the same courage that has propelled me into some of my scariest situations.
“I love you,” I say. Because those situations always resulted in the best stories. The realest ones.
“Love you too.”
I shake my head. “No, Iloveyou. I’minlove with you.”
She gives me a long look, then she steps toward me, grabs the front of my sweater, and pulls me down for a kiss.
I slide my arms around her and slip one up to cradle the back of her head, holding this wondrous woman exactly where I want her, her body molded to me, her lips warm and full beneath mine.
