She closes the door and turns to face me.
“Your move,” I say.
“I’m going to make lunch. I’m going to go through my emails and make sure there’s nothing I need to handle. I’m going to think. I’m going to overthink. Then I’m going to mull, followed by some pondering.”
“And then?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. But I’ll tell you when I do.”
“I understand.” Maybe not really. But if she’s been having feelings for as long as I have that she’s been calling an intermittent crush, I can give her the time to catch up. To let a new word replace that one. To wrap her head around the fact that she’s madly in love with me.
I think.
I hope.
I take a deep breath. Ibelieve.
She walks toward the kitchen but stops when she reaches me. She goes up on her toes and presses a kiss to the corner of my mouth, then catches my bottom lip between her teeth and lets it scrape lightly as she draws away.
My knees nearly buckle.
But she doesn’t say anything and neither do I as she disappears into the kitchen. But I have hope. A whole sleigh full of it.
We spend the rest of the day quietly. Taylor works on emails and talks to Miss Lily for a while, but not only does Miss Lily sound like she has everything handled, she sounds like she’s experienced glee while handling it.
Eventually, Taylor pulls a jigsaw puzzle from the game cabinet and works on it.
I dig out one of my dad’s Louis L’Amour novels and get lost in the Old West. We’re not ignoring each other. It’s mostly quiet, but it’s comfortable. This is something Taylor does; she sometimes goes deep inside herself to work a thing out, and as impatient as I am for us to begin a new chapter—one that opens with lots of making out—I’ll wait.
When I start to worry she’ll decide we’re better as friends, I force myself to review everything I remember from the reindeer herders until I relax, running through the steps in my mind, recalling the scents and sounds, the sounds the herders made depending on what they wanted the reindeer to do.
When the worry settles, I go back to the Old West.
She gets up to make dinner, but I won’t let her. “I got it,” I tell her. “I’m as good of a cook as you are.”
“Fine by me.” She goes back to her puzzle, and it looks like she has the majority of the thousand pieces in place.
A half hour later, we eat bacon, egg, and tomato sandwiches. “I’d have used lettuce, but our moms didn’t pack any.”
She shakes her head. “They remembered water crackers and a bottle of wine, but no lettuce. Wonder what they were packing us for?”
“Pretty sure I know.” But she doesn’t follow up the comment, and it’s as close as we get to touching on the decision she’s mulling.
I run through reindeer care in my mind again.
We settle back into our book and puzzle, but after an hour, I decide it’s useless, and I get up from the sofa. “Do you have a preference on rooms tonight? It doesn’t matter to me with the heater working. You want the fireplace room?”
She looks up from her puzzle. “You’re going to bed?”
“Yeah. I’m guessing you want to leave as soon as the road is cleared. I want to get enough sleep in case it’s really early.”
“Oh. Good idea. You take your parents’ room. I’ll pick a room when I’m tired.”
I think I’m too wound up to sleep, too on edge waiting for what Taylor will decide, but I’m wrong. I doze off, and I’m not sure how long I’ve been asleep when Taylor climbs into the bed.
“Tay?”
“It’s still warmer in here,” she whispers. “Don’t get any ideas. I’m here to sleep.”
