Cabin fever, p.10
Cabin Fever, page 10
“Bullshit. You were an ass all day yesterday and it’s not like you were super personable at the trade show. I tried to talk to you then and you looked at me like I kicked your dog. So obviously you don’t like me.”
“We’re competitors. Why would I like you?”
“Because we work in the same field. Because we can respect each other and be professional.”
When she said it like that, Morgan couldn’t quite remember why she disliked Shelby so much. Sure, she didn’t like Shelby’s style, but it’s not like she was a murderer or a drug dealer. She was just a salesperson who was more successful than Morgan. Was that really Shelby’s fault?
“Yes, I live alone.” Morgan still wouldn’t look at Shelby. But hey, old habits died hard.
After a beat, Shelby gave a laugh that seemed to clearly say “I guess I’ll take what I can get” and picked up the pot of oatmeal again. Morgan thought it best to just go sit down quietly so she didn’t do anything else to make Shelby yell at her.
There were already two places set at the little cafe table, each with a glass of apple juice and a steaming mug of coffee on the placemat. Shelby followed quickly after her, setting a bowl of oatmeal in front of each of them and dropping into her chair. She didn’t say anything else, just tucked into her oatmeal, and Morgan followed suit.
She was actually impressed with how good the food was. Morgan rarely ate oatmeal because she hadn’t been impressed as a kid. Her mother had made it with water and brown sugar, maybe a drizzle of maple syrup at most. What Morgan remembered was chewy and bland. This was anything but. Maybe it was the condensed milk, but the oats were creamy and the raisins had plumped nicely.
“I wasn’t sure if you took cream or sugar in your coffee, so I brought both to the table. It’s powdered creamer, but at least it’s something.” Shelby added a scoop of sugar to her own cup.
“Thanks.” It was something, but Morgan decided she needed to try harder. “I drink mine black.”
“I wasn’t trying to pry when I asked if you lived alone.”
To Morgan’s surprise, Shelby looked a little embarrassed, and there might’ve even been a blush on her cheeks.
“It’s okay,” Morgan said.
Shelby set down her coffee but continued to stare into the mug. “I realized while I was making breakfast that no one is going to miss me. I don’t have plans with friends and I don’t talk to anyone regularly. When I don’t show up at home, no one will report me missing.”
Morgan had assumed Shelby would be as popular in her personal life as she had been at the trade show, and she was shocked to discover that wasn’t the case. She was going to ask questions, especially about the lack of regular phone calls even to her family, when she realized she was in the same boat. She called her mom sometimes, but not enough that a lack of a call would send up warning bells. She didn’t really have any friends after moving a couple of years ago. No one would notice if her car wasn’t in her driveway.
“Shit. Me too.” Morgan set her spoon down, suddenly not very hungry at all. “No one will miss me until work on Monday.”
“It’ll probably be Tuesday for me. Not until I miss the area sales meeting.”
The oatmeal, which had been filling and warming her nicely a moment ago, turned into a pile of writhing snakes in Morgan’s stomach. This was not good. She looked at the windows again. The snow was still coming down hard. Maybe not quite so hard as yesterday, but enough to keep people inside. Certainly enough to keep them from driving a little used road off the beaten track near a state park. Shelby turned to look out the same window.
“By now our tire tracks will be covered.” Shelby turned back to look at Morgan, a childlike fear tinging her words. “How long do you think before the car is covered, too?”
Morgan did not let the words sink in. She would not let herself get bogged down in fear. If she thought about it too much, she would have to admit things were much, much worse than she’d thought. Instead, she went with her usual defense—cold, unflinchable logic.
“The angle of the car will work in our favor.” Morgan felt more confident in her assertion with each word she spoke. “It won’t get buried as quickly as it would if it was on flat ground. We have time.”
“And the rental car company will report the car missing, so they’ll be looking for us.”
Morgan’s stomach churned again, harder this time. “I was supposed to return it to Rochester Airport.”
“What?”
“They didn’t have any one-way rentals available. In fact, all they had was the one car, so I took it even though I was supposed to return it to the same place I rented it.”
“Which means they won’t suspect you were driving it back to Washington, DC,” Shelby said with a groan. “And no one will be looking for me at all.”
“The rental car company knows where I live, so they’ll put two-and-two together. Plus, every cop in the state will get the alert. Someone will think to look along the route I would have taken home and this place isn’t too far off the interstate. They’ll find us.” Fear was threatening to overwhelm Morgan, so she made her little speech as much to convince herself as Shelby.
Shelby looked skeptical, but it was clear she wanted to be optimistic, too. She shrugged, then stood and grabbed Morgan’s empty bowl. “Well, I’m not going to worry too much about it. I’m going to sit in front of the fire with one of those mystery novels and a cup of tea. Want to join me?”
She looked so sweet and unconcerned, Morgan couldn’t help but play along. She still didn’t like the prospect of a delayed rescue, but they had plenty of food, and the prospect of reading a book in front of a fire was actually really lovely. She was sure, despite her belief the car wouldn’t be completely buried, that they were in for a long weekend, but they were safe and warm. Why not enjoy the down time while they had it?
“I call dibs on the armchair,” Morgan said.
* * *
Shelby was stretched out on the couch, a cup of tea steaming on the coffee table, a book in her hand. If it wasn’t for the too large sweatpants and the scratchy upholstery beneath her, she would be able to convince herself that she was enjoying a relaxing Saturday afternoon at home. Not that she’d had one of those in a long time. Most of her Saturdays were filled with catching up on emails and updating the spreadsheet she used to track her customer interactions. The closest she came to relaxing on a Saturday was treating herself to a glass of low-calorie Chardonnay with dinner, but she did it in yoga pants, so that was something.
The crackle of the fire, in fact, added an element of coziness she found distinctly lacking at home. She was most definitely not at home. This was not her butter-soft leather couch beneath her or the imported Kusmi tea she loved in her mug. This was a stranger’s cabin in the middle of nowhere with only one bed and a grumpy bitch of a housemate while they waited to see if anyone gave two shits about two single women living in a city that made them anonymous. She didn’t even have a cat to starve to death if she was never rescued from this depressing cabin.
Shelby closed her eyes and took three long, deep breaths. There. She’d had her moment. Her pity party, table for one. Now it was time to get over it. It was time for her to get a grip and she only knew one way to do that. It was time to remind herself who she was. At the last moment, she remembered that she wasn’t at home alone, so she couldn’t say the words out loud like usual. She spoke them to herself, slow and clear, inside her own head.
I am Shelby Lynn Howard, granddaughter of Evelyn May Reeves. My bloodline is full of strong, confident women. Except my spineless, thoughtless mother, but never mind. My bloodline is full of strong, confident women. I am the best of all of them by far. Granny Reeves fought to give me a chance. I won’t waste that chance. I will make her proud. I will make myself proud. I am a woman to be feared by those who doubt me and loved by those who see my strength.
Shelby opened her eyes and found she was herself again. As always, her speech had done the trick. She’d been giving it to herself since her very first pity party on her twenty-second birthday, three days after Granny Reeves’s funeral. It grounded her in the ultimate truths of her life. Sure, she hadn’t found that person to see her strength yet. That much was obvious in the fact that there was no one who loved her enough to miss her. There never had been.
But she was going to change that. She was going to get out of this frozen hell and go home and stop working seventy-hour weeks. She was going to find some woman who was beautiful and smart and appreciated her and also laid her out at least twice a week. Okay, maybe just once a week if she had a big sale on the line. She couldn’t afford to let sex make her too tired at work.
Shelby shook herself. No. No sale would get in the way of her getting what she wanted. She’d been too worried about sales and not worried enough about finding her person. No sale was worth feeling like this again. Like she had nothing and no one in the world who cared about her.
Shelby finally stopped pretending she was reading. She let out a sigh and let her head fall back on the couch. It actually felt nice—stretching her neck and shoulders that she hadn’t realized she’d been scrunching up. Then she sighed again, this time pushing all the air out of her lungs, making her shoulders drop even further into comfort.
“You okay?”
Morgan’s voice came out croaky, like she was half asleep in her chair. Looking up, Shelby saw that she was, in fact, looking more content and comfortable than she had any right to look given their circumstances. In fact, if Shelby hadn’t known better, she might think that Morgan was enjoying all this down time. But that couldn’t be right. Not after she was so on edge when they talked about their chances at rescue during breakfast.
Nevertheless, there she was, looking completely relaxed. Shelby didn’t know anyone who could sit around for hours reading a book. What’s more, she never would have expected this from Morgan, who had spent the entire week at the trade show walking around like the human embodiment of stress. The tension that usually knotted her shoulders had slipped away. The worry line that cut between her eyes had smoothed out.
Shelby watched her and wondered if this was what she normally looked like. If this was how she normally spent her Saturdays. Maybe the Morgan she’d met at the trade show hadn’t been the real Morgan. Maybe this was the real Morgan and she wasn’t usually so uptight and rude. Maybe she could be a fun person to hang around with on a Saturday afternoon. Doubtful, but wilder things had happened.
Apparently, Shelby silently stared at Morgan too long, because she raised an eyebrow and asked again, “You okay?”
“Uh, yeah. Just hungry.” Shelby dropped her book on the floor and hopped to her feet. “Want to break into our potato chip supply?”
Shelby thought Morgan would scowl and make some comment about how they should be logical and ration their food. She was all set to argue when Morgan surprised her again.
“Sure. Especially if they’re served with a glass of that terrible bourbon.”
Shelby couldn’t help but smile at the mischievous twinkle in Morgan’s eye. “I think we can make that happen.”
Rather than scrounging out of the bag and drinking straight from the bottle like they did last night, Shelby decided to do a proper service of their snack. She grabbed bowls for their chips and juice glasses for their bourbon. For some reason, she wanted to pretend like she was entertaining a friend back at her condo in Alexandria instead of being stranded with a stranger in the woods. It probably had a lot to do with her recent promise to have a personal life, but Shelby decided not to analyze it too much.
When she brought their snack back into the living room, Morgan took her bowl and glass with almost friendly grace. She raised the bourbon to her lips with a grimace that didn’t seem to have anything to do with the quality of the alcohol.
“Are you okay?” Shelby asked.
“Just sore.” Morgan rubbed the back of her neck and took another sip of bourbon. “This is a decent painkiller though. How about you? How’s your shoulder?”
Shelby was pleasantly surprised, both by Morgan’s interest and in her candor about her own pain. Morgan was obviously a guarded person, but she opened up to Shelby, who couldn’t help but do the same.
“My shoulder is sore as hell, honestly, but I’ll survive.”
Morgan nodded, but when she would have gone back to quietly reading, Shelby decided to draw a little more information out of her unintentional roommate.
“Where do you live?” Shelby asked, relaxing back into the couch cushions. She was met by a blank stare. “You put my address into your GPS when we started this drive, but I assume you live somewhere in Northern Virginia.”
“Why would you assume that?” Morgan asked, but the words didn’t carry the bite of accusation Shelby was used to.
Shelby ticked off her evidence on her fingers, flicking off some cheese dust as she went. “We both work in the DC Metro, so it’s either DC, Maryland, or Virginia. Only lobbyists and ex-presidents can afford to live in the District, so that’s out. You aren’t the best driver I’ve ever seen, but Maryland drivers are much worse. So you must live in Virginia.”
“Considering I drove our rental car off the side of a mountain, that’s saying something.” Morgan punctuated the sentence by crunching a potato chip followed by a sip of bourbon. There was a self-deprecating twinkle in her eye that shocked Shelby so much she dropped her chip. Morgan Allen had a sense of humor, who knew?
“Only a hill. A Maryland driver would have driven us off the side of the hill, into a tree, through a burning building, and into the ocean. All without using a turn signal.”
Morgan snorted a laugh around a mouthful of sour cream and onion. It was an adorable, albeit brief, moment that made Shelby’s insides warm far more than they should have. She really needed a date. Or a friend. If all it took to find an obnoxious, rude woman like Morgan charming was being stuck in a cabin with her for twenty-four hours, Shelby was in serious need of companionship.
“Manassas,” Morgan said.
“Hmm?” Shelby had been intent on her inner musings and the word didn’t penetrate.
“I live in Manassas. Right outside downtown. Near the train station.”
Morgan didn’t quite meet Shelby’s eye when she described her home. She shuffled around in her bowl, apparently looking for the perfect chip, but Shelby was too good at reading people to buy that.
Manassas was probably the farthest away from Washington, DC, you could get while still technically being in the suburbs. Whereas Shelby’s neighborhood in Alexandria would be considered chic and maybe even hip, the same could not be said for Morgan’s home. For as densely populated as it was, Manassas was shockingly rural and one of the few conservative areas in the deeply blue rim of the state. It was also one of the few places where houses were somewhat affordable.
Morgan was probably embarrassed to live there because the zip code alone was enough to telegraph her socioeconomic status. Shelby, who had spent most of her adult life poorer than Morgan could possibly imagine, couldn’t care less about that. What she did care about was that Manassas, being deeply conservative, would not be a comfortable place for a single lesbian to live. While Morgan wasn’t so butch she would be clocked as gay by everyone who walked down the street, something told Shelby she wasn’t the kind of woman to stay in the closet even for her own safety.
They continued their pleasant if stilted small talk until the chips were gone and Morgan went back to reading her book, but not before Shelby gained a new level of respect for her. Morgan was infuriating and had a chip on her shoulder, but maybe she had a reason or two for that never-back-down attitude.
Chapter Ten
Morgan tried desperately to hold onto the soothing blanket of sleep. She knew she was asleep. She knew she was dreaming. She was warm and comfortable and there was an absolutely heavenly voice humming in the distance. The humming was what really told her she was asleep. The voice wasn’t familiar, but she was so drawn to it. It was wonderful, like hearing a lullaby sung by a grandmother who died before she was born. It was gentle and clear and had that deep alto pitch she was so drawn to. She knew it was a voice crafted specifically for her by her subconscious to keep her locked into her perfect cocoon.
She wanted to stay in that cocoon. To slip back into the depths of sleep that cleared out all her thoughts and worries, following the dream voice. But her focus on the sound was drawing her further away from those depths. It was drawing her to wakefulness despite her desperate desire to rest.
Morgan came fully awake, and if she’d thought that voice was alluring, it was nothing compared to the delicious smells of food cooking on the stove. The same way she picked apart the voice in her dream, she picked apart the scents of dinner. Onions and garlic and the rich, heartiness of pasta boiling. But what really caught her attention was the unmistakable hiss of meat sizzling in a hot pan.
She finally peeled her eyes open, but the leadenness of sleep still lingered in Morgan’s limbs. Her eyes came into focus and she watched Shelby flitting around the kitchen, going from one pan to another, her face wreathed in steam from the pasta pot, quietly singing the final notes of a song Morgan didn’t recognize.
Morgan sat in her armchair—sprawled in it really—and let herself wake up slowly from her nap. This was her favorite part of a Saturday afternoon—the nap before dinner. It was self-indulgent probably, to give herself a lazy Saturday every weekend, but she had to do it to maintain her sanity. So much of her life these days was wrapped up in work. In the lab, everything was so simple. She went into work when her shift started, did the same testing on every sample that came through the door for ten hours, and then went home when the clock struck the correct time. Someone else took over the work and when she clocked out, she was done.
Then she took this huge leap to leave the lab and start this new career where it felt like the work was never done. There was always a quote to prepare for a potential new sale or a question to answer from her boss or a customer. There was competitor research and studying trends and diving deeper into the technological theory. She could stay up until midnight every night answering emails and still not be caught up. She had, in fact, done that more than once. She felt like she never clocked out. Except on Saturday afternoons, of course.
