Winter Jacket: Finding Home (4 page)

“We have an audience,” I groaned under my breath. We were in the middle of nowhere and we’d still managed to attract a crowd. “I think we’d better invest in some curtains.”

“And a fence,” she added.

Our rental cabin was modest in square footage, but it was more than enough room for the two of us, with a generous loft upstairs populated with overstuffed furniture and a ping-pong table. On the ground level were an open concept kitchen, a dining room table with four chairs, and a living room complete with a potbelly woodstove. The first floor was also equipped with two bedrooms, one which I assumed was the master because the double bed faced a walk-out deck. 

Hunter flopped down on the bed in the master bedroom, and it made a terrible groan. “I guess this means no acrobatic sex,” she laughed.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and held my breath as I sank deeply into its uneven box spring mattress. “Not unless we want this thing to break.” I gave a few experimental bounces, and the springs shrieked and groaned in response. “But there’s plenty of other surfaces in the other rooms,” I grinned.

Her clear blue eyes sparkled. “You know I love a good challenge.” Her voice was rich with warm, honey tones.

She hopped up from the bed before I could vocalize my own challenge. “I need to lay down for a bit,” she announced. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.” She unfastened the button of her jeans and pulled the zipper low enough that I could see a hint of the red lace underwear that hid underneath her pants.

“That’s not fair,” I groaned.

She looked to me, eyes round with confusion.

“You can’t parade around here looking so edible,” I clarified.

The confusion softened on her face, and she gave me a knowing grin. “It’s almost like I’m doing it on purpose.” 

While I contemplated the knotty pine ceiling of the lofted cabin, Hunter napped beside me. Her hand had snaked its way under the waistband of my pajama pants, and her fingers were curled around the top of my underwear. Her warm fingers rested against my hipbone. It was an innocent gesture, and I tried not to think about how good it would feel if her hand just happened to shift and touch me in a more intimate place. It took all of my willpower not to roll my hips or wiggle in such a way that would relocate her hand.

I hadn’t been in too many relationships much longer than the one I currently enjoyed. This was the sweet spot of the relationship. I never understood those love songs that promised the listener that it would feel like “the first time.” My first time had been awkward and uncomfortable. Familiarity was what I craved—when you no longer felt self-conscious being naked in front of your lover—when you no longer stressed about if she liked the way you touched her, or if it was too much, or not enough, or just plain not good at all. The honeymoon phase might have been over, but that didn’t mean I still didn’t get butterflies when she did something adorable or that my body temperature didn’t spike when I admired the gentle swell of her backside in a pair of skinny jeans.

After Hunter’s nap, we found a small convenience store on a county highway and bought enough groceries to last the few days we’d be staying at the cabin. That night I cooked dinner on the gas grill outside—chicken breasts smothered in a spicy BBQ sauce and steamed vegetables in an aluminum pouch.

Long after the sun had set behind Mount Meeker in the distance, Hunter and I sat outside on a wool blanket and stared up at the complex swirls of distant galaxies sprayed across the inky black sky. I didn’t take the view or my girlfriend’s hand in mine for granted. Like Hunter, the night stars would soon be taken away from me when I arrived in Los Angeles.

After our first night at the cabin, it rained our entire stay, which was fine with me. I hadn’t envisioned us hiking to the top of Long’s Peak or neighboring Mount Meeker. And the weather gave us an excuse—if we even needed one—to stay holed up in the cabin, sleeping late into the morning and not bothering to change out of comfortable pajamas. Warnings about potential flooding kept me from entirely relaxing, but I was mindful to enjoy our time together.

The mountainside cabin was a vast improvement over the ski resort straight out of the 1990’s. The days were overcast, but the change in location was like sun rays poking through the most stubborn of clouds. There were no neighbors in sight, which simultaneously frightened and invigorated me. I made fires in the woodstove in the living room, and Hunter worked the French press when the antiquated contraption frustrated me. It was symbiosis at its best. 

The morning we were slated to leave and continue on to Los Angeles, I drank hot coffee outside on the deck. The wrap-around porch provided a stunning view of Mount Meeker. Fog rolled down the mountainside like thick puffs of smoke. There were two birdfeeders on the property and viewable from one of the picture windows. Birds of all sizes jostled for the prime real estate. The morning air was brisk, and I pulled up the high neck of Hunter’s running jacket that I wore just a little bit more.

I felt her presence behind me before I ever heard her soft footsteps. The wooden deck creaked beneath her feet.

“I could get used to this,” she announced. Her arms wrapped around my waist, and she rested her head on my shoulder.

“No cell phone reception, no wireless, and no TV?”

She smiled and pulled me in tighter against her. “Doesn’t it feel like we’re the only people on earth? No responsibilities or commitments, except to each other.”

“It is nice,” I hummed. “So what do you think? Did you like the Malibu beach house or the Estes Park mountain cabin better?”

“I think you spoil me.”

“It’s nothing that you don’t deserve, love.”

“You should stop being so damn accomplished so I can treat you once in a while,” she said, although her tone let me know she wasn’t really cross with me. “Tenured professor and now television writer?”

I ignored her words. “Why do you always smell so good?” I twisted at the waist and nuzzled my nose in the hollow of her throat.

“You’re imagining things.”

“You smell like new.” I pressed my lips against the sweet spot in the nape of her neck.

“New what?” she asked, a smile in her voice.

“Just new,” I sighed into her skin.

After breakfast, we packed up our belongings and closed up the cabin for the next lucky couple. I took the first driving responsibility of the day, and Hunter returned to staring out the passenger side window. As we started down the long dirt driveway, I made furtive glances in the rearview mirror back at the cabin. I went over a mental checklist to make sure I’d remembered to pack everything like my toothbrush and my cell phone charger, never once considering that maybe we’d left our final happy memories behind.

Chapter TWO

The remainder of the road trip was bittersweet. We switched off driving responsibilities every few hours over the last day and a half so the other person could appreciate the scenery. The landscape changed dramatically as we drove farther southwest. The mountains remained, dominating the horizon, but wilderness and tall skinny pine trees were replaced with stratified red rocks and eventually the urban sprawl of Los Angeles.

Podcasts filled the extended silences, and when we ran out of things to listen to, we played games of willpower like who could last the longest listening to Christian talk radio on the AM dial. If it had been a regular vacation, I might have actually enjoyed myself after we left our Colorado cabin. But both Hunter and I knew what was going to happen when we arrived in California—she’d board a plane back to Minnesota, and I would stay behind.

If Hunter hadn’t accompanied me on this trip, I would have flown directly to Los Angeles where a chauffeur holding a sign with my name on it would have been waiting for me in baggage claim to take me to my new apartment. But because of the road trip, I had to look up Troian at the studio to get the keys and directions to my new home.

Pickfair Studios had been named after two of Old Hollywood’s original movie stars—Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. The production buildings sat on a twenty-acre lot set in the sprawling hills of Burbank, a few miles north of downtown Los Angeles. The studio’s mechanized gate was closed when we arrived, exhausted and sweaty from the second half of the trip. A large, barrel-chested man stood in the security booth, reading a book. He barely looked up from his novel when I stopped my car at the gated entrance.

“Hi, there,” I greeted in a cheerful tone that belied my exhaustion. “Elle Graft to see Troian Smith? I’m a new writer on the—”

I stopped my introduction when the gate slowly lifted even though I hadn’t seen the guard move a muscle. My car continued to idle as I awaited his instructions or if he had any questions for me to verify my identity. Instead, he curled two fingers and beckoned me to drive through the gate.

I shifted into drive and slowly pulled forward, expecting his lack of interest to have been a joke. But the gate didn’t come crashing down on the hood of my car and the security guard didn’t chase after me as I looked for a place to park.

“That was weird,” Hunter murmured from the passenger seat.

“No doubt,” I agreed, finding a parking spot in a visitor lot. Because it was a Saturday, the lot was relatively empty. “Remind me to ask Troian about this place’s security procedures.”

It was hot that day, and the mid-afternoon sun beat down on us as we walked from the parking lot in the direction of Troian’s trailer. People on golf carts zipped by, talking loudly on their phones, and expensive-looking equipment was unloaded from the flat bed of trucks amongst a chaos of shouted directions. I had been on the lot once before, a few months prior, but I had been a visitor then. I saw everything with new eyes now that I was an employee.

Hunter’s hand was slightly sweaty in mine. She had grown conspicuously quiet the closer we’d gotten to the studio. In a ponytail, t-shirt, and jeans, she was effortlessly beautiful, but the grim look on her face had me worried.

“Hey,” I said, squeezing her damp hand, “is everything okay?”

“Just a little tired from the drive, I guess.”

I slowed our gait enough so I could kiss her cheek. “We’ll get the keys from Troian, and then we can relax the rest of the day,” I promised. “We’ll both feel more normal after a shower and some food.”

She nodded tightly. “Yeah. Okay.”

Troian’s office was a trailer that had always reminded me of the modular classroom my grade school had utilized when there were too many kids in the fourth grade. Her name and the words “Head Writer” were etched on the outside of the door. Although Troian was head writer, I later learned she also had the title of executive producer and showrunner. As such, she was responsible for every aspect of the show—every word of script, every actor cast, and even how the budget was spent.

I knocked and heard my friend’s muffled voice on the other side of the closed tin door. I waited and listened for a moment; I didn’t hear a second voice, so she was either talking to herself or on the phone. I tentatively opened the door and popped my head inside. Troian sat at her desk with her cell phone pressed to her ear. The scowl on her face lifted when she saw me in the doorway. She pressed a finger to her lips, but waved us in.

“No, I know, Jackson. And I completely agree with you,” I heard her say as we filed into the office. “The episode isn’t where we want it to be. But you don’t have to worry,” she said to whomever was on the other line. “We’re not scheduled to shoot that episode for another month.” She stuck her tongue out at me and ran her palm over her face.

“End of next week? Are you sure?” She paused and grimaced. “She does? Well of course then; whatever Jane wants.” Her free hand clenched into a fist, and she bounced it on her desk.

Hunter touched my elbow to cull my attention. She raised an eyebrow at me, and I shrugged in return. I had no idea who any of these people were or why my friend looked so stressed out.

“Uh huh. Yeah. Okay, I will. See you Monday.” Troian ended her call and set her phone on the desk with a long sigh. “Took you long enough,” she finally greeted us.

“It’s a big country,” I said with a shrug. “It takes time.”

“To fuck in every state, yeah,” she snorted. “I’m sure that does take time.”

“We only did it in states that end in the letter A,” Hunter deadpanned.

Troian grinned for the first time since we’d shown up. “It’s good to see you, too, Hunter.”

Hunter pressed her lips together and her body language grew rigid. “I don’t know if I should hug you or punch you.”

Troian’s eyes widened. “Why the hell would you do that?” I was sure she meant the punching part, not the hugging option.