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I frown and glance down at myself, realizing I not only put my t-shirt on backward, but also inside out.
Whoops. I hurried to change because I worried she’d regret her agreement to hang out and renege. I was too hasty though, and I yank my shirt off to correct it now. Embarrassment at my fumble should’ve come first, but when I see her blushing and checking me out as I turn my shirt inside out, a sense of excitement fills me.
Have I been reading this correctly? Is she attracted to me—even a little bit—as I am to her?
“You want more?” I ask as I set my hands on my hips.
She chokes, coughing on the bite of sandwich. “More?”
I furrow my brow. “Yeah. Are you still hungry? I can make another sandwich.”
After a few hurried sips of water, she clears her throat and shakes her head. “Nope. I’m fine.”
I narrow my eyes at her reply. I’m getting very cautious about that damn word from her. What does she really mean?
“Any idea when the power will be back on?” she asks, quickly changing the subject by pointing at the radio I left on the coffee table.
She’s seated in front of the fireplace. While I changed, she laid out one big blanket to sit on, then draped a thinner one around her shoulders. She couldn’t have gotten wet standing at the door yelling at me, but I can feel it now. It is cooler, and since I had been soaked, I’m cold.
I lower myself next to her and grab another blanket to drape over my shoulders. “The storm is supposed to pass by morning, but no word on power or utilities.”
“I’m guessing with trees like that one dropping wherever, it might be a while.”
“Plus road closures and flash floods.”
She sighs. “Looks like we’re stuck for a while then.”
I glance at her and shrug.
Silence ticks by, and within a couple of minutes, Aubrey seems to struggle with it.
“Want to play cards?”
“Sure.” I asked her to hang out with me, but now that I’m within her warm presence, I’m at a loss to think up something to do. Actually, the only thing that comes to mind has a lot to do with her appreciative stare when I took my shirt off. But that’s not on the table. “Cards it is.”
We while away time with three games of UNO. When we bicker about the fine details and drastically opposing opinions about proper Draw Two etiquette, we give up.
Her next idea is to put a puzzle together on the coffee table, but neither of us seem into it.
I grimace at the box. “I don’t have anything against the standard jigsaw puzzle shapes.”
She groans, shoving her pile of pieces back into the other half of the box. “Yeah, me neither. But these weird ones with curvy edges require too much brainpower.”
I smile, glad I’m not the only one eager to give up.
Instead of trying another form of entertainment, we roast marshmallows in the fireplace. Aubrey found them in the kitchen when she got another cup of water.
“I’m not saying I know what Marian’s ‘system’ is in the kitchen,” I say when she stabs a white blob of sugar onto the end of what I’m certain is a pronged device used for carving turkeys, “but I doubt Marian wants that used like this.”
She smiles. “We’ll just clean it really good before she gets back.” Then she thrusts her marshmallow into the flames. “And how can you not know her system yet? I know you’ve spent time with her in there.”
“Some time. I’m nowhere near apprentice level.”
“You never learned how to cook?” she asks.
I shake my head. “My parents were very hands-off and reliant on hired help. I was never allowed to learn. It was ‘beneath’ me.”
“Hmm. Sounds like Lauren. You had shitty parents too?”
