but my books are on the shelf next to it.
“Everett Miller, A Modern-day Mountain Man,” she reads. “Everett, you told me they were e-books, you have print copies too?”
I shrug, reluctant to talk about myself.
“This is so impressive. You know I’m going to stay up all night reading your most intimate thoughts, right?”
“You want to read about my last three hundred and sixty-five days? You want to hear about me drying my clothes on a line outside in the summer? About me butchering a goat? Go for it, honey.”
“You seriously do that? Butcher your goats?”
“How do you think we had chili?”
“That was goat chili? Oh. My. God. I’m telling you, Everett, I run a frugal girl’s blog, and have heard of some weird shit to cut corners... but I’ve never heard of people eating goat chili.”
“Calm down, woman. It wasn’t goat chili. I was joking. Yes, I butcher goats, but that was venison in the chili.”
She shakes her head, opening the sewing kit. “I don’t think I could do it,” she says, pulling out the thread and a needle.
“The butchering? It’s not so bad. I mean unless you get queasy around blood”
“No,” she says softly. “I don’t think I could do this whole off-the-grid thing. I think it would drive me a little crazy, to be honest. What if you want to go to the movies? Or enjoy a cup of coffee you didn’t have to make yourself?”
I know where she’s going with this. I get plenty of readers who send me letters asking me the same sort of thing. I know this life isn’t for everyone.
But in my bedroom, earlier, when I was taking Evie against me, when my hands were running over her soft skin, I thought that perhaps we could be something beyond this night. I thought we could be something real.
“I’d be lying if I told you there aren’t times I get a little stir crazy. I go to town about every eight weeks and pick up things I need. I’d say on a whole, eight weeks of making my own coffee isn’t so rough. Like I said, I don’t take anything for granted.”
Evie bites her bottom lip, straightens her shoulders, her body language telling me that my words aren’t the ones she wanted to hear.
“What is it? What did I say?”
“It’s just that when you say it like that, that you don’t take things for granted, it implies that everyone else does. I guess ... it’s kind of hard to hear. I wish you didn’t think of me that way.”
The popcorn starts smoking.
“Dammit.” I lift the pot off the burner, realizing it’s scorched. Using a potholder, I carry it out the front door and set it in the snow. The snow is still falling heavily. She’s followed me to the doorway, and I turn to look at her.
“I don’t think of you that way. I believe you live a full life and care deeply for those around you,” I say, speaking from my heart. “And, I’m sorry, I know you really wanted to string popcorn.”
“I don’t need it.” She sighs and reaches out for my hand. “Come inside. Let me warm you up.”
Chapter Nine
When Everett pulls me into bed that night, my heart feels torn. Which is strange. On one hand, I have this ridiculously dreamy man who has a massive boner for me holding me tightly against it. But on the other hand, I know this isn’t going to last... and I wish it could.
At the end of the blizzard, I’m going home to my little cottage, going to continue as if this never happened, because no matter how perfect Everett appears, his life couldn’t be more different than mine.
Even me, a girl with endless amounts of optimism, can see that there’s an expiration to this rendezvous.
Everett pulls me toward him until our noses touch. I reach out my hands and run them over his beard. It’s soft, and I have a sneaking suspicion he uses some sort of handmade balm for it. A smile crosses my lips, and before I lean over and kiss him on his lips, he kisses me.
“Are you always in your head like this?” he asks.
His hands run over my spine, down to my ass, and he squeezes it ever so slightly. Hard enough, though, that I know what he wants.
Hard enough for my body to tell me what it wants, also.
“I don’t think people would say there’s that Evie, she’s a thinker.”
“No? What would they say.”
I roll on