“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” she squeaked. “I’m so excited!”
“I’d have never guessed,” I laughed as I put the truck in gear and pulled forward. “Granted, it’s not a motorcycle, but snowmobiling can be even more fun, in my opinion.”
She wore a thick, puffy coat, blue jeans, the girliest-looking snow boots I’ve ever seen with sparkles and high heels, and a fluffy hat and gloves that almost matched the teal-blue color of her eyes. Her little aquamarine piercing glittered in the bright sunshine, sparkling almost as much as the dazzle of snow on the ground around us.
“So where are we going?” Sophie asked.
“About ten miles out is a gulch that is awesome for snowmobiling. My grampa used to bring Mira and I out here a lot when we were younger, as much as it used to freak out my mom.”
“Why? Is it dangerous or something?”
“Not really. But she was always just sure he was going to have a heart attack and die somewhere out in the snow. She was a little neurotic and had a whole scenario worked out where us kids then got eaten by a starving mountain lion or something.”
“Is that a possibility?” Sophie’s eyes were huge, sort of similar to the expression my mother got every time we headed out the door with my grampa.
“I’m not bringing you out here to feed you to the pumas, Soph,” I said, rubbing my hand over her knee to soothe her concern. “Probably won’t even see one. And they’re not likely to attack two people on a snowmobile.”
“Not likely, but they might?”
“Jesus, you sound like my mom,” I laughed, and she shot me a dirty look and then turned towards the window. But after a moment, I saw a small smile touch her lips out of the corner of my eye.
“She worried about you,” she softly said, still gazing out at the winter wonderland we drove through.
“Yeah,” I replied, “she did. And God forbid we stayed out until it got dark. Mom would rant and rave at us for weeks. If it looked like we were going to be late getting back, we sorta had to make the best of it because, chances were, she wasn’t going to let us go back out for a while. But those days were some of the best of my life.”
“I love winter. Didn’t get out in it much. I always wanted to go skiing. Ice skating. Snowmobiling.” She shot me an excited grin. “We used to go somewhere tropical a lot over school breaks, so I didn’t really get to. But one year, we went to Big Sky for Christmas. I thought I was in heaven.”
“Big Sky is beautiful. Right along Yellowstone Park. Too bad they had to build a resort there.”
“I’m glad they did or I’d have never seen it. We spent two weeks there. I skied a little, but never made it off the bunny slopes. My mom was more worried about me having some flashy snow gear, and I spent a lot of time in the shops.” She sighed wistfully. “But there was something about the environment. The atmosphere. The people that worked there.”
A strange tone had entered her voice, and I glanced over at her to see her chewing her lip.
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like the crew that worked at the lodge. They seemed like a little community. They seemed almost like a… family. Most were in their late teens or early twenties, I think. Just out of high school and in college, I guess. It was hard to tell because I was only fourteen. They all seemed so awesome and older and… fun.”
Knowing what I did about Sophie, I could see the appeal there. They represented a real sense of belonging that she’d never felt.
“I always thought about that, for years. I looked it up a couple times… on the website. About how to work there. I thought I could be a housekeeper or a hostess or something. I even applied once, not long after I got back from Paris. Sort of had an interview through Skype, and they offered me a job.”
“You were kind of serious about it, huh? Why didn’t you go?”
“My mom… she was horrified that I even applied.” Sophie grimaced. “She thought it was kind of scandalous that I wanted to clean hotel rooms. So I wrote back and told them some things came up and that I wouldn’t be able to at that time.”
I pulled into a turnout on the dirt road a few miles from the city limits. There were some small hills to cross with the snowmobile, but then a wide-open glacial valley that I had a feeling Sophie would absolutely love. Grabbing the backpack from behind the pickup seat, I reached inside and handed her a pair of ski goggles, then slipped another pair on myself.
“Stick your sandwiches in here with the thermos,” I grinned, handing her the pack. “We’ll go have a picnic in the snow.”
With a little maneuvering, I guided the snowmobile down the ramps to the ground. Patting the seat behind me, I looked back at Sophie who was slipping her arms through the straps of the pack.
“Let’s go, baby,” I smiled.
Sophie climbed on the back, wrapped her arms tightly around my waist, and squealed in my ear as I throttled off into the drifts of white.
“You wanna drive?” I asked.
Sophie shook her head and laughed. “I don’t know how.”
“Easy,” I grinned. “And I’ll be right here with you the whole time.”
I stepped off the sled into the knee-deep snow. With the tracks holding the snowmobile up, I sunk to a level that damn near had me at eye level to where Sophie sat. Her eyes went huge.
“Holy smokes, that’s a lot of snow,” she gasped.
I patted her curvy little bottom. “Scoot your ass up to the front and let me on.”
As I climbed on behind her, I leaned my head forward to show her the brakes and the throttle. After a long, rather detailed explanation about what she needed to do, I looked over at her to see her watching me closely, but clearly not listening to a word I said. She just stared at my lips.
“Soph?”
“Hmm?” she replied dreamily.
I tried again. “Soph?”
“Yeah?” she sighed, still watching my lips.
I tipped my gloved fingers beneath her chin and tipped her up to meet my gaze. She’d pulled the goggles up to the top of her head, and her eyes were hot.
“Did you just hear a word I said?”
“There’s the hand thingy,” she said, a bit dazed, “that makes it go and the brake thingy that makes it stop.”
“How about if I just guide your movements for a bit?”
She nodded, and I dropped a little kiss on her lips, then pulled her goggles down over her eyes and covered her hands with mine. As I leaned into her, I felt a slight shiver course up her body.
“Cold?”
“No,” she whispered and snuggled tighter against my body, her sweet little ass nudging my groin.
“Behave yourself,” I groaned.
“Sorry,” she smiled, but then wiggled against me again anyway. So I gunned the snowmobile, and she let out a startled scream as we lurched forward. It was either that or rip her pants down and fuck her right then and there.
Not that I thought that idea didn’t have merit. I mostly wasn’t sure if I had a condom with me.
Dammit.
And I made a mental note to always make sure I had a condom with me when I was with Sophie. Always.
She got the hang of it rather quickly, and was soon steering and throttling on her own, more or less. Every time I’d let go of the grips, she’d get a little nervous. At one point, she headed rather close to a pine tree and the snowmobile started sliding down into the natural depression made by the lack of snow underneath its branches. Sophie totally panicked and let off the throttle, which made it slide down even more. It took a little brute strength, but I managed to get us up out of the dip. She was incredibly wary of going anywhere near a tree after that.
We stopped in a wide open valley for lunch, and Sophie celebrated her first ride by standing on the footrest and flopping back onto the smooth blanket of white powder to make a snow angel. Unfortunately, the snow was a bit deep for that. She practically buried herself when she fell back and started to move, but looked rather like a snow angel herself
when she stood to dust herself off.
In spite of the deep snow on the ground, the sun was surprisingly warm for such a bright day. After her romp in the snow, Sophie pulled off her hat and gloves and unzipped her coat. We sat facing each other, straddling the seat of the snowmobile while we ate. She looked around at the wide-open meadow, the thick snow drifts on the bordering evergreens.
“This is so beautiful,” she murmured. “It looks like… Christmas.” She took another bite of her sandwich and looked up at me. “But like what I always thought Christmas was supposed to be.”
“And what’s Christmas supposed to be?” I asked with a grin.
“Pristine. Quiet and peaceful,” she dreamily replied, then frowned. “With my family, it’s always more of a show. To see who could donate the most money, who could host the most lavish parties, who could give the most extravagant presents.”
“You probably got some good shit out of it, though, right?” There had to be a bright side. I came from a family that sometimes worried if there would even be a Christmas.
“I suppose. I always had the ‘must have’ toy of the season, even if it was something I didn’t want. It generally was something I didn’t want.” Her eyebrows furrowed, and looked up at me apologetically. “That makes me sound pretty ungrateful, doesn’t it? It wasn’t that I wanted something else. I just didn’t really want anything. I was a good girl, though. I’d smile and be thankful, just like I was told to.” Her mouth twisted as she thought back. “Like with my car.”
“You got your car for Christmas?” I’d seen her car and was well aware that it had likely cost about forty-grand. And it was a Christmas present?
“I had a nice, plain little Subaru sedan in high school. Nothing terribly flashy. But it had great safety ratings.” She gave me a sad smile, rolling her eyes just a little sarcastically.
“Nice that they cared about your safety, I guess,” I said, a little confused by the tone to her voice.
“They were really good at telling everyone how much they cared. It was kind of a bragging point for my mother, telling all her friends how important it was to keep her only child safe.”
Okay, that I could see. Totally.
What little I knew about Sophie’s mother, the bits and pieces Sophie had told me mixed with my own stalkerish observations, she didn’t seem like the warm and fuzzy type. She certainly didn’t seem like the type to go for function over fashion. Unless the function was fashionable for simply being functional.
“Then, my dad surprised me last Christmas with the BMW. A big bow on it and everything. Just like a fucking car commercial. Luxury SUVs are all the rage now, you know,” she murmured sardonically and shrugged. “Plus, Richard’s mom has one, so it was sort of like they were priming me to lead the next generation of Banner women by putting me in the same kind of car.” She smiled wryly. “It also gives them another thing to hold over me. To remind me that I owe them everything.”
I reached for the thermos and poured a little more coffee into the cup. Handing it to her, I tried to keep the gruff tone out of my voice.
“Your parents kind of piss me off, Soph,” I said, watching her blow into the cup to cool it before she took a long drink.
She handed the cup back to me with a forlorn smile. “I think that’s why I like you so much.”
“Because your parents piss me off?” I raised my pierced eyebrow and I drank most of the Irish coffee, feeling the warmth seep through my body. “Or because they’d really hate that you spend time with someone like me?”
“Neither,” Sophie said, shaking her head.
She took the cup from me, swallowed the last sip, and screwed the cup back onto the thermos. Leaning forward to place it back into the backpack that hung from one of the handlebars, she then scooted a little closer to me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders and lightly kissing my lips.
“It’s because you’re nothing like them, Bran,” she stated with conviction. Then she curled into me, pressing her face into my neck. “Nothing at all.”
“Do you want me to take you home?” I asked as we passed the Ophir city limits sign.
Sophie sat close to me on the pickup seat with her head on my shoulder as I drove, the backpack on the passenger side. Her nose was slightly sunburned, in spite of the sunscreen I made her wear, from being out all day in the bright glare of the snow. The pink tinge glowed in the setting sun as she shook her head.
“No,” she said, then looked confused. “I mean, unless you want to. I don’t really want to keep you from what you were planning—”
“Not planning shit, Sophie,” I grinned.
“It’s Friday,” she said, her eyebrow raised.
“Yeah,” I replied, “so let’s grab some pasties and head back to my place. There’s that take-out place on the edge of town.”
“Don’t you need to go help the band or something?”
“Nah, they’ve got a couple extra hands tonight. I kinda… I like the idea of just hanging out with you a little longer.” I slanted a sidelong glance in her direction. “Naked, of course.”
Sophie laughed, biting her lip as her eyes sparkled. “I think that could be arranged.”
So we stopped on the way to my place and grabbed a couple pasties with extra gravy. And they sat on the kitchen counter and got cold as we warmed up in the shower. But, even reheated in the microwave, Sophie still said it was about the best thing she’d ever eaten, maybe aside from the tilapia I’d made her a while back.
And once again, I didn’t ask if she wanted to go home. I kept her wrapped in a blanket with me, snuggled up on the couch as more snow began to fall outside, blowing and swirling out the window. Until it had grown very late and she began to fade off to sleep. Then I led her to the bathroom where I dug out what had sort of become her toothbrush. Sophie’s toothbrush in my place.
And Sophie in my bed.
And it all seemed so incredibly right.
“I'm making mom’s enchilada recipe for dinner,” my sister said into the phone.
“What do you want, Mira?” I asked her with suspicion.
“What? I just want my little brother to come over for dinner,” she innocently replied. “And to maybe bring that girl Cody said you've been seeing.”
“What the fuck? I’m going to fire that fucker,” I scowled. “When were you talking to Cody?”
“Well, I was trying to talk to you. I stopped by the garage on Friday to ask you about Thanksgiving, and Cody said you'd gone snowmobiling with Sophie.” I could picture the expression on Mira’s face. It was the same one she likely wore when I had wrecked her car in high school. She was pretty pissed. “He said it like I should know who Sophie is. But my brother hasn’t told me about Sophie.”
“It’s not a big deal, Mira.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Was I?
Of course I was.
Yeah, maybe it was more serious than anyone else I had ever been involved with, but that wasn’t saying much.
“Yes, I'm sure.”
“Cody said you've been seeing a lot of her lately.”
And I had. Whenever she could get away from the demands of society and her parents. I hadn’t slept without her since Thursday night, and I was kind of getting used to that. To having her in my bed every night.
“It’s really not a big deal.”
“He said you guys are practically shacked up, Brannon,” Mira accused with laughter in her voice. “Why didn’t you tell me you've got a girlfriend.”
“It’s not that serious, Mira,” I argued. “There’s not really anything to tell. We just kind of… hang out.”
“But it is serious,” she gasped. Her tone became eerily similar to the way she used to tease me when we were kids. “Cody said you've been taking her with you to the Copperline, and, from what I hear, you never take a girl with you to the Copperline. You leave with plenty, but you never take one with you.”
“Why the fuck does everyone keep saying that?”
“Because you're a slut, Brannon,” she exclaimed. “How many other girls have you slept with lately?”
“You're my sister. I'm not really comfortable talking about that with you,” I started.
“How many, Brannon?”
“Mira—”
“Cody said she’s the only piece you've had for a couple months—”
“Since when did you and Cody get to be such buddies?”
“—and that’s not like you.”
“Do me a favor, huh? Tell him he’s fucking unemployed the next time you guys are gossiping and sharing recipes and all that shit you BFFs do.”
“When do I get to meet her?” she asked.
“I don’t know if it will ever get to that, Mira,” I groaned. “It’s really not a big deal.”
“Well,” she announced, as though she hadn’t even heard me, “I'm making enchiladas for dinner and I want you to bring her.”
“Can’t, Mira,” I chuckled. “Not tonight.”
“What?” Her voice was slightly teasing, as if she knew I wasn’t planning to all along but wanted to give me a hard time. “Brannon, you always come over when I make enchiladas.”
“Yeah, but I have plans tonight.”
Silence for a minute which, for my sister, was never good.
“Plans with Sophie?” she finally pried with a smile in her voice. She was totally enjoying this.
“Maybe…” I trailed off, not really wanting to admit it, especially to her, but even to myself. I wasn’t entirely sure what was happening with Sophie and I. But I liked it and I didn’t want to fuck with it by examining it too closely.
But, all that aside, oh yeah… I had major plans with Sophie for the night.
“What are we doing here?” Sophie asked as we pulled up to the Mofos’ house a little while later. I’d told her I had a surprise for her, but hadn’t even hinted as to what it was. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s home.”
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