Cabin Fever

by Janet Sanders

  In short, Sarah was definitely not a dinner-cooking woman, and yet here she was, about to cook dinner. She propped her laptop open on the counter and pulled up the page that contained the recipe she’d chosen. She glanced at her watch: it was four o’clock. That might be a little early to start cooking, but it would be much worse if she started too late.

  Giving a little sigh, she got started. She decided to think of the whole thing as a project schedule, with milestones and deliverables. That made her feel a little better, and then she poured herself a glass of wine, which made her feel better yet. The first thing to do, she decided, was to break the preparation into manageable stages. She got out a stack of bowls from the cupboard and methodically began measuring out the recipe’s ingredients into the bowls which she arranged in a row, where they’d be ready when she needed them.

  Her eyes were burning from the onion she was chopping when her phone rang. Cursing under her breath, Sarah picked it up with one hand while she rubbed at her eyes with the other. “Hello?”

  “Hey, sister mine. How goes it?”

  “Ellie! Actually it goes pretty busily right now. I’m cooking.”

  “Wait. What? Did you say you’re cooking?”

  “Yes, and I’m really in the thick of it right now. I’ll have to call you back.”

  “Cooking for what? Cooking for who?”

  “I’ll call you back.”

  “Sarah, don’t you hang up on me…”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow. Bye! Love you!” Sarah thumbed the phone off and set it on the counter. Ellie was such a gossip that there’d be no talking to her about dinner plans without turning it into an intensive, two-hour dialogue. Actually Sarah looked forward to talking to Ellie. She had some feelings she wasn’t entirely clear on, and there was no one like her sister for cutting through all the crap and seeing how things really were. But Ellie would wait, while the sausage sizzling in hot olive oil certainly would not.

  As it turns out the recipe was pretty easy to make, though there was one frightening moment where Sarah added the frozen spinach to the pan and wondered whether she was supposed to thaw the package out before adding it. The water melting off the spinach spit furiously in the hot oil, but the spinach melted out into manageable chunks soon enough. The aroma was undeniably delicious, too, which gave Sarah a little more confidence as the clock ticked forward to the time when Brad would show up. Still, she had a nervous stomach that even two glasses of wine were not entirely able to quiet.

  When she heard the knock at the door, Sarah briefly entertained the impulse to turn out the lights and pretend that she wasn’t home, but she managed to fight that down, check herself in the mirror (hair acceptable, nothing in her teeth, no sauce spilled on her white blouse, lips not stained red from the wine – all systems go) and walk to the door with a minimum of wobbling. When she opened the door, though, it didn’t quite occur to her at first to invite Brad in, and the two of them stood staring at each other for an extended period before she finally came to her senses, stepped aside, and waved him in.

  Brad appeared to be his usual tall, gorgeous self, and he was wearing his customary boots and Levis, but Sarah noticed that he had put on a shirt that seemed freshly-laundered in the greatest gesture to the social niceties that she was ever likely to see him make. As he walked past he handed her a bottle of red wine, but in the narrow confines of the hallway Sarah’s mind was fully occupied with just how large he was – a full head taller than her, broad-chested and with wide shoulders, while the legs of his jeans filled out in a way that promised powerfully-muscled thighs and calves. Sarah stared at his back as he walked into the living room, not so much with desire as with a feeling of intimidation. It felt as if she had opened her front door and a wild animal walked in, smelling of the forest and leaving a trail of moss and pine needles in its wake.

  By now her heart was beginning to beat heavily in her chest and Sarah was feeling a little short of breath. She closed the front door and, without meeting Brad’s eyes, walked straight into the kitchen. Her plan was to collect her wits before he tried to talk with her.

  Brad was looking around the cabin interior, taking in the furniture and the decorations. “This is a nice place.”

  “And you’re a very polite man. It’s my Dad’s place. He likes it.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I’m not so big on red and green as the two dominant colors. And I don’t know what he’s thinking with some of these decorations. Have you seen the scarecrow yet?”

  Brad picked the statuette up from the coffee table and chuckled. “I was just admiring this little guy. I was sure that you’d brought it with you from San Francisco. But no?”

  Sarah stuck her tongue out at him. “No, not really my style. But I must seem like a horrible daughter. My Dad was so sweet to let me stay here as long as I want, and here I am making fun of his stuff. I’m bad.”

  “You’re normal. If we can’t make fun of our parents, what would we do with ourselves? And believe me, your father has great taste compared to mine. I don’t think I’m going to let you see the inside of his place. It’s too much of a risk.”

  Sarah walked out of the kitchen with two glasses of red wine and handed one to Brad. He accepted it and held it in the air for a toast. “To generous fathers and their beautiful daughters.”

  Sarah clinked her glass against his. “To charming liars.” She could feel the blush spreading across her cheeks and hoped that Brad wouldn’t notice it, or – if all else failed – that the redness of her face would allow her to blend into the background of the cabin decor and disappear. She took a quick sip, avoiding his eyes to hide the moment. After a pause in which she could feel him watching her, she said briskly, “So, how was your day?” Not waiting for a reply, she headed back to the kitchen.

  “Getting better all the time,” she heard him say behind her.

  “My friends would be scandalized that I have no charming canapés for you. It’s just dinner and a salad, I’m afraid. They’re much better at parties than I am.”

  “I’m not sure what a canapé is, but I already know that I’d rather be here than at one of your friends’ parties.” He moved to where he could see her working in the kitchen and stood sipping his wine and staring at her with an intensity that Sarah found disconcerting. Abruptly she found herself aware of how muscular his legs looked in the faded jeans he was wearing.

  "We're about ready to go here. Are you hungry?"

  "Famished," he said with a smile that would not look out of place on the wolf in a production of Little Red Riding Hood.

  She couldn’t help smiling back at she filled two plates and carried them to the table, where she had already set up to place settings. She had arranged the bread and a cube of butter on a cutting board. She hadn’t thought to look for a vase for the flowers she’d bought until she had already brought them home, and wasn’t surprised that her father didn’t own anything designed for housing flowers or any growing thing for that matter. After a search that grew in intensity with every passing moment, Sarah was finally able to discover a glass juice pitcher shoved in the back of a cupboard. She didn’t doubt that her father used it for drunken Bloody Mary bachelor breakfasts, but she was relieved to find it all the same. With a little water, and arranged just so, the flowers added a welcome burst of color at the center of the table.

  Brad dropped into a chair with an audible thump and unfurled the napkin in his lap. He was right on the point of tucking into the food in front of him when he seemed to remember where he was and paused, looking at Sarah with his fork hovering in the air. She laughed and inclined her head. “Please, go ahead.”

  He smiled and attacked his pasta with gusto, making semi-verbal sounds of satisfaction with each bite. Sarah watched him with amazement. “OK, now you’re just messing with me. I know I’m not that good of a cook.”

  Brad shook his head, his mouth too full to answer at first. “Honestly, this is the best I’ve had in a long time. It’s delicious.”r />
  “You’re eating at your Dad’s place,” Sarah asked, suddenly suspicious.

  “Yeah.”

  “So who does the cooking. You? Your Dad? Ronald McDonald?”

  Brad laughed. “Mostly my father cooks something out back on the grill. Steaks some nights, or fish, or a couple brats.”

  “Uh, huh. And vegetables?”

  “Nowhere to be seen. Except for potatoes. Are potatoes a vegetable?”

  “I’m not sure, but in any case this is the first salad you’ve had in weeks.”

  “Months.”

  “I’m surprised. Don’t professional athletes have to take care of their bodies?”

  “They do if they want their career to last very long. But in my case I’m a former professional athlete, so I don’t have a team nutritionist looking over my shoulder anymore. But you’re right, I should know better.”

  Sarah shrugged, pushing a slice of tomato around her plate with her fork. “I’m in no position to judge. Most days, when I’m in the office, breakfast is a croissant that I buy with my coffee, lunch is forgotten, and then dinner is takeout. I haven’t seen a doctor in years, because I’m afraid of what he might say about me.”

  “You look good to me,” Brad answered. “Very … healthy.”

  Sarah laughed despite herself. “Well, thank you. But back to the cooking – you are very kind, and I am happy that you are enjoying the dinner I prepared, but I am also aware that makes me the fastest horse in a very slow race.”

  Brad gave her a long look. “You don’t like compliments very much, do you?”

  “What do you mean? I like compliments.”

  “Every time I say something nice about you, you either deny it or you make some sort of joke. Which is strange, because you’re a beautiful and successful woman. Don’t!” He raised his hand to stop Sarah from speaking. “You’re right at the point of denying what I just said, and you shouldn’t. Those are just the two most obvious things about you, and they’re clear to everyone who spends five minutes with you. Why don’t you like it when someone says nice things about you?”

  Sarah was taken aback. She hadn’t expected this from Brad. He had his own obvious qualities – tall, strong, blue eyes, white teeth – but she hadn’t anticipated that he’d be perceptive as well. “That’s … OK, you’re right. I don’t like compliments.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, OK, that’s not completely true. I like compliments just fine, when they’re for the right things.”

  “And what are the right things?”

  “Well, when they’re for something hard. Like if I won the Nobel Prize in physics, I’d be happy to accept compliments for that.”

  He laughed. “But for nothing else?”

  “No, but not for easy things. Like making pasta and a salad. That doesn’t seem hard to me, so part of me doesn’t want to be complimented for it. When you compliment that, it’s like you’re surprised that I managed to do something easy. Which actually feels like a bit of an insult.” She laughed self-consciously. “And that sounds completely crazy when I say it out loud.”

  Brad looked at her with a smile for a long time. “I can see that you’re not going to be an easy woman to figure out, Sarah.”

  She shrugged. “That’s true. And I accept that as a compliment.” She raised her glass in a toast. “To complicated people.”

  He clicked her glass with his own. “To complicated people, and the men who find them fascinating.”

  After that early high they spent the rest of dinner talking about smaller things – what there was to do in and around town, whether Brad had ever had the type of sausage that Sarah had worked into the pasta, and other trivial topics. Sarah was feeling a little out of her depth; she wasn’t opposed to talking about matters of substance with Brad, but she was feeling a little exposed after their initial exchange and she wasn’t ready quite yet to climb back into the analyst’s couch.

  When dinner was finished and the dishes were in the sink, they retired to the couch to finish off the bottle of wine. Sarah decided to take control and turn the spotlight on Brad before he had another chance to turn it on her. “So tell me more about your coaching career. Do you think that will make you happy?”

  “You sound like you have some doubts.”

  “Well, you won’t be the star anymore. Won’t that bother you?”

  “I was never much of a star. I played safety, remember. There were some people who knew who I was – the real hard-core fans – but I was basically invisible to everyone else when I wasn’t in uniform, even people who were fans of the team and bought tickets to watch me play. If I had been a quarterback or running back, that would have been different, but safeties are pretty anonymous.”

  “So it won’t bother you that the kids you coach will be getting all the attention?”

  “It will be a bit of an adjustment, sure. But the main thing is I just want to stay in football. I love the game too much to jut leave it behind. It sounds corny, but it’s in my blood. It really is.”

  Sarah smiled at him. “Well, that’s what you should do, then.”

  “That’s not to say that there aren’t some down sides.”

  “Such as?”

  He shifted uncomfortably on the couch, thinking about his words. “Such as every other part of my life. Coaches are pretty famous for putting in long hours.”

  “So what? I put in long hours all the time. Or at least I used to.”

  “Long hours for you are what, maybe a 12-hour day?”

  “More like 16. And then, if we’re trying to get something out the door, sometimes I’ll be there there all night.”

  “Right,” he nodded. “That’s what I thought. There are some coaches I know who, during the season, move a cot into their office so they can be there every night. Not just when something important is happening, but every night. Every single night, for the full season. Except when the team is playing on the road, of course, and then they’re in a hotel. They don’t see their homes for more than a few hours at a time for months.”

  “What? Do these men have families?”

  “Some of them do.”

  “And their wives don’t mind?”

  “I’m sure some of them do mind, but they make their peace with it somehow. Because that’s the way things are, if you want to be a coach at the highest levels. That’s the level of dedication that you’re expected to show.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  Brad nodded. “I agree.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense. They’re just logging hours. The most important thing isn’t how long you work, it’s how much good work you do, and if you’re exhausted you’re not doing very good work.”

  He nodded again. “I completely agree. But I’m not going to be able to change an entire industry, at least not when I’m first starting out. That’s the standard I’ll be measured against. So if I’m serious about this coaching thing – and I am – I have to go into it with the understanding that I won’t have much of a life for a while. Years, maybe.”

  Sarah shook her head. “That’s tough.”

  “It is. I think it’s the right thing for me, but it won’t always be easy.” He set down his wine glass on the coffee table and turned toward her. “And I wanted to make sure that I was very clear with you about that. I don’t want to give you the wrong impression.”

  Sarah’s stomach gave a jump. “What do you mean?” she asked, with a bit of a squeak in her voice.

  “I mean that I like you a lot, and I want to get to know you better. I want to keep seeing you, but we’re talking about right now. For as long as I’m in Tall Pines, I want to spend as much time with you as I can. But when I get the call from someone who’s willing to give me a chance, that’s it. You deserve better than I’d be able to give you after that.”

  Sarah looked away and took a long sip from her wine, buying the time she needed to organize her thoughts. Brad had just offered to be her temporary boyfriend. Did she want more from him? Les
s? What did she want, anyway?

  At last she set her glass next to Brad’s and turned to meet his eyes. “That sounds perfect. To be honest, I don’t know how much I have to offer, either. I like you, too, and I look forward to getting to know you better, but sooner or later I need to go back to my life.” She gestured at the cabin interior. “Everything about my life here is temporary.”

  Brad took her hand and gave it a little squeeze. For a moment Sarah thought that he was going to kiss her, and she even began leaning in a little bit, but then the moment passed. “You still haven’t told me about that life of yours. You know, the one that you need to go back to?”

  Sarah smiled and leaned back in the couch, still thinking about the kiss that had never quite materialized. Apparently she’d have to wait a bit longer. Or was she supposed to kiss him? She had no idea what the rules were these days.

  “That’s a long story.”

  “You already used that excuse. Come on, you don’t need to tell me all of it. Just give me the highlights.” When she paused he added in an accusing voice: “I told you about my plans.”

  “Fine, fine. The short version is that I founded a business and someone took it from me. Someone I trusted.”

  “Well.” He leaned back on the couch. “That sucks. What happened?”

  “I learned a hard lesson about paperwork, and what can go wrong if you don’t keep track of who’s signing what. There are things that I should own, important things, but now the lawyers tell me that this other guy owns them. He wants me out, and because he has documents proving that he owns the most important parts of the business, I’m out.”

  “That totally sucks. Can you do something about it?”

  “Break his kneecaps, maybe? Do you know someone who might take care of that for me?”