The Last Two Cabins

The dirt road ended in a turnout of pine needles and two cabins with their porch lights already on. I cut the engine. The lake sat black beyond the trees, and nothing else moved on the road behind us.

Andre stayed in the passenger seat with his hands on his knees. “That’s them.”

A man was stacking split wood by a stone ring between the cabins. A woman came out of the left porch with a pot and four mugs hooked on her fingers. She lifted the pot when she saw us, like she had been waiting on the kettle and not on the hour.

“Cocoa,” I said. “She said cocoa in the text.”

“I remember.” He looked at me. “We can still just be the neighbors.”

“We can.” I opened my door. The air smelled like wet bark and the first smoke. “Come on. I’m not deciding from the car.”

We carried our bags onto the right porch, unlocked the cabin the rental note had named, and left the bags inside without turning on more than the kitchen light. When we came back out, the fire was catching. Lena set the pot on a flat stone at the edge of the ring. Tom dusted his hands on his jeans and stood.

“You found the end of the road,” he said. “Most people turn around at the fork.”

“The app made it sound closer,” Andre said.

“It always does.” Lena poured. The cocoa steamed in the cold. She handed me a mug first, then Andre, then Tom. Her wedding band clicked the ceramic. “I’m Lena. This is Tom. You’re Jess, and you’re Andre. Sit before the good log burns down to nothing.”

We sat on the flat stones. The road behind the cabins was empty. No other lights. No other voices. The fire popped, and a spark died in the dirt before it reached my shoe.

Tom nodded at our cabin. “Yours has the better mattress and the worse kettle. Ours has the kettle that works and a door that sticks. Fair trade, if you need hot water in the morning.”

“We’ll knock,” I said.

Lena watched the way Andre’s shoulder stayed against mine, and the way I didn’t move it. She drank, then set her mug on her knee. “You two have the look of people who drove a long way to say something and then parked it.”

Andre huffed a small laugh. “That obvious?”

“Only if you’ve seen it.” She didn’t smile to soften it. “Tom and I have done this before. Weekends. Other cabins. People who wanted to and people who thought they wanted to. You wrote us back the same night I wrote you. That usually means you’ve been talking about it longer than you’ve been packing.”

I felt Andre go still beside me. The cocoa was sweet and too hot. I held it anyway.

“We’ve talked,” I said.

“For years,” Andre said. He looked at the fire. “Never did it.”

Tom leaned forward and fed the log a smaller piece. “No prize for going first. Also no prize for talking it to death in a parking lot.”

Lena’s eyes stayed on me. “So I’ll ask it straight, and you can hate the asking. Are you here to try it with us, or are you here to see if you still want to?”

The fire cracked. Somewhere down the slope, water moved against wood.

Andre’s hand found my wrist, not to stop me. Just there. I turned my mug so the heat sat in my palm.

“We’re here to find out,” I said. “We haven’t said yes.”

“Good,” Lena said. “Don’t say it to be polite. Tom and I like clear. We like married people who still pick each other. We don’t like guessing.”

Tom glanced at Andre. “If you want a walk, the dock’s twenty steps down. Nobody else on this road tonight. You can hear a car from here if one comes, and none will.”

Andre stood. His mug was still half full. “Jess.”

I stood with him. Lena took my mug without comment and set it by the stones to keep warm. Tom nodded once, easy, and went back to the fire like the question could wait where he had left it.

The path was a strip of packed dirt between ferns. The dock boards were cold through my shoes. The lake held a thin line of moon and gave it back broken. Andre stopped at the end, hands in his jacket, facing the water like it had asked him something first.

“I want it,” he said. “That’s the part I keep not saying out loud, because wanting it sounds like I want less of you.”

“You don’t.”

“I don’t know that yet.” He turned. The porch light from our cabin reached his face in pieces. “I’ve pictured it. You with someone who knows what he’s doing. Me with someone who isn’t guessing. And then I picture the part after, and my stomach goes mean. I don’t want to be the man who says go and then punishes you for going.”

“Then don’t punish me.” I stepped in until my shoes touched his. “Be honest while it’s happening. That’s the only way I know how to do this.”

“What if I can’t watch?”

“Then you look at me.” I put my hands on his jacket. “I’m not going down there to disappear.”

He searched my face. The fear was plain, and so was the want under it. I kissed him before either of us could turn it into a speech. His mouth was warm from the cocoa. He kissed me back, hard, one hand at my waist, and for a second the lake and the fire both went quiet. When I pulled back, his breath fogged between us.

“That’s still us,” I said.

“Yeah.” He swallowed. “Okay. We go back. We don’t pretend we didn’t hear the question.”

We walked up. The fire had settled into a steady burn. Lena had our mugs waiting. Tom had pulled the stones closer, so the four of us made a smaller circle than before.

Lena held my mug out. “Well?”

I took it. My hands were cold and his kiss was still on my mouth. I looked at Andre. He looked at Lena, then at Tom, then at me, and he didn’t sit down yet.

“Yes,” I said. “But we start where we can still see each other. No disappearing into a cabin tonight. If one of us needs to stop, we stop, and nobody gets clever about it.”

Andre’s mouth opened like he had more, and then he closed it. Lena nodded, once, as if the shape of the answer was enough.

“Sit,” she said.

I sat. Andre sat beside me, closer than before. Across the fire, Tom’s knee was an inch from Lena’s. She reached over and set her hand on his wrist, easy, the way you touch someone you already know will allow it. Andre watched that. I watched Andre watch it.

Lena met my eyes over the flames. “You don’t have to perform for us.”

“I know.”

“Then don’t.” She tipped her head toward Andre. “Kiss him. Here. If you still want to after the walk, we should see what that looks like before anyone gets brave.”

Andre turned to me. The jealousy was already in his face, tight at the mouth, and the want was there too. I set my mug down in the dirt. He set his beside it. I put my hand on his jaw. His stubble was rough under my palm. He caught my wrist, not to move it away, and his other hand came up into my hair.

I kissed him in front of them.

It was slower than the dock. His mouth opened under mine. I felt Lena shift on her stone, close enough that the heat of her knee almost reached mine. Tom’s hand settled on Andre’s shoulder, a steady weight, nothing more. Andre made a low sound against my mouth and did not pull me closer. His fingers stayed in my hair. Mine stayed on his face, then slid to the hand on my wrist and held there, our fingers caught together between us.

Lena’s fingers touched the back of my free hand, light, over the cuff of my sleeve. I didn’t let go of Andre. He didn’t reach for me past the kiss. The fire ticked. Someone’s cocoa mug clicked against a stone.

I broke the kiss only far enough to speak, my forehead against his.

“Yes, but—”