“I'll join you.” She frowned slightly and raised her eyebrows. “What? Am I not invited? I thought we were friends.”
Her lips spread into a small smile. “We are not friends, but sure, you can join.”
The cabin was quite spacious. Even with the area of the living room that Maggie had staged for the photoshoot that I wasn’t sure was happening anymore, there was still plenty of room. The room was warm since the fireplace has been going and whoever owned this place had made sure they had plenty of entertainment options. The television was massive, and on the console underneath was a DVD player and a couple of gaming consoles too. Large shelves on either side of the television were filled with books, DVDs, comics, and CDs.
I turned the television on.
“Any requests?” I asked.
“What have they got?”
Not as much as I thought, turned out. It seems like the internet wasn't working so streaming was out of the question.
“It doesn't look like we can get connected.”
“How about a DVD?” Maggie asked. She went to the shelf and surveyed the collection. It turned out; the DVD collection was pretty limited. She gathered them into one hand and picked the first one off the pile.
“It's a Christmas movie.”
I shook my head. “I don't think we need more snow. What else is there?”
She laughed and put the DVD Back down on the Shelf.
“This looks like a movie from the 40s. Romance if I had to guess,” she said, holding up the second one. Neither of us were feeling that one, so she moved on to the last two. An animated kids’ movie and a horror movie.
“I haven't watched the kid’s movie since I was a kid, and I don't want to change that,” I said. She conceded and put the kids' movie back on the shelf leaving us with the horror movie.
“Are you good watching this?” I asked her before putting it into the player.
“It’s not like we have many options. How bad could it be?”
We sat down and pressed play. This trip was just full of surprises, wasn't it?
I was sitting on a couch with a woman about to watch a movie at home. I couldn't remember the last time that I did that. Women didn't come to my home to watch movies, let's put it that way. Last time Maggie was at my home, she was naked seconds after we walked in.
She was different though, that was what we had established. We were friends, or at least friends of friends, which meant that we did stuff like this together. The other kind of person I would do stuff like this with was a girlfriend, and she definitely wasn't that. She had taken up way too much of my mental real estate lately though, more than any other woman, but I didn’t want to jump to conclusions.
The movie was okay, pretty standard, predictable, the type that you could walk away from, and come back in fifteen minutes having not missed out on much as far as the plot. The lights were on and everything, but Maggie didn't seem to be enjoying it very much. She reacted to a couple of predictable jump-scares, which was kind of amusing, but it seems like she was actually scared. It was funny and kind of cute. I could put my arm around her if I wanted to, right? Yes, a very friendly arm, I could do that.
I put my arm on the back of the couch and then slid it down to her shoulders and she didn't recoil. I didn’t know why she was freaking out, it wasn’t that scary, but at the same time, I wasn’t complaining about the contact. She was cute, and she smelled good, and since we were never crossing the sexual line again, I wasn’t going to turn her away if she wanted a little bit of a cuddle. The scarier this movie got, the closer we did.
It was one of those predictable ghost movies, where malevolent spirits went after people and they died in mysterious, gory ways. It didn’t do much for me, but Maggie was freaking out. On the screen, another member of the ensemble cast was about to get whacked, when suddenly, the lights went out. Maggie jumped and screamed. I held onto her.
“Relax, it’s just the power. The storm must’ve knocked the lights out.”
“Don’t say that like it’s a perfectly normal thing,” she said.
“It’s fine. Remember in the garage? We have some candles and lanterns. It’s all right. I’ll go grab something.” I got up to head to the garage, and she jumped up after me.
“Oh no, you’re not leaving me alone here.” It was dark so she couldn’t see me grinning at that. I wasn’t going to stop the woman no matter where she wanted to follow me. We got to the garage, accident-free and I used the light from my phone to uncover a couple of lanterns, a flashlight, and some candles.
We went back to the living room and I put the lanterns down to light them up. I looked around the living room in the dark. The cabin in the woods with the electricity out should have been scarier, but this place wasn’t that kind of cabin. It had its rustic fittings, like a mounted deer head on the wall and the various woodsy pieces of decor, but it also had Wi-Fi and hot running water. We would be perfectly comfortable throughout the night.
I looked over at the fireplace.
“I think we still have gas, which means we still have heat.” The bedroom that I used upstairs had a fireplace too and I had heated the room up. I wondered whether the other four rooms had fireplaces too. I decided to go and check.
“Wait a minute, where are you going?” Maggie said, hustling after me.