The Sweetheart Cabin

Shane drives like he does everything: one hand on the wheel, relaxed, singing along to a classic rock station under his breath and pretending he isn't.

By Wausau the city is gone. By Rice Lake the world is white and blue, pines bent under snow, frozen lakes flat as tables with tiny ice-fishing shanties scattered across them like dropped dice. You eat squeaky cheese curds out of a gas-station bag and quiz each other.

"My favorite color," he says.

"Green. Like a fire truck in Chicago, you said, which was a lie, nothing is green in Chicago."

"Good. Your worst habit."

"I don't have one."

"You apologize to your plants for not watering them, and then you don't water them."

"That's not a habit, that's a relationship."

He laughs, a real one, head tipped back, and the truck drifts a little on the snow and he corrects it without looking. You've noticed he doesn't use the GPS. You noticed at the last turn, a county road the phone wanted you to skip, and he took it anyway, like his hands remembered.

"You've driven this before," you say.

"Up north's up north." A shrug. "Every road looks the same."

It doesn't, though. Past Hayward he stops singing. He turns the radio down. At a crossroads with a bait shop and a closed Lutheran church he slows, not for a sign, just slows, and looks left down a road lined with birches. Then he takes it.

"You okay?"

"Yep." He flexes his hand on the wheel. "Just never been to a wedding this fancy. Gotta get in character."

Birchwater Lodge sits on a point of land in a frozen lake, and it is so pretty it looks like a puzzle box. A long log building with a green roof and a stone chimney that breathes woodsmoke. A ring of small cabins down toward the shore. A little white chapel at the very end of the point, steeple against the sky. Beyond it all, the lake: miles of white, crossed with snowmobile trails, the far shore a dark line of pines.

Down by the water there's a boathouse, red, with crisp white trim. It looks newer than everything else. Shane looks at it for exactly one second, and then he doesn't look at it again.

"Okay," he says. He kills the engine. He turns to you, and he's smiling, but his eyes are doing something else. "Ground rules for the lobby. I'm going to hold your hand. I'm going to call you Ava like I've said it a thousand times. If anybody asks how we met, let me tell it, I'm better at it. And if I'm about to do anything you don't want, squeeze my hand twice. I stop. Deal?"

"Deal."

He gets out, comes around, and opens your door, which he has never done in his life. When you raise your eyebrows he says, "In character," and holds out his hand.

The lobby is a cathedral of logs. A fire roars in a stone fireplace big enough to park a canoe in. There's a moose head over the mantel wearing a red bow tie, which is definitely Sadie's doing, and red paper hearts strung across every beam, and a sign on an easel in curly script: Welcome to Sadie & Bjorn's Valentine's Wedding Week!

And there is your family.

Your mother sees you first. Dianne Skoglund in a quilted vest, reading glasses on a beaded chain, arms already opening. "There she is, there's our brave..." She sees Shane. She stops. Her arms stay open in the air like she forgot why she raised them.

Gran, in the wingback chair by the fire with a brandy old fashioned at two in the afternoon, lowers her glass and says, quite clearly, "Oh, my."

Sadie shrieks. Your little sister launches herself across the lobby in a sweatshirt that says BRIDE in rhinestones, hugs you so hard your ribs creak, and then holds you at arm's length to look at Shane with her mouth open.

"You're real," she says to him.

"Mostly," Shane says, and offers his hand. "Shane. Congratulations. I've heard a lot about you."

"I have heard NOTHING about you," Sadie says, shaking it, glaring at you. "She sent me one picture. It was of a dog."

"That's Pickles. She's the better-looking one."

Sadie's face does a thing. You watch your sister fall in love with your fake boyfriend in under ten seconds. You can't blame her. In the firelight, in his good gray coat, with snow melting in his hair and his beard trimmed, he looks like an ad for a cabin you can't afford.

And then, from the bar by the window, someone sets down a beer.

Kendrick Nowak walks over the way he always walks into rooms: like he's been waiting for the room to notice. He looks good. He always looks good: perfect jaw, perfect sweater, the kind of handsome that's built for photographs. He smiles at you with every tooth.

"Ava. You made it." He turns the smile on Shane and holds out his hand. "And you must be the plus-one."

"Must be." Shane shakes it. It goes on a beat longer than normal. Kendrick's knuckles whiten first.

"I've got to say," Kendrick says, still smiling, "she kept you well hidden. Three months, Sadie said? Funny. I didn't see a thing on her socials."

"She's private," Shane says pleasantly. "I like that about her."

"Sure. Sure." Kendrick's eyes slide to you, amused. "It's just, you two don't really look like a couple yet. You know? Still that new stiff thing."

Your mother makes a small sound. Gran sips her drink with enormous interest.

Shane turns to you. He drops his voice so only you can hear it, and he's not smiling now. His eyes search yours.

"Can I kiss you?"

You nod.

He puts one hand on your jaw, warm from the truck, and he kisses you.

It isn't a stage kiss. It's slow and certain and a little bit careful, like he's asking a question with it, and your hand closes in the front of his coat before you tell it to. The fire pops. Somewhere very far away your sister makes a noise like a teakettle. When he pulls back he stays close for one second longer, forehead almost to yours, and you see his throat move when he swallows.

You turn your head. Kendrick's smile has died on his face.

"Huh," says Gran, to no one. "Not that stiff."

Cabin Seven has a wooden sign on the door with a carved heart: The Sweetheart Cabin.

Inside: a woodstove already lit, a braided rug, a loveseat roughly four feet long, a window looking at the lake, and one bed. One. Queen-sized, with a quilt, scattered with red rose petals in the shape of a heart.

"Sadie," you say, with your whole soul.

Shane stands in the doorway and looks at the petals for a long moment. "Cute," he says. His voice is odd. "I'll grab the bags."

"I can help..."

"I got it." He's already backing out. "Warm up. I'll be right back."

He isn't.

Ten minutes. Twenty. You unpack. You sweep the petals into a little pile and feel guilty about it and put two back. Forty minutes. You text him: Did you get eaten by a bear? Nothing. An hour.

You go to the window.

He's down on the dock, out past the boathouse, a tall dark shape against all that white. No bags. Hands in his coat pockets. Standing very still, looking at the red boathouse with its new white trim like he's reading something written on it.

You pull your phone out to call him.

Before you can, it buzzes in your hand.

Sixty yards away, on the frozen dock, Shane has his phone out. He's texting you instead of walking back.