Winter Jacket: Finding Home Read Online Free PDF

Hunter, the night stars would soon be taken away from me when I arrived in Los Angeles.
    After our first night at the cabin, it rained our entire stay, which was fine with me. I hadn’t envisioned us hiking to the top of Long’s Peak or neighboring Mount Meeker. And the weather gave us an excuse—if we even needed one—to stay holed up in the cabin, sleeping late into the morning and not bothering to change out of comfortable pajamas. Warnings about potential flooding kept me from entirely relaxing, but I was mindful to enjoy our time together.
    The mountainside cabin was a vast improvement over the ski resort straight out of the 1990’s. The days were overcast, but the change in location was like sun rays poking through the most stubborn of clouds. There were no neighbors in sight, which simultaneously frightened and invigorated me. I made fires in the woodstove in the living room, and Hunter worked the French press when the antiquated contraption frustrated me. It was symbiosis at its best. 
    The morning we were slated to leave and continue on to Los Angeles, I drank hot coffee outside on the deck. The wrap-around porch provided a stunning view of Mount Meeker. Fog rolled down the mountainside like thick puffs of smoke. There were two birdfeeders on the property and viewable from one of the picture windows. Birds of all sizes jostled for the prime real estate. The morning air was brisk, and I pulled up the high neck of Hunter’s running jacket that I wore just a little bit more.
    I felt her presence behind me before I ever heard her soft footsteps. The wooden deck creaked beneath her feet.
    “I could get used to this,” she announced. Her arms wrapped around my waist, and she rested her head on my shoulder.
    “No cell phone reception, no wireless, and no TV?”
    She smiled and pulled me in tighter against her. “Doesn’t it feel like we’re the only people on earth? No responsibilities or commitments, except to each other.”
    “It is nice,” I hummed. “So what do you think? Did you like the Malibu beach house or the Estes Park mountain cabin better?”
    “I think you spoil me.”
    “It’s nothing that you don’t deserve, love.”
    “You should stop being so damn accomplished so I can treat you once in a while,” she said, although her tone let me know she wasn’t really cross with me. “Tenured professor and now television writer?”
    I ignored her words. “Why do you always smell so good?” I twisted at the waist and nuzzled my nose in the hollow of her throat.
    “You’re imagining things.”
    “You smell like new.” I pressed my lips against the sweet spot in the nape of her neck.
    “New what?” she asked, a smile in her voice.
    “Just new,” I sighed into her skin.
    After breakfast, we packed up our belongings and closed up the cabin for the next lucky couple. I took the first driving responsibility of the day, and Hunter returned to staring out the passenger side window. As we started down the long dirt driveway, I made furtive glances in the rearview mirror back at the cabin. I went over a mental checklist to make sure I’d remembered to pack everything like my toothbrush and my cell phone charger, never once considering that maybe we’d left our final happy memories behind.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter TWO
     
     
    The remainder of the road trip was bittersweet. We switched off driving responsibilities every few hours over the last day and a half so the other person could appreciate the scenery. The landscape changed dramatically as we drove farther southwest. The mountains remained, dominating the horizon, but wilderness and tall skinny pine trees were replaced with stratified red rocks and eventually the urban sprawl of Los Angeles.
    Podcasts filled the extended silences, and when we ran out of things to listen to, we played games of willpower like who could last the longest listening to