Page 62 of The Apparent Trap

“Northern lights?” he whispers, like the thought is too exciting to say loudly. I nod.

“We’ve gotta go outside, right?” he asks. I nod again. “Well, they said socks, long johns, a hat, and those thermal sleeping bags actually keep you warmer than coats, so let’s just do that?”

He gets up before I reply and finds the sleeping bags that live in the room.

The stairs to the roof deck descend like something on a spaceship—you press a button, and the roof opens, and metal stairs unfurl. We make our way up, and the cold is bracing. During the day there’s at least a bit of sun to soften the blow.

But after a moment, my body starts to acclimate—maybe it’s the magic of being up here at night with more stars than I’ve ever seen in my life. There’s no wind, so we’re surrounded by just the clean smell of pine and snow, with the twinkling lights above us.

We lay out the two sleeping bags on the ground, and then we each cozy up into our individual cocoons, lying on our backs, looking out at the stars. There’s no sign yet of the majestic lights I’ve wondered about my whole life, after growing up with a dad who can talk about weather phenomena forever.

We’re quiet at first, just listening to the sounds of the forest around us. It’s peaceful here, no agenda, the cold causing everything to still.

I know I should lean into that. I should embrace the cold, the quiet, the sense that even though I’m here with Lee, this is a special moment of solitude.

My mind, however, is a furnace. It’s roaring with questions, thoughts, and desires kindled by the hours half sleeping in bed and our conversations—from last night and Thanksgiving and in that damn bar—all wrapping around each other and churning.

Surely a conversation with safe topics would be better than letting my mind swirl?

“You said the other night you started cooking young, but when did you know you loved it?” I ask.

He’s silent for a moment, and I wonder if maybe he’s fallen back asleep. But then he says, “I loved it instantly.” His voice is soft, like he’s afraid of speaking too loud here. “Cooking is perfectly controlled once you know what you’re doing. It’s science. It always pans out. Raw ingredients can have varying degrees of surprise—a perfect farmers market summer tomato will always taste better than a similar-looking mealy grocery store winter one. But when it’s cooking, you know what’ll happen. You know heat plus ingredients will turn out a certain way if you follow the recipe. High heat creates char, long low heat creates tenderness. Salt will amp up and expand flavor. A bit of acid will brighten it. Herbs, sauces, cheese, spices will all give specific additions. It’s knowable. Repeatable. A little magic trick that improves someone’s day no matter how many times they’ve tasted it.”

I don’t respond, because it’s a beautiful sentiment but also such a sad visual—a sweet boy living in upheaval finally finding the one part of his life he could control.

“Why didn’t you go into environmental stuff like your dad?” he asks, changing the subject by throwing the ball into my court.

“When I was a kid, I definitely wanted to.”

“Really?”

I smile at the excitement in his voice, as though hearing about someone’s childhood nonsense could actually be endearing. “Yeah, I got super into those saving-the-rainforest campaigns, and I used to run penny drives from my school to like, adopt acres of rainforests. For years it was my mission.”

He chuckles. “Did you save them?”

“I’m sure those things weren’t something that stood the test of time.”

“Why not?”

“They’re too earnest to be real,” I say with a sigh.

He pauses before replying. I wonder if he’s going to argue with me, try to beat some of that earnestness back into me. But instead he asks, “So what changed your mind? Why’d you go into television production instead of running away to save rainforests or get a PhD in climate science or something?”

“My job-path answer’s not as poetic as yours,” I say with a small laugh. “I guess you could just say my interests became my own as I got older. I loved my dad, and I’m still super into science. But I always loved writing and nonfiction stories, and I found a lot of stuff fascinating. And then I did an internship when I was in college at a news network. That summer made me think it was all so cool. I loved the breadth of it—it wasn’t like what my dad was doing, where he studied something specific for years at a time. Instead, you could learn intensely on a particular topic and then get to go learn about something new right after. It was like I got to learn and teach for a living.”

“That’s a nice way to look at it.”

“It was just how I saw it,” I say, deflecting the compliment. “I knew from the start it wasn’t necessarily a stable industry to go into anymore, and so competitive—no one ever leaves, so jobs rarely open—but I was in the right place a few times, and I kept moving up.”

“You’re selling yourself short.” I can hear him rustle, like his sleeping bag is now turning toward me. “You deserve the career path you’ve had.”

The words trigger a memory from Thanksgiving. And before my brain can catch up to my mouth, I have to ask something. “Why did you say the other week you thought you deserved to lose the chance . . .”

I stop, all the reasons I shouldn’t be saying this suddenly bubbling up.

But he knows what I mean immediately. “You’re wondering why I said I deserved to lose my chance with you?”

“Yeah,” I breathe out, almost a whisper. “You said you would’ve ruined it anyway.”