Vanessa
Stunned as I was, I was able to swallow my surprise and maneuver Grandma Shirley into the living room where we continued to catch up. I tried my best to focus on the conversation, but the damned bowling game going on upstairs kept wrenching my attention away from her, and back to him. What in the hell was he doing up there?
At long last, my grandmother seemed to tire of chatting and showed me to where I’d be staying on the first floor, a room overlooking the back garden which had always been a guest favorite. I dumped my stuff, noting the expansive closet and wardrobe, but chose to not unpack. What was the point, when I’d only be here for a short while? Sure, it was nice seeing my Grandma, and maybe the town itself was pleasant to return to, but I had a life. Soon, Grandma Shirley would have the help she needed, and I would get back to the city, leaving all this behind again. Leaving Torwood behind. God, I had to go talk to him, didn’t I. It would be rude not to.
“Dear, I think I’m going to have a nap,”
Grandma Shirley said, once I had finished placing my things in the room.
“Sounds good, grandma. I’m gonna rest a bit too.”
I leaned down and she kissed me on the forehead, then began to waddle towards her room. I noticed that she had carved what looked like a clever little anti-gravity rune on the boot she wore. I guess that was one way to keep the weight off while disobeying your doctor’s “don’t walk” orders.
I genuinely tried to rest, the tiredness catching up to me once again. But like clockwork, each time as my eyes closed and my consciousness began to drift towards sleep, the clatter from upstairs began anew. If anything, it sounded like it was getting louder. Wearily, I swung my socked feet out of the bed and trod towards the main stairs. There was no putting off the inevitable.
I followed the noise through the upstairs hallways until I found a closed door with an edge of light spilling out from below. I steeled myself, and knocked.
Nothing. I knocked again.
“One minute, Shirley,”
came a voice from within.
The door opened, and I was face to face with a wall of green.
Torwood had always been tall, but he hadn’t always been wide. The man standing before me filled my vision completely, his shoulders disappearing beside the sides of the door frame. I moved my vision up from his muscle-bound chest, and was greeted by a bearded, chiseled face, tall horns, and pearl white tusks. What had not changed one bit was his eyes. Torwood always had the most beautiful golden eyes, which now met mine, and at once I was eighteen again. I was in the park. I was-
“Vanessa?” he said.
I came back to reality. His face was a picture of shock.
“What are you doing here?”
he continued.
“Uh, I just got in. I’m back in town for a bit. I’m helping out Shirley.”
Why did I suddenly feel self-conscious calling her Grandma? Surely the seven foot tall half-nude Adonis in green looking down at me had nothing to do with it.
Torwood was silent for a long moment. “I wasn’t told you would be coming,”
he said finally.
“Well, sorry. It was kind of an emergency. Tom just called me yesterday and told me that she fell. So I took the next flight out here. Tom’s getting here tomorrow. He didn’t call you?”
Torwood shook his head no.
“Sorry,”
I repeated. “Uh, anyways, how have you been? It’s been a long time,” I said.
Torwood just stared at me.
Then, like I wasn’t even there, he closed the door in my face. I stood at the threshold in stunned silence. Okay, I knew things were gonna be awkward, but what was this? I gathered myself, then turned back towards the stairs, shaking my head in disbelief.
Behind the door, the racket resumed. What was going on in there? My confusion started to burn away, replaced by a righteous anger. Anyways, who the hell did this guy think he was? He was shacking up in my grandmother’s house, answering doors shirtless, and making noise like he was trying to wake the dead. I spun on my heel and marched back to his door, pounding on it with a force I was sure would get through even his thick skull. He wrenched it back open.
“Yes?”
“I just wanted to ask if you’d also be able to keep your noise level down a bit. I’d really appreciate it.”
I spoke carefully, keeping my voice calm and level.
“I apologize. I did not mean to upset you,” he said.
“I’m not upset. I’m just letting you know that it’s affecting the rest of the house.”
“It’s clear that I’ve angered you. I will stop,”
he continued. My temper flared twice as hot, and my facade began to slip. Was he trying to provoke me?
“I’m not angry. It’s just— for your information dude, both my grandmother and I are trying to rest right now. Whatever you’ve got going on up here, you’re keeping the whole neighborhood awake.”
“Once again, I apologize. I won’t keep you any longer,”
he said, and moved to close the door once more. I stuck my foot against it, refusing to let it be shut in my face again.
I felt an old, familiar feeling well up in me: I was about to say something I was gonna regret.
“What are you even doing here Torwood? I thought you never wanted to see me again. I don’t get it. Are you trying to get your name on my grandma’s will or something?”
He looked taken aback. I pressed further. “What’s your angle here, Torwood?”
“Your grandmother needs care, and neither you nor Tom were present. I do not have an angle,”
he snarled the last word.
“And you’re the one caring for her? Where were you when she fell, huh?”
He finished closing the door, pushing me back with it. I stumbled, then stalked back downstairs, fuming. What was I expecting after all these years, a happy reunion? I thought time would have healed some wounds, but I guess I was wrong.
His reappearance in my life, acting like a grump and living under my grandmother’s roof, was a disruption I wasn’t going to tolerate. This guy would not fuck with me any more. Teenage Vanessa was gone. Adult Vanessa was mature, she was self-assured, she was no longer under the spell of his golden eyes and big hands and soft lips. The ten years I spent not thinking about the orc who broke my heart were not about to disappear.
***
That night, snow began to fall. As soon as the sun set, a thick blanket of clouds moved in from the south, bringing with them what Pigeonponders called “pigeon shit”, snow so wet and dense that it clumped together in heavy balls and quickly carpeted every surface. My sunlit stroll that afternoon was a distant memory, as the world outside the windows became a curtain of white.
The snow kept falling as I went to sleep, it was still falling when I got up for a glass of water in the middle of the night, and it had barely slowed down when I woke up. God, I had forgotten how Pigeonpond could dump historic amounts of snow like it was nothing.
I got dressed and poked my head out of the room. It was quite cold in here, I thought, wishing I had brought my slippers. Floating candles bobbed around the hallways, leading me to the front of the house, where I heard commotion. I felt my mouth twist into an expression of distaste when I walked in on Torwood feeding logs to the old hearth that dominated the front sitting room. Blessedly, he was wearing a shirt this time.
If he heard me enter the room, he said nothing. I stood behind him and prepared to clear my throat, thinking of a way to ask him why he was making a fire while fully communicating my discomfort with his presence, when he spoke: “The power has gone out for most of the town. The front door is packed with snow and will not open. If you had any plans for today, they are cancelled. Your grandmother is in the kitchen.”
My stomach twisted. Did he mean we were trapped here? Did he mean that, until the snow was clear, I had to stay here with him? Certainly it wasn’t true.
“Did you push the door hard?”
I asked, immediately regretting how stupid the question sounded.
He stood and turned towards me. It was the first time I had seen his full figure without the obstruction of a half-closed door, and it confirmed that the man was truly huge. His shoulders strained against his button-down shirt, framing a vast expanse of chest and a neck like a tree trunk. I wondered how wide I would have to hold my arms to wrap around his neck to hug him, or maybe to strangle him.
“Yes,”
he replied. “I pushed hard.”