The cabin smelled like cedar and woodsmoke, and for the first hour, neither of them said much at all — just the quiet, easy kind of silence that comes after a long drive with someone you’ve known for years.
Priya set her bag down by the window and looked out at the lake, still and silver in the late afternoon light. “We should have done this months ago,” she said.
“We say that every time,” Jordan replied, coming up behind her, resting his chin lightly on her shoulder. “And then we don’t do it again for another year.”
She laughed, leaning back into him. It was true. Life had a way of filling every open weekend with something — work, family, the hundred small obligations that made up ordinary life. This trip had almost been cancelled twice.
They cooked dinner together that night, bumping elbows in the tiny kitchen, trading the kind of easy jokes that only come from real familiarity. No phones on the table. No laptop propped open “just in case.” Just the two of them, and the low hum of the fire, and the particular kind of attention that’s easy to forget how much you miss until you have it again.
Later, wrapped in blankets on the porch, Jordan reached for her hand. “I forget sometimes,” he said quietly, “how much I like just being near you. Not doing anything. Just this.”
Priya turned to look at him properly, the firelight catching the side of his face. “Then let’s not forget it again,” she said. “Not for a whole year, anyway.”
He smiled, and pulled her closer, and for the rest of the weekend, that’s exactly what they did — nothing, and everything, together.