It had been raining all day and the low grumble of thunder slowly came closer and closer as the hours passed. Inside the cottage it was dark and pretty chilly too. Cold wind slithered inside from under the door and from one of the broken windows. There was also a small puddle of water under the broken window since rain could also get in. Em and Remy had tried to find something to use for covering the window, but they had had no luck. So, they had placed a small bowl under the window and now most of the water sprinkled on it. They had also places buckets outside to collect some rain water. Although the walk to the river wasn’t too long, carrying several water buckets wasn’t the most pleasant thing. And now, since the water was literally coming inside their house, it was a perfect opportunity to collect it.

Em and Remy were sitting at the table, both sighing out of boredom. They hadn’t been able to do anything all day. It was too dark in the room to read, and they only had one book to begin with. They couldn’t make food because of the rain they couldn’t put a fire in the stove.

“Ughhh,” Em sighed. “How can it be even more boring than usually?”

“I know right,” Remy said poking the table. “Remind me that next time we go to the city, we’ll get some kind of entertainment.”

“Definitely. It’s too early to sleep too.” Em yawned. She was gonna fall asleep from the boredom. The sound of rain drumming on the roof was making her pretty drowsy too.

“We could play games, I guess,” Remy said then.

“What games? We don’t even have playing cards?”

“I dunno. Rock paper scissors?”

“Well we don’t have anything better to do. So, I guess...” she said. It didn’t sound very exciting but who knows maybe it’d turn into something exciting. Best of 17 tournament could take a while.

“Okay, are you ready? Rock. Paper. Scissors. ….Hah, I win!”

“Just a lucky chance. Again. Rock. Paper. Scissors….”

“Haha!”

“Screw you. It’s best of five. I can still win.”

Out of next seven battles, Em won three, two of the wins being in a row so she felt pretty good about that even though she got destroyed.

“Okay, okay. I lose. Please stop this senseless beating now,” she said, throwing her hands in the air as a sign of surrendering.

“Cool. As a prize I can sleep in the bed tonight,” Remy said, grinning victoriously.

“What? It’s my turn. Do you mean I have to sleep on the floor in this weather?”

“Hey, I won. I need some kind of reward. You can always sleep in the armchair…”

“Please, we both know the armchair is worse than the floor. I’m basically a pretzel in the morning if I sleep in it. You should know that, you experienced it too.”

“All the more so, I don’t want to do it. But maybe you can win your bed turn back if you beat me in another game.” Now Remy’s smile was almost scary. He was definitely scheming something.

“Okay, bring it on. What’s the next game?”

“Staring competition. The one who laughs first, loses.”

“What? Okay. Just so you know, I’ve been training against the moose. He’s really good but I haven’t lost once.”

“Yeah, right,” Remy said, chuckling a bit. Em couldn’t help but smile a little too.

“Okay. First one to laugh is the loser. Moose, you’re the judge. Three, two, one…start.”

Both stared each other in the eye, trying to keep the straight face but it was surprisingly hard. Even Remy, who had been very confident about his victory in this game too, found it pretty difficult to not smile. Em’s eyes were very distracting. In the dark lighting of the room they looked almost grey, even though he knew her eyes were actually blue.

Em tried her best not to even crack a smile but this was harder than she had expected. The moose was an easier opponent, it had boring and dead eyes unlike Remy. Em really liked Remy’s eye colour, sadly his eyes were almost always hiding under his long hair. He had muddy brown eyes but in Em’s opinion there was also a hint of gold in them. He also had pretty, long eyelashes, unlike her, and him blinking was very distracting.

Few minutes passed without either of them faltering. Em had to bite her hip a few times, and Remy bit his tongue twice. It started to seem like they’d spend the rest of the day just staring at each other but then the clock struck four and the cuckoo jumped out. In the dead silence the *cuckoo-cuckoo-cuckoo-cuckoo* sounded like it was screamed in their ear. Em was startled by the sound and jumped a bit. Remy couldn’t help it, Em’s face was hilarious in that moment, and he burst out into laughter.

Em looked at Remy for a second a bit dumbfounded but then a victorious smile rose on her face. “Hah, I win! Now I’ll sleep in the bed!”

“The score is even. The winner of the next game wins the bed,” Remy said. This was an unfortunate turn of events, but he was sure, he’d be able to win. “I’ll let you decide the next game because I’m so nice and fair.”

“A real hero. Okay, hmm, two truths and a lie,” Em said.

“Wow, here I was trying to play fun games and you go straight to the serious business,” Remy said. He didn’t really like this idea, but he’d have to play along since Em had done the same with his games.

“We can do something else if you want to,” Em said, a bit worried. Maybe Remy wasn’t comfortable with this type of games. Some of Em’s friends didn’t like truth or dare at all.

“Nah, I’ll accept the challenge. So, the other person has to guess which of the things is a lie, right? Cool, you can start.”

Em thought about her questions for a moment. They’d need to be something pretty easy at first. But Remy didn’t really know anything about her, so it could be a challenge still.

“Okay… I have a brother. My favourite colour is blue. And I don’t like bananas.”

“How am I supposed to know from these?” Remy grumbled. “Okay, let me think for a sec.” His brows furrowed as he was tried to think.

“You…don’t have a brother?” he said then very unsurely.

“Correct,” Em said, smiling a bit. “How did you know?”

“I dunno,” Remy said. “It was pretty much just a guess. And I had a feeling that you would’ve mentioned him at least or something.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“But, who doesn’t like bananas?”

Em laughed a bit. But she was pretty nervous about what Remy was going to say. The fate of her night rested on this game.

“Okay, my turn… Ummm, I like cats. My hair was blonde when I was young. Skunk is my favourite animal.”

“What? These are the most random things. This is gonna be so hard.”

Em had no idea of the right answer. Her initial thought was the hair but that could be right too. What if it was a werewolf thing to change hair colour? And she was pretty sure that she had heard of normal people getting darker hair after getting older. Skunk part was also pretty weird but so over the top in a way that it might even be true. Why did she suggest this game? It was so hard.

“Well, what’s your answer? Your time’s running out…” Remy said, smiling confidently.

“There’s no time limit in this!”

“Yes, there is. At least now.”

“No. Let me think. Your statements are dumb.”

“They’re just challenging. If you want, we can go back to rock-paper-scissors. Or you can just give up…”

“No way! Okay, I have an answer. It’s…uhh….the hair thing is a lie.”

Remy was silent for a few painfully long seconds. “Correct,” he said then, sounding (and looking) very sour and disappointed.

“Yes!”

“But you just guessed that!”

“Maybe I did. But it was correct. Also, do you really like skunks?”

“I do. They look very adorable,” Remy said, clearly ready to defend his opinion if further needed.

“Well, they are kind cute, you’re right.” Em said. Ignoring the smell, skunks were kinda cool. But now she had to come up with something really hard.

She rubbed her hands together and cleared her throat.

“Okay, my turn then. I’ve had a boyfriend. I’ve never been in a relationship. I’ve kissed a girl.”

Remy looked extremely confused and Em felt a little burning on her cheeks. What was she thinking? She should’ve just stuck with favourite animals and colours. And now for some reason she had thrown in kissing and relationships. It was challenging for sure but still… She couldn’t help but hope that maybe she could sink through the bench and the floor and disappear to the ground.

“Interesting choices,” Remy said. “I’m gonna go with kissing a girl.”

“You’re sounding very confident,” Em said. “But you’re wrong.”

“What?” Remy looked very confused. “What’s the wrong one then?”

“The boyfriend one,” she said, more and more awkward. This had been a stupid idea.

“Oh, so are you like…not interested in guys?” Remy asked. He felt a weird lump in his chest thinking about it. Not that he had anything against gay people, it was just because of... because of… To be honest, he didn’t even know himself why he felt like that.

“No. I mean yes. I mean that I’m not into girls. I’m very much straight,” Em hurried to say. “We were playing truth or dare at one birthday party. Some of us may have been slightly drunk. And one of the girls was dared to kiss the person next to them and that happened to be me,” she explained, not even sure of why she did. Remy hadn’t asked about it. But maybe she just wanted to clear up the situation.

“Okay.” The lump in his chest seemed to have disappeared or at least shrunk a bit. “But it’s hard to believe you haven’t dated anyone,” he said then without really even thinking. “You seem like a pretty smart girl and you aren’t bad looking either.”

“Wow, how suave. I bet you’ve had much success in dating with those complimenting skills,” Em said with a hint of amused smile in the corner of her mouth.

“Well, not really. I haven’t dated that much either,” Remy said touching the back of his neck, now visibly uncomfortable.

“Really? I would’ve guessed that you have,” Em said. From what she knew, Remy was very sweet guy and quite good-looking too. For sure he would’ve charmed at least a few girls.

“Well, I haven’t. That’s it. Do you want to play some other games?”

“…Not really, if you don’t have anything in mind?” Em said. Apparently, their game session was over, and she felt like it was her fault.

“No, I don’t.”

“Okay.”

They sat in the silence for a while, in complete, almost pressuring silence. Remy looked out of the window. The rain had stopped.

“I think I’m gonna go outside for a bit,” he said.

“Why? Everything’s wet. You’ll just get cold,” Em replied.

“I’ll be fine. I’ll be right back.” He stood up and headed outside. Em sighed after the door closed. She had messed up again.

Remy wasn’t right back. Em was pretty sure she dozed off in front of the table before Remy actually got back. When Remy opened the door slightly, the wind slammed it open with a loud bang that made Em jump. Remy walked in. It was really hard to see anything, it was dark outside. Not dark from the clouds but dark from the night. But still Em could see that Remy’s hair was glued on his face and he was soaked to the bone.

Em got up quickly and walked to Remy. He shook his head like a dog and mumbled some curse words.

“I started raining so suddenly,” he grunted throwing his shirt off. Em was pretty sure that she heard his teeth clattering.

“Didn’t I say that going outside was a bad idea?” Em said hurrying to find a blanket from the wardrobe. Remy was going to get pneumonia at this rate and what would they do then? “Why did you even go outside?”

“I didn’t expect it to start raining again,” Remy said and sneezed. “I had to think about…stuff.”

“You go to bed right away,” Em said pushing him towards the bed and wrapping him in the blanket at the same time. She chided herself for not putting a fire in the stove while the rain was out. Now they had to be in the cold until morning.

“Wait, you need to change to dry clothes first,” she said, stopping mid-way through the room. She hurried to the wardrobe again and pulled out the first shirt and pair of trousers she could find. “Put those on,” she said and threw the clothes at Remy. She heard the rustling of clothes but very determinedly looked on other direction, not that she would’ve seen much anyway.

Finally, she heard him thud on the bed. Remy pulled two blankets on him and curled into a small ball. It looked like a night in the chair for Em, but she didn’t mind it right now. The most important thing was that Remy would stay warm.

“I’m still cold,” Remy mumbled so quietly that it was barely audible.

“What?”

“I’m still cold.”

“There’s no more blankets, sorry.”

Remy was quiet for a few seconds.

“Can you come in here too?” he asked then sounding a bit shy. But maybe that was just the blankets muffling his voice. Em felt her face flush red.

“S…sure. But do I fit in there?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t really care. Just climb in,” Remy said. Em didn’t really have other choices. If Remy was cold, she wanted to help as much as she could. Remy moved as close to the wall as he could when Em got to the bed.

The bed definitely wasn’t for two people. It was very cramped and uncomfortable with both of them in there. Remy curled closer next to Em shivering a bit. Remy’s hand touched her hand and his fingers were ice cold. Em pulled one of the blankets to cover her as well so she could share her body heat better. Little by little Remy stopped shivering and seemed to fall asleep. Em stayed awake for a while, listening to Remy’s breathing but soon that and the rain that was drumming against the roof and the sound lulled her to sleep as well.