I walked into the master bedroom I had paid for, and there it was: my suitcase tossed in a corner, my expensive face cream used, and a stranger’s yapping dog curled up on my pillow.
This was my girls’ trip. The one I planned and paid for to escape the stress of my life.
But my best friend, Jenna, decided to invite more people without asking. Then she gave my room to her influencer niece, looked me dead in the eye, and said, “You won’t mind the couch, right?”
Little did they know a historic blizzard was about to snow them in without power, and I’d be watching it all unfold from a luxury spa down the road, deciding whether or not to answer their desperate calls for rescue.
The Promise of a Break: A Price for Peace
The cursor blinked at me from the center of a half-written project proposal. Synergize forward-facing paradigms. I closed my eyes, and the meaningless corporate words swarmed behind my eyelids like gnats. It was a Tuesday, but it felt like the fifth Monday of the week. At home, my husband, Tom, was holding down the fort with our ten-year-old, Leo, but the maternal guilt was a low-grade hum beneath the fluorescent lights of the office. I was failing on all fronts, spreading myself so thin I was transparent.
I minimized the document and opened a browser window I kept for emergencies. Escapes. Fantasies. A cabin rental site popped up, filled with pictures of crackling fires and snow-dusted pines. My finger twitched over the mouse.
There it was. “The Aspen Hollow.” Two bedrooms, a stone fireplace, a wraparound porch with a view of the mountains that looked like a Bob Ross painting. It was perfect. It was also seven hundred and fifty dollars for a weekend. I thought of Leo’s upcoming orthodontist bills and the new tires Tom said we needed for the SUV. I winced.
Then I thought of the blinking cursor again, of the hollow feeling in my chest when I kissed a sleeping Leo goodbye in the morning. I clicked “Book Now.” The confirmation email felt like a shot of adrenaline. A weekend. Just one weekend of quiet.
My first call was to Jenna. We’d been best friends since we were dorm-mates in college, a twenty-year tapestry of terrible boyfriends, cheap wine, career changes, and weddings. She was the only person I could imagine sharing the sacred silence with.
“A cabin? In the mountains?” Her voice crackled with excitement over the phone. “Maya, you are a lifesaver. An absolute angel. Yes. A thousand times, yes!”
I smiled, the first genuine smile in weeks. The tension in my shoulders eased. “Just us,” I said. “Like old times. We’ll drink wine, do face masks, and speak to no one.”
“It sounds like heaven,” she breathed. And for a moment, I believed it was that simple.
Just One More
Two days later, my phone rang. It was Jenna. Her tone was bubbly, a little too bright. I knew that tone. It was the precursor to a favor.
“Hey! So, the weirdest thing,” she started, not pausing for breath. “You know my cousin Mark? He and Sarah just split up. Like, this morning. He’s an absolute wreck, poor thing.”
I made a sympathetic noise, my eyes drifting to the rental confirmation on my desk. Two bedrooms. One for me, one for her. A perfect, balanced equation.
“And I was just thinking,” she continued, her voice weaving a delicate, guilt-laced web, “it would be so good for him to get out of the city. Just to clear his head, you know? He’s such a great guy, he’d be no trouble at all. He’d probably just fish or something. We’d barely even see him.”
The silence stretched. I pictured a third person in our quiet cabin. A sad man. A sad, fishing man. It wasn’t part of the vision. The vision was a sacred space for two.
“Jenna, I don’t know,” I said slowly. “The place only has two beds.”
“Oh, that’s fine! He can take the couch!” she chirped, as if she’d already solved a problem I hadn’t even agreed to. “He won’t care. Please, Maya? You’re so good at this stuff. I feel so bad for him.”
There it was. The gentle pressure, the framing of me as the gracious, understanding one. To say no would be to brand myself as selfish and unkind. After twenty years, our dynamic had grooves worn into it, and this was one of them. My desire for peace felt petty when weighed against a man’s fresh heartbreak.
“Okay,” I sighed, the word tasting like defeat. “Okay, Jenna. He can come.”
“You’re the best! The absolute best!” she squealed. “He’s going to be so thrilled. This is going to be so much fun!”
I hung up the phone and looked at the picture of the cabin. The cozy, two-person retreat already felt a little more crowded.
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