Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(57)

He looks at me some more. Doing that almost smiling thing.

I look at the snow falling on the trees and street signs. “Right. Okay.”

“I’m just here to help you adjust and discover.”

“Yes, thank you for driving that point home.”

“Anytime, Grasshopper.”

He nudges me with his shoulder. So I look up at him almost smiling at me. When I look too long, his smile fades away, and we’re both just looking, now.

And then I reach up and grab his shoulder and brace myself on my toes and I kiss his cheek, which is cold and stubbly, but his breath is so warm along my ear that I kiss him again, still on his cheek but it’s a spot closer to his mouth.

I hold my kiss there, the location innocent, but the duration indecent, my lip turned out against his skin where I can feel it warming up, where I can feel snowflakes landing and melting.

His shoulder eases in my hand, and so I slide over it, holding him close.

I finish the kiss, but release him slowly.

He whispers, “Jenny,” just as the bus roars up along the stop.

I turn away fast, but feel his naked, mitten-free hand brush my cheek, barely.

I get into a seat that’s opposite the seats closest to the stop, but I still see him. He’s already headed toward the parking garage, his head down.

I keep my fingers on my mouth all the way home.

At home, I turn on all the lights, for once, even though it makes it harder to see the snow. I’m worried that all of this wanting to kiss Evan that’s developed from working hard to avoid and thwart Evan is some kind of delayed reaction to my diagnosis.

Like, I worked so hard, at first, to reassure everyone that I was going to be okay, just so I could do what I wanted to do, so my mom could continue having her life in Seattle, that now I’m just breaking apart and Evan is conveniently there and so hot in his long-limbed sort of way and doesn’t seem to hate me despite my efforts.

And here in Lakefield, other than lab buddies and confusing surprise cybersex with the anonymous former tenant, all I have is Evan.

Although it must be some kind of against the rules to even longingly almost kiss your occupational therapist. And vice versa. I mean, when he held me in the lab it didn’t feel entirely therapeutic.

I would call and ask my mom about all of this, but she would probably tell me to marry Evan, so I elect for a weird conversation with C.

Who is not on, but he’s posted at least two dozen pictures since we’ve talked, mostly of snow and snowflakes—a tiny drift on a mailbox flag, a clump of falling snow glowing midair and backlit by a streetlight, and one so close and sharp you can see each point of a single flake.

What do you think?

I kind of jump when the message comes through. I feel jumpy and unsettled all over. I feel leftover wanting for Evan that’s not really leftover and with it something like embarrassment, and then maybe sweetness.

Also, I feel anticipation of seeing him again, even if I don’t know what I’ll say, after everything that happened today, but I realize if I trust anyone with the awkward ever after of almost kissing, it’s Evan.

He seems weirdly okay with almost-kissing moments. I don’t know if that’s maturity or gravitas or what.

Or maybe the almost-kissing thing happens to him a lot.

I do know I want to see him again, already, and this has never happened, so he could simply be using my hormones against me so that I will install voice-recognition software and put my lights on timers and relearn to drive.

They’re beautiful, I say.

The snow, the too-quiet feeling of the snow, is the perfect way to sit in front of these pictures and these messages with my heart confused.

I close my eyes—now, the embarrassment comes.

I broke down in front of my OT and he kissed my forehead and he saw my bra and he must know I tried to really kiss him, kiss him, at the bus stop.

I’ve been thinking a lot about snowflakes, C writes.

Who cares about snowflakes?

Is my very first thought. My next is the way the snowflakes melted against Evan’s cheek.

My message box is blinking, waiting for me to reply. I think about things going sideways.

I think about when an experiment fails and the only thing to do is to design another, and to use what you’ve learned.

What about them? I ask.

His cursor blinks a long time then he sends a long message.

About how they are too small to do anything but drift together, but when you look close they seem so singular.

Drifting is different from moving under your own power, deciding something. It’s currents—in the water or in the air.

Or, in the middle of something where no one can face truth or honesty and tells stories instead. Drifting together. Drifting apart.

It doesn’t mean anything except that you’re passive in the current, or that the current is stronger than you are.

I read through his message a few times.

First, I think, I don’t want to drift anymore, but I don’t write that.

Another message from C blinks through.

We should meet.

Oh.

Just to start a friendship? It feels like we should, I know it might be awkward, and I don’t want you to feel unsafe. We can’t be that awful, because of the way tenants are placed in the house, it’s possible we walk right by each other all the time, anyway.

My hands are shaking, but in the interest of avoiding drift, I write,