Kiss Her Once for Me (107)

Snow days mean freedom, and some part of me does feel impossibly free. I finally told Jack how I feel—full honesty game. And she doesn’t feel the same way, but at least…

At least I tried.

I slide my hands into the pockets of my coat. Maybe this snow will bring its own magic. Maybe it will bring me something new.

Two Christmases ago, the snow brought me Jack, and even if we didn’t work out, we had one perfect day together.

This last Christmas, the snow brought me Andrew and the Kim-Prescotts.

Maybe this snow will bring me a new person—a messy, honest, too-loud person, one who can love me back. Someone else who shoves their fists into the pockets of her Carhartt jacket, someone else who flicks her chin to get her hair out of her face, someone else whose smiles come in increments like the phases of the moon.

I know there’s only one Jack. But maybe someone else will make me feel the way she does. In time. If I can be that open version of myself I was with her.

I step onto the sidewalk on the edge of the Burnside Bridge.

Last year, with Jack, we walked down the middle of the bridge. There were no cars, no boundaries, no restrictions at all. Everything was blurred and indistinct. Now, I stick to the path as cars chug by, slowly, windshield wipers pushing aside the mounting snow. Yet, even now, there’s something magical about this bridge, too.

Maybe the someone new this snow will bring me is myself.

Behind me, a car honks, and fuck it—nope, I’m still the Ellie Oliver who despises being honked at by strangers. I fold my arms across my chest and hope they pass quickly.

They don’t pass. They honk several more times. The car pulls up beside me and slows down to match my pace, and it’s only then that I realize there is a vast difference between walking across the Burnside Bridge in the middle of the night during a snowstorm with Jack and walking across the Burnside Bridge on a random Tuesday at eight o’clock by myself. I avoid looking directly at the vehicle—a truck, I think—that has decided to crawl along beside me, honking.

I pull out my phone, ready to utilize the emergency call feature just as the driver of the truck rolls down the passenger-side window and yells, “Hey!” And I swear I recognize that voice.

“Elle! Hey, Elle, stop!”

The truck pulls up beside me with its emergency flashers on. “Holy shit! You walk fast!” the driver shouts, and then they’re leaping out of the car, and the driver is Jack.

Jack, on the Burnside Bridge. Jack, in the snow. She’s silhouetted in the harsh glare of Gillian’s headlights, so all I can make out is the breadth of her shoulders and the length of her legs, her entire body dotted with snowflakes.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“What am I doing?” she shouts. Jack always thinks she has to shout when she’s outside, as if somehow the fresh air makes it impossible to hear her naturally loud volume. “You’re the one who’s walking alone in the snow!”

“I—I needed some space,” I say. “To think.”

She takes a step forward and shifts from silhouette to full, in-color person, and even though I just saw her twenty minutes ago, and even though she literally just broke my heart, the sight of her makes me feel invincible and devastated all at once.

“That was pretty humiliating back there,” Jack screams at me, even though we’re ten feet apart.

Fuck. “I’m so sorry, Jack. The last thing I wanted to do was embarrass you at your event.”

“Oh no, I wasn’t.” A chin flick to get her hair out of her eyes. “This is a soft opening. Everyone in there was a friend. I meant, that was humiliating for you.”

Even bigger fuck. “Well.” I give an awkward shrug. “You’re worth the humiliation, I guess.”

Jack sucks in a breath and pulls herself up taller.

“Is this… is that why you followed me all the way to the Burnside Bridge, Jack? To tell me I should be embarrassed?”

“No, I…” She shoves her fists into the pockets of her Carhartt jacket, goddamn her. “I opened your present after you gave your humiliating little speech. It is—”

“I know it’s kind of weird,” I insert, feeling more humiliated by the second, “to draw you a picture of what the Butch Oven looked like before, but I thought it was a good reminder of what you did. You know, how hard you worked to turn it into what it is. Where you started, and where you are now. I framed it so you can hang it on the walls of the Butch Oven. Or not. Whatever.”

“I will absolutely hang it on the wall. Did you… did you draw the building from the memory of when I showed it to you last Christmas?”

I nod. “I have a very good memory for artistic details.” Honest, even when it’s hard. “And I remember basically everything about that day.”

There’s a small sliver of hope in the corner of Jack’s mouth. It’s always the fucking hope that gets me. It makes me feel like a weird pile of goo, held together by a purple puffy jacket.

“Andrew says you’re working on something new?”

I nod uneasily, aware that we’re still standing on the side of a bridge, in the accumulating snow, as cars crawl past.

“Am I in it?”

I open my mouth to tell her that—

“Honesty game,” Jack demands before I even have the chance to respond.