Catch Yourself a Snowmance (Have Yourself a Merry Little #2)

6. Carson

Chapter 6

Carson

Guys! I'm eating junk and watching rubbish.

You better come out and stop me!

– Kevin McCallister, Home Alone

L iam and I raided a trunk and a few boxes in the attic after dinner and discovered a bunch of blankets in the middle of the afternoon yesterday, so we all had something extra to stave off the chill last night.

Do the extra blankets we found smell like mothballs? Yes.

Do I now smell like mothballs? Probably.

We’re trying to ration our firewood, so we waited until evening to light the fireplace yesterday. But today, we’ve agreed to let it burn all day. Cell service has been spotty in the storm, so we’re fully cut off from the outside world for the time being.

I make quiches for breakfast, and enjoy myself a bit too much watching Alyssa devour her slice with a smile. As the morning winds on, we sit around talking, some of us in the main rooms, others in their own bedrooms reading or napping.

We make lunch. Then we clean up. I lie down for a while, and when I wake I walk through the house looking for Alyssa. Mostly, I’ve spent the day following her around like a puppy. She’s fun to talk to and we seem to hit it off. We talk about our families, our jobs, our dreams. And she seems interested in it all.

No one else seems to notice the amount of time Alyssa and I are spending with one another, or if they do, they’re not making a big deal about it. I’m grateful for that. I don’t need Gage or Mitch acting like a couple of frat boys while we’re all cramped in such close quarters.

Noelle pulls out another board game before we sit down to a dinner of pan roasted chicken and vegetables.

“Who’s making dessert?” Jennifer asks while we clear our dinner plates to the sink.

“Dessert?” Liam asks. “I feel like all I’ve done is eat and sleep, eat and sleep, eat and sleep.”

“And that’s a bad thing because …?” Mitch asks.

Noelle wraps her arms around Liam’s waist and stands next to him. “Are you complaining?”

“Not at all.” He leans down and kisses her on the temple.

“How about s’mores,” I ask.

“S’mores?” Tori asks. “Did someone say, s’mores?”

“It was Carson’s idea,” Alyssa volunteers. “He loaded the baskets with all the things we needed at the market.”

“I’ll put more wood on the fire,” Gage offers.

Alyssa looks at me, and without a word she and I walk into the pantry to grab out the graham crackers, marshmallows, and the variety of chocolate bars we bought for just this occasion.

She reaches for the bag of marshmallows right as I’m grabbing the box of crackers and our arms cross. She turns and looks up at me. Time seems to slow. Would it be so bad to date her? We get along so seamlessly. She’s easy to talk to, funny, and beautiful. What could go wrong?

Liam’s laughter booms through from the living room, reminding me why I need to table those kinds of thoughts. I’d never want to rock the boat in our friendship. What if something happened and Alyssa and I got serious. Then something else happened and she decided she actually couldn’t stand me.

“Excuse me,” she says with a shy smile.

“No, excuse me,” I tell her with a responding smile that feels like it spreads through my body.

She shakes her head, her smile never dimming when she looks away and backs up to make room for me.

The sudden and surprising urge to shut the pantry door and kiss her takes me off guard. It’s all this being cooped up together. I’m losing my bearings.

I step away and wave my arm. “After you.”

She smiles at me and our eyes lock. I know she feels it too.

Do we have chemistry? No doubt.

Can we act on it? Not a chance.

I tell myself it’s okay. I’m the perpetual bachelor, after all. Alyssa and I can be friends—with a side of harmless flirtation and obvious attraction. We’re adults. We can handle ourselves.

Alyssa carries the marshmallows and bag of chocolate bars into the living room and I follow behind her. She’s already kneeling in front of the fire when I come into the living room, a skewer extended into the flames and a childlike grin on her face.

“Brown or burnt?” she asks.

The flicker of firelight dances across her features.

“Brown,” I say.

Our friends chime in with their preferences. Alyssa looks over her shoulder at me. “Brown? Seriously? ”

“Perfectly golden brown.”

“Oh no, Wolfgang. You aren’t telling me you’re a marshmallow wuss now are you?”

Her eyes are full of mirth and her marshmallow … is on fire!

“Hey!” I shout. “It’s … it’s … its …” I wave my hand toward her marshmallow.

“I know,” Alyssa calmly answers me.

She slowly turns and takes the piece of sugary charcoal out of the fire and blows on it.

“Perfection,” she announces with a satisfied nod of her head.

“No. That’s just marshmallow murder,” I moan, hamming it up for her sake.

“Wait til you taste it,” she says, as if I’m going to be the one eating that charbroiled disaster.

“I will,” I tell her with a wink. “Wait, that is.”

“Ah no. I’m going to make a convert out of you.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Give me a chance.”

“Only if you give a perfectly golden brown marshmallow a chance in exchange.”

I look around the room. All eyes are on us.

“Uh. Go ahead, guys,” I tell our friends. “Roast your marshmallows … or incinerate them. Don’t let us hold you up.”

Liam stares at me, so I look away toward Gage, whose eyebrows are trying to reach his hairline. I shift my gaze to Mitch. He’s got a lopsided grin as if he’s in on some secret.

“Okay,” Alyssa says, smiling up at me from her spot on the floor. “Deal. You make me a s’more—your best attempt at one—and I’ll do the same.”

“Okay,” I agree, wondering why I even suggested this insanity in the first place.

I don’t, as a rule, like burnt food. I’m no gourmet connoisseur. I eat my share of game-day junk food, but in general, I eat relatively healthy, and definitely not-burnt food. Unless it’s a hot dog or a steak that’s charred. Then I’ll take a few black spots, but never completely scorched.

Alyssa hands me the bag of marshmallows. Our friends are taking turns roasting theirs to varying degrees of brown.

“Sit down here, Wolfgang.” Alyssa points to the spot on the worn, braided rug next to her.

“Wolfgang?” I raise a brow in her direction.

“Puck. Wolfgang Puck. You’re the chef of marshmallows, right?” Her eyes sparkle with mischief in the best of ways.

“Say that again, louder so the people in the back can hear you,” I tease.

“We’ll see. You’ll be calling me Julia or Ina before the night is out.”

“Julia or Ina?” I take a seat next to Alyssa, enjoying our banter more than I should.

“Childs or Garten. The female queens of chefery.”

“Ahhh. I think you’re …” I rub my chin thoughtfully. “... Ina. Or maybe I’ll just call you Contessa.”

“You knew who they were already?” Alyssa smiles over at me.

“I mean, I do sit around watching TV in my boxers, dusting myself in artificial orange powder most days.”

Alyssa busts out laughing. A few of our friends look over from their conversations, but they turn back to what they are doing when all they see is Alyssa cracking up. Mitch’s eyes widen a little. He tilts his head toward Alyssa in an unspoken question. I ignore him.

“So, there’s a method to the blackening of a marshmallow,” Alyssa says.

“A method? To lighting it on fire?”

She smirks at me. “Yes. A method. You want to catch it quickly and let it go until it’s all burnt and then the goo on the inside is perfection.”

“At least we agree on one thing,” I tell her.

“We do?”

“The goo. It’s the best.”

“I know!”

She’s giddy and it’s adorable.

She places her marshmallow on her skewer and I poke mine.

“There’s a method to browning too,” I inform her. “You never get near the flame. Just the heat, and you’ve got to constantly rotate so there’s a slow burn.”

I look over and she’s studying me, her marshmallow mid-air, nowhere near the fire. She smiles softly and I smile back.

She pops her skewer right into the flame. I suspend my marshmallow above another flame, away from smoke. Hers catches fire in a few seconds. She leaves it there, rocking her head side to side a few times and then she pulls it out and blows out the fire. Then she grabs a graham cracker.

“Chocolate of choice?”

“Traditional. Hershey’s.”

“Hmmm.” She nods in either approval or as a way of telling me that’s what she expected me to say. Then she hunts through the pile of chocolate on the coffee table for a Hershey bar.

“How about you,” I ask, never lifting my eyes from the browning marshmallow that’s about to sag from the browning process.

“Reese’s cup.”

“That might overpower the marshmallow,” I warn her.

“I’ll take my chances,” She winks at me.

I don’t know what we’re doing, but the marshmallows aren’t the only things playing with fire, that’s for sure. We’re flirting. We know it. Probably every person in the room knows it.

I pull the marshmallow out of the fireplace, use the cracker to ease it off the skewer and then I open a Reese's cup and place it on top of the marshmallow.

I hand the confection over to Alyssa. She exchanges hers for mine.

We stare into one another’s eyes while we take our first bites.

“Mmmmmm,” she says, pulling the square away from her mouth and licking the stray marshmallow from her lips. “That’s pretty good. I’m not gonna lie.”

“And this is … not bad.” I keep a straight face.

“What? It’s amazing!” She nudges me.

“It’s really not so bad once it’s all assembled. The chocolate makes up for the ashy taste.”

“Staaahhp.” She laughs. “Ashy taste. What about the goo?”

“The goo is perfect,” I admit.

“Say it,” she says. “Tell me I’m the contessa of marshmallows.”

“You are. You’re the contessa.”

“And you are Wolfgang.” She takes another bite and closes her eyes.

I don’t take another bite.

“Are you going to finish that?” she says around a mouthful of s’mores.

“In a minute.”

Alyssa gives me a side eye.

“Okay. Probably not, unless I’ll offend you.”

“No. I want it. Here. Trade.”

She hands me the uneaten part of her s’more. And I swap her for mine. We finish our treats in silence, taking in the conversation around us.

We all hang around the fire talking and laughing for the rest of the night until someone starts yawning. Pretty soon that yawn travels.

“I’m going to head up to bed,” Liam says.

“Me too,” Jennifer says.

I stand up and start grabbing trash and skewers, everyone else pitches in. Alyssa and I take our places at the sink, standing side by side to wash the skewers.

She’s scrubbing, I’m rinsing and drying. Our friends start to say goodnight one by one.

“See you in the morning,” Noelle says, giving Alyssa a side hug and smiling over at me.

And then we’re alone.

The murmurs of sounds from bathrooms down the hall and upstairs, and people shuffling and talking in their bedrooms filter in like white noise in the background.

“I actually do make a good dessert,” Alyssa says quietly, turning off the water.

She grabs a towel off a hook on the wall and wipes a spot on the counter.

I watch her. She’s efficient, but not uptight. There’s a care to the way she cleans, like she knows she’s preparing things for the next day—as if closing out this kitchen is the way she gives a little something back to Noelle, even though this cabin is nothing like what we had been led to imagine we’d be staying in.

“What?” she asks, looking over at me.

“Nothing. I’m just watching you.”

I smile at her. The light in here is dim, but I think she’s blushing.

“So, what’s this dessert?” I ask.

My voice sounds a bit lower and drowsy, even to my ears.

“Huh? ”

“The dessert. The one you make.”

“Oh. My apple fritters are to die for. Noelle even says they’re the first thing she craves when fall rolls around.”

“Apple fritters. No offense, but that sounds a lot better than burnt s’mores.”

She smiles. “For the less discerning palettes, I think they probably are.”

“Less discerning, huh?”

I nearly push off the counter I’m leaning on and walk over to her. I cross my arms to keep myself anchored in place. Two days with her is wearing on me like water hitting the same spot on a stone.

“I’ll have to make you some after we’re back home,” she offers easily. “Then you’ll see. I can make a dessert that will have you literally licking the plate clean.”

“Is that right?”

“Yep. Guaranteed.”

I like the idea of her baking for me more than I can say. The only person who ever bakes for me is my mom, and that’s only when I come around to visit.

I push off the counter and walk toward Alyssa. I stick my pinky out. “Pinky promise you won’t tell Noelle or Liam we are planning to see one another after vacation. They’ll get way too much satisfaction that their diabolical plan to meld the friend groups actually worked at that level.”

Alyssa sticks her pinky out and locks hers with mine. We stand like that. Neither one of us releasing the hold we have on one another.

“I already told Noelle she was right.”

“Right about what?” I ask, still holding onto her pinky with mine.

“Right that I misjudged you initially.”

“Because of the Dorito dust? ”

She giggles and pulls her hand away slowly. “Yes. That … I was wrong.”

“You saw a piece of who I am. It’s not like I’m not that guy. Sometimes I have Dorito dust on my shirt.”

“There’s a lot more to you than that.” Alyssa tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Thanks.”

I want to compliment her, but I’m afraid it will be like a fire hydrant when the cap comes off and I’ll end up telling her how beautiful she is, and smart and kind and funny … How I love the way she makes me feel at ease, how I’m amazed at the way we can sit quietly together and not have to say anything. I’ve only known her for two days. So I keep my mouth shut.

“I’ll get the light,” I tell her.

She walks ahead of me, pausing in the doorway. I hit the switch when I’m standing right next to her. She looks up overhead and laughs softly, pointing at the beam. I glance up.

“No. When did that get here?” I ask her.

“I think Noelle brought it. She wanted excuses for kissing Liam.”

“Like they need mistletoe?” I chuckle.

“Right?” Alyssa agrees.

We look up at the mistletoe, and then our eyes catch in the dim light of the hall nightlight someone plugged in.

I don’t know what comes over me, but I start singing, “Do you wanna kiss a snowman?” from the Disney movie, Frozen . My voice is so soft it’s almost a whisper, but the house is so still I feel like I’m singing into a microphone.

Alyssa giggles. “Disney tunes?”

“Too corny?”

“Definitely.”

On an impulse, I reach down and clasp Alyssa’s hand in mine. Then, in a move of boldness or stupidity, or a strange cocktail of both, I place a soft kiss on her knuckles. I glance at her eyes while I do. I’d kiss her for real, but there’d be no turning back if I did.

Alyssa smiles at me. I gently lower her hand. We stare at one another without saying a word.

And then, before I know what’s happening, she stands on tiptoe and kisses my cheek. She whispers, “Goodnight, Carson,” with her mouth still near my cheek.

I lean in toward her ear and whisper, “Goodnight, Alyssa. Sweet dreams.”

And then we walk quietly down the hall. She turns at her bedroom and I continue on to mine.