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

9. Carson

Chapter 9

Carson

The best way to spread Christmas cheer

is singing loud for all to hear.

~ Buddy, "Elf"

S omeone just crawled into my bed. I think. It’s too dark to tell and I’m half-asleep.

Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe I’m not.

Is it Alyssa?

This house is so cold, even with the heater running.

“Mmmm … Hey, you cold?” I ask her.

She answers me in a surprisingly deeper voice, “Mm hmmm.”

She’s cold. Okay.

I nearly forget she’s there … I’m dozing back to sleep.

Then I remember.

Alyssa?

I roll over onto my side to pull her toward me.

She’s cold. I’ll hold her.

Why is she in my bed?

My eyes are so heavy, I can’t open them to check.

Sleep takes me again.

Oh, yeah. Alyssa. She’s here. In my bed.

This place is drafty. My foggy mind drifts back to sleep.

In my dream, I tuck Alyssa into my arms.

Snuggling her is … weird. She’s larger than usual. And bulky. And … hairy?

Hairy Alyssa.

It’s still Alyssa.

But why does she smell like pickles and ginger ale?

We had chili. Maybe it’s the chili.

I snuggle her close.

She’s warm. Really warm. Like a little heater.

No. A big, hairy heater.

“That better?” I ask her.

Something isn’t right. Why is Alyssa so big and muscular and …

“AAAAAGGGHHH!” I wake, nearly falling backward off my bed when hairy Alyssa pushes me.

On the other side of my bed, looming at over six feet tall, Gage shouts “What are you doing in my bed?”

“What are you doing?” I shout back at Gage. “This is my bed!”

“What do you mean what am I doing? What were you doing? You were about to kiss me!”

“You were in my bed. I wasn’t kissing you.”

“You snuggled me like that was your next move.” Gage looks around, a dazed expression on his face.

I follow his gaze. It’s my room, alright .

“I must have sleep walked,” he says, shaking his head. “What’s your excuse?”

“My excuse for what?”

“For cuddling me.”

“I thought you were someone else.”

Gage’s smile shines white through the nearly pitch blackness of my room.

“Oh, yeah you did. You thought I was Alyssa.”

“I thought you were a woman,” I admit. “I was asleep.”

“Obviously.”

“Obviously,” I echo, brushing off my shirt as if the movement will rid me of the residue of having curled up with one of my closest friends like we were koalas in a eucalyptus tree—cuddly koalas with feelings for one another.

“No one has to know about this,” Gage says.

“Obviously,” I agree.

“Go to sleep, love birds!” Mitch calls from somewhere down the hall.

I smack my hand to my forehead. “Man, we are never living this down.”

“Nope. I’m down for a new friend group. You?”

“After I get some sleep.”

“Sounds good.”

Gage turns and walks toward my bedroom door.

I climb back into bed and tuck the covers up around me.

“You give good cuddles, bro,” Gage says, and then he shuts the door to my room.

I hear him chuckling all the way back to his room.

I wake the next morning with a vague recollection of something odd …

Oh, no! Gage!

And now I have to do the walk of shame into the kitchen to endure the relentless teasing from our friend group. Not to mention how I’ll even explain my reaction to him crawling into my bed.

I thought Gage was Alyssa. Not that she would be crawling into my bed if she were cold. But tell my sleep-addled, middle-of-the-night brain that.

Outside the window, soft flakes are falling again. Drifts of snow cover everything as far as I can see. The treetops and branches peek through—vague shadows of gray in a landscape of white.

I step out of bed, ready to face the inevitable roasting.

When I come down the stairs, someone starts humming Here Comes the Bride .

“He’s here, Gage! Your sweetie pie!” Mitch shouts. Then he turns to me. “Good morning cuddlebug.”

I decide to own the moment. “Morning cutie patootie, come over here and give me some sugar.”

I open my arms wide and move a step in Mitch’s direction. The girls start cracking up. Alyssa just smiles over the rim of the coffee mug she’s gripping in both hands. I smile back at her. It’s like we’re sharing a secret. Man, I like her—a lot. All week I’ve been telling myself we can’t go further than friendship. And that’s logical. Messing up our friend groups would be horrible—an irrevocable disaster. But what if we don’t mess up our friend groups? What if we actually pursue something and it works out.

Mitch steps between me and Alyssa and bends to tuck his head under my chin.

“What are you doing?” I ask him, stepping back.

“I’m cold. Will you snuggle me?”

“Get a sweater,” I tell him, turning to grab a mug from the cabinets.

Our friends laugh at Mitch’s antics, but then everyone seems to drop the issue by the time I’m serving muffins and scrambled eggs. And, yes. I volunteered to cook. No one wants to tease the chef.

The snow keeps falling all through our meal.

Liam pulls up his weather app. “Looks like another big snow day. We can still get out, but there’s no telling if we’d get back in. I think it would be wise to cancel hitting the slopes.”

“No snowboarding?” Gage looks over at me from across the table. “And just when Carson was getting the hang of it.”

I glance at Alyssa. She’s at the foot of the table and I’m around the corner, right next to her. She smiles a soft smile at me.

“I hung up my snowboard. I was going to ski today, if we went.”

“I’ve got something we can do,” Noelle offers in her cheery teacher voice.

“Tell me it doesn’t involve glue and construction paper,” Mitch says.

Liam shoots Mitch a look like the one my dad would shoot me when I was bugging my sisters.

“It does not,” Noelle answers sweetly. “But I do have some craft supplies if anyone is so inclined. I thought we’d maybe bake cookies later. But in the meantime, I have a …” She looks around at each one of us, her face expectant and alight with the anticipation of whatever she’s about to say. “... a karaoke machine!”

“Nooooo …” Jennifer says. “Not Karaoke!”

“It will be fun!” Noelle says, and I almost believe her.

I can’t sing. Not a bit.

“What about those of us who can’t carry a tune in a bucket,” Alyssa asks. “We are cooped up here for the rest of the day. Maybe we don’t force everyone to endure bad singing. ”

Noelle deflates just the slightest, but then she perks up almost as quickly.

“I know!” she exclaims. “A talent show! Those who want to sing can. Those who don’t want to sing can do something else.”

“What about just reading our books and napping?” Jennifer asks Noelle.

“We’ll have time for that and a talent show.”

Jennifer shrugs.

Alyssa leans over toward me, so I lean to meet her halfway. She places her mouth right near my ear. “What’s your talent.”

So many answers rush to my mind. Not that I’ve got thousands of talents to choose from. The answers are flirty and cross lines we haven’t officially decided to cross.

“Cuddling,” Mitch whispers from the other side of the table.

“You’re on Santa’s naughty list,” I whisper back to Mitch.

“What, because I have 20/20 hearing?” He answers me at full volume.

“That’s not a thing,” I correct him.

“How else did I hear you if I don’t have 20/20?”

Noelle smiles and turns to Mitch with the sweetest expression. “I think it’s mainly for vision—that system of stating perfect eyesight. When a person hears without any sign of loss, we just say, normal hearing .” She raises her eyebrows and tilts her head. “I only know because of teaching. I’m sure lots of people would be unsure of the exact terms.”

“ Normal hearing doesn’t sound impressive.” Mitch nearly pouts.

“I’m impressed,” Alyssa tells Mitch. “You heard me whisper while everyone else was engaged in conversation. Pretty impressive.”

Mitch sits back and folds his arms over his chest like he just won a lawsuit .

I just smile at Alyssa. Why not? She makes me happy. No. More than happy. Content. And yet really restless in the best of ways. I want more. Definitely, without a doubt, I want more.

After we’ve cleared the breakfast dishes, everyone mills around for an hour or so, taking turns in the shower and aimlessly hanging out. Then Noelle cracks out the karaoke machine. I can’t honestly think of a talent for this makeshift show we’re having. I used to juggle in high school—mostly as a way to channel the fidgety energy of those years. I could also walk on my hands back then and do a clapping push up where I clapped between each one. Yeah. None of that will be attempted today. I barely survived the slopes without incident. I’m not pushing my luck with stunts like those in a cramped cabin with wood floors and plenty of furniture to kill myself on.

Talent … talent … talent.

Okay. Juggling it is.

Noelle shouts down the hallway, “Okay, everyone! Let’s bring your talent to the living room.”

“She needs one of those bells,” Gage says as he passes me on our way out to the main room.”

“What bells?”

“You know, those teacher ones.”

“I’m guessing she might have one. At school. I don’t think teachers just carry those everywhere with them.”

“Yeah. Probably not.” He looks off in the distance and then nods.

I chuckle softly.

We pile onto the couch and chairs, a few people sit cross-legged on the floor. Noelle is the ringmaster, standing at the fireplace.

“Who wants to go first? Or should we just have Alyssa sing?”

Alyssa shakes her head.

I feel badly for her. Noelle doesn’t seem the type to tease her friend in public. Alyssa already said she couldn’t sing. My hand shoots up.

“I’ll go first.”

“Great! Carson, show us what you’ve got!”

“I …” I wave my hand dramatically like a magician. “... am going to juggle.”

“Juggle?” Gage asks, already laughing.

“Yay!” Noelle says, and she adds an enthusiastic clap.

“What are you juggling?” Mitch asks.

“Nothing heavy,” Liam adds.

“Yeah. Okay …” I look around the room. “Um. One moment.”

I step into the kitchen, grab three oranges from the bowl in the middle of the table and walk back into the living room.

“Ladies and gents, behold, the amazing talent I have not practiced since high school …”

Alyssa laughs softly. Our eyes meet. Unfortunately that’s right after the first orange leaves my hand and the second one is already being propelled upward. She’s got some sort of spell over me. I’m smiling at her like a lovesick boy. One orange falls directly on my head with a thud. The other lands on the coffee table and bounces onto the floor where it rolls.

Gage busts out in laughter, holding his gut. Everyone follows him, some obviously trying not to laugh. I’m still looking at Alyssa and she’s smiling a full smile in my direction.

“Ta da!” I say, taking a bow and returning to my seat.

“Well, that set the bar,” Mitch says.

“Good thing it’s not a limbo contest,” Gage adds. “That bar is low low low. How low can you go?”

I shake my head and sit back in the comfort of the sofa. That’s over with, and I did what I set out to do. I spared Alyssa the embarrassment of having to sing in front of all of us .

“Okay?” Noelle says. “Who’s next?”

“A-lyss-a!” Tori chants. “A-lyss-a!” Jennifer joins in. Then my friends shout her name too, even though they don’t know what they’re rooting for. I remain quiet.

“Okay. Okay. I’ll sing.”

“You don’t have to,” I tell her.

“It’s okay. I just get a case of the nerves. I actually like to sing.”

“Okay.”

If Alyssa likes it, who am I to judge? I couldn’t care less how she sings. She might as well sound like Gilbert Gottfried as the parrot in Aladdin, all nasally and squawking, Jafaaaahr. Jafahhhahhhahhr . I’d still think she’s adorable.

Alyssa takes the microphone from Noelle. She clears her voice, nods at Noelle, and waits. Some synthesized keyboard tune starts up. I barely recognize it.

Then Alyssa starts to sing, “Oooh, ooooh hooo hooo hooooo oooo …” And my jaw literally drops. Her voice. It’s like spun silk or a cloud. It’s airy and light and shimmery, wrapping around me and pulling me in. I can’t take my eyes off her as she sings Whitney Houston’s old song, Run to You in a style I’m sure would make Whitney herself proud. I watch those singing competitions on TV sometimes. This performance would win. I stare at Alyssa, unable to take my eyes off her. She sings with her eyes closed at times, lost in the lyrics, making the unreal sound coming out of her seem effortless. When she opens her eyes and sings that she wants to run to me, I believe her.

Does she?

I hope so.

The room is still when she sings the last note. And then Gage and Mitch start whistling and clapping like maniacs and Alyssa’s friends, who obviously know how amazing she is, cheer. Tori jumps up and hugs Alyssa .

“It’s been too long since I’ve heard you sing. Thank you.”

“Yeah. No problem.” Alyssa tucks a hair behind her ear, ducks her head and walks to a spot next to the coffee table to sit on the floor. I watch her the whole way. She’s like a magnet to me.

It’s not just being locked in the cabin. It’s not the way she stayed with me while I flubbed at snowboarding. It’s not the late night chats, or the way she feels in my arms.

It’s all of it.

It’s her.

I’ve got it bad.

Later that afternoon, after the rest of our friends demonstrates their mediocre talents, we ate lunch, and half of our crowd retreated to their bedrooms for a nap, I approach Alyssa. She’s curled up in the bay window with a blanket and her Kindle. She looks so cozy, but I can’t help myself.

“Hey,” I say in a quiet voice.

I look down at her and she tilts her head up to meet my gaze.

“Want to take a walk?”

The snow stopped a few hours ago. It’s not too bad. Everything’s covered, but there are dips where paths lie dormant beneath the snow. If we bundle up and put on boots, we can experience that certain kind of stillness that only happens in remote areas after a snowstorm.

“Yeah. I’d like that.” Her voice is soft and her expression intimate.

I smile down at her and extend her my hand.

“I’ll meet you back down here in a few, okay?” she says.

“I’ll be here.”

I watch her walk out of the living room, her long brown hair swishing across her back.

Is this normal? I’ve known Alyssa for less than a week. Maybe being in a cabin is like dog years. Every day is like seven years or something. I do know her. And I definitely like her.

Alyssa reappears, wearing her puffy red ski coat, gloves and a scarf. She’s got her black snow boots on with her jeans tucked into the tops. I pull on my coat and open the door so she can step out past me.