Naughty or Nice

20. Henry

20

HENRY

DECEMBER 27

“ Y ou want one?” Rora holds up an unwrapped sour candy.

I don’t understand how she hasn’t fried her tastebuds off with the amount of citric acid she’s consumed over the years. Sour has never been my flavor of choice, but it’s as close as I can get to tasting Rora on my tongue for now, so I nod.

She pops the candy between my lips, and my eyes water. Rora rests her head on my shoulder, peering down at the Switch in my hand. Charlie and Kate went to visit friends, so she’s sitting in my lap in the living room, and we’re just pretending that it’s not weird that Noelle and Felix are right there.

The past thirty-six hours have been bliss; we’ve barely spent a second apart. We lazed around with my family all day yesterday, Rora teaching me the basics of how to play Animal Crossing . The first thing I asked her to teach me was how to grow flowers, and when she fell asleep, I looked up how to send them to her. If she was serious about us playing together when we’re traveling, I’m going to send her virtual flowers every damn day. I’ll do anything it takes to keep in touch with her.

We slept at her place because, as nice as the queen-size guest bed here is, she wasn’t kidding when she said she couldn’t stay quiet, even with the belt between her teeth. And now, she’s showing me how to catch fish in the game, and I’m not sure I’ve ever been so content.

“Okay, hold just a second until?—”

My phone rings, and we both jump. I only just manage not to drop the console, but the fish is long gone.

“This is how you know he’s old—he has the sound on his phone,” Felix grumbles from the armchair, where he was napping before my phone woke him up.

“Everyone keeps the sound on,” I say, reaching for my still-ringing phone, but the call ends the second my fingers graze it.

Rora wrinkles her nose and shakes her head. “No one under the age of forty.”

“Shit. I am old.”

Rora reaches up to kiss my cheek. “I like it,” she says with a wink, climbing off my lap and stretching. “I’m going to make hot chocolate.”

I watch her walk into the kitchen, my heart racing, before glancing at the missed call on my phone. Forget racing; my heart plummets into my stomach. There’s only one reason my boss would be calling.

Squeezing my phone tight, I follow Rora into the kitchen. She looks over her shoulder, and I nod to the door.

“I’m going to head out to return this call, so Felix can go back to sleep.”

“Cool. You want peppermint in the hot chocolate?”

The bright sparkle in her eyes does nothing to dissolve the dread coiling inside me. I just want to grab her, hide away, and pretend I don’t even have a phone.

“Sure, baby. That sounds perfect.”

I shove my feet into my snow boots, pull a beanie over my head, and shrug on my jacket before stepping out into the wintry afternoon. The porch roof has done a decent job of keeping the snow off the porch, so I sink onto the swing and take a deep breath before hitting my boss’s name.

She answers on the third ring. “Henry! Thanks for calling back. I have your first assignment.”

I stay on the porch for longer than I should after the call is over, just processing. But every second in Wintermore feels a little more precious now, and I know better than to waste them, so I stand up and force myself to walk back into the house, stomping my boots on the welcome mat.

Rora is humming my favorite song from the album I played her last night, slowly swaying while she stirs the hot chocolate. She looks up when I enter the kitchen, but every bit of light drains from her face as she takes in my expression. She opens her mouth and closes it again like she isn’t sure what to say. The room is silent save for the bubbling on the stove.

“Let’s take a walk, sugar.”

She swallows and turns the burner off. “Okay.” Her hands shake a little as she opens a cabinet and withdraws two travel mugs.

I cross the room, placing a hand on her lower back. “I’ll get the hot chocolate.”

Rora nods, and I hear her sitting on the bench by the door to pull her boots on. By the time the travel mugs are closed, full of chocolate and peppermint, she’s all bundled up. I offer her a cup and she takes it, shouting to Felix and Noelle that we’re going out, and threading gloved fingers through mine.

Snow crunches under our boots. We don’t speak, just cling to each other’s hands and head out of the cul-de-sac. On Main Street, we turn away from the town in unison, an unspoken agreement that we don’t want to be surrounded by locals and tourists enjoying the end of the festive week.

We follow the frozen river, and I think we’re heading for the park a half mile or so from the town center until Rora tugs me across a small bridge I’ve never noticed before. She leads me through a tunnel of tall pines and winter shrubs, our tracks the only blemishes on the otherwise perfect snow-covered path. It spits us out into a clearing with an iced-over reservoir and a view of the mountains. A solitary bench peeks through the snow, and small animal print impressions are dotted along the reservoir’s edge.

“Jackrabbits,” Rora says, the sound startling me. She sets her cup on the snowy bench. “They eat the bark from those plants over there,” she continues, nodding toward the trees we’ve just left. “Their fur turns completely white at this time of year so they’re really hard to spot, and I don’t know why I’m talking about it so much. Who was on the phone, Henry?” She looks up at me, visibly holding her breath. She already knows where this is going; I just need to rip the band-aid off.

“My boss. She was calling with the details of my first assignment.”

Rora looks over my shoulder, then down at her boots. Anywhere but at me. “Where are you going?”

That’s not what I expected her to ask . An easier question, with an easier answer than what she really needs to know, I suppose.

I clear my throat. “India. There’s a university where one of my colleagues teaches a unit on Arctic research for a couple of months every year, but his wife is pregnant. I have some teaching experience, and they want me to pick up the class so he can stay closer to home.”

“Makes sense. You’ll be good at that.” She blows out a long breath, foggy in the chilly air, before finally meeting my gaze. “When?” Her voice cracks, and the sound cleaves through me with a sharp sting.

There’s no happy answer to when I’m leaving, but I know she knows it’s an especially shitty answer based on my reaction.

“Friday.”

She just stares at me for a moment like she can’t process the word that’s just come out of my mouth. Her face falls slowly, shadows creeping over her eyes. “Friday? Th-this Friday?” I nod, and she takes a step back like the confirmation has punched her in the gut. “But that’s … that’s in three days.”

She covers her face with her hands, and I want to reach for her, want to pull her into my arms and keep her there for as long as I can. Forever, if I can. But I know she needs a second to process.

“I know, baby.”

When she drops her hands and looks up at me, her eyes are lined with silver. “I thought we’d have more warning. I thought we’d get to ring in the new year together. Fuck, I thought we’d have more time .”

A tear spills down her cheek, and I can’t stop myself any longer. I reach for her, tugging her against my chest and squeezing my eyes closed when I feel a sob wrack her body. Rora buries her face against my jacket, and I wrap my arms tightly around her, trying to memorize the feel of her body against mine.

A moment passes, and she looks up at me, her cheeks tear-streaked. “Friday,” she whispers like she can’t make sense of it.

“Friday,” I repeat, my voice thick.

Rora’s lip quivers, and I brush my thumb over it, desperate to touch every inch of her.

“I don’t know what to say.”

There’s nothing she can say, nothing that is going to make it any easier when I get on that plane and fly eight thousand miles across the world. This was what I wanted, something new to break me out of my rut. I took this job because she encouraged me to. But now? I don’t fucking want it.

I don’t want to do this if it means leaving her. I don’t want to do anything that means leaving her.

“Rora.”

She sucks in a deep breath like she can see the crazy ideas running through my head. And they’re just that: crazy.

“I already know what you’re going to say, but I can’t leave without at least putting it out there,” I say .

A look of resignation falls across her face, but she nods anyway.

“Let’s stay. I’ll take over the store so Noelle can open her bakery. You can open a photography business. We could make it work. We could be together.”

“Henry.”

There’s so much anguish in that one word. I clasp her face, pressing my forehead to hers. “I know. I know.”

“Neither of us wants that,” Rora says, her voice shaky. “We’d just end up resenting this place, resenting each other, like my parents did, because we gave too much up to be here.”

“So come with me.” The words slip out before I can stop them, and her eyes widen. “I’ll be traveling all over. There’ll be so many photography opportunities for you.” It’s not viable. We both know it’s not viable, so why am I still clinging to a shred of an idea that it is?

She presses her lips to my forehead, tears running down her face and onto mine. “Three weeks. We only met three weeks ago. I want this, I do, but we hardly know each other. Not enough to take that kind of leap.”

“You’re right. I know you’re right, but god, I fucking hate it.”

Rora steps out of my arms, and that little spark of hope fizzles out into nothing. She runs her hands through her hair, chewing her bottom lip. I look away, the tear tracks, the mussed hair, and the hollow expression too much. If this is it, if this is all we get, I don’t want to remember us like this.

“I know you were really clear on your feelings on this weeks ago, so there’s zero pressure,” Rora begins as I stare at a jackrabbit print so hard it blurs. “But what if… What if we tried long distance?”

I look up, but it takes a second for her words to sink in, and she must take my silence for hesitation because she sounds less certain when she continues.

“We could call and video chat, and try to meet up when we can. We could actually get to know each other and see where this goes. I know you don’t do long distance, but?—”

“Yes.” I don’t even have to think about it. As soon as I understand what she’s suggesting, it’s a no-brainer.

Her eyes widen. “Yes?”

“Yeah, sugar. Let’s get to know each other and find a way to be us .”

She takes a small, tentative step toward me. “Are you sure? I don’t want you to agree to this just because it’s the only option we have. I know how hard it was for you last time.”

I hold out my arms. “C’mere.” Rora closes the distance between us, and I fold her into my arms. “I know I said never again, but I didn’t know then how I felt about you. It was supposed to be a one-time thing where we went our separate ways. But you’re right; this is our only option. Because I have no intention of leaving here without you in my life, sugar. I want you. I want us . We don’t have to be long distance forever, but we’ll get to know each other and we’ll figure things out.”

“It’s not going to be easy,” she says, but she sounds a little steadier.

“True. It’s probably going to be really fucking hard, actually.”

Rora stands up a little straighter, squaring her shoulders. “But we’re going to do it.”

There she is . Where hope is slowly filling me, Rora is full of that resolved stubbornness that I’ve come to love so much. This is the Rora who wanted a one-time festive fling and made it happen even though it could’ve turned into an awkward mess. The Rora who snuck into a political rally she wasn’t supposed to. The Rora who talks down anxious kids, puts pushy parents in their place, and resolves sibling disputes without breaking a sweat.

And if this is the Rora determined to make things work between us? We’ve got this.