Snowed in for Christmas

Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two

Jett

PAUL AND MOM MAKE dinner that night, a truly enormous meal that includes steak, potatoes, asparagus soaked in butter, the works. They even pull out cheesecake for dessert. After all those days of peanut butter sandwiches and instant ramen, it’s a true feast.

Part of me misses the peanut butter and ramen, though.

Ben and I speak as little as possible that day. We don’t fight, which I suppose we should if we truly want to convince our parents nothing happened, but neither of us seem to have the heart for it. We stay quiet instead, and our parents seem to interpret that as exhaustion due to our “harrowing adventure.”

The news echoes in my head all day. I sneak glances at Ben, wondering if he heard what I heard, wondering if his head is spinning the way mine is. Our parents are through. They aren’t dating anymore. They’ve called it off for whatever reason. When they cook us dinner, they do it as friends, joking, jabbing each other playfully with their elbows. Their relationship didn’t work out, but they hold no bitterness.

And Ben and I are free to do whatever we want.

He has to be thinking it too. The moment our parents finished talking with us, he ran up to his room to hide, only returning when his dad called him down for dinner. He ate sullenly, staring at his plate. That was the moment I probably should have given him shit to convince our parents that nothing had changed, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it when he couldn’t even lift his eyes from his asparagus.

After dinner, we all eat cheesecake in the living room while watching a cheesy Christmas special on television. Ben chooses one of the arm chairs, curling his legs up to make himself small. His eyes never leave the screen.

I sit beside my mother, equally quiet. Though I stare at the screen, I don’t see a single thing happening on it.

The next day, I come downstairs to find my makeshift Christmas tree still sitting in its pitcher on the kitchen island. I should have gotten rid of the damn thing. The sight of it stings my chest like a jab from an enormous bee. But it’s far too late now, especially because wrapped gifts rest all around it. My mom or Paul apparently also found some simple string lights to carefully drape over it.

“I’m told this was your idea,” Mom says as I trudge sleepily into the kitchen.

“The tree? I guess so. It’s just a branch from the backyard. I was bored.”

I certainly can’t tell her I made that “Christmas tree” for the sake of giving Ben a gift, a gift I hope he’ll always remember me by.

“It’s nice,” Mom says. “Very ‘Charlie Brown.’”

I chuckle. “That’s what I thought too.”

“Do you want coffee?”

“God, yes.”

The day is a little more bearable with caffeine. I add a couple gifts around the tree, stuff I got for Paul and Mom. I didn’t bring anything for Ben, and he didn’t bring anything for me. At the time, that sort of gesture would have been unthinkable. Besides, I gave him his gift in private.

We gather on the stools around the kitchen island and open gifts one by one, even though we technically missed Christmas by a day. Yesterday was already a lot without adding a major holiday to it, however. Mom got me a new scarf, as well as a video game I’ve been eyeing for a while. Paul got Ben a new pair of binoculars that look powerful enough to pick out individual rocks on the moon. I whittled something for my mom. She’s always liked handmade stuff. It’s just her cat, but she squeals over it and hugs me tight enough to crush my bones. I also got her an e-reader for all those books she devours.

The gifts go on until the tidy presents sitting under the tree turn into a pile of paper and cardboard. Paul gets up to make everyone breakfast while the rest of us clean up. Ben still doesn’t speak to me, but maybe it’s because we’re in front of our parents. It has to be. I need it to be. Because if there’s some other reason for his silence, it’s nothing good.

He vanishes again after breakfast, back up to his room, back up to his books. I struggle not to watch him go, my chest all tight and achy when his bedroom door shuts.

I struggle to find something to do with myself that day. All I want is to talk to Ben, figure out where his head is at. We have a chance now, a real chance. Maybe we would need to play it cool for a little while, but in a week, a month, two months we could be doing whatever we want. We could be together if we wanted.

His silence crawls through me like tree roots pushing up and cracking pavement. Every moment we don’t speak, a new fissure appears. Maybe he doesn’t want to be together. Maybe he never wanted to be together. Was this nothing more than an experiment for him, a momentary lapse in judgment? I struggle to reconcile that image with what happened over the past several days. Overlaying that Ben atop the Ben gasping and groaning in my bed is like crossing my eyes to try to make sense out of one of those Magic Eye pictures. I give myself a headache before I manage to reconcile the images.

I head outside at some point, shoveling the slushy snow out of the driveway to make it easier when we leave here tomorrow. When I parked in this driveway, I never imagined I’d be so reluctant to get out of here, but even with the cold biting my bare hands and the tip of my nose, I’d give just about anything for a second blizzard. Even with our parents here, something of the magic of this past week remains. The moment we drive away, it’ll be gone for good, no more substantial than the melted snow.

TOMORROW ARRIVES ALL TOO swiftly. I wake to the sound of quiet discussions. When I pad downstairs, bags sit in the hall. The kitchen is sparkling clean. Every pillow and coaster has returned to its proper place.

Mom bustles up to me. “I made you coffee,” she says, “but can you go get your sheets off your bed? We have to start a load of laundry before we leave. Benjamin already threw his in before leaving.”

“He left?” I can’t keep the hurt out of my voice as my heart plummets into my feet.

Thankfully, Mom doesn’t seem to notice. “Yeah, he was up early. Said he wanted to get back before noon if he could.”

The news strikes like a punch to the chest. I’m winded from standing still in front of my mother. I drag myself numbly back up the stairs and yank the sheets off the bed, the sheets we slept in, the sheets that still smell like the two of us, no matter how I tried to cover the scent with weed. I hold them bundled in my arms and, in a moment of weakness, shove my nose into them and breathe deeply. I close my eyes as memories flood through me, memories Ben is apparently more than happy to sprint away from as quickly as he can.

Is it really that easy for him? I’m here sniffing sheets and he’s speeding back to his normal life, locking himself up with his books to forget all about me. Did these past several days truly mean nothing to him? It seemed like they did. It seemed like they mattered. But I’m beginning to question everything I thought I learned about him.

I haul the sheets downstairs and throw them into the washing machine before I can linger any longer. I start up the wash. Water gushes into the machine, stripping away the final traces of the time Ben and I shared together.

I don’t hang around long after that. I accept coffee, but not food, packing up my stuff and getting out of the house as soon as I can. I help Paul and Mom with some of the clean up, but Ben apparently took care of a lot of it before he made his escape this morning. By noon, I’m alone in my car, winding through the sleepy resort town of Stone Valley.

Snow still dusts the sides of the mountains when I reach the pass, but the road itself lies clear. I drive through nothing worse than a bit of slush that dampens the roadway.

I go straight back to Denver, to my mom’s house. There are a few days left in the break, but I have no idea what to do with any of them.

At first, I simply get high and play that new game Mom got me. The time slips by, and I don’t hear from Ben even once. I think about texting him myself, but the thought of getting confirmation of his rejection scares me worse than the silence, so instead I say nothing.

Then it’s time to head back to school. My stomach twists up at the thought. We both only have one semester left, but we’ll spend it in the same block of dorm rooms. There will be no avoiding each other, no forgetting that the other lives down the hall. We will have to see each other, and I have no idea whether Ben will even meet my eyes when we do.

My roommate Ryan notices my foul mood immediately.

“Damn, someone needs to get laid,” he declares during our first night back in our room.

“Shut up,” I grumble.

“Ha! So it’s true.”

“It’s not true.”

“No?” he says with a raised eyebrow. “Got some action during the break? Who was it? Don’t tell me it was that weird freshman.”

I roll my eyes. “It was none of your business, that’s who.”

Ryan flops onto my bed next me. “Of course it’s my business. C’mon, man, why so secretive?”

I sigh. Usually I’d tell him all about my escapades. I don’t know how to explain that this is the one time I can’t kiss and tell.

“Holy shit, was it serious?” Ryan says. “No way. Did you fall for someone?”

“Will you shut up?” I snarl. “Don’t be stupid.” Even though he’s completely right, I’ll never admit it to him.

Ryan slaps me on the shoulder and hops back up. “Well, whatever, man. Listen, I’m going to a little thing tonight. A couple of those sorority girls down the hall are having a get together. Just a handful of us. You should come. Might get your mind off of…” He waves a hand vaguely. “Whoever did this to you.”

“Whoever did this to me” happens to be a guy who lives just down the hall, a guy I professed to hate mere weeks ago. Ryan would never believe me if I told him the truth. At this point, with Ben’s icy silence, I barely believe it.

“Fine,” I say. “You’re right. I do need to get this out of my system.”

Ryan grins. “Atta boy! I’m heading over now, but text when you’re on your way. Room 403.”

“Sure, got it.”

I hunch forward onto my knees after Ryan leaves, sorely tempted to bury my head in my hands and never come out, but he’s right. I need to go out tonight. I need to flirt, to drink, to meet other people. It’s the only way I’ll have any hope of shaking off this thing with Ben. It’s the only way I’ll stop missing him.