Chapter 19 #3
Shit. Try banana pancakes.
I can’t bake.
I don’t believe you.
Patricia lost a few teeth thanks to my cookies.
Patricia Pastry Shop?
Yeah.
She’s over two hundred years old or something. You lose your teeth. I bet your cookies are good.
I laugh. Before I can respond, another text shows up.
What happened?
My fingers hover over the screen as I weigh telling him or not. But, well, if this is supposed to be the start of something, honesty’s important.
My ex showed up at the B he’s so right it’s almost scary. It’s all so easy. What’s even more frightening, though, is how much he’s helping me out of my hole. He’s reaching out his hand to me, and I’m grabbing it with all my fingers so that I don’t fall one more time.
I even manage to get up and start cleaning my room.
I manage to start humming Taylor Swift songs and to re-glue the lights to my ceiling.
We spend the whole day texting back and forth, trivial things that make me laugh even though they’re not all that funny.
We talk about William and Vaughn, how they never stop arguing over Vaughn’s music.
We write about Patricia and Spirit Susan, who has told just about every one of Aspen’s residents at least once a year that, pretty soon, they’re going to run into a yeti during a blizzard before their knight in shining armor comes to save them.
We text about everything and nothing, and yet every word helps my heart to bloom a little bit more.
In the evening I send him a goodnight text, even adding a kiss-blowing emoji.
I’ve gotten the fireplace in my room going, turned on all my string lights, and have a cup of hot chocolate waiting for me on my nightstand, as I intend to study a bit more in bed.
I’m smiling as I walk over to the window to draw the curtains.
Thick flakes are falling from the sky. The first of the year.
All the house lights and streetlights are in fierce competition to see who the better accompaniment to the flakes’ white winter dance will be.
I watch the goings-on for a while, warmed by the fire, when my eyes notice something else.
There, on the other side of the street, in front of Patricia’s Pastry Shop and right in the middle of William’s no-parking zone, is Wyatt’s Volvo.
The light is on, and I see him and Camila in the seats, covered by blankets.
They plan to sleep in the Volvo. They plan to sleep there the whole night long, maybe even longer.
For a while I just stand there with the edge of the curtain in my hand, looking at the car. In the meantime, they’re almost completely enveloped by the snow.
Paxton’s words come to mind. “Maybe one day you’ll manage to get so involved with me that you won’t have to let go of the time with your ex but will be able to remember him as a good friend.” And then Mom’s. “If you want to forget him, you have to accept that it’s over.”
The curtain slips out of my hand. The flakes merge into one single storm before my eyes.
I take my lined robe off the bedpost, slip into my Birkenstocks, and shuffle downstairs.
I take the last key from behind the counter and go outside.
Aspen smells of snow, love, and security.
The roofs of our town’s gingerbread houses are covered with soft white powder.
The snow crunches beneath my sandals as I fight my way across the street.
It’s only a few feet, but by the time I knock on the window, my fingers are already numb.
Wyatt flinches. Seeing me, he puts the window down.
I hold the keys out under his nose. “Room twelve. You know where it is.”
He blinks, seems surprised, but just for a second, then he’s got himself back under control and grins. That dumb Wyatt grin that always gets me off track without fail.
“Twelve, huh?”
I turn around and go back inside. The two grab their things and follow, but I don’t turn around; I just keep on going until I’m back in my room and, with a pounding heart, under my blankets.
For the next few days or even weeks, Wyatt Lopez is going to be just a heartbeat away, and I have no idea where that’s going to take me.