Chapter 9 #2
“Oh, well, it’s really great,” she said dismissively. “Hey, Archer.” She redirected, laying her hand on his arm. “Have you, ah, kissed anyone under the mistletoe yet?”
My stomach dropped at my feet. Started collecting snow right there on the sidewalk.
Archer laughed. “They just hung it like an hour ago.”
She shrugged. “Do you maybe want to walk over and look at it with me?”
Ooh, she was bold.
And it was her boldness that made me wither a little. Not only was I jealous, but now I was envious too.
Archer was silent a moment, staring down the street toward the lit-up gazebo with the tree and mistletoe. Then he turned back to the girl still clinging to his arm.
She was worse than a snowflake.
“Ah, sorry. Can’t. We’re going to eat.” Archer looked at me.
“Yep,” I said. “I’m starving. He promised if I helped him shop.”
Archer laughed and pulled away from the girl to drape his arm around my shoulders. “You don’t want to see him hangry.”
I elbowed him in the side, and he laughed.
“Okay. Well, maybe another time,” the girl offered.
“Sure,” Archer said, steering me toward Bab’s. “See you later!”
A few seconds later, I glanced over from beneath his arm. His arm that I really liked the weight of. Just like I liked the feel of his wide frame against my side. “You, ah, could have ditched me back there.”
He made a face. “Why would I do that?”
“Because she totally has the hots for you, and you know it.”
“Well, I like you better than her.”
My heart and my stomach somersaulted at the same time. In opposite directions. My feet stuttered a little under the onslaught as the wiring in my brain also short-circuited. Archer’s arm moved from around my shoulders to around my waist, tightening to keep me from tumbling.
“Whoa there. Did you somehow sneak some of that moonshine back there without me seeing?”
“I told you I’m starving, and you dragged me to every shop anyway,” I complained.
He laughed, and with it right beside my ear, it felt like it was just for me.
“Well, we’d better get you fed before you fall into a snowbank.”
He didn’t take his arm from around me until he opened the door to the bistro.
A short while later, we were back out in the swirling snow, the night even darker than before. I glanced up into the inky sky, hoping to see a few stars, but they were muted by the twinkling lights still illuminating the town.
A packed snowball slammed into the side of my head and exploded, snow and ice raining all over my jacket and hat. I spun as Archer laughed, bending to grab another handful and launch it at me.
With a battle cry, I ran to the nearest snowbank and grabbed my own handful, taking a moment to pack it tight before launching it at him. He batted it away like the athlete he was, and I went back for another.
After that, we lost ourselves in a snowball battle, running down the street and into the town square, where a whole field of snow waited to be utilized. My entire face was burning, my gloves wet and my toes stiff by the time I held up my hands in surrender.
“No more!” I called. “My fingers will fall off.”
“Lightweight!” Archer called from a few yards away.
Using my teeth, I tugged off my gloves as I walked toward the gazebo, going up the steps at the backside of the tree. Once the gloves were off, I curled my hands around my mouth and blew into them, trying to get warm.
Archer jogged up behind me, and I leaned against one of the wooden pillars and gazed at the tree, trying to remember where my mom hung our family’s ornament.
“You can’t be that cold already.” He tormented me, his smile nearly as bright as the lights on the tree. Or maybe that was just how much he lit me up inside.
Don’t think like that. I reminded myself. He’s your best friend. Nothing else.
Keeping my eyes cast down, I blew into my hands again.
Archer’s boots filled my line of vision, and then his hands wrapped around mine. “They’re like ice,” he exclaimed.
“I told you,” I muttered, trying to calm my racing heart.
How was I supposed to think of him as just a friend when he made me feel so much more?
“Guess I know what I’m getting you for Christmas,” he said, rubbing his hands over mine. I stared at where he engulfed me, wondering when he’d taken off his gloves.
Taking in the feel of his skin against mine.
“Better gloves.”
His words startled me, and I looked up. “Wh-what?” I asked, the word forming as a white cloud between us.
He was standing so close.
“I’m getting you better gloves for Christmas,” he repeated.
“Oh,” I said, teeth beginning to chatter.
“Jeez, Tobes, listen to you,” he murmured and pulled my hands up and toward his mouth.
I stared, slack-jawed and wide-eyed, as he lowered to blow into our hands, warming my skin with not only his skin but his breath too.
Breath from his lungs.
Inside him.
On me now.
“I think that was our last snowball fight,” he said between breaths.
The hair on my head stood. I was shocked it didn’t blow right off.
“Wh-what?” I rasped, still enraptured by the sight of him cradling my hands and sharing his warm breath.
“You clearly can’t handle it. You’re too delicate.”
I jerked back, nearly yanking my hands free of his. “I am not.”
“Then why are your hands like ice?” he asked, tugging them back to blow on again.
I glanced across the gazebo, eyes landing on the mistletoe.
“I like you better than her.” Archer’s words replayed as I stared at the symbol of true love.
The friction of our hands as he rubbed them together created a spark, a spark that turned me brave.
“Guess there’s a little life left in you after all,” Archer said, finally letting go of my hands and stepping back.
I stared at him without a word until he cleared his throat and tucked his hands into his pockets. “Guess we should be going.”
He turned and disappeared behind the tree. Shoving away from the railing, I went after him, noting the way the lights made his hair seem gold.
“Archer.”
He stopped.
Turned.
Neither of us spoke a word, but even without words, there was something. Something bigger. Even though it was unspoken, it was there, swirling between us. Something that felt so big in that moment, something so alive there was no way I could ignore it.
His eyes flickered when I started forward. At his sides, his hands flexed. I bulldozed right into him, arms around his shoulders, and pushed him back.
The buzzing between my ears was so loud that I heard nothing else as my lips brushed against his. My entire body began to sing… only to be cut short by a loud thump.
Shocked, I glanced around, realizing the loud thump was me and I was on my ass in the gazebo.
I pushed up onto my elbows as Archer stared down from above, his face unreadable and closed off.
“Archer, I…” I started, panic flooding my limbs at rapid speed.
He made a slashing motion with his hand, and I fell quiet and watched in utter horror as he lifted his arm and swiped it over his lips.
The lips I’d just tried to kiss.
He scrubbed them down his arm and the back of his hand before letting it fall to his side. “What the hell was that?” he demanded.
“I don’t know. I-I…” Oh my God, what the hell had I been thinking?
I hadn’t. I’d been feeling.
My mom always told me to never be sorry for what I felt because my feelings were my feelings.
But I was sorry now. So sorry.
“Archer, I didn’t mean…” I faltered.
“To kiss me?” He finished.
I swallowed.
“Why?” he demanded.
I looked up.
“Why would you do that?”
If my heart beat any harder, it would shatter. As it was, my chest was likely already bruised. Moments ago, when I’d looked at that mistletoe hanging there and promising true love and then felt the… well, whatever I felt in the air around us—
“Toby.”
My spiraling mind stilled. I wet my lips. “I—I like you.”
Thick silence stretched between us, muffling that whispered confession.
“Of course you do. We’re friends.”
I looked at him, for once unable to hide the true depth of just how much I liked him.
His face flushed, eyes darting everywhere but to me. In that moment, any warmth he’d given me was gone, and I was back to freezing. I went into crisis mode, trying to ignore the shattered pieces of my once-whole heart to think of a way to salvage what I could of our relationship.
Because in truth, I would rather be Archer’s friend than nothing at all.
“How could you?” he rasped, horrified and accusing.
I averted my eyes to just over his shoulder because looking at his disgust was more than I could bear. But in my attempt to avoid him, I locked eyes on the mistletoe… the liar wrapped up with a red bow.
I fell under its spell, believed in its magic.
As I stared at the legend, now a witness to my downfall, Archer drove the nail in our friendship coffin. “You’ve ruined everything.”
And then he fled the gazebo like it was the scene of a crime when, in reality, it was the beginning of the greatest regret I’d ever know.