Ten #2
London pushed herself up and went to the window. Up close, the paper snowflakes looked worse than they seemed. They were so ugly, they were adorable. She reached up and adjusted one that had started to peel away from the glass.
The front door opened behind her, and London turned. Probably another neighbor doing good deeds.
Harper stepped inside, stamping snow from her boots and dusting it off her beanie.
“Forget something?” London asked.
Harper pulled off her gloves and Carhartt. “Nah, just done earlier than I thought.”
She glanced around the room, noticing the folding table and laptop.
“Still working?”
“Just finished.”
London stopped a smile halfway, Sebastian’s words screaming in her mind. The furnace kicked in and blew enough air to lightly move the snowflakes in the window.
“You hungry?”
Harper pulled a folding chair up to the plastic table. “I could eat.”
“Pizza?”
“Has to be. It’s the only thing you can get delivered in this town,” Harper said, deadpan.
That had been their running joke for years.
When they moved to Leavenworth from Los Angeles, Harper had innocently asked about ordering takeout, unaware that food delivery was not a thing in a town with a year-round population of 3,500.
It was before Door Dash, but well within the realm of restaurants delivering food.
They’d ordered takeout Chinese weekly in California.
“There’s no delivery?” she asked, incensed. “I feel baited and switched. You moved me someplace where we have to cook or go out for food?”
She’d been joking, but the joke stuck. When they didn’t want to cook, when going to a restaurant was too much work or too expensive or too overrun with tourists, Harper would ask, “Wanna order in?”
And London would say, “Pizza? It’s the only thing you can get delivered in this town.”
Hearing that banter again landed heavy on London’s heart.
It was like finding an old pair of jeans in the back of the closet you hadn’t worn in years and discovering they still fit.
Harper seemed to remember, too. The corners of her mouth lifted into that crooked smile London used to wait all day to see. “Like I said, pizza.”
London retrieved her phone from the back pocket of her jeans, carpenter pants she’d never worn for actual carpenter work. Until now. “Same place?”
“Has there ever been another option?”
London dialed from memory. The number had been the same since she was a kid.
“Half margarita—”
“—half sausage.” Harper finished the sentence. The way they’d always done it.
When London hung up, Harper was in the window, studying the snowflakes.
“They’re terrible,” she said.
“Yes. And they’re children,” London defended.
“Doesn’t make them good.”
“You’re heartless. Where’s your Christmas spirit?”
Harper reached up and rotated a snowflake. Always trying to level things.
“That’s worse,” London said.
“Don’t criticize an artist.”
Was that a laugh?
“But you were just—”
Outside, snow started floating down. Harper noticed it first, cutting London off before the critique could continue. “Looks like we’re getting more. What a winter, huh?”
London followed her gaze to the street. It had grown silent. Calm. The way it only did when snow started to settle in earnest. They stood inside their own snow globe and watched little puffs of cotton landing quietly on the pillow of existing snowbanks.
It had been so long since she’d been with Harper in easy silence. Together, but not talking, just being. Nothing was wrong. No sudden loss. No emergency. No accusations.
Harper dropped her hand from the snowflake she’d been obsessed with fixing and leaned on the windowsill.
“So, did Bash interrogate you when I left?”
“Immediately,” London fessed up. “Why would you think that?”
“Because he called me and did the same thing.”
Of course he did.
After a few seconds of internal debate, her “fuck it” attitude and Fifty in Fifty list took over: Don’t wait to say the hard things.
“He thinks you comforting me earlier means something. But you know Bash, he’s addicted to Hallmark movies and happy endings.”
“What did you think it meant?”
“I thought you didn’t want to see me cry on the street.”
“Seemed like the right move,” Harper said, just as a car pulled up with a neon Leavenworth Pizza sign on its roof.
“Yeah,” London said. “Let me go get that.”
She stepped into the cold to retrieve the warm pizza box and thanked the driver before the car pulled away again, red sign glowing through the falling snow.
When she returned, Harper had thrown a painter’s tarp down and was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the dining room. The crystal chandelier was a stark contrast to paint splattered canvas.
“We have that folding table.” London set the box between them.
“This’ll be more fun. Less formal. Pizza from the box on the floor is just so—”
“2007? Santa Monica? When we literally dug in couch cushions to find take out money?”
“I was thinking Barn Beach bonfire, but that works, too.” Harper smoothed a wrinkle on the tarp, as if they were preparing for a fine dining experience.
When the box opened, the scent of Italy filled the room.
“I don’t care what anyone says. Tomato, cheese, and oregano are the holy trinity. They can keep their celery and carrots.” London took a big bite of a big slice.
“Remember when your dad banned pizza on the couches? Said the sauce was impossible to get out?”
“And then he spilled a glass of Red Mountain Cab on it trying to impress a Sommelier guest.”
“That was just the best!”
“Well, Mum always said, it wasn’t a party until the red wine was spilled. And that Dad was the biggest klutz she’d ever met, and she loved him regardless.”
“That couch was doomed anyway,” Harper folded a slice. She’d always done it that way. “I mean, who buys a white couch for a rental property? It’s like throwing away money.”
“Wait here.” London pushed herself up and stifled a grunt. Her body still ached.
Harper watched her disappear into the kitchen and return with a bottle of wine and two mismatched wine glasses.
“You had this the whole time?”
“Emergency bottle.” London set the glasses between them and pulled a wine key out of her pocket. “I figured today qualifies.”
She opened it without ceremony. Four twists. One pull. The pop of the cork, and then, two glasses half filled with a local Pinot Noir.
“What are we toasting?” Harper asked before taking a sip.
There were a dozen things she could say.
The inn. The overzealous neighbors with good intentions. Surviving the year.
Don’t wait.
“To you.” London raised her glass. “For helping me save this place. For showing up when you didn’t have to.”
Harper looked down at the wine, a light maroon, almost transparent. “To The Colchuck,” she said, unwilling to be the center of attention.
The wine was complex, the kind that warmed your insides with care. Thoughtful. Not alcohol-forward. Washington wines, London boasted, were some of the best in the world.
The conversation bloomed easily from there. Memorable guests, both good and bad. Frederick’s impossible standards. Their favorite Christmas memories. The time they’d accidentally double-booked Harper’s parents to stay in the honeymoon suite—with a couple on their honeymoon.
Harper laughed at that last one. Her dad had been so kind about it. Flabbergasted. But kind. He’d found other accommodations so the couple could enjoy their post-wedding euphoria. Harper was a lot like her dad. She put other people’s needs first, instinctively.
Wine softened the edges of the evening. Not enough to make things blurry. Enough to dissolve the tenseness that followed them everywhere.
At some point, the pizza box was pushed away. At some point—they’d shifted closer.
London wasn’t sure when it happened, and she’d only noticed it when Harper moved a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
Neither of them spoke, the quiet calm of the snowstorm enveloping them, even inside.
London looked into Harper’s eyes, hazel and strong, shifting between green and blue as they always did.
Who moved first?
Maybe neither of them did. Maybe it just sort of happened, like gravity.
They’d been this close thousands of times. Pulling lint off the other’s sweater, plucking a loose eyelash and making a wish, tucking hair behind ears.
In restaurants. On ski lifts. At the front desk.
But this felt different.
Because they both noticed.
London could feel her heartbeat in her wrists.
Harper’s eyes searched her face the way they used to. Curious. Open. A little uncertain.
This was not a good idea. It was, in fact, a very bad idea.
London knew how complicated this would make things.
And she did it anyway.
When their lips met, it wasn’t fireworks. It wasn’t magic. It was comfort.
Harper tasted like pinot and smelled faintly of oregano and sawdust. Her lips were warm. Soft. She took London’s head in her hand and pulled.
Oh.
This was a very bad idea.
For a few seconds, London forgot why.
Forgot the papers in the drawer and the guests on the way and the agreement. Forgot the careful distance they’d been keeping. Forgot the plan she’d built to survive the next year, when everything else crashed around her.
There was just this. And heat. And the way Harper’s breath warmed her neck.
It would have been easy to keep going. Too easy, maybe.
London pulled back. Not a lot. Enough.
Harper didn’t chase her. Her hand stayed where it was briefly, fingers resting against London’s head until she let them fall.
They stayed close.
Start living, she'd written. Number ten. At the time she thought that meant Portugal.
“You okay?” Harper asked, studying her face for a clue.
A glance at the empty pizza box turned into transfixion on a grease spot.
“That,” she said, gesturing vaguely between them, “probably wasn’t part of the construction contract.”
Harper let out a little laugh. Permission for it to be okay. “Probably not.” Her hand brushed London’s again. This time, neither pretended it was an accident. London didn’t move.