Chapter 13 Jamie
Jamie
Christmas Eve, Shrishti texts me the meme from Mean Girls with text superimposed: “Get in loser, we’re going ICE SKATING.”
I can think of literally nothing I want to do less, but I’m also willing to do just about anything to make Shrishti happy, so I restrain myself to a private eye roll before texting back k fine when.
The answer is MIDNIGHT!!!!!! because of course it is. Only, that night when I head for the front door to leave, I find Marigold there, hopping on one foot as she tries to shove the other one into a navy-blue duck boot.
“Going out somewhere?” I ask, after she’s noticed my presence and promptly toppled sideways into the coat rack.
“Shit! Announce yourself next time, Larson!”
“Shan’t. It’s too funny watching you struggle.”
She finally manages to force her foot into the boot, weight landing back on the floor with a solid thud. “I’m going out with Cessy. She invited me ice skating.”
No. No fucking way.
“At Rockefeller Center?”
“Yeah. Midnight skating on Christmas Eve. Festive, no?”
“Funny,” I say. “That’s where I’m going, too.”
“Ha, ha.”
“No, I’m serious. Shrishti invited me.” I arch a brow at her. “Take that as you will.”
Marigold tugs on her coat and passes me mine. “They’re in cahoots. To what end, I don’t know. But definitely in cahoots.”
She pulls on a rather ridiculous-looking beanie, bedecked with a sparkly white pom-pom on top.
“You look like a cupcake,” I tell her.
“Thank you,” she says haughtily, and grabs the keys. “Now, are you going to call in sick? Or are you coming with me?”
Coming with, apparently, although the prospect of faking a migraine does sound awfully tempting now that she mentions it. Only once we’re out on the street, barely catching the downtown bus before it pulls away from the curb, I think…This isn’t so bad.
None of this has been “so bad,” in fact. Not since the day I moved in with Marigold.
I still don’t know what to make of that.
It’s snowing when we emerge from the bus at Rockefeller Center.
It’s really starting to feel like the universe is out to get me.
And by get me, I of course mean turn tonight into some kind of syrupy Hallmark movie.
One in which I’m presumably the Scrooge character for not getting appropriately merry—or at least that’s what Shrishti implies when we meet up with her and Cessy in the locker room:
“Who pissed in your eggnog?” Shrishti, of course, is ornamented in a green-and-red reindeer sweater, complete with a headband that has antlers sprouting out of it. “Lighten up, Jamie, it’s Christmas!”
I honestly hadn’t thought I looked that morose.
“I just didn’t realize this was a double date, that’s all,” I say. “But consider me lightened!”
And if there had been any lingering part of me holding on to some resentment, it vanishes once we’re out on the ice—partly because it turns out that Marigold can’t skate. Like, at all.
“This is so embarrassing!” she shrieks at Cessy as she topples over for the third time in the first five minutes. The knees of her cream-colored tights are already soaking wet. “I can’t believe you have me making a fool of myself in front of Jamie Larson, of all people!”
“I heard that,” I call from ten feet away, and punctuate it with a smooth counter turn, just to show off; twenty-one years of Iowa winters weren’t for nothing.
She laughs, and I’m suddenly struck by how beautiful she looks like this, cheeks flushed pink with the cold and snow scattered like glitter through her hair. I skate closer and offer her a hand, which she—somewhat surprisingly—takes.
“You good?” I ask once she’s upright again.
“The only thing injured is my ego,” she says. Up close, she’s even prettier. Her pupils are huge and black, reflecting the fairy lights strung about the rink—dark pools full of stars.
“Do you need someone to hold your hand?”
I mean it to be sarcastic, but it doesn’t come out that way. It must not, because she just nods and interlaces her gloved fingers with mine, grip tightening as we start to skate forward.
“You good?” I ask again after we’ve made it ten feet—which is more progress than she’d made so far on her own.
“Hanging in there!” she says, all fake cheery, but she’s still gripping my hand like she wants to crush it.
“You can loosen your grip, you know,” I say. “Just a little.”
“Oh. Sorry.” She relents, but only for about five seconds before she wobbles and we’re back to bone-disintegrating strength.
“Is this your master plan? Snap all the bones in my fingers so I can’t play at Stockholm next month?”
She snorts, but the pressure doesn’t really let up. “Yeah, you got me. This was all part of the long game. Get you to stay at my place, so you start to trust me, then have Shrishti invite you here so I can obliterate your treble hand. Is it working?”
“Few more minutes should do the trick.”
She laughs, and the sound is light and crystalline in the chilly night air.
It makes me want to say something else to earn that laugh again.
I watch her out of the corner of my eye, her hair whipping around her wind-reddened cheeks.
Her lips are flushed the same color—bitten, a part of me thinks, and the visual of my mouth on hers, my tongue salving the sting from my teeth and her breath hot where it mingles with mine… .
Indecent, that’s what it is.
I really need to focus on something else. Anything else.
This late, we’re some of the only ones left on the ice—even at Christmas. A drunk-looking couple near us staggers against the rink wall, cackling; Marigold’s distracted enough by them that she skates right into me and sends us both tumbling down to the ice.
She lands half-sprawled atop me, one knee between my legs—that was close—and her hands flattened against my chest. For a second I just stare at her, her pink-tinged nose scant inches from mine and her damp hair tumbling forward to graze my cheek.
“Ouch. Sorry,” she says, but she doesn’t move, and for a long moment I can’t bring myself to make her. My hands find her hips and just…rest there, our breath puffing in frozen clouds between our lips. Hers are lacquered in clear gloss. This close, she smells faintly of strawberries.
“Merry Christmas,” I say eventually, because it’s the first thing that pops into my mind.
“Christmukkah, this year,” she says, gesturing toward the massive menorah someone has erected opposite the Christmas tree.
“Right. Well, then, merry Christmukkah. Or happy Hanu-mas. Um.”
A faint shudder rolls through her body, and at last she pushes herself away, climbing unsteadily to her feet.
It’s her turn to offer me a hand, but I wave it away; I’m not convinced my weight wouldn’t pull her off balance again and send us both crashing down.
And this time, her knee might meet its painful target after all.
“Sorry,” she says again once we’re both upright, as I dust the fallen snow off my now-freezing ass.
“I’ll accept compensation in the form of donated practice room hours. Ten should do it.”
“Oh, you wish.” She holds out her hand, and she waits for me to take it.
It feels too easy, touching her like this. I should want to let go. I should skate away and leave her there for Cessy to deal with, since Cessy is the one who invited her.
But instead I wrap my hand around hers and gently tug her forward, and we skate side by side underneath the lights.