Chapter 5
It hardly snowed in Houston, but my freshman year of college, flurries fell slantwise, dissolving against my dorm window.
Classes were canceled. Milan and I stole packets of Swiss Miss from the dining hall.
The hot chocolate was too sweet, but we sipped it in her twin bed, watching a rom-com in which two office mates hurled bland insults at each other, shared stories about their awful Midwestern childhoods over Chinese takeout, and kissed without tongue. Booooo!!!
Milan was propped on her giant pillow, thumbing through Instagram. She gasped. “There’s a snowball fight on the quad. We have to go.”
“You just did my hair.”
Kissing her teeth, “Put on a bonnet.”
I begrudgingly flung off the blanket and went to my closet to dig up a beanie. In front of the mirror, Milan wiggled a mascara wand through her lashes. I knew then that there was a guy, and this was a cover to track him down.
On the quad, boys pelted screaming girls in the dwindling sunlight. Rocking on her toes, Milan said, “Do you see a tall—FUCK!” A guy stuffed a snowball down her back. Not the guy she was looking for.
I was gathering snow in my hand to retaliate when something cold and wet struck the side of my face. The outlines of a deep, raspy voice filled out as it drew closer.
“I’m so sorry,” it said. “I was trying to hit the person behind you.”
I turned to find a guy in a green North Face vest, tall and wiry, wearing a knit scarf too small for his neck, homemade, a gift perhaps. His eyes were the same deep brown as his skin, a strange physiological pairing I’d only ever seen maybe twice before.
“Sorry,” he said again. His voice was like something being scraped from a can, weird alongside those warm eyes.
“It’s okay.”
We looked at each other before he turned away.
“Wait,” I called.
He stopped. “Yes?”
Bending down, I heaped a clump of snow in my hand and threw it in his face.
The next month, we were dating.