To Fall for Winter

by Kelsey Kingsley

  I shrugged. “I was sure at the time, but knowing what I know now, it might’ve only been the idea of her that I was really in love with.”

  “Deep,” she nodded. “So, what happened?”

  “Ah, well, I came home one day, and all my shite was gone. All my money, my TV, my laptop … Everything that was worth anything was gone, includin’ her.”

  “Jesus Christ …”

  I shrugged again. “I sure know how to pick ‘em.”

  “Yeah, you weren’t kidding. What does that say about me?”

  “Not my girlfriend, remember?” I prodded with a gentle lift of my mouth, and she lowered her eyes to the floor. I picked up the white Persian, and sat on the couch, stroking her fur. She was my favorite. “This one, Cheryl, broke up with me, in a note.”

  “What did it say?”

  I could feel that piece of paper between my fingers. Could still see those ugly words scrawled in her pretty handwriting: “I can’t continue to waste my time on a guy who would rather spend his money on silly things like tattoos and piercings. I can’t waste my life on a guy who would rather sit with his nose glued to a sketchbook. You’re not a man, Ryan; you’re a boy pretending to be one. You’re a disappointment, and the worst decision of my life.”

  I tipped my head, mouth dry. “Ah, y’know,” I cleared my throat, “I didn’t take life seriously enough, I needed to grow up, I needed to stop spendin’ money on stupid shite.”

  “That you were a disappointment?” I didn’t have to answer that one; she knew, and her fists clenched at her sides. “That was the last girlfriend you had?” I nodded, and she shook her head. “So, your parents were never the ones to be disappointed in you?”

  “No.”

  Finally understanding, she nodded once. “She broke you.” I didn’t respond. I didn’t have to. She saw me, and she huffed angrily. “Ryan. You know that’s bullshit, right?

  The words in Cheryl’s note had been double-stitched along my brain, and they had spoken loudly. But Snow’s powerful presence in my life had dulled the voices, and I nodded once. “I’m workin’ on it.”

  She held her head higher, satisfied. “What do you want to do with your life, Ireland?”

  “What?”

  She sat down next to me on the couch, petting the cat in time with my hand. “If you weren’t working at the vet’s, what would you be doing?”

  I considered the question, and got up, putting Cheryl in Snow’s lap. I walked over to a steam trunk that had belonged to my grandfather, opened it, and pulled out the first sketchbook on top. The trunk was full of them: all of my paperback secrets.

  “What is this?” she asked, looking up to me after I had handed it over to her.

  “What’s it look like?” I smirked, a little more smug than intended.

  She flipped back the weathered cover, and immediately gawked at the first scratch of black charcoal and pen. “You actually drew this?”

  I nodded, sitting back down and kicking my feet onto the coffee table. “Yep.”

  She thumbed through the pages of black and white, her face expressing the awe I had expected, because that’s how everybody looked.

  “Jesus Christ, Ireland. You’re so talented. Why haven’t I ever seen you do this?”

  I shrugged. “It’s not something I do all the time. Just mostly when I’m bored, or angry, or upset, and well … With you bein’ around, I haven’t been much of any of those things.”

  Her pale skin did nothing to hide the flush of her cheeks. “I should teach you how to use a tattoo machine.”

  “That’s actually something I’ve always wanted to do, y’know. Always loved tats, always loved drawing … Shite seems to go hand in hand, but then, you have the people you wanna impress, and they tell you that’s not something to waste your life on.”

  She glared at me doubtfully. “Your parents?”

  I shook my head. “Nah, they always encouraged me to do what I wanted, as long as I wasn’t hurting myself or gettin’ into trouble.”

  Her eyes darkened. “Cheryl?”

  Reluctantly, I nodded, and she proved again to be as unpredictable as the weather when she stood up abruptly, pushing the cat from her lap, and began pacing the living room, clutching the book in her white-knuckled, black-inked hands.

  “That fucking bitch,” she growled, walking back and forth, each pass more heated than the last. “And you actually wanted to impress a fucking spineless whore like that?” I didn’t answer right away, diverting my eyes, and she stopped in front of me. “Honestly, Ryan?”

  “Yeah, I did,” I said, looking up to her icy eyes, freezing me nearly to death. “She was the first normal woman to give me the time of day. She was a teacher, dressed professionally, didn’t like spontaneity or kinky sex. She had her shite together. I mean, she had a feckin’ house, Snow, and she paid her own feckin’ bills. It was miraculous that she even gave me a second thought.”

  Her face fell, her anger crumbled. She knelt down, holding the book in her hands, placing it on the coffee table between us. “Oh, Ireland ... Fuck normal.”

  I smiled at my pet name. “Sometimes normal pays the bills, babe.”

  “Uh, this shit?” She touched the sketchbook. “This would pay your bills, and then some. A whole lot more than trimming nails and making appointments.”

  “I like workin’ at the vet.” Honestly, I did. I liked the animals, I liked the clientele …

  “But you love this,” she said, picking up the book and pressing it to her chest. “And for what it’s worth, this impresses me.”

  For what it’s worth. My mouth slowly lifted one corner, then the other, because y’know what?

  It was worth everything.

  CHAPTER NINE |

  SHOWER HEADS & WINTER DANCES

  The next day, my day off, Snow went to work, and I went out to Home Depot a couple towns over to buy the shower head that she said she liked.

  Look at me. Romantic gestures and all.

  But I wasn’t a handy guy, and I had to call my big brother to come over and help me out during his lunch hour.

  “You’re sure about this?” he asked, holding the thing in place while I screwed it in.

  “Sure about what?”

  “Y’know ... This.” He looked around the bathroom at all the girly shite cluttering the shelves and vanity. “Livin’ with Snow.”

  “What do you mean?” I raised a brow at him, and he twisted his lips around something he knew I might want to punch him for.

  “I just mean … after everything. You don’t exactly have the greatest history with women, and it’s a little, ehm … fast.”

  I twisted the screwdriver, glancing up at him. “This is different,” I said, moving on to the next screw, pursing my lips and narrowing my eyes with concentration. “I like her. Granny does too.”

  “I do too. I think she’s good for you. I just wanted to make sure you … ya know …”

  “Thought it through?” I asked, laughing and stepping out of the shower, the new head successfully in place.

  He shrugged a shoulder. “Yeah, well …” He nodded, resigning to the fact that I already knew what floated around in all of their heads. “Yeah.”

  I put the screwdriver back in his toolkit, ran my hands over the cool red metal, and shifted my jaw. “You don’t think she’s too crazy?” I asked, looking to him for his brotherly advice in the ways of love and romance. Lord knows he had that shite figured out from the earliest of ages.

  And Patrick laughed. “Oh, I think she’s absolutely insane, but she’s your type of crazy, I think.”

  My type of crazy. I considered the idea that I could have a type of crazy, a type of not quite there. Those other girls, the ones before Cheryl, were they just my search to find the crazy that worked for me? Was Cheryl there just to prove that I couldn’t do plain and boring? Maybe that’s all any relationship was, I thought; finding a flavor of insanity to complement your own.

  And maybe Snow was mine.

  No
… I hoped.

  I hoped she was mine.

  ❧

  I woke up in the middle of the night to a warm bed, and that meant only one thing.

  Snow was gone.

  In an instant, I was out of bed and walking through the apartment, checking every room, every place she could have been. I contained my anger and panic with the security of knowing she wouldn’t leave. But all I found was a group of cats, sleeping in different nooks and crannies, and no Snow.

  I pulled on my sweatpants and ran up to Granny’s part of the house. The door into the kitchen was always kept unlocked—just in case—and tip-toeing inside the dark and silent room, it didn’t take long for me to know Snow wasn’t there.

  And so, I pushed my hands into my hair, closed my eyes, and pressed my forehead against the cool metal of Granny’s refrigerator with concentrated breaths passing through my nostrils and out through my mouth. I had to calm down, I told myself. Her things were still there, her car was still outside. She wouldn’t have left without her clothes, her shoes, her tattoo shite.

  She wasn’t Cheryl, and with that, my heart slowed to a calmer pace. I opened my eyes, turned my head to the kitchen window, and there she was.

  She stood there, in the open backyard, with the blanket she brought wrapped around her body. Snowflakes sprinkled from above, scattering over her raven hair like stars against the night sky. I quietly opened Granny’s backdoor, stepping into the cold, forgetting entirely that I was shirtless and barefoot.

  “Snow,” I said. Her name, not the change in the weather.

  Her face was upturned, staring at the winter sky with eyes closed. Her black hair perfectly matched the gnarled tree branches, her skin perfectly matched the flakes falling from the sky.

  She was spontaneity. She was unpredictability.

  She was winter.

  She was mine.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, walking out into the blanketed yard, approaching with caution. Like she was some sort of wild animal, bound to run away if I dared make a sudden move.

  But not Snow. She wouldn’t run.

  She opened her eyes then, turning to me. I saw underneath the blanket that she had at least the sense to put on her tank top and a pair of pants. Not that it did much to protect her from the cold, but at least she wasn’t naked.

  “It’s snowing,” she said with a little smile. Her voice barely a whisper against the muffled hush. She pulled the blanket tighter, clasping her hands against her chest. Her arms were tense with excitement, and her eyes sparkled.

  The corner of my mouth lifted. “Yeah, I see that.”

  “I had gotten up to use the bathroom, and I saw the snow through the window, and I had to come out and see it.” Her smile widened, and she took a step forward. “Will you dance with me, Ireland?”

  I laughed, disturbing the silent night. “Get the hell out of here. It’s feckin’ freezin’ out here.”

  “You should’ve put a shirt on, you idiot,” she said, lifting the sides of the blanket to take me in. “Please, dance with me. It’s snowing, and I’ve always wanted to dance in the snow.”

  “Where did you come from?” I narrowed my eyes at her, wrapping her in my arms, keeping her warm. It had never occurred to me that I should ask before that moment. Somehow it never mattered.

  “Florida,” she said, her arms tightening around me.

  My features softened. “So … You’ve never seen snow before?”

  “No. Well … not like this, anyway.” She shook her head, her eyes lowering to my chest, as though she were embarrassed. “But I always knew it would be my favorite thing. It’s beautiful, and dangerous, and unpredictable, and quiet.”

  Just like her.

  “So, why didn’t your parents name you, I don’t know, Sunshine?” I chuckled at my own lame joke.

  “I wasn’t born with this name,” she said, giggling a little as she glanced around at the world dressed in white. “I started calling myself Snow in high school, because it sounded bad-ass, but now … yeah. I can’t imagine being called anything else.”

  I wondered if I should ask what name was on her birth certificate, but then again, did it even matter?

  I sighed, tightening my arms around her. I rested my chin at the top of her head. “I’m a terrible dancer, ya know.”

  She pressed her face to my chest and smiled. “So am I.”

  But we danced, anyway.

  And it wasn’t much of one, to be fair. It was an awkward shuffle in the snow, a side-to-side type of thing with zero rhythm. Neither one of us was winning any awards anytime soon, and we wouldn’t be auditioning for any reality TV shows, but whatever. I danced with her, because she wanted to, because she loved the snow. That was reason enough.

  And even though I was shirtless and barefoot, even though the blanket had eventually fallen away to the ground, I found that I wasn’t cold anymore, and neither was she.

  CHAPTER TEN |

  PRODUCE & LABELS

  “You really like oranges, huh?”

  I watched as she pulled bags of the fruit from her reusable grocery bags, at least six of them in total. She grinned mischievously at me as she held up one finger, silently leaving the kitchen to bounce her way to the room she used as a studio. When she returned with a case in hand, she simply told me to sit at the table.

  I decided to humor her and sat down without question.

  “So, since you already have a job and wouldn’t have much time to be our errand boy at the shop … I don’t think I could teach you there, but I figured … I have all the shit we need, so why not practice here?”

  “Practice what?”

  She unfastened the case, opening to reveal the gleaming metal of a tattoo machine and its components. My eyes widened at the sight of it, and my bloodstream buzzed with excitement.

  But then, I eyed her skeptically. “Babe, I don’t think I have any skin left that I can reach, and I am not tattooing my own cock. I draw the line somewhere.”

  She laughed, tugging at my beard as she bent down to kiss me sweetly. “Don’t be stupid. You’re not tattooing yourself.”

  I glowered at her, shaking my head slowly. “No way in feckin’ hell am I trustin’ myself to do anything to your body.”

  “You do something to my body every day,” she said, gripping my neck and kissing me again. Harder. And she couldn’t just kiss me; she had to gently pull my lower lip between her teeth before setting me free.

  The little tease.

  “You know what I meant,” I growled, suddenly desperate to do something to her body right then and there, among the fruit and tattoo machines. My fingers roamed her back, lower and lower until I settled over her arse. I groaned, flexing my hands, pulling her toward me.

  “Nuh-uh, we’re working.”

  “You started this,” I pointed out, pressing my cheek to her breast.

  “Later,” she scolded, taking my hand from her arse, and dropping an orange into my palm.

  “What the feck is this for?”

  “Baby, this is what you’re going to tattoo for the first time.” She patted my shoulder before setting up the tattoo machine.

  “Oh, boy. I’ve always wanted to ink a killer tribal dragon into feckin’ produce. Dreams are comin’ true here tonight.” My voice dripped with sarcasm as I turned the orange over in my hand.

  She rolled her eyes, unwinding a length of electrical cord. “I learned on pig skin, but I’m not buying any of that crap, so you’re going to learn on fruit.”

  I groaned through the smile that tugged at my lips.

  I was smiling a lot those days, a total contradiction of my life before. Before Snow.

  I watched as she finished setting the supplies up, and I pretended to be annoyed when she told me she was letting me use her shitty machine. She didn’t want me screwing up her good shite, she said, and I acted annoyed, swatting at her arse when she told me I was probably going to break it and buy her a new one.

  I listened with excitement as she told me
what to do. I felt that excitement bubble into eagerness as she showed me how to hold the machine. Hours upon hours of sitting through my own tattoos, and you’d think I’d know it all, but there was something different in holding the power between my own fingers.

  “You have to learn how to work on a curved surface,” she instructed.

  “I can carve a mean pumpkin. You should see my jack-o-lanterns.”

  That old Kinney humor. It got us in trouble, and right then, it got me a light backhand to the chest. “Come on, this is serious right now,” she giggled.

  “Babe, this is fruit. There’s nothin’ serious about fruit.”

  She narrowed her icy eyes, and I held my hands up, surrendering to the very important task at hand.

  “Okay, obviously this is a little different than flesh, but we’ll get there. Right now, we’re just going to work on pressure and learning how to work with a curved, textured surface.”

  And with her expert guidance, I pressed the machine to the dimpled surface of the unsuspecting orange. I willed my hand to steady, squinting my eyes with concentration and determination, and I watched those little needles jackhammer in and out, in and out, injecting the ink into its skin. That hypnotic hum soon lulled me to breathe steadily, my lip curled into a half smile, my tongue stuck between my teeth. Snow peered over my head, leaned against my back and worried her lip with nervous anticipation.

  And after twenty minutes passed, I had inked the world’s most incredible smiley face onto the side of an orange. Snow hung over my shoulder, resting the side of her head against mine. Temple to temple.

  “Your first tattoo,” she said adoringly, and turned to kiss my cheek before taking the orange from my hand. She walked away, holding it up into the light. “I can’t wait to take this into the shop tomorrow, and tell Tre that my—"

  She stopped herself from talking, stopped herself from moving. I turned in my chair, resting my elbows against my knees, watching her back. The slow movement of her shoulders as she breathed heavily, the slip of her tongue weighing heavily on her mind.