Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances (9 page)

Which was a good point, I had to admit. He didn’t sound particularly bitter about his dad. It sounded like something that was long past and no longer relevant to his life.

“I don’t know any Stuarts,” I said. “Except for Stuart Little. And you.”

“Exactly. Who calls their kid Stuart?”

“Who calls their kid
Jubilee
? It’s not even a name. It’s not even a thing. What is a jubilee?”

“It’s a party, right?” he said. “You’re one big traveling party.”

“Oh, don’t I know it.”

“Here,” he said, getting up and reaching over for one of Rachel’s presents. It was a board game called Mouse Trap. “Let’s play.”

“It’s your little sister’s,” I said.

“So? I’m going to have to play it with her anyway. Might as well learn. And it looks like it has a lot of pieces. Looks like a good way to kill time.”

“I never just get to kill time,” I said. “I feel like I should be doing something.”

“Like what?”

“Like . . . ”

I had no idea. I was just always on my way somewhere. Noah was not a fooler-arounder. For fun, we’d update the council Web site.

“I realize,” Stuart said, holding up the Mouse Trap box and shaking off the lid, “that you probably lead a fancy life in the big city. Wherever you’re from.”

“Richmond.”

“Fancy Richmond. But here in Gracetown, killing time is an art form. Now . . . what color do you want?”

I don’t know what Debbie and Rachel were doing, but they were out in that snow for a good two hours or more—and Stuart and I played Mouse Trap the entire time. The first time we tried to do it correctly, but Mouse Trap has all these gizmos and things that swing around and drop a marble. It’s weirdly complicated for a kids’ game.

The second time we played, we made up entirely new rules, which we liked much better. Stuart was really good company—so good that I didn’t even notice (that much) that it was taking Noah a while to call me back. When the phone rang, I jumped.

Stuart answered it, because it was his house, and he passed it to me with a kind of strange expression, like he was a little displeased.

“Who was that?” Noah asked, when I got on.

“That’s Stuart. I’m staying at his house.”

“I thought you said you were going to Florida?”

In the background, I could hear a lot of noise. Music, people talking. Christmas was going on as normal at his house.

“My train got stuck,” I said. “We crashed into a drift. I ended up getting off and walking to a Waffle House, and—”

“Why did you get off?”

“Because of the cheerleaders,” I said with a sigh.

“Cheerleaders?”

“Anyway, I ended up meeting Stuart, and I’m staying with his family. We fell in a frozen creek on the way. I’m okay, but—”

“Wow,” Noah said. “This sounds really complicated.”

Finally. He was getting it.

“Listen,” he said. “We’re about to go over to see our neighbors. Let me call you back in about an hour and you can tell me the whole story.”

I had to hold the phone away from my ear, so great was my shock. “Noah,” I said, clapping it back into place. “Did you just hear me?”

“I did. You need to tell me all about it. We won’t be that long. Maybe an hour or two.”

And he was gone,
again
.

“That was quick,” Stuart said, coming into the kitchen and going to the stove. He switched on the kettle.

“He had to go somewhere,” I said, without much enthusiasm.

“So he just got off? That’s kind of stupid.”

“Why is that stupid?”

“I’m just saying. I would be worried. I’m a worrier.”

“You don’t seem like a worrier,” I grumbled. “You seem really happy.”

“You can be happy and worried. I definitely worry.”

“About what?”

“Well, take this storm,” he said, pointing at the window. “I kind of worry that my car might get destroyed by a plow.”

“That’s very deep,” I said.

“What was I supposed to say?”

“You’re not
supposed
to say anything,” I answered. “But what about how this storm might be evidence of climate change? Or what about people who get sick and can’t get to the hospital because of the snow?”

“Is that what Noah would say?”

This unexpected pop at my boyfriend was not welcome. Not that Stuart was wrong. Those are exactly the things that Noah would have mentioned. It was kind of creepily accurate.

“You asked me a question,” he said, “and I told you the answer. Can I tell you something you really don’t want to hear?” he asked.

“No.”

“He’s going to break up with you.”

As soon as he said it, there was a physical bang in my stomach.

“I’m only trying to be helpful, and I’m sorry,” he went on, watching my face. “But he
is
going to break up with you.”

Even as he was saying it, something in me knew that Stuart had hit upon something terrible, something . . . possibly true. Noah was avoiding me like I was a chore—except Noah didn’t avoid chores. He embraced them. I was the only thing he was walking away from. Beautiful, popular, fabulous-on-all-levels Noah was pushing me aside. This realization burned. I hated Stuart for saying it, and I needed him to know it.

“Are you just saying this because of
Chloe
?” I asked.

It worked. Stuart’s head snapped back a little. He clicked his jaw back and forth a few times, then steadied himself.

“Let me guess,” he said. “My mom told you all about it.”

“She didn’t tell me
all
about it.”

“This has nothing to do with Chloe,” he said.

“Oh no?” I replied. I had no idea what happened between Stuart and Chloe, but I’d gotten the reaction I wanted.

He stood up, and looked very tall from where I was.

“Chloe has nothing to do with it,” he said again. “Do you want to know how I know what’s going to happen?”

No, actually. I didn’t. But Stuart was going to tell me anyway.

“First, he’s avoiding you on Christmas. Want to know who does that? People who are about to break up with someone. You know why? Because big days make them panic. Holidays, birthdays, anniversaries . . . they feel guilty, and they can’t get into it with you.”

“He’s just busy,” I said weakly. “He has a lot to do.”

“Yeah, well, if I had a girlfriend, and her parents had been arrested on Christmas Eve, and she had to take a long train ride through a storm . . . I’d have my phone in my hand all night. And I would answer it. On the first ring. Every time. I’d be calling her to check on her.”

I was stunned silent. He was right. That’s exactly what Noah
should
have done.

“Plus, you just told him you fell into a frozen creek and you were trapped in a strange town. And he hung up? I’d
do
something. I’d get down here, snow or no snow. Maybe that sounds stupid, but I would. And if you want my advice? If he isn’t breaking up with you, you should dump his ass.”

Stuart said all of this in a big rush, as if the words were blown up by some emotional windstorm deep inside. But there was a gravity to it, and it was . . . touching. Because he clearly meant it. He said everything that I had wished Noah would say. I think he felt bad, because he shifted back and forth silently after that, waiting to see what damage he had caused. It was a minute or two before I could speak.

“I need a minute,” I finally said. “Is there somewhere . . . I can go?”

“My room,” he offered. “Second on the left. It’s kind of a mess, but . . . ”

I got up and left the table.

Chapter Eleven

S
tuart’s room was messy. He wasn’t kidding. This was the opposite of Noah’s room. The only thing that was completely upright was a framed copy of the picture I had seen in his wallet sitting on his bureau. I went over and had a look at it. Chloe was a stunner, no kidding. Long, deep brown hair. Eyelashes you could clean a floor with. A big, bright smile, a natural tan, a splash of freckles. She had pretty right down to the bone.

I sat on his unmade bed and tried to think, but there was just a low hum in my head. From downstairs, I heard the sound of a piano being played, really well. Stuart was running through Christmas songs. He had real style—not just like one of those people who play by rote. He could have been playing in a restaurant or a hotel lobby. Probably somewhere better than that, even, but those were the only places I’d seen piano players, really. Outside the window, two little birds huddled together on a branch, shaking snow off themselves.

There was a phone on Stuart’s floor. I picked it up and dialed. Noah sounded just the tiniest bit annoyed when he answered.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s up? We’re about to go, and—”

“In the last twenty-four hours,” I said, cutting him off, “my parents have been arrested. I got put on a train, which got stuck in a blizzard. I’ve walked miles in deep snow with bags on my head. I fell into a stream, and I’m stuck in a strange town with people I don’t know. And your excuse for not being able to talk is . . . what, exactly? That it’s Christmas?”

That shut him up. Which wasn’t really what I was aiming for, but I was glad to see he had some sense of shame.

“Do you still want to go out with me?” I asked. “Be honest with me, Noah.”

The other end of the line went silent for a long time. Too long for the answer to be “Yes. You are the love of my life.”

“Lee,” Noah said, his voice sounding low and strained. “We shouldn’t talk about this now.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It’s Christmas.”

“Isn’t that really
more
reason to talk?”

“You know how it is here.”

“Well,” I said, hearing anger spring into my voice. “You have to talk to me, because I am breaking up with you.”

I could barely believe what was coming out of my mouth. The words seemed to come from a place deep inside me, far beyond the place where I stored them, past the ideas . . . from some room in the back that I didn’t even know was there.

There was a long silence.

“Okay,” he said. It was impossible to tell what tone was in his voice. It may have been sadness. It may have been relief. He didn’t beg me to take it back. He didn’t cry. He just did nothing.

“Well?” I asked.

“Well, what?”

“Aren’t you even going to say anything?”

“I’ve kind of known for a while,” he said. “I was thinking about it, too. And if this is what you want, you know, I guess it’s for the best, and . . . ”

“Merry Christmas,” I said. I hung up. My hand was shaking. My whole body was, practically. I sat on Stuart’s bed and wrapped my arms around myself. Downstairs, the music stopped, and the house filled up with a drowning kind of quiet.

Stuart appeared at the door, pushing it open cautiously. “Just checking to make sure you were okay,” he said.

“I did it,” I replied. “I just picked up the phone and did it.”

Stuart came and sat down. He didn’t put his arm around me, just sat next to me, kind of close, but with a little space between us.

“He didn’t seem surprised,” I said.

“Assholes never are. What did he say?”

“Something about how he’s known it for a while, how it’s probably for the best.”

For some reason, this made me hiccup. We sat in silence for a while. My head was spinning.

“Chloe was like Noah,” he finally said. “Really . . . perfect. Beautiful. Good grades. She sang, she did charity work, and she was a . . . you’ll like this . . . a cheerleader.”

“She sounds like a prize,” I said grimly.

“I never knew why she went out with me. I was just some guy, and she was
Chloe Newland
. We dated for fourteen months. We were really happy, as far as I knew. At least, I was. The only problem was that she was always busy, and then she got busier and busier. Too busy to stop by my locker or the house, to call, to e-mail. So I would stop by her house. And call her. And e-mail her.”

It was all so horribly familiar.

“One night,” he went on, “we were supposed to study together, and she just didn’t show up. I drove over to her house, but her mom said she wasn’t there. And then I started to get kinda worried, because usually she would at least text me if she needed to cancel. So I started driving around, looking for her car—I mean, there are only so many places you can go in Gracetown. I found it in front of Starbucks, which made sense. We study there a lot because . . . what other option does society give us, right? It’s Starbucks or death, sometimes.”

He was wringing his hands furiously now, pulling on his fingers.

“What I
figured
,” he said pointedly, “is that I just made a mistake and that I was supposed to be studying with her at Starbucks all along, and I’d just forgotten. Chloe didn’t really like coming here to the house very much. Sometimes she got a little freaked out by my mom, if you can believe that.”

He looked up, as if waiting for a laugh from me. I managed a little smile.

“I was
so relieved
when I saw her car there. I’d been getting more and more upset driving around. I felt like a moron.
Of course
she was waiting for me at Starbucks. I went inside, but she wasn’t at any of the tables. One of my friends, Addie, works the counter. I asked her if she’d seen Chloe, since her car was there.”

Stuart ran his hands through his hair until it got kind of huge. I resisted the urge to pat it down. I kind of liked it that way, anyway. Something about his really big hair made me feel better—took away some of the burn I felt in my chest.

“Addie, she just got this very sad look on her face and she said, ‘I think she’s in the bathroom.’ I couldn’t figure out what was so incredibly sad about being in the bathroom. So I bought myself a drink, and I got one for Chloe, and I sat down and waited. There’s only one bathroom in our Starbucks, so she had to come out eventually. I didn’t have my computer or any books with me, so I was just generally staring at the wall mural where the bathroom door is. I was thinking about how stupid I was to get upset with her and how I’d kept her waiting, and then I realized that she’d been in the bathroom for a really long time and that Addie was still looking at me, really sadly. Addie went over and knocked on the door, and Chloe came out. So did Todd, the Cougar.”