Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

blow a bugle in his ear next time?
But then his lips quirked up, and amusement flickered in his eyes. Something else, too—something that
made my heart beat faster. A flush reddened his face, and he bent down quickly to pick up his book.
Oh, I realized with a pang. He’s just shy.
Leaning against my pillow, I gazed at the picture of Jeb on my iPod until the sting of it grew too strong.
I punched the center button, and the next picture popped up. It was of the Great Hollyhock Blitzkrieg,
which took place last Christmas Eve, only a couple of weeks after I told Jeb to smile, for heaven’s sake.
Since Christmas Eve was one of those days that lasted forever, with all the waiting and finger drumming
for Christmas itself, a group of us had tromped to Hollyhock Park in order to get out of our houses for a
while. I made one of the guys call Jeb, and miraculously, he agreed to come with us.
We  ended  up  having  a  snowball  fight,  boys  against  girls,  and  it  was  awesome.  Dorrie,  Tegan,  and  I
made a snow fort and set up a snowball-distribution system that involved Tegan packing, me stacking, and
Dorrie pummeling our enemies with dead-on accuracy. We dominated the guys until Jeb cut around behind
us and tackled me, using his body to drive me into our snowball pile. Snow went up my nose, and it hurt
like heck, but I was too exhilarated to care. I rolled over, laughing, and his face was right there,  inches
from mine.
That was the image captured in the photo, this time taken by Tegan on her cell phone. Jeb was wearing
his denim jacket again—the faded blue so sexy against his dark skin—and he was laughing, too. What I
remembered, as I looked at our happy faces, was how he didn’t get off me right away. He braced himself
on  his  forearms  so  that  he  wasn’t  squishing  me,  and  his  laugh  softened  into  a  question  that  made  my
stomach quivery.
After  the  snowball  fight,  Jeb  and  I  went  out  for  mocha  lattes,  just  the  two  of  us.  I  was  the  one  who
suggested  it,  but  Jeb  said  yes  without  a  moment’s  hesitation.  We  went  to  Starbucks,  and  we  sat  in  the
matching purple armchairs at the entrance of the store. I was giddy; he was bashful. And then he grew less
bashful,  or  perhaps  just  more  determined,  and  he  reached  over  and  took  my  hand.  I  was  so  surprised  I
spilled my coffee.
“For heaven’s sake, Addie,” he said. His Adam’s apple jerked. “Can I just kiss you?”
My heart went crazy, and suddenly I was the shy one, which was nuts. Jeb took my cup from my hand
and put it on the table, then leaned in and brushed his lips over mine. His eyes, when at last he drew back,
were as warm as melted chocolate. He smiled, and I melted into a swirl of chocolate, too.
It was the most perfect Christmas Eve ever.
“Hey, Addie!” my little brother called from downstairs, where he and Mom and Dad were playing with
the Wii that Santa brought him. “Want to box with me?”
“No, thanks,” I called.
“How about tennis?”
“No.”
“Bowling?”
I groaned. Wii did not make me say “Wee!” But Chris was eight. He was only trying to cheer me up.
“Maybe later,” I called.
“Okay,” he said, and his footsteps retreated.
I  heard  him  tell  our  parents,  “She  said  no,”  and  my  melancholy  deepened.  Mom  and  Dad  and  Chris
were downstairs together, merrily strapping on nunchucks and punching each other in the face, while here
I was, gloomy and alone.
And whose fault is that? I asked myself.
Oh, shut up, I replied.
I scrolled through more pictures:

---

Jeb posing cheesily with a Reese’s Big Cup, because he knew it was my favorite and he’d brought it
for me as a surprise.
Jeb in the summer, shirt off, at Megan Montgomery’s pool party. God, he was beautiful.
Jeb looking sudsy-adorable at a car wash Starbucks held as a fund-raiser. I gazed at the picture of him,
and my insides went soft. That had been such a fun day—and not just fun, but cool, too, because it was for
a good cause. Christina, my shift manager at Starbucks, had gone into labor early, and our store wanted to
help with the hospital bills not covered by insurance.
Jeb  volunteered  to  pitch  in,  and  he  was  a  total  stud.  He  arrived  at  nine  and  stayed  through  three,
scrubbing and slaving away and looking pretty much like he should be in one of those beefcake Hottest
Guys in the Universe calendar. He went way beyond what boyfriend duty required, and it made my heart
happy. After the last car pulled out of the parking lot, I wrapped my arms around Jeb and tilted my face
toward his.
“You didn’t have to work so hard,” I said. I breathed in his soapy smell. “You had me at the very first
car.”
I was going for flirtatious, along the lines of the scene in Jerry Maguire  when  Renée  Zellweger  told
Tom Cruise, “You had me at ‘hello.’” But Jeb furrowed his brow and said, “Oh, yeah? Uh, good. But I’m
not sure what you mean.”
“Ha-ha,”  I  said,  assuming  he  was  fishing  for  more  praise.  “I  just  think  it’s  sweet  that  you  stayed  the
whole time. And if you were doing it to impress me . . . well, you didn’t have to. That’s all.”
His eyebrows went up. “You thought I washed those cars to impress you?”
My cheeks grew warm as it dawned on me that he wasn’t kidding. “Uh . . . not anymore.”
Embarrassed, I tried to pull away. He didn’t let me. He kissed the top of my head and said, “Addie, my
mom raised me on her own.”
“I know.”
“So I know how hard it can be. That’s all.”
For  a  moment,  I  felt  pouty.  Which  was  totally  lame.  But  while  I  knew  that  Jeb’s  wanting  to  help
Christina was a good thing, I wouldn’t have minded if at least part of his motivation had to do with me.
Jeb pulled me close. “I’m glad I impressed you, though,” he said, and I could feel his lips on my skin. I
could also feel the warmth of his chest through his wet shirt. “There’s nothing I want more than to impress
my girl.”
I wasn’t quite ready to be teased out of my sulk. “So you’re saying I’m your girl?”
He laughed, as if I’d asked out loud if the sky was still blue. I didn’t let him off the hook but instead
stepped backward out of his embrace. I looked at him, like, Well?
His dark eyes grew serious, and he took both of my hands in his. “Yes, Addie, you’re my girl. You’ll be
my girl forever.”
In my bedroom, I squeezed shut my eyes, because it was too hard, that memory. Too hard, too painful,
too much like losing a slice of myself, which, in fact, I had. I pressed the off button on my iPod, and the
screen  went  black.  The  music  stopped,  and  my  iPenguin  stopped  dancing.  She  made  her  sad  you’re-
turning-me-off? sound, and I said, “You and me both, Pengy.”
I sank into my pillow and stared at the ceiling, rehashing just how things had gone wrong between Jeb
and me. How I’d stopped being his girl. I knew the obvious answer (bad, yuck, didn’t want to go there),
but I couldn’t help obsessively analyzing what got us to that point, because even before Charlie’s party,
things were less than great between us. It wasn’t that he didn’t love me, because I knew he did. As for me,
I loved him so much it hurt.
What tripped us up, I think, was the way we showed our love. Or, in Jeb’s case, the way he didn’t show
it—at least, that was how it felt to me. According to Tegan, who watched a lot of Dr. Phil, Jeb and I spoke
different love languages.

---

I wanted Jeb to be sweet and romantic and affectionate, like he had been at Starbucks when he kissed
me that first time last Christmas Eve. I ended up getting a job at that same Starbucks the month after that,
and I remember thinking, Sweet, we’ll get to relive our kiss again and again and again.
But we didn’t, not one single time. Even though he stopped by all the time, and even though I always
broadcasted with my body language that I wanted him to kiss me, the most he would do was reach across
the counter and tug the strings of my green apron.
“Hey, coffee girl,” he’d say. Which was cute, but not . . . enough.
That was just one thing. There were others, too, like how I wanted him to call and say good night every
night, and how he felt awkward because his apartment was so small. “I don’t want my mom hearing me be
all mushy,” he’d said. Or how other guys were totally fine holding their girlfriends’ hands in the school
halls, but whenever I grabbed Jeb’s hand, he gave me a fast squeeze and then let go.
“Do you not like touching me?” I’d said.
“Of course I do,” he said. His eyes got that look in them that I guess I’d been trying to stir up, and when
he  spoke,  his  voice  was  raw.  “You  know  I  do,  Addie.  I  love  being  alone  with  you.  I  just  want  us  to
actually be alone when we’re alone.”
For  a  long  time,  even  though  I  noticed  all  that  stuff,  I  mostly  kept  it  to  myself.  I  didn’t  want  to  be  a
whiner-baby girlfriend.
But around our six-month anniversary (I gave Jeb a play-list of the most romantic songs ever; he gave
me nothing), something turned sour inside me. It sucked, because here I was with this guy I loved, and I
wanted things to be perfect between us, but I couldn’t do it all on my own. And if that made me a whiner-
baby girlfriend, well, tough.
Like,  with  the  sixth-month-anniversary  thing.  Jeb  could  tell  I  wasn’t  happy,  and  he  kept  asking  and
asking why, and finally I said, “Why do you think?”
“Is it because I didn’t get you anything?” he said. “I didn’t know we were doing that.”
“Well, you should have,” I muttered. The next day he gave me a quarter-machine necklace with a heart
on it, only he took it out of the plastic egg and put it in an actual jewelry box. I was underwhelmed. The
next  day,  Tegan  pulled  me  aside  and  told  me  that  Jeb  was  worried  I  didn’t  like  the  present,  because  I
wasn’t wearing it.
“It came from the Duke and Duchess,” I said. “The exact same necklace is in the quarter machine by the
exit. It’s, like, one of win-this! display necklaces.”
“And do you know how many quarters Jeb had to feed in before he did?” Tegan said. “Thirty-eight. He
had to keep going back and getting change from the customer-service desk.”
A heaviness descended. “You mean . . . ?”
“He wanted you to have that particular one. With the heart.”
I didn’t like the way Tegan was staring at me. I shifted my gaze. “That’s still less than ten dollars.”
Tegan was silent. I was too afraid to look at her. Finally, she said, “I know you don’t mean that, Addie.
Don’t be a jerk.”
I didn’t want to be a jerk—and of course I didn’t care how much a present cost. But I did seem to want
more from Jeb than he could give, and the longer we went on like that, the crappier we both felt.
Flash-forward several months, and guess what? I was still making him feel crappy, and vice versa. Not
always, but way more often than was, like, healthy or whatever.
“You want me to be someone I’m not,” he said, the night before we broke up. We were sitting in his
mom’s  Corolla  outside  Charlie’s  house,  but  we  hadn’t  gone  in  yet.  If  I  could  go  back  to  that  night  and
never go in, I would. In a heartbeat.
“That’s not true,” I told him. My fingers found the gash on the side of the passenger seat and wormed
into the foam rubber.
“It is true, Addie,” he said.

---

I changed tactics. “Okay, even if I do, why is that necessarily bad? People change for each other all the
time.  Take  any  love  story,  any  great  love  story  at  all,  and  you’ll  see  that  people  have  to  be  willing  to
change if they’re going to make things work out. Like in Shrek, when Fiona tells Shrek that she’s sick of
his  burping  and  farting  and  everything.  And  Shrek’s  like,  ‘I’m  an  ogre.  Deal  with  it.’  And  Fiona  says,
‘What if I can’t?’ So Shrek takes that potion that turns him into a hunky prince. He does it out of love for
Fiona.”
“That’s in Shrek Two,” Jeb said. “Not the original.”
“Whatever.”
“And then Fiona realized she didn’t want him to be a hunky prince. She wanted him to turn back into an
ogre.”
I frowned. That wasn’t how I remembered it.
“The point is, he was willing to change,” I said.
Jeb sighed. “Why does the guy always have to be the one to change?”
“The girl can, too,” I said. “Whatever. All I’m saying is that if you love someone, you should be willing
to  show  it.  Because,  Jeb,  this  is  our  one  shot  at  life.  Our  one  shot.”  I  felt  the  familiar  tightening  of
despair. “Can’t you just try, if for no other reason than because you know how important it is to me?”
Jeb stared out the driver’s-side window.
“I . . . I want you to follow me onto a plane and serenade me in the first-class cabin, like Robbie did to
Julia in The Wedding Singer,” I said. “I want you to build a house for me, like Noah did for Allie in The