Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

snowdrift at four
A.M
. And as she smiled sympathetically to him, again I had the untakebackable thought.
Her smile seemed to please him. He slouched back to his booth.
I talked to Keun until he finished my waffle and delivered it to me steaming hot. “God, that looks good,
Keun,” I said, but he’d already turned around to plate the Duke’s hash browns. He was picking the plate
up when Billy Talos appeared, grabbed the plate, delivered it to the Duke, and sat down next to her.
I  glanced  back  at  them  a  couple  times,  leaning  across  the  table  and  talking  intently  to  each  other.  I
wanted  to  cut  in  and  let  her  know  that  he’d  been  flirting  with  one  of  several  Madisons  as  we’d  been
trudging through the snow, but I figured it was none of my business.
“I’m going to talk to one of them,” I announced to JP and Keun.
JP was incredulous. “One of who? The cheerleaders?”
I nodded.
“Dude,” Keun said. “I’ve been trying all night. They’re packed too tightly to talk to just one of them.
And when you try to talk to all of them, they just kind of ignore you.”
But  I  had  to  talk  to  one  of  them,  or  at  least  appear  to.  “It’s  like  lions  hunting  gazelles,”  I  said  as  we
watched the gaggle intently. “You just find a straggler, and”—a tiny blonde girl turned away from the pack
—“pounce,” I said, as I jumped up off the stool.
I walked up to her with purpose. “I’m Tobin,” I said, ex-tending my hand.
“Amber,” she said.
“Beautiful name,” I said.
She  nodded,  and  her  eyes  darted  around.  She  wanted  a  way  out,  but  I  couldn’t  give  her  one  yet.  I
fumbled for a question. “Um, any word on the status of your train?” I asked.
“Our train might not even leave tomorrow,” she informed me.
“Yeah, that’s too bad,” I said, smiling. I glanced over my shoulder toward Billy and the Duke, only she
was  gone.  The  hash  browns  still  steamed  off  the  plate;  she’d  poured  the  ketchup  on  a  side  plate  to  dip
them into like she always did, but then left. I left Amber and walked over to Billy.
“She went outside,” he said simply.
Who  in  their  right  mind  would  go  outside  when  the  hash  browns  and  the  warmth  and  the  fourteen
cheerleaders were all inside?
I grabbed my hat from the counter and pulled it down low over my ears, and then I put my gloves back
on  and  ventured  back  into  the  wind.  The  Duke  was  sitting  on  the  curb  of  the  parking  lot,  just  barely
underneath the awning, half protected from the still-falling snow.
I sat down next to her. “You missed the postnasal drip?”
She sniffled and didn’t look up at me. “Just go back inside,” she said. “It’s not a big deal.”
“What’s not a big deal?”
“Nothing’s not a big deal. Just go back inside.”
“‘Nothing’s Not a Big Deal’ would be a good name for a band,” I told her. I wanted her to look up at
me so I could assess the situation, and finally she did, and her nose was red, and I thought she was cold,
but then I thought maybe she had been crying, which was weird, because the Duke doesn’t cry.
“I just . . . I just wish you wouldn’t do it in front of me. I mean, what is interesting about her? Tell me
what is interesting about her, seriously. Or any of them.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “You were talking to Billy Talos.”
She looked up at me again and this time held my gaze as she spoke. “I was telling Billy that I didn’t
think  I  could  actually  go  to  the  stupid  formal  with  him,  because  I  just  can’t  bring  myself  to  stop  liking
someone else.”
The  idea  crept  up  on  me  slowly.  I  turned  toward  her,  and  she  said,  “I  realize  that  they  giggle  and  I

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actually laugh, that they show their cleavage and I have none to show, but just so you know, I am also a
girl.”
“I know you’re a girl,” I said defensively.
“Really? Does anyone? Because I walk into the D and D and I’m the Duke. And I’m one of the three
wise men. And it’s gay to think that James Bond is hot. And you never look at me like you look at girls,
except . . . whatever. Whatever whatever whatever. When we were walking here right before the twins
came, I thought for one second that you were looking at me like I was an actual female, and I was, like,
hey, maybe Tobin is not the world’s biggest superficial jackass, but then you go and I’m breaking up with
Billy and I look up and you’re talking to some girl like you’d never talk to me and whatever.”
And then, belatedly, I got it. The thing that I was trying to unthink was a thing that the Duke had also
thought. We were trying to unthink the same thought. The Duke liked me. I looked down. I had to think it
through before I looked at her. Okay. Okay, I decided, I will look at her and if she is looking at me, I will