Midwinter Night's Dream (10 page)

"I'm saying that you and Dad encouraged us to explore who we really are, and not to get hung up on labels. So thank you for that." I pulled her into a hug.

She hugged me back, and for a long moment, we stayed that way, standing in the middle of the barn. Finally, she pulled away. "You're all damp from working. You should go in and take a shower before you get sick in this cold air. And by the way, Leo is
hot
."

The last of my bad mood was flushed away by a laugh. "You're such a cougar."

"I am not!" She giggled. "I'm just
saying
… I get it. He's very good-looking and he seems really together and… strong. Responsible. I like him. I'm sorry if I put my foot in it. I won't again."

"Thanks, Mom. Love you." I kissed her cheek. It didn't escape me how lucky I was to have parents who supported me no matter what.

"I love you too. Though if both you and Hank end up with boys, we're going to have to have a family discussion about surrogacy. I want my grandchildren. Now go take a shower. I'm heating up a big pot of chicken dumpling soup as we speak."

"Sounds awesome. I really appreciate all the extra work you guys are doing for this."

"Oh!" She waved her hand. "It's fun to have guests at Christmas. I'm in mom heaven."

I headed for the door.

"And Micah?"

I turned to give her a quizzical look.

She smiled. "I think Leo likes you too."

*                               *                                    *

By the time I was out of the shower and changed, Yas had arrived. She and Sloane were in the kitchen helping Mom get a meal ready. The room smelled fantastic—chicken soup, sugar cookies, and nutmeg. I loved being home at Christmas. Mom had the house totally slammed with Christmas decorations, like usual. There were red lights hung up all over the kitchen, candles in pine boughs in the deep windows of our fieldstone house, and even the big guns were out—the heirloom Santa embroidered dish towels.

Yas looked Christmasy herself in a tight gold turtleneck sweater that complemented her skin perfectly. As soon as she saw me, she came up and gave me a hug. I patted her back. I was all for hugging my friends, but this wasn't just friendly. She pressed tightly into me so I could feel every curve, and it made me uneasy. I stepped away.

"I was just telling your mom how nice it is of you to give up part of your Christmas break to help Leo!" Yas looked radiantly happy, her smile wide and open.

"You too. I'm glad you could still do the part."

"Me? Are you kidding? It's not every day a girl gets to play Demetrius. Besides, I wanted to see your home and meet your awesome parents. How could I say no?"

Mom gave me raised eyebrows behind Yas's back. It was a
you'd better take care of that
look.

"Where's Leo?" I asked before I realized I was going to.

"Up in his room," Mom said. "And Hank and your dad are out getting pies."

"Pies!" Sloane shouted with enthusiasm. He was whisking something in a bowl. "I swear last year I gained five pounds on pies alone.
So
worth it."

"We're expecting a big snow any minute, so hopefully they'll be home soon." Mom peered out the window.

"Excellent!" We hadn't had snow yet this year, and I missed it. The first snow of the year was always the best.

"Wanna help me set the table?" Yas nudged my arm.

It was snowing like crazy outside as we finished up dinner. Helen had arrived just as we sat down to eat. Between her loud chatter, Sloane's making jokes in a stupid French accent—which made my dad belly laugh every time—and Mom wanting to hear everyone's life story, it was hard to get a word in edgewise. It was fun, and normally I'd be chilling with a home brew, just leaning back and watching everyone interact and digging the hell out of it.

But I hadn't had a chance to talk to Leo since that weirdness in the barn, and he'd sat as far away from me at the table as he could get. His soulful blue eyes met mine a few times, and he smiled, but it was a stiff
see-how-much-you-don't-affect-me
smile. All I could think about was getting him alone. I was so strung out over it, I didn't even have an appetite. And with my mother's cooking sitting right in front of me, that was saying something.

I'd thought Leo and I had come a long way since that horrible phone call. I'd talked to him a half dozen times during those last crazy days of school. Today, when we'd worked in the barn, it felt natural. Nice. I finally felt like myself around him, not awkward and wrong-footed. I'd caught him looking at me lots of times, especially when I raised my sweatshirt. Leo gave off a very controlled, business-like surface, but today I saw the heat lurking under all that. And fuck, was that hot. For the first time, I believed he really wanted me, and it made me feel incandescent. I felt like I could do anything.

Until Mom mentioned a 'girlfriend' anyway. Now all I wanted to do was corner Leo so I could explain. And maybe…. Hell yeah. Maybe I could kiss Leo again. He’d almost gone for it in the barn. I definitely wanted Leo, alone in a room, with every part of him pressed up against every part of me. I wanted that way more than I wanted food at the moment.

He glanced at me, and I let him see what was in my mind, sent him a flaming Cupid's invitation to sin, if you will. I know it hit its target because he got flushed and shifted in his chair to face Helen.

Yeah. This was so going to happen.

While everyone helped clear the table, wandering in and out of the kitchen, I went over to the windows. The snow had stopped and the sky had cleared, showing a full, bright moon of pale yellow. It was magical, that moon, and it shone on a good two feet of fresh powder. It gave me an idea that made me almost giddy.

Leo was behind me pushing in chairs.

"Hey, Leo, c’mere," I said, not too loudly. I didn't want everyone to hear.

His face betrayed nothing as he came over, but he stood closer to me at the window than was normal. I felt a rush of anticipation.

"Look." I nodded out the window.

We looked out over the perfect snowy landscape. It could have been filmed for a commercial on the Hallmark Channel. The farm had a ton of trees on this side of the house, big deciduous trees that were now bare, their branches laden with snow, and a row of super tall pine trees that had a thick layer of white frosting.

Leo looked for a long moment, his face softening. "It's beautiful. You know, this is the first time this year it's really felt like Christmas to me."

"Me too. I love snow. We have snowshoes. Want to go for a walk with me?"

I was hoping to get Leo alone. But there was an immediate shriek behind me. Helen erupted, "Oh my God! Snowshoeing! That would be so much fun!"

A short and round bundle of energy pressed between Leo and me. Helen place her hands on the windowsill, her nose nearly on the glass. "Oh wow! Look at that moon! I wanna go too! You don't have wolves around here, do you?"

She was joking, or at least I assumed so. Leo met my eyes over her head, his face closing up again. "Yeah. Sounds great. How many pair do you have, Micah? If you don't have that many, we could take turns."

"Oh, we've got plenty of snowshoes," said my dad.

I turned to see him and my mom coming out of the kitchen. My dad was trying to be helpful, but my mom looked stricken. I knew she could tell what I was trying to do. Sloane and Yas and Hank all came in too.

"What's up?" Hank said.

"Where are you going? I'd like to go!" said Yas.

"Oh, um, I thought most of you might like to stay here. We can decorate the tree!" Mom offered, with urgent cheerfulness. She shot me a conspiratorial look. "Yasmine, I'd love to have your help." She put her arm around Yas and gave her a squeeze.

Mom, you rock.

"But we don’t have the tree yet," Dad said, confused.

"Well… you could go get one tonight!"

"I thought you said you wanted to do that tomorrow?" Poor dad. He could tell he was missing something, but he had no clue what.

Hank chimed in. "We've got four adult pairs of snowshoes. That's Leo, me, Sloane, and Micah. Plus—do we still have my old pair and Micah's from when we were younger? I bet those would fit Yas and Helen."

I conceded with what I hoped was good grace. "Yeah. Pretty sure our old ones are in the basement. So. We're all going then?"

Everyone was in.

~8~

Leo

I was falling in love—with the Springfield's farm. I'd grown up in Philadelphia, in an upscale urban neighborhood. I loved the city. It was home. But the farm was freaking amazing. It was all trees and fields and big stretches of lawn. It was like living in the middle of a big, private park. Lilith made sure everyone had hats, gloves, and all of that, and then we took off into the snow. We tromped through the Springfield's pasture and out a gate on the other side, through some woods, across a trickle of a stream, through more woods, then we came out on a rails-to-trails, which, according to Hank, went on for miles. How awesome is that, to be able to leave your back door and walk—or snowshoe—for miles in nature?

Micah and Yas were snowshoeing near me and I said as much.

"Yeah. I didn't appreciate it enough when I was growing up," Micah said. "We used to snowshoe out here as a family whenever we got a nice, fresh snowfall. Well… at least we did before my mom got sick."

"What happened?" Yas asked worriedly. "Is she okay?"

"She's great now. She had cancer about ten years ago, but she kicked it."

"That's good. She's the nicest person."

"You all are trying to kill me," Helen complained, catching up with us. "I have short legs, you know."

"You're not short," Yas said indignantly.

"Oh, I am, darlin'. It's just my gigantic personality that makes you think otherwise."

Yas laughed.

Sloane and Hank were ahead of us with Grinch. The two older dogs had stayed home, too lazy to come out in the cold. But Grinch and his pack were moving fast and pulling away. I knew Micah was capable of going faster, but this was my first time on snowshoes, and I didn't want to leave Helen.

"Feel free to go on ahead," I told him. "There's no way we can get lost on this trail."

"No, I'm good," Micah said quickly. He smiled a private smile that seemed to be just for me, and his eyes lingered on mine. It made me feel so warm, I expected the snow to melt beneath my snowshoes like some crazy cartoon.

Yeah, I knew that Micah had wanted us to snowshoe alone. Together alone. The idea had appealed to me too. Please, God, let us find ourselves alone, maybe later tonight.

It wasn't the first time my gut had overruled my logic, and it probably wouldn't be the last. There comes a point at which you want something badly enough, it becomes imperative enough, that you willfully disregard the obstacles. This attraction to Micah was like that. He'd gotten under my skin until all I cared about was that he seemed to really want me, even three weeks after that kiss at the party. If it had just been a passing straight-boy fantasy, it would have faded by now, right? Plus, meeting Micah's parents and hanging around with his family had shifted my perspective. Micah and his parents accepted Hank and Sloane completely. Lilith and Karma even doted on Sloane. So I knew Micah wasn't the type to go into denial about having had gay sex or to be an asshole about it.

I’d already figured out I’d been wrong about the ‘girlfriend’ thing. Or Lilith had. Thank God. The only damper was Yas, who still looked at Micah like he was the personification of her single desire. She gushed over the farm and Lilith and Karma in a way that set my teeth on edge. Even I could see that Micah didn't act interested in her, that he treated her the way he treated everyone else. But still—she had those stars in her eyes, and I really didn’t like the idea of being the one to put them out.

As they say, it was complicated.

We tromped ahead, the squeak-crunch of the snow loud and clean in the night air. The rails-to-trails was flat, so it was easy going. Woods edged one side of the trail and the other side was farmland. With the full moon reflecting off the snow, it was surprisingly bright out. We passed a group of cows that seemed to be enjoying the moonlight too. They dug through the snow with their noses, looking for grass.

Sloane and Hank stopped up ahead and waited for us.

"Hey," Sloane said as we caught up. "Grinch wants to walk with you guys for a while." He held the lead out to me.

I took it, though I wasn't sure Grinch was truly interested in being attached to me. "Is he okay out here? Bulldogs don't have very long legs." Grinch panted up at me with a big grin, looking very okay.

"Yeah, he's a tank. He wouldn't miss it for the world," said Micah.

"He's faster than I am," Sloane commented dryly. "He's like a Humvee fording a river."

"Okay, Grinch. Show me what you've got," I told the dog. A moment later, he was pulling me down the trail and it was all I could do to move my snowshoes fast enough to keep up with him. I wished for skis so I could just stand still and let him pull me.

It was all like some pleasant and peaceful Christmas postcard—until it wasn't. Up ahead, either Hank or Sloane whistled, loud. The next thing I knew, Grinch was taking off and pulling me into the woods.

"Hey!" I shouted, as my snowshoes flailed, going faster than I felt they had any ability to go. Grinch pulled me like an engine with a rollicking, unstable freight train attached.

"Don't let go of the leash!" Sloane called out.

Yeah. Great advice. Thanks.

Maybe Grinch just had to go to the bathroom. Or maybe he'd seen something small and furry that he wanted to chase. Hopefully, whatever it was, he'd be over it soon. At least I hoped so as the woods closed in around me and Grinch's stocky form bounded through the snow, dragging me along.

At least I couldn't get lost, not with my own snowshoe tracks behind me. Right?