I end the call and set my phone down on the piano bench. One deep breath, two . . . I open my eyes and pick it up again. Jack picks up immediately.
“I was just about to call you!”
“I was just on the phone with my parents.”
He’s quiet for a breath, and then says, “Hold on,” and hangs up. I start to frown at my phone when it lights up in my hand, a video chat request with Jack’s contact photo, and the frown fades before it can really form.
“You sounded really serious. More serious than usual, I mean,” he says, blue eyes scanning my face. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, I was just surprised. My mom asked me to go spend Christmas with them in New York City.”
His lips part and his eyebrows pinch down. “Oh.” He wets his lips. “Well, that should be interesting.”
I wish I could reach through the phone and kiss the tension from his brow. “I’m not going, idiot. I already have Christmas plans. With you.”
His face scrunches more. “I don’t want you to miss the holiday with your parents, when it’s what you’ve wanted for years.”
“It would be stolen moments,” I tell him. “I’m mostly stunned because . . . she asked.”
The dislike he has for my family flickers in his expression, and then a hesitant smile curls at his mouth. “You said you were hoping they’d change. I’d say that’s a good start. You’re really okay with this?”
The selflessness in his expression sends my heart into double time. He would tell me to go if I was at all torn, his own feelings be damned. “I’m more than okay with it, Jack.”
The hesitation vanishes from his face and he leans back against the wall of his bedroom, shoulders relaxing. “I checked the weather a few minutes ago. Looks like we’re supposed to get heavy snow right in that sweet spot in the morning, before buses go out and when schools call for delays and snow days . . .”
I leave the library and go to my room, sitting on my own bed. Ready to talk to him until I go to sleep, potentially. “You’ll be up early to find out, won’t you?”
“Like you won’t. You’re as excited by the idea as I am, Eli.”
My first snow day with friends to spend it with? It makes me sound too pathetic to say that out loud, but I can’t deny I’m excited about the potential. I play it cool. “We’ll see what we get.”
“Yes,” Jack says, a sparkle in his eyes. “And I’ll be the one to tell you.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“You’ll be snoring into your pillow when I check the news.”
I almost laugh. “Challenge accepted. But no using an alarm!”
He holds his hand in front of the camera.
“You’re a dork,” I tell him.
I pretend to shake his hand anyway, and I feel like I’m already winning when I see the satisfied glow in his eyes.
TWELVE
JACK
It’s four o’clock when I roll over in bed and look at my alarm clock with bleary eyes to see how much time I have left to sleep. I readjust and close my eyes, reaching for the fragment of the dream I was just having—and suck in a loud breath. Weather!
I sit up and scrub at my eyes, then grab my phone and go to the weather page I left open and hit refresh. The list of school delays and closings is on the bottom, in alphabetical order. F, F, F . . . Fredricks Central School District.
Delayedtwohours.
I fall back against my pillow. That’s it?
I turn my screen off and set my phone down, willing away the disappointment. It’s a start, and it’s early. There’s still time.
