With his hands shoved into his pockets, Penn walks backward in front of me, grinning.
“What?” I say, suspicious. “I don’t like that look.”
He laughs and stoops forward, doing exactly what I knew he would.
Seconds later, a snowball crushes against my leg.
“I can’t help it,” Penn says, raising both hands. “Perfect packing snow cannot be wasted. It’s a crimenotto have a snowball fight in these conditions.”
Taking the bait, I reach into the cold snow, my fingers freezing as I ball it up and aim at Penn. I miss, and before I can register what’s happening, another snowball hits me square in the chest. A big white spot on my coat.
You don’t need me. But you want me. Don’t you?
Penn’s jingly laugh rings out over the quiet park. “Well,” he calls out. “Looks like your aim is just about as good as your parallel parking.”
I try to smile, swallowing hard, still a bit lost in time. Ithappens often—me mixing up who we are here and who we were there. But the gap between the two is closing.
Penn’s still grinning when he approaches, hands tucked into his pockets. My breath hitches as I stare up at him. Sparkly snow falls all around us. Into Penn’s hair. His long eyelashes. “I’ve been thinking,” he says. “And I think you’re secretly the fun friend, too.”
I crack a smile. “Even though I pack electrolytes for everyone when we go out? And set an alarm for the responsible time to leave?”
He nods. “Even though.” Something stutters in my chest as he eyes my yellow beanie and adds, “I like your hat, by the way.”
“I’ve been told it’s a superpower, looking good in hats. You have it, too.”
His mouth slants as he adjusts his baseball hat. “Good to know.” After he slides a look at the ice, he turns back, eyebrow raised. “Let me guess. This little detour was all a ploy to get me out there, wasn’t it? You want to humiliate me. You want to make up for the time you took a bite of a Pop-Tart and gave yourself a concussion.”
I laugh, shoving into him, and he grabs my hands. I look to where his fingers wrap around mine, then glance up at him again. My pulse quickens as we stand there, our cold hands clasped together.
Finally, Penn nods toward the lake. “C’mon. Time for you to show off your moves and make me feel bad about myself.”
I breathe out a laugh as he leads me across the snow, both of us quiet, the moment as delicate as the icicles hanging along the eaves of the boathouse.
I feel all of thirteen, my thoughts on a loop.
Penn’s holding my hand.
Although it’s not quite dusk, the string lights on the boathouse are glowing, their reflections shimmering across the ice. Penn stops when we reach the edge of the lake.
“I’m not built for slippery surfaces,” he says. “Like, at all. Not even in sneakers.”
I give him a look. “That’s why you’ve got me.”
He smiles, surprised, and the embers of hope I’ve been clinging to for weeks start to flicker into a small, bright flame.
I take Penn’s hand and guide him onto the ice. He shuffle-steps so slowly, we’re barely moving, but still, he wears a proud smile that tugs at my most fragile heartstrings.
“You’re very skilled at dragging dead weight,” he tells me.
“Oh, I’m just waiting until we’re in the middle to let go and watch you fend for yourself.”
He grins. “I knew there was a catch.”
We circle once, and we fall only three times in twenty minutes, which is frankly a better ratio than I’d hoped. Afterward, though, we’re freezing. The obvious choice would be to get out of here and warm up elsewhere, but I don’t want to leave. Penn must not, either, because as we step off the ice, he offers to grab coffee from the boathouse.
“Isn’t it locked?” I ask. “It’s only open on weekdays.”
“True,” Penn says. “But there’s a passcode. And I know a guy.”
