Page 30 of Jacob Michaels is Not Crazy

“Jesus,” I whispered. “When they call for snow they aren’t fucking around are they?”

I didn’t know why I was whispering. Of course, it was night time and we were outside and something about being in the dark underneath the moon in the stillness of the night made me feel that I had to be quiet. Reverent, even. Lucas and I had decided, once the snow stopped, that we would take a walk down to the lake. The snow had started right as we were finishing up breakfast and had continued on at a fairly steady rate until just after dark. Oma guesstimated that we had gotten a foot of snow, and when the six o’clock news had come on, with the three of us still huddled in front of the fireplace, she was confirmed to be almost on the nose with her guess.

All day long, the three of us had taken turns adding logs to the fire, stoking it, keeping it blazing warm, as we sat and shared stories and just talked. When lunch came, Lucas and I had gone in and made all of us lunch to take into the living room. At dinner time, Oma had gone in and heated up leftovers from the day before and brought it into the living room as well. All we had really needed was for it to be Christmas time so we could have a lighted tree and it would all have felt as cozy as possible. But, since it was late March, we had to settle for things such as they were.

Oma had regaled us with tales about growing up in Ohio—when the winters were really awful. Obviously, Lucas and I knew nothing of a really harsh winter. Lucas told us about going to NYU and studying in the city. After much prodding, I shared stories of acting gigs and performances and maybe a few insider pieces of gossip about certain celebrities. I didn’t have much else to share, story-wise, that the two wouldn’t have known already, so celebrity insider stories it was.

Once the snow stopped, shortly after dinnertime, Lucas asked if I wanted to take a walk down to the lake. Of course, I didn’t want to walk down to the lake in the freezing cold in nearly knee-high snow. However, I really wanted to put my mouth on Lucas’—and I really didn’t want to do that in front of Oma. Even though she would have thought nothing of it, I just didn’t feel right doing it. No one wants to kiss the guy they’re involved with while their nearly seventy-year-old grandmother looks on.

“When it rains it pours,” Lucas responded in a normal tone.

Obviously, he wasn’t intimidated by the haunting silence of the snowy night around us.

“You’re using that wrong,” I replied in a sing-song voice as we trudged through the snow.

Suddenly, Lucas’ fingers were sliding between mine and he was holding my hand in his as we made our way through the woods towards the lake. I looked down at our intertwined fingers, wondering if I should take issue with this or not. I decided that it was a perfectly acceptable thing for two guys in a situation like ours to do and just went with it. We trudged through the snow and the woods for a few moments, our hands keeping each other’s warm for several long minutes before I couldn’t take it any longer. I turned and pulled Lucas into me and lowered my head to shove my mouth over his.

Lucas’ mouth responded to mine as he pushed the length of his body into mine and his hands went up to my face. His fingers were ice cold but I didn’t care. I just wanted to kiss him and I would have taken that at any temperature I could have gotten it. The whole situation was so surreal for me. I never wanted to kiss and have someone be so close to me as much as I wanted that of Lucas. Running my fingers through the silky waves of his hair, I let myself melt into him as we kissed in the snow and the dark quiet of the woods and let myself just be in that moment, not worrying about what it all meant. If it had been warmer, and there wasn’t snow on the ground, I know I would have pushed him to the ground and done other things. Instead, I found myself finally pulling away from him, a smile growing easily on my face.

“That wasn’t half bad.” Lucas smiled up at me.

He slid his arms inside of my coat and around my middle, his body pressing up against mine. It was if he was trying to crawl inside of me, to join the warmth of our two bodies. To become one being. Under the darkness of the inky, early spring sky, within the cocoon of quiet that the snow-laden woods provided, we held each other and dreamed of a life that hadn’t quite developed in our imaginations yet.

“Do we talk now?” I asked softly, obviously having to ruin the moment.

“About what?”

“Don’t do that, Lucas.”

He sighed and gently pulled away from me, his arms sliding from around my middle hesitantly.

“What do you want to know, Rob?” He looked at up at me with a placid expression.

“What are you?” I asked the first question that came to mind.

“I already answered that.”

“Not fully you didn’t.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You saw me coming,” I whispered. “That’s what Oma told me.”

“What does that mean?”

I just stared at him. He sighed again.

“Okay.” He shrugged. “So, maybe I have premonitions. So what?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged back. “That’s not normal though, right?”

“I guess not.”

“How long have you had premonitions?”

“Long as I can remember.” He replied evenly. “But I didn’t recognize what they were, or that I was even having them until I was in college. So I’m still adjusting to it myself.”

“What does that make you?” I asked. “Clairvoyant? Psychic?”