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It wasn’t exciting work, but it wasn’t bad for retail, and he liked seeing his dad every day. It was also nice to have a little extra cash in the bank, especially since he planned to be the fun uncle and spoil his future niece or nephew outrageously.
He tapped out a quick acknowledgment to his dad, sent Esme a laughing emoji, then opened a new message to Colin.
Then he just sat, staring at the blank screen, wracking his brain for something to say.
Hey,he typed out.Want to go for a hike?
“He won’t want to go for a hike,” he muttered and deleted it.
What’s new with you?
He huffed out a breath. “Weak.”
Need help shoveling your driveway?
“That could work,” he mused. Then he looked out his living room window, where the sun was shining bright, and remembered it hadn’t snowed in two days. He deleted the words with a sigh, then lay back in the recliner.
“It shouldn’t be this hard, should it?” he asked the ceiling. The off-white, popcorn-textured drywall didn’t answer back. “I text Colin all the time.”
But never with so much riding on it. Evan sighed, then picked up his phone again, where three little dots had appeared on the screen.
Colin was sending him a text.
Evan sat up, the recliner shifting upright with a thump and a crunch, and stared at the screen. The three little dots sat there for what seemed like ages, blinking like a little digital harbinger of doom. Just as he surged to his feet to pace off the anxiety, the message appeared.
Snowball fight, four o’clock. You in?
“Snowball fight,” he murmured.
Colin lived in East Grand Rapids, in a neighborhood full of families with school-aged kids who liked to stage epic snowball wars. Evan had been present for a few of them, and they were full-on battles. The kids were ruthless, taking no pity on the thirty-somethings in their midst, and the first time he’d taken part he’d laughed so hard he couldn’t catch his breath. The kids had had so much fun pelting him with snow that even though his team had lost in spectacular fashion, he’d been issued an open invitation from the grade-school gang of organizers to return anytime.
He waited to see if anything else would appear, but that was it. No mention of needing to talk or clear the air, which brought both staggering relief and fresh worry. He’d been so concerned about how to talk to Colin about the kiss that he simply hadn’t considered the possibility that Colin would want to ignore it.
He wondered if they could do that, just pretend it never happened and go on as they had been for the last fifteen years. An hour ago, he might have said that was exactly what he wanted to do, but the conversation with Liza had clarified things for him. “Don’t you think fifteen years is long enough to pine for someone?” she’d asked, and she was right. Something had shifted inside of him with that kiss, something he couldn’t change back.
For better or worse, things had changed, and they would have to deal with it.
I’m in, he texted back before he could talk himself out of it, and went to go change.
* * *
By the timehe parked his Jeep in Colin’s driveway at a few minutes past four, he could already hear the sounds of battle. The small ranch home sat back from the street, the stretch of lawn that Colin meticulously maintained in the spring and summer still covered in a blanket of snow. It was also empty, and when he climbed out of the car, he determined that the cries and shouts were coming from around the corner.
He tugged his stocking cap down over his ears and crunched his way across the lawn. The sun was blinding, making him wish he’d dug his sunglasses out of the glove box, but the air held the bitter bite of winter, and his cheeks were frozen by the time he reached the battlefield.
He took a moment to survey the scene. The large front lawn of the neighboring house—which belonged, if he remembered correctly, to the family of the Snow Fight Gang’s ring leader—had been divided into four sections. Each of the four teams had erected a snow wall, approximately four feet wide and three feet high, with team members huddled tight behind.
The rules were basic, the game simple. The two or three best throwers stayed flush against the wall, popping up just long enough to hurl the baseball-sized snowballs at the other three teams before ducking down again, while the remaining members of the squad worked frantically behind them to replenish the supply of ammunition.
Snowballs flew like missiles, and the air rang with the cries of war.
They hadn’t been at it for long, because there was still plenty of snow piled up behind the barricades. As the game went on the supply would thin, and the snowball builders would have to venture out into the open for fresh ammunition. If they got hit by enemy fire, they had to join the side that had taken them down. The game ended when three of the four teams were eliminated, when the street lights came on, or when moms started calling kids to come inside, whichever came first.
Evan figured they had about an hour before the street lights blinked on. Pleased with the prospect of a long fight, he let out a shrill whistle.
The snowballs stopped flying as everyone turned to look at him.
“I call Evan!” one kid shouted from the team directly to his left, half a beat ahead of everyone else, followed by groans and shouts of“No fair!”as he jogged over to join his teammates.
