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Snow Day
(the fifth date)
On the day of Avery and Ryan’s fifth date, it snows.
This is not out of the ordinary—it snows a lot in the towns where they live. But this is the first snowfall, and that always occasions a certain amount of surprise. Winter is no longer deniable, even though there are still some leaves that refuse to abdicate from the trees. The days have already been shortening, a minute or two of sunlight leaking away each evening, but that isn’t as noticeable as the sudden shift to snow.
If Avery and Ryan lived in the same town, the snow wouldn’t have much impact on their date. Their progress toward each other would be a measure slower, a measure more thoughtful, but everything would go as planned. As it happens, Ryan is driving to Avery. They might have met midway, but for them there is nothing midway, nor is there anything, really, within a fifty-mile radius. A pair of movie theaters. A few diners. A mall that has seen better days. AWalmart where you were sure to bump into at least three people you didn’t want to see while out on a date. Places you could hang out, but you wouldn’t necessarily want to, at least not for a special occasion. And at this point, for Avery and Ryan, each date is a special occasion.
They met at a dance—a gay prom—the blue-haired boy (Ryan) and the pink-haired boy (Avery) spotting one another and filling one another’s minds with music and color, shyness and an inexplicable but powerful urge to overcome shyness. It has progressed at a pace neither Ryan nor Avery has any reference point for. Are they going fast? Slow? The speed limit? Ryan has now met Avery’s parents; Avery has yet to meet Ryan’s parents, but at least he knows the reason has nothing to do with him and everything to do with the fact that Ryan’s parents aren’t quite ready for their blue-haired son to bring home a pink-haired boyfriend (or a boyfriend with any other hair color, for that matter).
Avery’s parents have always been understanding—even before he realized he was a boy and should be recognized by the world as a boy. When he shared this truth with them, they didn’t dismiss it or try to persuade him otherwise. And when Ryan appeared in Avery’s life, and Avery let him appear in his parents’ lives as well, they were nothing short of welcoming. Avery isn’t particularly surprised by this, even if it still feels like he’s sharing a new chapter with them as it’s being written, and he’s a little nervous about how they’ll read it. Ryan, meanwhile, is unfamiliar with this level ofacceptance. He doesn’t know how to act around anyone’s parents, because his own are so negating.
Ryan does not check the weather forecast as he grabs his keys and leaves his house. There might have been murmurs about snow at school, but Ryan has learned to tune out all murmuring when he’s there; most murmurs are nastier and less important than the weather report. When the first flakes hit his windshield, it’s so gradual that it looks as if small, translucent spiders are dropping from the sky, filaments in their wake. It’s only when he’s ten minutes from Avery’s house that the wipers need to be turned on and the truck needs to slow. The snowflakes have begun to crowd the sky, and Ryan can’t help but smile at the way something solid can materialize from air, as if it has been summoned by a gentle spell.
He feels he already knows the route by heart…but sometimes the heart makes wrong turns. He could call Avery to ask for directions, but he chooses to rely on his phone’s navigational skills instead, since he wants Avery to believe he can find his way from memory. (On the fifth date, you are always looking for ways to prove the path to the sixth, seventh, and eighth.)
Avery is waiting by his window, so he is aware of the snow, too. It isn’t so dense that his delight needs to skid and swerve into worry. No, as he watches the downward drift, he doesn’t picture Ryan in any wreck, or even imagine Ryan forced to turn back home. Instead he feels that elementalwonder that comes from seeing the world so casually altered, the transfixing sensation of watching something so intricately patternless fall.
When Ryan’s pickup appears within the snowfall, Avery’s heart becomes the opposite of snowfall—that strange, windblown moment when you look and see the snow is actually drifting upward. Snowrise. When Avery sees Ryan pulling into his driveway, his heart is snowrise.
He is trying to guard this heart of his, but the guards are distracted. He is trying to cage his excitement, but he keeps leaving the door unlatched. He knows it is dangerous to like someone so much.
There is nervousness, too. Avery has control of his room, but he doesn’t have control over the whole house. His mother likes to hang up family pictures, and as a result there are lots of photos of Avery as a kid, Avery before everything was known, Avery before everything was understood. His mother had been very clear about this: It would hurt more to erase the past. Better, she said, to come to peace with it. There was no reason to hide it, no reason to disown the child Avery had been. Avery thought it was much more complicated than this, but at the same time, his parents had been so cool with everything else that he didn’t think it would be fair to tell them to take down all the photographs of the time before. In some of the photographs, Avery looks very happy. On some of those days, he was. On others, not as much. Only Avery has access to the feelings that lived underneath. Even when he was just a kid.
He certainly can’t ask his parents to take down the photos now, just because Ryan is coming over. He knows it isn’t worth it to try to curate his past, to try to present it to Ryan as if it had been otherwise. One of the most exciting and intimidating things about Ryan is the fact that Avery wants to tell him the truth. This is what they’ve recognized in each other. No pretending. They will talk to each other undisguised.
This makes Ryan anxious, too, but it’s an anxiety he’s willing to navigate, the same way he’s willing to step into the snow and walk through the wind in order to get inside. He can see Avery in the window as he pulls into the driveway, can see his pink hair and the lamp right next to him, the way it beacons out on such a dimming day. Ryan once heard the phraseLeave a light on for meand thought it was one of the most romantic requests ever made. He liked the idea that when you fall in love with someone, the other person becomes your lighthouse keeper, even if it means staying up all night, even if it means staring out into the darkness until the darkness assumes the shape of your love and comes back to you.
Ryan turns off the truck and almost immediately the windshield is covered. He turns off the headlights and for a moment there is the sincere silence of an entirely natural world. Even though his lighthouse keeper waits, he sits for a few seconds and listens to the music of the snow, to the slight tintinnabulation of snowflakes conversing with glass. He opens the door and lets his sneaker sink into the sparseaccumulation that covers the driveway. The cold immediately attaches itself to his ears, his fingers. He races up the steps, inaugural footprints marking his trail. When he gets to the door, it is already open. When he gets to the door, he finds Avery in a blue sweater, Avery smiling as if Ryan’s arrival is the greatest gift a boy could ever want.
They stop and look at each other. A little more snow falls on Ryan’s shoulder and dusts his hair. He doesn’t notice. Not until he is inside and Avery is brushing it off, using it as an excuse for immediate touch, a welcome that starts at the top of Ryan’s head and works its way to the side of his face and down his neck.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Avery says.
“And I’m so glad to be here,” Ryan answers.
Avery, having been inside the past couple of hours, has no idea how warm his house is, how it feels to Ryan as if cookies are being baked a few feet away. It is the kind of warmth you want to nestle into.
There are footsteps from another room, Avery’s mother calling out, “Is he here?” Ryan stomps his shoes on the mat, takes off his coat, and hands it to Avery, who hangs it on a doorknob to dangle until it is dry enough for the closet. Avery’s mother appears from her home office, welcoming Ryan and asking him about his drive. Ryan isn’t used to this kind of chitchat from a parent—maybe his father would have given him an “Is the truck driving okay?” but he wouldn’t have wanted to know anything beyond that. For Avery’s mother,it seems like the chitchat is meant as an entryway into more conversations, more topics.
She asks Ryan to leave his sneakers by the door, but she makes it feel like a favor rather than a command. Ryan complies, then worries he is broadcasting the hole in the heel of his left sock. If Avery’s mother notices, she doesn’t say anything.
(Ryan’s mother would have said something, and it wouldn’t have been very nice.)
“Well, I won’t get in your way,” Avery’s mother promises, getting in their way a little bit longer. “If you need anything, you know where I’ll be. There should be muffins in the kitchen. I think we have blueberry, maybe some carrot—or that might be bran. I’m not sure how you feel about bran, Ryan. Or about raisins—I think those have rai—”
“We’ve got it, Mom,” Avery interrupts. Ryan is amused to see him so exasperated by prolonged muffin talk.
Avery’s mother laughs, holds up her hand in surrender.
“As I said, I’ll be in my office if you need anything.”
She shoots Avery one last look—I love you even when you’re rude to me in front of your friend—and skedaddles.
When Avery’s mother leaves the room, Ryan steps away from the door and takes up Avery’s old position at the window. The snow is now blowing in gusts, clouds dissolving in the midst of a fight. The branches of the trees are beginning to bow and sway, as if beckoning the snow to fall even faster.
I’m lucky to have made it,Ryan thinks.
