Oneshots

Hot Chocolate With Extra Marshmallows

I’d always been okay with her differences and such, especially when it came to her sexuality.  Before she came out, we used to have sort of a thing going.  I guess that’s what you’d call it; a thing.  She would play outside in the snow until her cheeks were rosy and she’d beg and beg and beg for me to join her, but I’d stay inside, watching her stumble around in the cold from where it was warm.  When it got dark, she’d come back indoors and I would greet her at the door and take her coat and offer her a cup of hot chocolate just the way she liked it, extra marshmallows and the spoon still in the mug.  We’d cuddle by the fire and watch the snowflakes flutter through the air as re-runs would play on mute through the old TV set with the bunny rabbit ears.  She’d tell me about her adventures and I’d listen closely to every last detail, and kiss her on the nose and she’d snuggle up to my chest under the patched blanket, eyes fixed on the TV we both knew she wasn’t really watching.  She’d fall asleep like that, and I’d try to pick her up as delicately as possible and bring her to bed, but she’d always wake up and smile at me as I lay down beside her.  Some nights we’d make love, thought every night we end up just staring up at the fading glow-in-the-dark stars that dotted the ceiling and tell each other everything.  I’d twist my fingers through hers, and we’d fall asleep like that, together under the covers, where nothing could hurt us.

When she turned sixteen, everything changed.  That’s the year she came out to everyone.  I was one of the last people to know.  She stopped coming around as often, and we didn’t meet at Seven-Eleven, and walk down to the dock where the icy lake would lap at the edges of the shore like we used to every day after school.  But when she did tell me, I tried to be as supportive as I could, and I promised her we could still just be friends, and she was allowed to come over any time she wanted, and I’d be waiting there with a cup of her favorite hot drink and a recording box full of ancient VHS tapes and a chest to fall asleep on.  She smiled, relived I guess, but she never really did take me up on my offer.  And our once strong friendship just sort of faded and scattered, a handful of dust tossed up into a desert wind.

She found herself a girlfriend, a pretty, athletic girl, with a group of quirky friends, chock full of interesting personalities.  She changed into someone else, someone quieter, a little more reserved.  She seemed less, well, less happy, but I don’t think that was the case because every time I’d walk by she’d be smiling; however, she never did wave.  It was almost like I just sort of got lost in the background, just another unfamiliar face in the crowd of high school without a name or even a real person attached to it.  She seemed to have moved on, found someone better than the boy who held protected all of her darkest secrets and fears.

I guess I never really moved on.  I never took down the picture of us from when she got me out in the snow with her, the one of the two of us smiling in front of what was left of the igloo we labored all afternoon to build, only to have it destroyed in an epic snowball fight.  I wouldn’t admit it to anyone except her, but if I had to pick, that would be my most favorite memory.  I keep the curled photo paper taped to the stand of my lamp, where every day I can wake up to her smiling face, the thing I miss most.

I remember that one day: January 5th.  It’s been horrifically imprinted into my memory forever.  Outdoors, the snow was falling in thick drifts.  It was the kind of weather she loved most, and she’d come in, stomping the ice from her boots and the flakes would be sticking to her eyelashes, melting only a fraction with each blink.  I was sitting on the couch, half-heartedly watching the black and white moving picture displayed on the TV screen, when the phone rang, a shrill piercing noise that made me jump.  It had been too long since I’d last heard that noise, and I’d forgotten what it sounded like.  I stood, and walked slowly to the phone, trying to remember who knew my number.  I could only think of one person.  Her.