Winners Don't Have Bad Days (Watty 2020 Winner, Romance)

23. #KissAndSnow, January 2018

Mike sat on his bed in front of the open closet. The box with the skates rested on his knees. The boots smelled of leather, highlighting just how new this object was, how out of place.

Daya gave him an opening big enough to drive a truck through and he didn't take it. He could have told her about the decades-long competition between his parents and his own gastronomical excesses when she spoke up. Or afterwards... and he didn't. When she goes down the rabbit hole of the rare food sensitivities and medical conditions to help him, it would be on his own head. 

He sighed and replaced the sharpened skates in the closet. They looked so out of place next to the folded sweaters, the row of familiar shirts and slacks, alien even.

But he was the one who brought up the skating first. It was also him who let Daya talk him into accepting skates as a Christmas gift. 

And how could he refuse? Daya seemed less tractable since she came back from Toronto, as if an unfamiliar energy buoyed her into a different plane of existence. She always had a dancer's walk so light that he used to steal glances to check if she really walked like that all the time... but now she floated.

Her head floated too, as if she had left a bit of herself back in Ontario. She'd incline it, smiling dreamily, listening to an inaudible tune, miss what he was saying, apologize, ask him to repeat, then would drift away again, the popular fluff on the wind.

A shiver ran through him whenever he thought of it: was it all family business and would it let her go? It had been two days already since she had come back... at least physically.

Two whole days, oh my! Any woman should have forgotten her entire past by now in my intoxicating company. 

He scratched his ear... the only time Daya's attention didn't waver from him was when they went shopping for the skates and in the gym. Ironically, he wouldn't have minded less scrutiny at those locations, particularly in the gym.

Maybe it would have been better to say straight out, I want you to stay with me, instead of working out a rental agreement, but he was prepared to confess his love to the old Daya. The Daya who returned from Toronto was... intractable. And these were the times when quickly sparked passion was looked upon with derision. His acquaintances back at the university cited years of dating before moving in together like it was a work experience on a resume.

He did it in a reverse order: asked the lady to move in, then fell in love with her. Such romantic arrangements had plenty of historic precedents, normally in the absence of choice. Modernity made his feelings suspect and it wouldn't do at all. 

Hence, the quest for a reasonable rent amount that wouldn't ruin...what?

Everything, his thoughts whispered at him, ruin everything...

A light tap on the door interrupted his calculations. "Come in."

The object of his thoughts poked her head into the door, a pair of skates hanging around her neck. "I... ahem..." She blew a run away strand out of her eyes and started again. "Mike, sorry to bug you, but they are forecasting a Chinook for tomorrow. Let's go tonight before the ice melts."

"Ah, the motherland is blowing me a kiss, how nice." Through his first winter in Calgary, Mike came to appreciate the Chinooks, the warm coastal winds that made it over the Rockies from his native BC to Alberta. They thawed the city for a few days, melted the snow in the streets, inspired the more reckless citizens to wear shorts. And made an arch in the clouds over the horizon.

But the Chinooks were no friends for those interested in outdoor skating. "Give me a few minutes to get ready, Daya, and we'll go." 

He took the skates out of the closet again and sighed. An alien thing...