“Hey there. I don’t think we’ve met before. I just moved in.”
I shifted a little, giving him my back, and pulled out my phone. I wasn’t up for playing nice with the neighbors. Well, except Adam. “Sorry about that,” I mumbled.
He laughed too hard for the joke, and I pretended to take a call so he’d take the hint.
He did eventually. “I’ll let you go then. Hopefully we’ll run into each other again some morning. We early birds have to stick together, right?”
I sort of nodded and raised a hand distractedly in his direction while pretending to be deep in conversation on my phone until he was gone. After that, I still had to wait another five minutes before Adam reappeared wearing a camel-colored coat with a fleece collar. The bedhead was gone and his hair was damp. He’d had the slightest bit of stubble on his chin earlier, but now his skin looked perfectly smooth. I wondered if he’d shaved for the picture, or me.
I picked up my bag. “I feel like being five today.”
“Okay,” he said with a hesitant smile. “What does that mean?”
I pulled Shelly’s carrot out of my pocket. “When’s the last time you built a snowman?”
“Kindergarten, maybe.”
“Then we’re about to go back in time to glue eating and scheduled nap times.” I wrapped my gloved hand around his, an act that made his eyes widen for a second and tugged him to the stairway. “Not that I ever ate glue.” I glanced over my shoulder at him. “But you sort of look like the type.”
“You’re pretty mean for a girl I let hang out in my room all night,” he said, but there was a hint of laughter in his voice.
“I don’t hear you denying it.”
“What did you do in kindergarten then?”
“I was a thief. Used to steal all the good stuff from the other kids’ lunches. Then I’d try to play it cool walking around with bags of chips stuffed into my tights. Trust me, I’d much rather have been a glue eater.”
“So you were the weird kid?”
“Oh no, I was super popular.” I grinned at him and reached out to push open the double glass doors that led outside. “I had all the good food.”
* * *
I took us to the grassy area at the nearby elementary school, which had an easily hopped fence. Sure, the kids might kill our snowman come Monday, but I felt like I was giving him a chance.
I made sure to get a lot of footage of Adam’s hands as we rolled the body segments together and stacked them one by one before stepping back to check our progress.
“Um,” I said.
“Yeah, I think we did something wrong.”
“Or brilliant. Look, he’ll be a middle-aged snowman complete with a beer gut. This is what we call serendipity.”
“Or we accidentally switched his lower section with his midsection.”
“Either way, I’m digging him.” I added the carrot nose and found two rocks for the eyes. He still looked unfinished, but there weren’t any nearby trees with branches that we could reach, so I unwound my scarf and added it. “Much better.” I surveyed our armless creation and took a slow pan shot with my camera before lowering it. “So this is how Dr. Frankenstein felt. Huh.”
“Not everything you hoped he’d be?”
“Not quite. I mean, look at him. He has no mouth. He doesn’t know what to feel.” I leaned forward. “Are you happy, Mr. Snowman? Are you going to blame us later for your lousy childhood?” I gestured at our snowman and turned to Adam. “Well I can’t do anything when he’s like this. Maybe you can talk to him.”
Adam stepped forward and placed a hand on Mr. Snowman’s shoulder, doing something with the other that I couldn’t see. “There,” he said, stepping aside. “He’s forgiven us, and he’s ready to raise his own dysfunctional snow kids.”
Mr. Snowman had a semicircle carved under his nose. He was smiling. I was, too.
We positioned ourselves a few feet in front of Mr. Snowman, making sure he was clearly visible in the background, and snapped the pic. Adam didn’t let me get my hands anywhere near his phone and scrutinized the photo for a solid minute before deciding it was okay.
“Vain much?” I asked as we set out in search of some playground equipment that wasn’t iced over.
He shrugged in answer. Okay then.
The swings turned out to be our only option. “Do your parents get along?” I asked, filming my knees as I pumped my legs while Adam only swayed slightly.
“Define get along.”
“Can they talk to each other without lawyers present? Can they be in the same room without screaming obscenities? Are they constantly after you to spy on each other?”
“My mom baked my dad his favorite pie last week and had my brother drop it off. Just because.”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s... I don’t know what that is.”
Adam twisted toward me, pulling his arm inside the chain of his swing. I couldn’t help lifting my camera for a few seconds to capture him under the guise of putting it away for good. “It’s messed up. People split up when they don’t like each other anymore. When my dad moved out, my mom helped him pack. Like, they literally did it together.”
“You have to have some idea why they split.”
Adam looked down at his hands. Clearly I’d asked the wrong question. Maybe it was something horrible, like his parents finding out they were related. I suppressed a shudder and changed the subject before Adam became completely comatose.
We left the swings and our snowman and headed back to the apartment as flurries of snow began falling. Our conversation lagged the closer we got, drying up completely when we reached the parking lot.
“So that was fun,” I said.
“Yeah.” Adam had his hands in his pocket and was so busy staring at the building it was like I wasn’t even there.
Super awesome feeling.
I glanced up at our floor. “And that won’t be fun.”
His lips barely moved when he answered. “No.”
I didn’t say that it was already not fun, but I doubted he would have heard that. I suppose it was naive to think he’d keep me from Shelly all day, so instead of showing the disappointment that tugged at me, I adopted a chipper tone and started backing toward to the door. “Well, I guess I’ll see you.”
“Wait, you’re going?” He nearly tripped as he started after me without noticing the pothole in front of him.