Fear froze me colder than the blizzard raging outside.
And then his hand moved to the button of my jeans. I jerked my head free and gasped the word that had been trapped inside. “Stop!” And I kicked and bucked and twisted. Nothing. He moved only because he wanted to, and this time he dragged his mouth down my neck. He licked me.
“No. Stop. Guy, I’ll scream.” My threat sounded pathetic in my ears. It was weak, and my throat felt raspy from laughing. I wanted to cry until I realized I already was. But the walls were thin. Guy knew that, but I repeated it out loud. Someone would hear me. I’d scream until they did.
He hurled himself to his feet.
“You’re gonna scream? After you’ve been teasing me all this time, you’re gonna act like you don’t want this?” He said other things, things that battered against me as I scrambled off the couch.
“Yeah, run home, little girl. Where are you gonna go? Who’s gonna care, huh?” He blocked me when I got to the door, grabbing my wrist when I reached for the handle. “You gonna tell Daddy? Tell him how you kept coming to me and begging me to let you in? How many nights, Jolene? How many?”
Too many. I remembered them all, and I felt so foolish because, even then, I’d known. I’d known, and I’d kept coming.
“You gonna tell your boyfriend how you kissed me? You didn’t mind then, did you?” He released my hands. “No, you’re not gonna tell anyone, are you? Who would you tell? Nobody cares about you, do they?” He moved aside so that I could yank open the door. “Go on. Come back when you want your letter and you’re ready to grow up, Jolene.”
His laughter chased me down the hall.
ADAM
Bees were buzzing inside my head. Or I thought they were until reality penetrated the dream I already couldn’t remember. My phone was vibrating on my nightstand.
Jolene:
Are you awake?
Adam:
No.
Jolene:
I’m on my balcony.
I looked toward my sliding glass door and the snow pounding angry fists against the glass. The display on my phone read 1:47 a.m.
Adam:
You’re not on your balcony. Frozen death is on your balcony.
She didn’t text back.
I sat up, cold seeping into my skin just from looking outside. It made no sense for her to be out there. I told myself that as I flung back my blankets and, armed only with flannel pants and a T-shirt, peered through the glass. Visibility was like two inches. An entire hockey team could be out there and I wouldn’t know it.
I felt each one of my teeth freeze solid when I slid the door open. “Jolene!” I called her name but the wind ripped the sound away. It didn’t matter that I was still standing in my room. Snow swirled around me and licked my skin with needled tongues. Stepping out, I reached the wall and leaned over, telling myself I wouldn’t see anything, not a girl shivering against the wall.
And I didn’t.
Jolene wasn’t shivering anymore. She was too cold.
“What are you doing?”
“C-can you c-come over? Or c-can I?”
“What?” I could barely hear her, but if she’d said what I thought she’d said... “No. Jolene, no. Go inside. I’ll call you. Go!”
Her response was to break from her position and place her foot and hands on the railing.
“Are you trying to kill yourself?” I grabbed her shoulders and shoved her back. Instead of letting go, she gripped the railing tighter. “Jolene. What.” I wasn’t even asking her a question at that point. Either her brain had frozen with that one imperative locked in place, or something was wrong enough to make her forget that she’d nearly died the last time she climbed onto my balcony, and that hadn’t been during a snowstorm. That, or she didn’t care.
Both options scared the hell out of me.
“Okay, okay.” I swung my leg up and hissed when my hands wrapped around the burning cold metal railing. I shifted to grip the wall, and something soft and impossibly cold pressed my hand into the brick. Jolene grabbed a fistful of my T-shirt and pulled. When I tumbled onto her balcony, I realized the soft, cold thing was her hand.
Breathing hurt, and her hand in mine was almost too frozen to hold. I pushed her toward her door, which she’d left open, so there was no warmth to welcome us when we got inside. Shoving the icy wind out when I closed the door helped, but not enough. I was still in the process of freezing. Jolene stood still as though already frozen. I ripped the thick down comforter from her bed, wrapped it around her back, and pulled her against my chest before cocooning myself in it, too.
Ice had begun forming on the exposed hairs on my arms, and as I looked at Jolene, that ice seemed to stab deep inside me. Her eyelashes had frosted over and glistening tracks of frozen tears trailed down her cheeks.
We both started to melt as we sank to the floor in front of her bed. My teeth were chattering; her lips were gray. I didn’t know what I was saying to her as I started rubbing warmth back into her hands, her arms, her back. She said nothing as I coaxed circulation back into her limbs. I didn’t stop until her teeth were chattering, the sound a sharp clicking that was so fast that it almost sounded like my phone vibrating.
“Are you going to tell me why you were freezing to death outside?”
We were sitting shoulder to shoulder, so she didn’t have to move much to let her head drop to my shoulder. “No.”
Glancing at her face, I saw that the color was returning to her lips, but she didn’t feel all the way thawed out. Little shivering tremors still racked her body, so I wrapped my arm around her waist, sharing my body heat. I forced my tongue to the roof of my mouth so that I wouldn’t say something rash in response to her one-word answer. With gut-twisting panic, I thought back to the look on her face when she’d grabbed the balcony railing. She’d have done it. She’d been that desperate. I hadn’t been that afraid since the night we’d gotten the call about the accident that killed my brother. So I didn’t say anything else. I added another arm, and I held her.
I wanted to make her tell me, to shake her and scream at her and hold her all at once. I wanted her to hold me. I still felt threads of terror stitching through me until I could almost see them under my skin. I’d already known I loved her. But I didn’t know until that moment when she’d started to climb to me that I’d die for her.
“Just so you know,” I said, hearing the way my voice shook, “you’re my favorite person. In every way, you are my favorite.”
After a minute, I leaned forward to flip open the laptop that she’d left on the floor. I turned on the first movie I found, then settled back into the comforter with her as the opening credits of Napoleon Dynamite started to play. Her frozen tears had melted away, but new ones fell silently as we watched the movie.