“Save it.” I wave toward the counter. “My charger is over there. Why don’t you let your phone charge while I update my parents and then I’ll charge mine?”
“And then we can figure out what we’re going to do the rest of the day?”
I don’t trust the smile on his face. “I know what I’m doing: worrying.”
“No way. We’ve just been handed a snow day fromlife. Those are rare, and we have a moral imperative to exploit it fully.”
My lips twitch. “A moral imperative, huh?”
“Asolemnmoral imperative.” He sits back. “Of course, if you’re not up for that, we could try one of the alternatives.” He looks too innocent not to be suspicious.
“Which are?”
“We could spend the whole day talking about feelings. About kissing. The two we already had. The one we almost had this morning that you were so bummed didn’t happen.”
“Is the other alternative murder? Like I kill you for being annoying?”
He scoffs. “No. It’s making out instead of talking about making out.”
“Snow day sounds great. Do you want to build a snowman?”
He laughs and gets up from the table. “Call your mom. I’m going to finish shoveling.”
My mom picks up on the first ring. “Everything okay, honey?”
“Considering we’re snowed in and I’m not sure we can make it to the reindeer farm in time, no. Not really.”
“You’re safe, fed, and warm?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s call it a Christmas miracle. Any other good things that come along will be extra stuffers in your stockings.”
We chat about the café and the boys. She says she made the cranberry blondies and they turned out great. She also tells me business is slow because they got snow too, so not to worry about Celia and Sara being overloaded.
“Any more snow in the forecast?” I ask.
“Not in the next few days.”
“That’s good.”
“Does that mean you’ll be able to pick up the reindeer?” she asks.
“Only if this road gets plowed out in time. My car won’t make it down their private road, and it’s too much for us to shovel ourselves.”
“Could you try?” she asks.
“To shovel a half mile of snow? What happened to making Christmas special even if we can’t get the reindeer?”
She sighs. “The twins know you’re stuck in the cabin. Rome woke up worrying about it. Then when Sara walked them to preschool, he said he wasn’t going to worry anymore because he’ll talk to Santa on Friday and get it all fixed.”
“Great.” Are there bigger problems in the world? Absolutely. Butthisis the one problem I was going to be able to solve, and that’s looking highly unlikely anymore.
“I don’t want to put too much pressure on you,” my mom says. “I’m trying to find the balance between reassuring you that we’ll figure something out if the reindeer fall through but not having you give up if there’s any chance at all of making it work.”
“Trust me, Mom. There is no danger of that.” At this point, it would be worth it to dig out this dumb road so I don’t have to deal with all the Levi tension. Not that it’s bad tension. But it’s freaking me out, and my circuits feel too overloaded with Christmas Town to handle confusing Levi feelings.
We hang up, and I decide it’s time to go out and help Levi. I join him in my snow boots and jacket, kitchen dustpan in hand, and find he’s now only about three feet from reaching the car.
