Once upon a time… I published my first short story. It was for the first edition of a new literary magazine and my payment was a printed copy. Having never published before, I didn’t mind not getting paid and being able to say I was an author. It was many years ago. At the time, I was deep into my young adult contemporary romance era. I hope you enjoy, Winter’s Kiss.

(Stay tuned after for what Buttercup is doing in Cat Thoughts)

I kicked at a pile of snow with the toe of my navy-blue boot watching the feathery white flakes scatter across the porch. Looking out at the houses that lined my street, white iced the driveways, trees, cars, and roofs making it hard to imagine that the grass would be green again in three months. A blanket of fresh snow floated down from the sky and covered my front lawn. Snow angel snow—soft, pillowy, and perfect for flapping your arms and legs about as the melting flakes soaked into the back of your jeans and coat. Not the dense kind that could be molded into snowballs which Rayne’s sad little snowman in our yard was a testament to.

“Winter! Hey, Winter, watch me!” Rayne called. He resembled the Michelin Man, his skinny five-year-old body stuffed into a puffy black snowsuit. A smile touched my lips as my baby brother fell into a snowbank and sent a dusting of white specks into the air. He popped his head up from the mound of snow and shook the flakes off his bright blue fleece beanie.

I stuffed my mittened hands into the pockets of my gray peacoat, let out a long exhale, and watched my breath come out in a cloud of white steam. January was usually the bitter cold start of winter which required layers upon layers of sweaters, long underwear, and a scarf beneath a heavy winter coat, but due to weather conditions winter break had been extended. Rayne had dragged me and my jacket out the front door; I wore little more than a long sleeve shirt.

What was I supposed to do for the next few days snowed-in up to my eyeballs? Marcus—Mom tsked at me every time I didn’t call him Dad—would be working from home. After watching me veg out in front of the TV for an hour, he’d find some odd job for me to do around the house, like alphabetizing the DVDs (yes, we still own those—he refuses to subscribe to any streaming service) or rotating the canned goods in the pantry by expiration date. No thank you.

I couldn’t spend another day cooped up in the house with Mom either as she flounced from room to room in a thin lace-trimmed nightgown, a lipstick marked coffee mug in one hand.

For the love of all things holy put on some clothes. It’s January.

Even as a child—oh, how she could embarrass me, and still did—I remembered how Mom’s carefree way about her sexuality made people uncomfortable. My friends thought she was cool while boys in my class would tell me how hot she was, like it was a compliment or something. It made me want to melt into the shadows. I won’t even go into how other parents reacted.

I once asked her how she came up with Rayne and Winter as our names—big mistake. I will never ask my mother anything that revolves around her eccentric choices. As if she was deciding between the fish and chips or shrimp platter at King’s Fish Fry, she nonchalantly replied our names were reminders of our conceptions. Before I could cut her off, she then went into horrific detail long enough to scar me for life.

I wished I could go back to school tomorrow. The idea of walking to school in a blizzard was much more appealing than making up a few snow days at the end of my senior year during June in the Indiana heat. I have one word. Humidity. Especially when I sat behind Carter Briggs in English—Miss Kribble was a huge fan of the alphabetical seating chart—who lacked the ability to camouflage his gym sweat. I wrinkled my nose. I could smell the B.O. already.

“You know your face might actually freeze that way.”

I turned in the direction of the voice to find, Ben, my neighbor standing on his porch, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his ski jacket. His thick dark hair framed his face like it often did when he didn’t take the time to mess it up with gel like most of the guys at school.

“Only if I’m lucky,” I shot back before returning my gaze to Rayne.

Ben chuckled and then joined me in watching my brother try to catch snowflakes on his tongue.

I glanced at my neighbor out of the corner of my eye. “Hey, I’m sorry about Janie, I heard the day before winter break started.”

Ben shrugged. “It’s no big deal.” He continued to look out over the lawn as I studied his profile. “It was over a long time ago.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but it hung open stupidly. I’d known Ben a long time, since we were kids; we’d spent summers playing in the yard as small children and went to elementary, middle, and high school together. We were really good friends—at least I thought we were. “What do you mean? I thought you liked her.”

“I do,” Ben said. He didn’t look at me. “I did. I tried to break up with her back in November—”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me…”

Ben turned and stared at me. “You’d just started seeing Steven and…” He shrugged.

“So. We’re friends.” I frowned. Why hadn’t he told me? “Geez, Ben, you guys dated for like a year. That’s a big deal.” That’s like a decade in teen years.

Ben’s blue eyes stayed on mine a moment before he turned back to witness Rayne dive into another snowdrift. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. Janie did seem surprised by it. And then she did that girl thing…”

I raised an eyebrow at him. What girl thing?

Ben frowned. “She started…crying.”

A small smile crept into the corner of my mouth. “You’re such a jerk.”

I didn’t think Ben could frown even more, but the deep crease in the center of his brow looked like it was in steep competition with the turned down corners of his mouth. “Really? But…I didn’t break up with her. I, I said I’d try to work it out—”

For as long as I’d known Ben, he’d always had a very cool and relaxed demeanor about himself. So, watching him struggle as he tried to defend his decision to end it with Janie was a side of him I didn’t see often.

I squeezed my lips together and tried to suppress my smile, but it didn’t work. I had to be making some kind of weird face. I brought my gloved hands up to my mouth and pretended to blow on them to hide my quiet laughter. But the more I tried to suppress it, the funnier it became. By the time Ben figured out I’d been messing with him my laughter had escalated to a mix of snorts and giggles.

He flipped me off and returned to watching Rayne, his expression serious and his arms crossed over his chest.

“You’re going to melt the snow with all that steam you’re letting off,” I said biting my lip to keep any giggles from escaping all over again.

No response.

I rolled my eyes. Guys were so much more sensitive than girls. I cleared my throat. “Janie broke up with you before you could do it to her again, huh? Isn’t she finishing a semester early and going to DePauw in the spring?”

Ben sighed. “Yep.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. And I meant it.

“Whatever. The last month was just a show anyway.”

The screen door creaked open behind me, and Mom poked her head out wearing her usual nightgown plus a pair of fleece-lined boots. Yep, those boots should keep the rest of you warm.

I loved my mother, but I just wanted her to be…normal. Why couldn’t she come to open house night and do her grocery shopping like the rest of the moms in their mom-jeans and ‘Go Cardinals!’ sweatshirts? Maybe it was cool that I could talk to her about anything—boys, drugs, alcohol, and sex—she didn’t even flinch or bat an eye. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t even want to talk about it with my best friend, Abby. And it didn’t help that Mom talked about it, ‘making love’ as she called it, as some beautiful art. All that talk was embarrassing and awkward and stupid.

“Rayne, baby, come in for lunch,” Mom called and leaned out the door unaffected by the cold.

I guess those boots were working.

“Hey, Ben,” she said when she spotted him on his porch. She sidestepped the screen door and let the old wood doorframe smack against the house knocking a few icicles off the gutters.

Ben waved. A small icy breeze blew across our porch ruffling Mom’s night gown so that it pressed against the curves of her body. Heat crept into my cheeks and burned my ears, the chill in the air lost on me. I shifted back and forth on my feet as I looked at my snow-covered boots hoping I blocked Ben’s view of my half naked mother. I wanted to die. It didn’t matter that he’d seen her every summer working in the garden in her bikini.

Rayne dashed up the front porch leaving a fury of flurries in his wake. I brushed my jacket off with my mittens, but the soft white bits of frozen rain had already melted away.

“You know Winter isn’t seeing that boy anymore,” Mom said.

I closed my eyes; maybe it was my turn to melt the snow off the porch. The heat of embarrassment rushed across my entire body. She hadn’t been fond of Steven. Truthfully, Mom hadn’t been fond of his mother, Mrs. Burton, after the woman snubbed her at the hardware store.

“C’mon, Mommy, I’m hungry,” Rayne whined. He danced around me and tugged our mother towards the door.

“Say hello to Linda for me,” Mom called to Ben as my brother dragged her into the house.

I had never been more thankful to hear that wretched door slam in my life. Ben and I stood on our porches; the sound of winter so soft I could hear the snowflakes settle onto each other as they drifted down to the ground.

“You know my mom loves your mom,” I said, my eyes still glued to my boots.

That was an understatement. Mom loved, loved the Thorntons. She wanted Ben and me to have little Thornton babies. Mrs. Thornton was the only one that got my mother. Maybe that’s why I considered Ben to be such a good friend, not because we’d been neighbors all our lives, but because he didn’t act the way everyone else did around her.

Maybe that’s why it hurt that he hadn’t told me about his breakup with Janie. Knowing her, she probably made him swear not to tell anyone about it so she could save face. But I thought he trusted me. I wouldn’t have told anyone.

I’d crushed on Ben half of my eighth-grade year and into the summer before we started high school hoping he’d realize it and kiss me. But it never happened. And then he started dating Angela Castro when we went back to school who I knew would be totally wrong for him. By the time they’d broken up my ego had been wounded, and I was too stubborn to give him a second chance, not that he knew he had a first one.

Out of all of Ben’s ex-girlfriends, I liked Janie best. It’d been so long since I’d had that silly crush, I wasn’t even jealous. Much. It was more like this feeling of the person in front of you in the lunch line taking the last slice of pizza and not offering to share it with you.

“Hey, Winter.”

I turned in time to be met face-to-face with a snowball, its soft, fluff exploding into winter dust as it contacted my head. White flakes peppered my dark eyelashes and fell onto my shoulders as the snow found its way down the back of my neck and into my jacket. The snow melted while it ran down my flushed skin. Did he really just do that?

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I blinked the snowflakes from my eyes and stared at Ben in disbelief. “I’m going to kill you.”

Without a word Ben jumped over the rail of his porch and took off down the narrow space between our homes.

“You’re lucky that snow was soft!” I bounded off my porch after him, stepping in his fresh prints that dotted the deep snow. High drifts rose above my knees. I could barely make out his silhouette ahead of me in the spray of snow he’d left behind.

The icy air filled my lungs with each inhale. As my breathing became heavy with exertion, a white cloud puffed from my mouth like a smoking dragon. My throat burned and my thin shirt beneath my coat stuck to my back from the cold film of sweat that had developed from running. Boy, I’m out of shape.

I stopped and rested my hands on my knees—Ben was nowhere in sight. All the houses on our side of the street had long back lots that looked like an open field until it reached the woods at the end of the property line. Large metal barns sat nestled behind each house; we used it to store our vehicles and riding lawn mower among other things.

I scanned the white wasteland and searched for movement. A snowball plopped down in front of me, half of it disappearing in the air before it reached my feet. “For someone who plays sports that require throwing balls, you have sucky aim,” I called.

Ben poked his head out around the corner of the barn. “I didn’t miss the first time.”

A huge grin spread across my face, and I broke into a sprint towards the end of the garage trying to stay in the path Ben had made for me. He threw another snowball before he took off alongside the building’s metal frame, but it fell apart above me again and rained down on my head. I laughed as I rounded the corner and watched Ben stumble into a snow drift, but he picked himself up before I could catch him.

The wind burned my cheeks, and I was sure my hair was a tangled mess of dark locks plastered to my head. But I didn’t care; I was having more fun than I had opening gifts Christmas morning—and that’s my favorite holiday.

Out of breath, I slowed down and watched Ben run toward the space between our two massive garages. Like a wind tunnel, the wind whipped through swirling snow into mini cyclones. He glanced over his shoulder at me and lost his footing. His feet slipped out from under him leaving him sprawled on his back on the ground.

“Are you okay?” I called as I came to a stop a few feet away.

“Yeah.” He winced. “But I think I broke my ass.”

I giggled and Ben shot me a dirty look. A patch of ice beneath him had frozen over from the water that ran off the gutters. “Let me help you up,” I said and extended my hand.

“No, stay over there or you’ll slip. This whole side is ice.” He rolled to his side and struggled to get up on his feet.

Up close I saw how slick and shiny the thin layer of ice stretched beneath the sprinkling of fresh snow. If I had been the one to take the fall, I doubt I would’ve been able to get up. Mom, Rayne, and Marcus—err, uh, Dad—would’ve had to search for me and then defrost me.

Ben managed to get up on his feet, but he looked awkward trying to keep balance, like a tiny dog unable to move when their owners dressed them in those ridiculous winter sweaters.

I bit my lip to keep from laughing, but I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. “Would you stop trying to be a guy and just give me your hand?”

Ben stood still like he’d become a part of the frozen ground. “I would if I could. If I move, I’m going to fall.”

Ha. “I told you so.”

Ben rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Are you going to help me or not?”

“Oh, now you want my help—”

“Forget it, Winter,” Ben said, shifting his weight. “I’ll just fall and break my neck. Your conscience.”

Ughhh, boys. I reached out my hand, but I couldn’t close the two feet between us. Ben shuffled his feet across the ice towards me, the worn bottoms of his Vans working against him. Who wears Vans in three feet of snow?

My impatience got the better of me, and I placed one foot onto the glassy surface between us. Bad move. My boot slid across the ice until I was mid-split; panic setting in, I grabbed Ben’s sleeve, and he leaned back under my weight. We became a flailing mess of arms and legs struggling to stay upright before my feet slid out from under me and our bodies hit the ice.

Damn, that’s gonna leave a bruise.

Ben groaned as half his body met the frozen ground, and I winced as the other half of him fell on top of me.

“Are you okay?” Ben asked.

I nodded even though the slow burn of pain hadn’t left my shoulder and hip.

“Good thing you broke my fall.” He grinned, his blue eyes sparkling.

If he hadn’t been crushing my arm beneath his body, I’d have smacked him, but instead I replied, “No wonder Janie broke up with you.”

“Ouch. Low blow.” Ben feigned hurt which made me laugh. It felt good to laugh—to laugh like I used to with Ben when hung out every day. Then he smiled and we were both cracking up. The kind where you don’t remember what you were laughing about, but you can’t stop, your eyes water, and you just feel…happy.

And then Ben touched my face and wiped away an escaped tear. I fell silent—I may have stopped breathing, too. His smile faded, but something in his eyes seemed to change, like the color had deepened and if I fell in, it could swallow me whole. His breath came in slow, even puffs, as the pound of my own heart threatened to drown it out. Where my legs covered the ice, wet snow dampened my jeans, yet I couldn’t feel the cold. I felt something I hadn’t felt in years—I wanted Ben to kiss me.

We stared at each other, white clouds of our breath caressing our winter reddened cheeks. His body pressed against too much of mine. As cliché as it sounded, something fluttered in my stomach. I swallowed and willed it away, but the familiar yearnings of that eighth-grade girl I’d left behind summers ago caused my body to tremble.

Ben’s eyes flickered to my lips and then met my eyes again. “You must be cold,” he said, his breath warm across my numb skin. He pulled himself off me and the cold air attacked the right side of my body he’d been keeping warm. Kneeling on the ice, Ben grabbed my hands and pulled me to a sitting position. We crawled to the snowbank and climbed over the shoveled pile of snow, dense and crunchy beneath our hands and knees.

My heart sank. It was Angela Castro and the first day of school all over again. I’d buried the feelings I’d had for Ben, and now they pulled at my insides more fiercely than I thought possible. I bit back the disappointment and grabbed his hand when he offered to help me over the last mound of snow.

“Winter…”

I turned, and before both my boots sank down on the other side of the slope, Ben pulled me towards him, so that our faces were inches apart. And then his lips brushed against mine. Surprised, my body tensed, and I imagined I looked like a petrified soldier frozen before a battlefield. Not a good look. But his soft, warm lips moving against mine brought me back, and I relaxed against him, the space between us obscured from the cold.

Ben touched the side of my face, his hand warm against my wind-chilled skin despite not wearing gloves. Every place our bodies pressed against each other felt like a summery blast of heat melting the winter away. Sweet cinnamon toothpaste lingered on his breath that reminded me of the churros sold at the carnival during the summer.

I could still taste it when Ben pulled away and rested his forehead against mine. “I’ve wanted to do that for a while now.”

I closed my eyes and smiled. “You’re not the only one.”

(If you made it this far, thanks for reading this warm and fuzzy feel good tale of young romance. My early writings are filled with these kinds of sweet stories. But there won’t be many more… darker tales are on the horizon.)

Cat Thoughts

The perfect box is hard to find—we’ve had this one for a couple of months now. Brownie and Buttercup take turns sitting in it, but never together. No matter how small or simple, do you have something you find comfort in?

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