Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances by Myracle, John (good book club books TXT) 📕

of the picture I had seen in his wallet sitting on his bureau. I went over and had a look at it. Chloe was a stunner, no kidding. Long, deep brown hair. Eyelashes you could clean a floor with. A big, bright smile, a natural tan, a splash of freckles. She had pretty right down to the bone.

I sat on his unmade bed and tried to think, but there was just a low hum in my head. From downstairs, I heard the sound of a piano being played, really well. Stuart was running through Christmas songs. He had real style—not just like one of those people who play by rote. He could have been playing in a restaurant or a hotel lobby. Probably somewhere better than that, even, but those were the only places I’d seen piano players, really. Outside the window, two little birds huddled together on a branch, shaking snow off themselves.

There was a phone on Stuart’s floor. I picked it up and dialed. Noah sounded just the tiniest bit annoyed when he answered.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s up? We’re about to go, and—”

“In the last twenty-four hours,” I said, cutting him off, “my parents have been arrested. I got put on a train, which got stuck in a blizzard. I’ve walked miles in deep snow with bags on my head. I fell into a stream, and I’m stuck in a strange town with people I don’t know. And your excuse for not being able to talk is . . . what, exactly? That it’s Christmas?”

That shut him up. Which wasn’t really what I was aiming for, but I was glad to see he had some sense of shame.

“Do you still want to go out with me?” I asked. “Be honest with me, Noah.”

The other end of the line went silent for a long time. Too long for the answer to be “Yes. You are the love of my life.”

“Lee,” Noah said, his voice sounding low and strained. “We shouldn’t talk about this now.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It’s Christmas.”

“Isn’t that really more reason to talk?”

“You know how it is here.”

“Well,” I said, hearing anger spring into my voice. “You have to talk to me, because I am breaking up with you.”

I could barely believe what was coming out of my mouth. The words seemed to come from a place deep inside me, far beyond the place where I stored them, past the ideas . . . from some room in the back that I didn’t even know was there.

There was a long silence.

“Okay,” he said. It was impossible to tell what tone was in his voice. It may have been sadness. It may have been relief. He didn’t beg me to take it back. He didn’t cry. He just did nothing.

“Well?” I asked.

“Well, what?”

“Aren’t you even going to say anything?”

“I’ve kind of known for a while,” he said. “I was thinking about it, too. And if this is what you want, you know, I guess it’s for the best, and . . . ”

“Merry Christmas,” I said. I hung up. My hand was shaking. My whole body was, practically. I sat on Stuart’s bed and wrapped my arms around myself. Downstairs, the music stopped, and the house filled up with a drowning kind of quiet.

Stuart appeared at the door, pushing it open cautiously. “Just checking to make sure you were okay,” he said.

“I did it,” I replied. “I just picked up the phone and did it.”

Stuart came and sat down. He didn’t put his arm around me, just sat next to me, kind of close, but with a little space between us.

“He didn’t seem surprised,” I said.

“Assholes never are. What did he say?”

“Something about how he’s known it for a while, how it’s probably for the best.”

For some reason, this made me hiccup. We sat in silence for a while. My head was spinning.

“Chloe was like Noah,” he finally said. “Really . . . perfect. Beautiful. Good grades. She sang, she did charity work, and she was a . . . you’ll like this . . . a cheerleader.”

“She sounds like a prize,” I said grimly.

“I never knew why she went out with me. I was just some guy, and she was Chloe Newland. We dated for fourteen months. We were really happy, as far as I knew. At least, I was. The only problem was that she was always busy, and then she got busier and busier. Too busy to stop by my locker or the house, to call, to e-mail. So I would stop by her house. And call her. And e-mail her.”

It was all so horribly familiar.

“One night,” he went on, “we were supposed to study together, and she just didn’t show up. I drove over to her house, but her mom said she wasn’t there. And then I started to get kinda worried, because usually she would at least text me if she needed to cancel. So I started driving around, looking for her car—I mean, there are only so many places you can go in Gracetown. I found it in front of Starbucks, which made sense. We study there a lot because . . . what other option does society give us, right? It’s Starbucks or death, sometimes.”

He was wringing his hands furiously now, pulling on his fingers.

“What I figured,” he said pointedly, “is that I just made a mistake and that I was supposed to be studying with her at Starbucks all along, and I’d just forgotten. Chloe didn’t really like coming here to the house very much. Sometimes she got a little freaked out by my mom, if you can believe that.”

He looked up, as if waiting for a laugh from me. I managed a little smile.

“I was so relieved when I saw her car there. I’d been getting more and more upset driving around. I felt like a moron. Of course she was waiting for me at Starbucks. I went inside, but she wasn’t at any of the tables. One of my friends, Addie, works the counter. I asked her if she’d seen Chloe, since her car was there.”

Stuart ran his hands through his