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

Jeb pulled me close. “I’m glad I impressed you, though,” he said, and I could feel his lips on my skin. I could also feel the warmth of his chest through his wet shirt. “There’s nothing I want more than to impress my girl.”

I wasn’t quite ready to be teased out of my sulk. “So you’re saying I’m your girl?”

He laughed, as if I’d asked out loud if the sky was still blue. I didn’t let him off the hook but instead stepped backward out of his embrace. I looked at him, like, Well?

His dark eyes grew serious, and he took both of my hands in his. “Yes, Addie, you’re my girl. You’ll be my girl forever.”

In my bedroom, I squeezed shut my eyes, because it was too hard, that memory. Too hard, too painful, too much like losing a slice of myself, which, in fact, I had. I pressed the off button on my iPod, and the screen went black. The music stopped, and my iPenguin stopped dancing. She made her sad you’re-turning-me-off? sound, and I said, “You and me both, Pengy.”

I sank into my pillow and stared at the ceiling, rehashing just how things had gone wrong between Jeb and me. How I’d stopped being his girl. I knew the obvious answer (bad, yuck, didn’t want to go there), but I couldn’t help obsessively analyzing what got us to that point, because even before Charlie’s party, things were less than great between us. It wasn’t that he didn’t love me, because I knew he did. As for me, I loved him so much it hurt.

What tripped us up, I think, was the way we showed our love. Or, in Jeb’s case, the way he didn’t show it—at least, that was how it felt to me. According to Tegan, who watched a lot of Dr. Phil, Jeb and I spoke different love languages.

I wanted Jeb to be sweet and romantic and affectionate, like he had been at Starbucks when he kissed me that first time last Christmas Eve. I ended up getting a job at that same Starbucks the month after that, and I remember thinking, Sweet, we’ll get to relive our kiss again and again and again.

But we didn’t, not one single time. Even though he stopped by all the time, and even though I always broadcasted with my body language that I wanted him to kiss me, the most he would do was reach across the counter and tug the strings of my green apron.

“Hey, coffee girl,” he’d say. Which was cute, but not . . . enough.

That was just one thing. There were others, too, like how I wanted him to call and say good night every night, and how he felt awkward because his apartment was so small. “I don’t want my mom hearing me be all mushy,” he’d said. Or how other guys were totally fine holding their girlfriends’ hands in the school halls, but whenever I grabbed Jeb’s hand, he gave me a fast squeeze and then let go.

“Do you not like touching me?” I’d said.

“Of course I do,” he said. His eyes got that look in them that I guess I’d been trying to stir up, and when he spoke, his voice was raw. “You know I do, Addie. I love being alone with you. I just want us to actually be alone when we’re alone.”

For a long time, even though I noticed all that stuff, I mostly kept it to myself. I didn’t want to be a whiner-baby girlfriend.

But around our six-month anniversary (I gave Jeb a play-list of the most romantic songs ever; he gave me nothing), something turned sour inside me. It sucked, because here I was with this guy I loved, and I wanted things to be perfect between us, but I couldn’t do it all on my own. And if that made me a whiner-baby girlfriend, well, tough.

Like, with the sixth-month-anniversary thing. Jeb could tell I wasn’t happy, and he kept asking and asking why, and finally I said, “Why do you think?”

“Is it because I didn’t get you anything?” he said. “I didn’t know we were doing that.”

“Well, you should have,” I muttered. The next day he gave me a quarter-machine necklace with a heart on it, only he took it out of the plastic egg and put it in an actual jewelry box. I was underwhelmed. The next day, Tegan pulled me aside and told me that Jeb was worried I didn’t like the present, because I wasn’t wearing it.

“It came from the Duke and Duchess,” I said. “The exact same necklace is in the quarter machine by the exit. It’s, like, one of win-this! display necklaces.”

“And do you know how many quarters Jeb had to feed in before he did?” Tegan said. “Thirty-eight. He had to keep going back and getting change from the customer-service desk.”

A heaviness descended. “You mean . . . ?”

“He wanted you to have that particular one. With the heart.”

I didn’t like the way Tegan was staring at me. I shifted my gaze. “That’s still less than ten dollars.”

Tegan was silent. I was too afraid to look at her. Finally, she said, “I know you don’t mean that, Addie. Don’t be a jerk.”

I didn’t want to be a jerk—and of course I didn’t care how much a present cost. But I did seem to want more from Jeb than he could give, and the longer we went on like that, the crappier we both felt.

Flash-forward several months, and guess what? I was still making him feel crappy, and vice versa. Not always, but way more often than was, like, healthy or whatever.

“You want me to be someone I’m not,” he said, the night before we broke up. We were sitting in his mom’s Corolla outside Charlie’s house, but we hadn’t gone in yet. If I could go back to that night and never go in, I would. In a heartbeat.

“That’s not true,” I told him. My fingers found the gash on the side of the passenger