Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

What  can  I  do?  and  eventually  they  walked  back  toward  the  Mustang.  As  we  approached  the  Waffle
House, we walked past them, and Timmy lunged menacingly at me, but that was it. When I turned to watch
them go, I saw the three college guys trying to scoot down the exit ramp.
The Duke and I reached the door finally, and I pulled on it; Keun unlocked it, saying, “Technically, I
shouldn’t let you in, since only JP beat the Restons. But you have the Twister.” We pushed past him, and
the warm air rushed onto my face. I hadn’t even noticed until then how numb my body had gotten, but it
tingled as it warmed, coming back to life. I threw the soaking-wet Twister mat and spinner down onto the
tiled floor, and shouted, “The Twister has arrived!”
Keun shouted, “Hooray!” but the news barely even warranted a glance from the gaggle of green across
the dining room.

---

I grabbed Keun and hugged him with one arm and with the other mussed up the hair sticking through his
visor. “I need some cheesy waffles in the worst way,” I told him. The Duke asked for hash browns and
then collapsed into a booth next to the jukebox. JP and I sidled up to the breakfast counter and talked to
Keun while he cooked.
“I can’t help but notice that the cheerleaders are not, you know, hanging all over you.”
“Yeah,” he said, his back to us as he worked the waffle irons. “Yeah. I’m hoping Twister will change
that. They did try to flirt with Mr. I-Have-a-Ponytail-but-I’m-Still-Macho,” Keun said, gesturing with his
head toward a guy passed out at a booth, “but apparently he is obsessed with his girlfriend.”
“Yeah, the Twister seems to be working really well,” I said. The wet mat lay crumpled on the floor,
utterly ignored by the cheerleaders.
JP leaned over me to look at the cheerleaders and then shook his head. “It only occurs to me now that I
can awkwardly glance at cheerleaders while eating pretty much every day during lunch.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I mean, they obviously don’t want to talk.”
“Indeed,”  I  said.  They  were  crowded  around  three  booths  in  a  kind  of  oblong  huddle.  They  were
talking very fast, and very intently, with one another. I could hear some of the words, but they made no
sense to me—herkies and kewpies and extensions. They were talking about a cheerleading competition.
There are discussion topics I find less interesting than cheerleading competitions. But not many.
“Hey, the sleepy guy awakes,” JP said.
I looked over at the booth and saw a guy with dark eyes and a ponytail squinting at me. I recognized
him after a second. “That guy goes to Gracetown,” I said.
“Yeah,” Keun answered. “Jeb.”
“Right,”  I  said.  Jeb  was  a  junior.  Didn’t  know  him  well,  but  I’d  seen  him  around.  He  apparently
recognized me, too, because he rose from the booth and walked up to me.
“Tobin?” he said.
I nodded and shook his hand.
“Do you know Addie?” he asked.
I looked at him blankly.
“A junior? Beautiful?” he said.
I scrunched up my eyes. “Um, no?”
“Long blonde hair, kind of dramatic?” he said, sounding both desperate and also like he couldn’t get his
head around the fact that I wouldn’t know this girl he was rambling on about.
“Um, sorry, dude. Not ringing any bells.”
His eyes closed. I saw his whole body deflate.
“We started dating on Christmas Eve,” he said, staring into the middle distance.
“Yesterday?”  I  said,  thinking,  You’ve  been  dating  for  a  day  and  you’re  this  worked  up?  One  more
reason to avoid the happy middle.
“Not yesterday,” Jeb says wearily. “A year from yesterday.”
I turned to Keun. “Dude,” I said. “This guy is in bad shape.”
Keun  nodded  while  scattering  the  Duke’s  hash  browns  on  the  grill.  “I’m  gonna  give  him  a  ride  into
town in the morning,” Keun said. “Although what’s the rule, Jeb?”
Jeb  said  it  like  Keun  had  told  him  the  rule  a  thousand  times  before.  “We  don’t  leave  until  the  last
cheerleader leaves.”
“That’s right, buddy. Maybe you should go back to bed.”
“Just,” Jeb said, “just if you happen to see her or something, will you just tell her I got, um, delayed?”
“I  guess,”  I  said.  I  must  not  have  been  convincing  enough,  because  he  turned  around  and  made  eye
contact with the Duke.

---

“Tell  her  I’m  coming,”  he  said,  and  what’s  weird  was  that  she  got  it.  Or  seemed  to.  Or  anyway,  she
nodded  in  a  way  that  said,  Yeah,  I’ll  tell  her,  if  for  some  reason  I  see  this  girl  I  don’t  know  out  in  a