I can’t imagine why this would be a point of embarrassment. Before I can question him further, music begins to rise up, filtering out of the silvery, snow-limned trees. Louder, louder, vibrating through the blades under my feet. It’s like living inside a microphone as the Ronettes gather around it. Our surroundings havebeen magicked into loudspeakers, so that the trees, the geese flapping high overhead, every individual snowflake is emitting the sound Hall wants it to. I slide him an inquisitive look, but he faces determinedly forward. Is he trying to distract me?
A slow grin crosses my face. I think he notices it with his peripheral vision, because he fidgets. Scratches his cheek and turns his face farther away.
I hear an ever-so-faintclip-clopof horse hooves on cobblestones, shimmering sleigh bells, the crackling of a fire. I smell cinnamon, pine forest, peppermint, chestnuts. At first I think that Hall’s infused these details into the environment, painting a scene, but whenever he flings me out, away from his body so that I can then twirl back into his arms, I notice how the sensations recede, go quiet. He’s notmakingthose sounds or scents. Heisthem. Being close to him is like huddling up before a hearth on the longest night of the year, a thick quilt wrapped around me, utterly safe and contented. It’s like closing my eyes, lambent light warming me all over, and drifting away in a golden tint of nostalgia, toy drummers, and childhood things.
“Maybe a little bit of holiday cheer isn’t so bad,” I admit. The sky is black, with purple wispy clouds drifting like little ships sailing to the moon. “But I’ll warn you, I might be a lost cause.”
Hall’s reflection in the ice is glowing. Actually glowing—a soft, blurry halo clinging to his edges, visible only from specific angles.
“What makes you think that?” he asks.
I stare at his radiant profile. I don’t register the temperature anymore, or if music is playing, or if the rink is still growing. Maybe that was only an illusion. Maybe we’ve been circling the same small area over and over. I’m too riveted to question whyhe’s cleared the snowfall away from my face as he looks down at me with star-bright eyes.
“The sort of person you are... all sweet and warm and fuzzy, is fiction to me. I’ll never be able to let my guard down enough to be like that. Even with my mom, who’s the nicest, most understanding human I’ve ever known, I’m scared to open up, because what if the worst she’s seen so far isn’t my worst, which will be her limit. I don’t want her to discover her limit with me.”
“I can tell you have difficulty being yourself in front of others.”
“It’s a habit I can’t shake. People are always using me to get more famous, or they want to schmooze Grandma. I dated this one guy for a few months, thinking he was so wonderful, until he revealed that he’d written a screenplay and wanted me to show it to Grandma. I told him I would, and it was like a flipped switch—all he could talk about from that point onward was whether I’d shown her the screenplay, when I was planning to do it, if I’d please hurry up. This is why I don’t date anymore, why it’s hard to maintain friendships. These friendships start off fun and light, with them treating me to margaritas, which evolves intoI need twelve hundred dollars for my cat’s medicine, I’ll pay you back. Hey, bestie, please loan me five grand? I’m only asking you because I know you’re such a good friend, and nobody else will help.At some point, they all reveal their true selves. Then I feel like a fool for believing they liked me forme. It even affects my relationships with people IknowI should be able to trust, like my parents.”
“I’m only one person,” he says softly, “but Bettie, I’m not using you for anything.”
I scan his face, but I’m not searching for proof that he’s lying; he’s so right, so inarguably right, that it brooks no challenge.
I sigh. “Sorry to bring the mood down. I suppose I’ve just been burned a lot. It’s made me jaded.”
“I’ve been burned, too,” he volunteers, which successfully captures my undivided attention.
“What? By who?”
He nods. “By catching a falling star.”
A laugh ruptures from my chest. “Youwhat?”
“Well, more like it fell directly through me. But it was the first time I felt heat! Second time, I got struck by lightning. For a questionable century there, I confess I developed an addiction to getting struck by lightning.”
All I can do is howl, which breaks his face into that boyish, irresistibly charming grin, and very quickly I can’t remember why I’d been feeling low. The lamps he nicked from Victorian London burn lively and fierce as the moon arcs out of the trees. It’s unusually large this evening, a milky round pearl. I don’t know if Hall is affecting the appearance of our environment, making it picture-perfect for maximum holiday cheer. Does it matter? The stirring of pleasant feelings inside me is real.
Before my eyes, Hall scatters trees all over the town square and grows them up to maturity, adorning them with tinsel and jewels, lights that flashHappy Holidays. Hall’s magic has been working seamlessly of late,whenhe’s using it to execute his own ideas. I’m growing suspicious of magic’s “total inability” to supply me with a luxury car rather than the pickup.
“He gives his harness bells a shake,” Hall murmurs. “To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep of easy wind and downy flake.”
I stare at him. “Is that poetry? Did you come up with it?” Idon’t know anything about poetry, but I know that it’s romantic and elegant and whenever I envision myself far in the future as an eighty-year-old, Old Me is surrounded by poems bequeathed from the many brilliant, softhearted lovers to whom I was a muse.
He smiles. “Robert Frost did. Wish I could take credit! You look so impressed with me right now.”
I look at the trees, the lights. He’s an artist in his own way. “I’ve always thought I’d end up with a poet, if I ever got swept off my feet.”
“Hmm,” he says to himself, head bowed. “Bettie Hughes, carried away by a poet. I can see that.”
“Thank you for this.” I gesture to the rink. “I needed some fun.” This man, if he can be called that, is indeed filling me up with the joy he promised to.
Hall’s gaze flares with a bright emotion, open and honest, as he takes in my gratitude. A ring of brown encircles his right pupil, to match his left. I don’t think it was like that yesterday, but the longer I think about it, the foggier yesterday becomes.
We step off the ice and head back up the hill, easy wind and downy flakes swirling behind us in a glitter spill of lights.
*
Chapter Nine
