“We don’t know!”
Hall’s eyes gleam. His knuckle grazes my cheekbone. “You’re right. Very niche. Thank you, I love these.”
“I try.”
His expression changes, eyes darkening. He holds my stare for a long, loaded moment, and then something above me snags his attention. His jaw hardens.
“What?” I look up, but all I see is a puff of smoke. It smells like mint, like magic. “Why do you keep doing that? What’s up there?”
“Nothing.” His face is flushed. Definitely notnothing, then. Maybe I’m being haunted.
Snowflakes from the memory land on his shoulders, instantly melting. They last longer on my clothes than his, star-frost sparkling against my coat. Hall presses the pad of his finger to a snowflake that’s landed on my sleeve and crystallizes it with his magic, marveling over it for a moment before he tucks it into his pocket.
“I am feeling terribly human today,” he says at length, settling the cards on his knee. “I used to find those characters on CW shows unrelatable, but now I’m allmoodyand I just want to put on a black cloak and wail mournfully in... in a park full of fog. I want my cloak to billow behind me as I storm down an alley at midnight, the shadows scattering fearfully.” His hand tightens into a fist. “I want to wander through a cemetery in the rain and curse my feelings.”
“I understand. We’ve all been there.”
He nods again.
“Would it help if I said I’ve thought of the perfect white elephant gift?”
“Maybe.” He’s skeptical.
“I have two ideas, actually. The first is a papier-mâché Lacey Chabert fromFamily for Christmasand a papier-mâché Lacey Chabert fromA Christmas Melodymeeting and realizing they’re twins who were separated at birth.”
His spine snaps straight.“Nice.”
“The other is a puzzle. We’ll need to use magic for this one, though, because whoever gets the puzzle, the picture on it will be whatever their favorite Christmas memory is.”
He smiles one of those slow, happy, skin-crinkling-around-the-eyes smiles that tells me I’ve got a winner. “I like that.”
“Wonderful.”
“Spectacular.”
“Fantastic.”
“And if you were the one to get it?” he asks. “What would your favorite Christmas memory be?”
I cock my head. “I’d forgotten how much I used to love this time of year, when my siblings and I were kids. One year, we went sledding on the hill behind the movie theater, and then when we got back, Grandpa made us hot chocolate and put onHome Alone. We’d discussed how we could easily overpower any burglars, then made all the adults really mad when they found our traps. Syrup on the stairs, nails sticking out of walls, that sort of thing.”
He holds in a laugh, shoulders shaking.
“But I think that my best Christmas memory,” I go on, “is this one time when I woke up in the middle of the night. I was probably about eight years old. I was hoping to catch Santa filling up stockings, so I tiptoed downstairs, but there were no presentsunder the tree, nothing in the stockings. Then I looked out the living room window, and...” My gaze strays as I replay the scene in my mind’s eye. “The world was blue magic, the yard filled up with moonlight so bright I could see every tree, the shapes of cars parked all the way down on the streets in town. The glowing cinema sign, snow sparkling on the gazebo in the town square. There wasn’t a single sound in the whole house, because I was the only one awake.” I pause. “I think that might be the most peaceful I have ever felt, but I haven’t thought about that moment for a long time.”
He’s watching me with a half smile, and I feel wretchedly perceived, like I told him something I didn’t mean to.
I deflect. “What’s yours?”
He hands me the snow globe, and I give it a little shake. The memory playing out before us goes loose and dissolves, blossoming into Hall and me in the movie theater. We watch ourselves watchingHis Girl Fridayfor a minute, and then it becomes us watching Hall watchingmewatchingHis Girl Friday.
“Our greatest hits?” I ask, giving the snow globe another shake. Now we’re looking at ourselves baking cookies.
He takes the snow globe from me, contemplating diminutive Bettie and Hall for a moment, before sliding it away into another dimension for safekeeping. “Like my own VHS player.”
We stand up, in the bedroom once more, memories gone. For a moment, all we do is stare at each other. “Would it help if we went back in time?” I ask quietly.
He gives an almost imperceptible shake of the head. “We’d just carry it with us.”
