“This is my favorite day of the year. Everything is quiet because everyone is just amazed by the magic of the first snow,” she explains, tilting her head, closing her eyes so the snowflakes fall on her face.
We hold hands, our fingers lacing, my thumbs drawing small circles on her skin.
But my chest burns. Pressure rises in my throat, and I’m not able to take my eyes off her.
“It’s,” I start, lowering my voice. “My birthday.”
“What? Your birthday is on November twenty-ninth?” Her eyes light up as they flicker between mine and I have to blink to suppress the pressure building behind my eyes.
This is going to sound pathetic.
“I don’t know. I guess.”
“What?” Her smile falters.
“I’m not sure. I don’t have my birth certificate.”
“What’s on your ID then?”
“The day Varners adopted me.”
“Oh,” her face tenses. “But… today?”
“I remember my eighth birthday with my mom. I only know it was the first snowfall. That’s all.” I inhale the freezing air to sink the pressure back into my stomach.
This is kind of embarrassing.
She looks at me like she sees me for the first time ever, like she’s looking inside me. Then she steps closer, snow melting in her hair, and takes my face in both hands, her palms warm against my frozen skin. She pulls me down to her.
“Kasien,” she whispers, like it’s something fragile, “come here.”
I lean down automatically, because I always do when she asks for anything. Her thumbs brush the corners of my eyes, like she’s checking if I’m really crying.
I’m not.
Not yet.
It just feels like it.
For a second, we just stand there, the first snow falling around us, city lights blurred behind her, her breath warm against my mouth,O Childrenplaying subtly in our car, wrapping around us. My chest is so tight it almost hurts to breathe.
Before I can look away, before I can make some stupid joke, she pulls me down and presses her forehead to mine. Her nosebrushes mine and she drapes her hands down, taking mine and lacing our fingers back together.
“I love you, Kasien,” she says, every word steady, like she wants it carved into my bones.
“I’m in love with you so much it scares me. You have no idea,” she whispers, her eyes closed.
Something inside me just breaks and fixes at the same time.
All those years of convincing myself I was never meant to belong to anything but the house and the name and the work. And now she’s here, on my fake birthday, under the first snow, saying the one thing I never thought I’d hear again.
I swallow hard, but it doesn’t fix the burn in my throat. My vision blurs for a second before I force it back into focus. I don’t want to blink. I don’t want to miss her face when she says it.
I could say it back. But I just feel like it’s not enough, like the words coming out of my mouth are not worthy of the feelings I actually carry inside.
Instead, I lower my lips and kiss her. Slow. Careful. Nothing like the way I usually devour her. I kiss her like a promise I don’t know how to put into sentences, my fingers tightening around her hands as if someone might try to take her away if I let go.
When I pull back, our noses still touch. She’s smiling, a little breathless, a little shy, like she didn’t just tear my whole chest open.
