Now that we’d turned off the Transcanadienne, it wasn’t long before we were passing snow-covered villages and fields with nothing but white powder as far as the eye could see.
The heating was on in the car, but the sight made me shiver.
“Remember that time we went ice skating?” Aiden asked.
I opened my mouth to saynowhen the memory hit me at full force. Aiden and Devin running circles around me, Kieran patiently trying to teach me how to balance despite having the motor control of a newborn foal.
And then another memory of falling flat on my ass and Aiden’s grinning face swimming into my vision, offering me a hand up.
Yeah. He was okay. Always had been.
“There’s a reason we only did that once,” I said.
“You were having fun by the end,” Aiden insisted. “Just needed to break out of your shell and relax before you got it.”
He was probably right. I didn’t have a clear or specific memory of that day the way he obviously did, but that was a theme in my life. It took me a while to warm up to things. People. Hobbies.
Snow.
Despite living in upstate New York my whole life, I still hadn’t quite warmed up to snow.
“Yeah,” I agreed after a half-beat too long. “It’s just that the shell’s thick.”
Aiden glanced at me, making the next turn without having to be told, a soft, warm smile on his face.
Something in the pit of my stomach did a backflip.
That… was new.
“You’re talking to a man who’s been wearing his dad’s leather jacket since the day the guy died,” Aiden said. “I know all about shells.”
That was hisdad’sjacket?
I didn’t know. I hadn’t known. How could I have?
The Goodes hadn’t moved in next door until after Kieran’s—and Aiden’s, and Devin’s—dad died. I’d never known Mr. Goode.
Kieran never talked about him, either.
“What was your dad like?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t about to set anything off in the minefield I knew I was stepping into right now.
“Tall,” Aiden said. “Or maybe he wasn’t, I dunno, I was twelve years old last time I saw him. Most adults were tall. Kind. Loved my mom more than anything in the world. Carried me around on his shoulders a lot.”
“You miss him,” I said, as though that wasn’t the most obvious thing in the world.
“All the goddamn time.”
Aiden’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel.
Without thinking, I reached out and put a hand on his knee, squeezing tight. He looked at my hand, then at me, then at the road again.
“I’m sorry.”
What else was I meant to say? I might not have gotten along with my family, but my dad was…
I loved my dad, and losing him would’ve broken my heart. All I could imagine right now was tiny twelve-year-old Aiden huddled in his dad’s jacket.
“Don’t be.” Aiden sniffed. “First of all, you’ll make my eyeliner run and then what would your family think?”
