Felix raised an eyebrow.
“Uh,” I started, rubbing the back of my neck where his fingers had just been as he held the door open for me to come inside. I wiped my feet on the doormat, as usual, and stepped out of the rain into the arguably just-as-cold cabin.
The heating definitely needed fixing.
“Didn’t wanna drive out here in practically zero visibility, thought I’d wait a few minutes while the rain died down, accidentally fell asleep in my truck?” I said.
I might’ve lied to someone else—or more likely, offered an apology without an excuse—but this was Felix. We never lied to each other.
“I’ve been freezing my ass off since I got here because youtook a nap?” Felix asked. “Geez. What kind of repairman are you?”
“The part-time kind,” I said. “But I’d say that was pretty average service. I did actually show up, right?”
Felix licked his lips, which were maybe a little less pink than they should have been.
I unzipped and stripped off the hoodie I was wearing and passed it to him. “Here. Actually.” I paused, getting my keys out of my pocket. “Go turn the heating on in the truck. Mrs. Delaney will kill me if I let you die of hypothermia in here.”
Felix curled his still-cold fingers around my keychain, and then held it up to the light.
Or rather, one specific part of it up to the light.
“Holy shit,” he said. “Is this…”
“The ring you proposed to me with?” I said, smiling at the memory.
We’d been six years old, it’d been Valentine’s day, and Felix had come into school with this in his pocket and shyly presented me with this cheap little ring with a big plastic emerald on it. We’d barely known each other then, but after that we’d become best friends. Inseparable.
Well. Inseparable until we were separated, anyway.
“Youkeptit? All this time?” Felix looked up at me in awe, huge brown eyes exactly the same as I remembered them from when we were kids.
I’d never had an easy time resisting those. What Felix wanted, Felixgot. He’d been good about not abusing his powers of persuasion.
“Sure.” I shrugged. “What, I was gonna throw it out?”
Felix slipped the tip of his finger through the ring, cold apparently forgotten. “I never expected to see this again,” he said.
“You can have it, if you want,” I offered.
I wouldn’t have offered it to anyoneelse, but Felix had given it to me. Him having it back would’ve felt right.
“No,” he said, pulling his finger back out of it. “No, it’s yours. I gave it to you.”
All the same, he closed his fist tightly around the keys. “It’s really you, isn’t it? After all this time.”
“It’s really me,” I said. I was having a hard time believing it, too. “I havesomuch to tell you.”
“I bet,” Felix said. “Uh, me too.Somuch. My life has been pretty nuts, actually,” he finished, a shiver running through him.
He still hadn’t put the hoodie on, and I wished he would. I’d survive the cold while I was working, but Felix looked miserable.
“Go. Get in the car. Warm up. I’ll come get you when the heating’s fixed. It’s probably the boiler, it’s… old. Older than us.”
Felix snorted. “We’re not that old,” he said.
“You keep telling yourself that.” I patted him on the shoulder, brushing past him to get into the house.
This wasn’t exactly how I’d expected my day to go, but I wasn’t about to complain.
