Winter Will Be: A Short Story

I hated running, which is the only reason I stood there while he blew up.

“Don’t give me that look, Samantha,” he said. I barely heard him and didn’t change my expression. He was just lucky I hadn’t found my voice yet.

I was up to my knees in ocean by then, thinking that my name sounded like a winter day wrapped in fur, while his sat on my tongue, tasting like summer.

I spit it out.

“How dare you? No, you look at me, River. I’ve lived here for less than six months, and I have to leave again—again! Put yourself in my shoes for five seconds, will you?”

“You don’t even wear shoes,” he grumbled.

“Then put yourself in my heart!” I raged. “Buy yourself a freaking apartment in there because I can’t get rid of you!”

When he didn’t say anything, I tucked my hair behind my ears and turned to face the water instead.

I would miss the ocean. It’s hugeness, and it’s loudness and it’s carelessness. All the things that River had pointed out to me all those months ago.

He let me take two steps forward before growling, “Stop, Sam. You’re going to freeze.”

“Go home,” I said. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

I heard him sigh in exasperation. It was nice to know that I was getting to him.

“I should’ve known,” he said a little wistfully. “You said this would happen, and I didn’t believe you. I should have.”

I nodded toward the sea. “Go on.”

“It’s not your fault that you have to leave.”

I nodded at that, too. It was never my fault. I was sixteen; I had to go wherever my family went. It didn’t matter how quickly I fell in love with our new town or house.

It didn’t matter that I might have fallen in love with River.

“Will you please get out of the water, Sam?” He paused before adding, “I think there’s a frozen pizza at my house.”

I couldn’t help a smile. But I didn’t show it to him. I didn’t even turn around.

“We don’t have to eat the pizza,” he said, sounding more and more distressed. “We can eat whatever you want. Just get out of the water.”

Slowly—and only because I was starting to shiver—I sloshed onto the beach, picking up speed as I passed River. Without saying another word, I headed for the foggy street.

“Wait!” he called. “Where are you going?”

That was a good question. I didn’t feel like going home to the cardboard boxes and packing tape. I wasn’t in the mood for pizza either. No. I wanted to be outside in the snowflakes that were starting to fall.

I wanted to be free. Free like the snowflakes.

They didn’t feel anything for anyone. Not even River.

“Winter will be cold in Massachusetts,” my mother had told me and my siblings. And she was right.

Right then, I was no longer Samantha, pitiful teenager who was being dragged around the country by her six family members that somehow managed to keep believing that moving was fun.

Right then, I was Samantha, Massachusetts winter.

I walked up the road in silence, feeling River’s presence behind me even more acutely than I felt my bare feet on the pavement. He didn’t ask any more questions, bless his heart, but followed me in quiet determination. Somehow, even though he didn’t say it, I knew that he wanted me to stay even more than I dreaded having to go.

The ice cream shop where we first met was halfway down the road, closed for the season. I stood outside of it and waited, but he didn’t say anything. That was fine. I could hear our first conversation clear as day through the fog.

“What can I get for you?” River asks me.

“Vanilla please.”

He laughs like I’m the stupidest thing he’s ever seen. “Vanilla what?”

“Oh, um, in a cone. Please.”

He nods. “Do you want sprinkles on that?” He’s still laughing at me. I can tell. “I have rainbow.”

“I only like the green ones,” I challenge, crossing my arms.

Twenty minutes later, the line is backed up nearly to the beach, and I have a vanilla ice cream cone with green sprinkles.

“You know they all taste the same, right?” he says, handing me an extra bowl.

“I didn’t think you’d actually go through the trouble of picking out the green ones,” I say, totally self-conscious with throngs of people lined up behind me.

 “Don’t feel too bad,” he says, pointing to a single blue sprinkle. “That one’s a gift from me. Maybe I’ll see you around?”

Suddenly, I was no longer a Massachusetts winter.

Winter will be cold, I reminded myself, but it didn’t work. Instead, I found myself thinking, Winter will be kind.

The second time I saw River, he was sitting on the railing of the boardwalk.

I turned back toward the beach. He followed me away from the ice cream shop.

The boardwalk was mostly deserted in the thickening fog. I climbed onto the railing and saw River sit down beside me.

“It’s you,” he says. “Green sprinkle girl.”

“Isn’t that pretty?”

“What’s your name?” he says, swinging his body to face me.

“Samantha. What’s yours?”

“River.”

I laugh. “I mean your real name.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Prince River.”

I roll my eyes. “Fine. Don’t tell me. I don’t care.”

He jumps off the railing, saying, “I’m serious. Not about the prince thing but about my name. I can get my mom to confirm.” He lifts his phone.

“Okay, okay,” I say, raising my hands. “I’m sorry. It’s nice to meet you, River.”

I looked out over the ocean, wondering what River was thinking as my brain repeated Winter will be honest on a loop.

We’d spent a lot of time on the beach, swimming, and running—always because he took something from my lunchbox—and looking for starfish.

“Sam, you run like a turtle with no legs!”

“Shut up, and give me back my sandwich!”

He takes it out of the baggie. “Turkey again? You really must broaden your horizons, Sprinkles.”

“When I get ahold of you, River—”

“What? You’ll throw sand at me again? We both know that’ll put your sandwich in grave danger.”

I shut down the memory as fast as it had come. I must have made a face because River asked, “What’s wrong?”

Winter will be cold. Winter will be cold. Winter will be cold.

“Nothing,” I said, as the rest of the memory filtered into my brain. I would never get over the fact that the first time I kissed him it was with half of a ruined turkey sandwich in my hand.

Winter will be unexpected.

I walked to the movie theater where we’d seen the midnight premiere of a movie that neither of us remembered because we’d fallen asleep in the front row. To the store where I’d accidentally smashed a jar of spaghetti sauce that ruined his shoes. To the ice rink where I tried to teach him how to skate. Back to the ocean where I wondered if love was as simple as wanting to be with one person, forever.

River followed me around town.

But when we finally reached my house, he stopped at the edge of the driveway.

“You can come in,” I said hoarsely. “Everyone wants to say goodbye.”

He stood still for a moment before shaking his head rigidly. “No.”

I blinked my tears away. “Please come in. I can’t… this can’t be the end.”

“I remember, you know,” he said. “I remember being reported to the shift manager for spending twenty minutes picking out green sprinkles. I remember the spaghetti sauce, and the bruises I got at the ice rink and telling you that I’m a prince. I remember… all of it. And if you had just come back to my house and eaten the stupid pizza and pretended that everything was fine, I could’ve let you go. But now, that stuff feels like it happened yesterday, and I don’t want you to…. I just…. And I can’t even say anything coherent because it’s all so…”

I wrapped my arms around him as he trailed off and whispered, “I’ll be back. In the summer.”

“But you never come back,” he replied. “You said so yourself.”

I clung to a fistful of his winter jacket like my grip alone could keep us together. “I’ve never fallen in love before,” I said.

It was a long time before he whispered, “Winter will be lonely without you.”

But he was wrong. Winter was Massachusetts. Massachusetts was River. And River was kind and honest and unexpected. I loved that about him. I loved him.

“No,” I said. “You have an apartment in my heart, remember?

“Winter will be warm.”