Page 59 of Just Forever

“See, I’m not happy about it, but that does sound more likely.”

“Oh, fuck you. I run.”

He laughs, and the low sound caresses my ear. I close my eyes for a moment, take a deep breath, and blow it out. I feel less tense already. I slide my back a bit to the left so that I’m lying on the carpet instead of half on it and half off and aim my gaze at the ceiling. This is my kind of meditation. The only thing that’d make this setup better would be Ryker walking in the door and coming to lie down beside me.

I was so occupied with my annoyance about Scott that my mind is only now catching up to all the other, admittedly way more important parts of my life.

“Where are you calling from?” I ask. “Did you guys land already?”

The long pause is pretty ominous. I really should’ve caught on by now that things aren’t going to go my way today.

“Yeah, about that.” Ryker blows out a breath. “There’s a freak snowstorm in Philly. We can’t take off yet.”

A wave of disappointment crashes over me. It doesn’t make sense that it’s so overwhelmingly big. Things happen. You have to roll with the punches. Life happens. Shit happens.

The wave still sweeps me off my feet, and then my mouth and nose and ears are full of sand.

I should say something supportive, like… ‘that sucks’ for example. ‘Oh, man. That sucks.’ ‘That’s so annoying.’ ‘I’m sorry.’ Something in that ballpark.

“Oh” is what finally comes out. It’s not even a sympathetic oh. Not the good kind of oh that’d make it seem like I’m an understanding partner, who understands understandingly about understandably sucky circumstances.

Instead, it’s a loud, disappointedohand there’s no room to interpret that oh as anything other as such.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

A small laugh escapes. Very small. Tiny, even. “Yeah. Fuck you for making it snow in Pennsylvania.”

He laughs too. Very softly.

“My powers got away from me.”

“Next time try and rein them in a bit maybe?”

There’s a small pause. Very small. Tiny, even.

“You know I’d melt it all if it meant I could get back to you,” he says. Softly.

I laugh again. This time it comes a bit easier.

“You’ve got money,” I say.

There’s a second of confused silence where he obviously tries to follow my train of thought.

“Sure?” he says. “So… I should use that to… get a really big fan?”

“No. You should do that rich dickhead thing where you have a crazy big carbon footprint, so you’ll accelerate climate change. The temperature of the planet rises. A lot. Ice caps melt. And then there’ll never be snow again.”

“Problem solved,” he says. “I’ll go kick a penguin for you.”

I let out a loud snort. “Yeah, right. What did penguins ever do to you, anyway?”

“Penguins can be real assholes, you know.”

“Yeah?”

“Penguins sometimes push other penguins off cliffs to check if the area is safe and if there are any predators. Saw it in a documentary once.”

“Well, that’s just common sense. They live in Antarctica. It’s tough out there,” I say.

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