Page 25 of Cocoa Kisses
“Car door, please,” she says, and Levi zips around to open the back door of my Civic on her side.
He grabs a blanket and pillow from the top of her pile, and her face appears as he deposits them into the backseat. Then he adds another blanket and pillow from her pile, and I try not to laugh.
“Mom, it’s four hours. I don’t think we’re going to need a nap along the way.”
“You never know. Isn’t that right?” she calls to Mrs. Taft, who is coming over from next door, equally overloaded.
Field trip, Levi mouths as he transfers the last of my mom’s load into the car. It appears to be . . . an afghan my grandma crocheted for me when I was seven?
Mrs. Taft reaches us, leaning to one side under the weight of a grocery tote holding two gallons of drinking water. She starts a monologue as soon as Levi reaches to take the bag of water from her.
“We talked to Warren and Liz, and we all agree: get on the road now, fill up before you leave Creekville, then stop again for gas when you get to Elkins. You could make it all the way to Morgantown without refueling, but if that storm catches you, you’ll wish you had a full tank.
“Call us every two hours.” She’s tossing things into the backseat, and I watch two snow beanies and two pairs of thick winter gloves punctuate each of her orders. “Liz signed you up for AAA, so you call them if you have any problems.”
My mom opens Levi’s door to tuck a paper into the glove compartment. “This is your temporary membership, but it’s valid. Levi, you download the app on her phone while she drives, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The fussing continues for a few more minutes until Levi puts his arm around Mrs. Taft, who is rearranging the pillows in the backseat, moving them from one side to the other as she determines which side they’re better stacked on. “Ma, we have to get on the road to beat this storm.”
She glances up at the sky as if she’ll be able to see the storm—still several hours away—coming. “Okay.” She gives a short, tight nod. “Okay.” Then she leans into his hug. “Y’all both drive safely, you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” we say together.
One more round of hugs and we’re finally in the car, me reversing out of the driveway while Levi holds my phone up to the window to show he’s already downloading the AAA app. Our moms hug each other in the driveway and wave.
We wait until I turn the corner before we start laughing.
“That was worse than when they sent us off to fifth grade science camp,” he says.
“It definitely was,” I tell him. “I’m surprised your mom even lets you do your job if that’s for a four-hour road trip.”
“It’s probably because she doesn’t get to fuss over me before my assignments,” he says. “That was all the fussing she’s been banking for years.”
“That explainsyourmom,” I say. “I have no excuse for mine.”
“Aw, it’s just Mama B love.” He waggles my phone at me. “I’m screenshotting evidence of the fully downloaded app and sending it to her.”
“Good plan. Then pull up my audiobooks and let’s find something to listen to.”
He twists in his seat to give me a surprised look. “Taylor Rose Bixby, are you telling me we will not be spending this entire four hours having an awkward conversation about that mistletoe kiss?”
“Because one talk wasn’t enough? I’d rather drive us into the first snowbank I find.”
He chuckles and leans forward to study the sky through the windshield. “Hard to believe we’ve got snow coming. You think it’ll make it down to Creekville?”
“We had a white Christmas about three years ago. Before that, the last time was . . . hmm. Maybe when we were seniors?” Too late, I realize I probably should not have resurrected that specific memory. I hold my breath for a moment, wondering if Levi will remember it too.
The pause between us is long enough for me to think he might be remembering the same part of that snowfall that I am. We’d gotten in a snowball fight in our front yards, and Levi had tackled me after I’d shoved a fistful of snow down his collar. Somehow, I’d ended up flat on my back, Levi fully on top of me in a way that would have had my dad dragging him off me by the scruff of his neck if we weren’t laughing so hard—and if it wasn’t Levi.
Levi, the reliable friend. Levi, the boy next door. Levi, who’d never given my parents a second of worry.
But for the first time, I’d found myself almost wishing he would. I remembered the strangeness of that feeling, of knocking him off me so I could smoosh more snow in his face, desperate to change or at least hide the weird vibe. It was an early warning sign of a crush, which made no sense.
I was a veteran of crushes, like most seventeen-year-olds were, and I knew how they could form out of nowhere. Some boy who’d been around for years would suddenly say or do or wear something that caught my eye, and then boom. I’d be a goner. I’d spent half my junior year crushing on a senior baseball player because I’d spotted him reading a D.H. Lawrence novel, and I thought it meant he had hidden depths. It was a thrilling and secret discovery. Later, I found out he’d only been reading it because he’d heard it was scandalous and he was looking for the dirty bits. My crush died as fast as it started.
So when I’d felt those early warning signs—caught full-frontal between Levi and the snow as his eyes sparkled down at me, and I’d suddenly noticed the nice shape of his bottom lip, and that he had an appealing weight to him—I’d performed an emergency bailout.
