Page 17 of Catch Yourself a Snowmance
“I know!”
She’s giddy and it’s adorable.
She places her marshmallow on her skewer and I poke mine.
“There’s a method to browning too,” I inform her. “You never get near the flame. Just the heat, and you’ve got to constantly rotate so there’s a slow burn.”
I look over and she’s studying me, her marshmallow mid-air, nowhere near the fire. She smiles softly and I smile back.
She pops her skewer right into the flame. I suspend my marshmallow above another flame, away from smoke. Hers catches fire in a few seconds. She leaves it there, rocking her head side to side a few times and then she pulls it out and blows out the fire. Then she grabs a graham cracker.
“Chocolate of choice?”
“Traditional. Hershey’s.”
“Hmmm.” She nods in either approval or as a way of telling me that’s what she expected me to say. Then she hunts through the pile of chocolate on the coffee table for a Hershey bar.
“How about you,” I ask, never lifting my eyes from the browning marshmallow that’s about to sag from the browning process.
“Reese’s cup.”
“That might overpower the marshmallow,” I warn her.
“I’ll take my chances,” She winks at me.
I don’t know what we’re doing, but the marshmallows aren’t the only things playing with fire, that’s for sure.We’re flirting. We know it. Probably every person in the room knows it.
I pull the marshmallow out of the fireplace, use the cracker to ease it off the skewer and then I open a Reese's cup and place it on top of the marshmallow.
I hand the confection over to Alyssa. She exchanges hers for mine.
We stare into one another’s eyes while we take our first bites.
“Mmmmmm,” she says, pulling the square away from her mouth and licking the stray marshmallow from her lips. “That’s pretty good. I’m not gonna lie.”
“And this is … not bad.” I keep a straight face.
“What? It’s amazing!” She nudges me.
“It’s really not so bad once it’s all assembled. The chocolate makes up for the ashy taste.”
“Staaahhp.” She laughs. “Ashy taste. What about the goo?”
“The goo is perfect,” I admit.
“Say it,” she says. “Tell me I’m the contessa of marshmallows.”
“You are. You’re the contessa.”
“And you are Wolfgang.” She takes another bite and closes her eyes.
I don’t take another bite.
“Are you going to finish that?” she says around a mouthful of s’mores.
“In a minute.”
Alyssa gives me a side eye.
