“What do you mean?” He stops again. Turns. “We had full bars on the bus.”
“Well, gee, Tom.” I gesture around at the pitch-black night and whipping snow. “We’re not on the bus, are we?”
It would have had more bite if my teeth weren’t chattering, but Tom rises to the bait even through the softball delivery.
“Oh, we’re not on the bus?” he repeats sarcastically. “And whose fault is that?”
“No way.” I jab a finger in his face. “You do not get to put this one on me. You agreed to this plan wholeheartedly. And be real. As bad as this is, it’s not worse than the bus.”
Not yet, I silently add because this day has had a way of one-upping itself on the horror scale.
“That’s weird,” Tom says, getting in my face. “The ‘plan’ I remember agreeing to was, ‘Hey, Tom, there’s a motel just up the way.’” He swipes snow out of his face. “Now, I know you have a concussion. But in no universe does ‘just up the way’ entail a thirty-minute walk in the snow. Are we even going the right direction?”
I wrap my arms around myself and, because I’m too tired to put up a fight, tell the simple truth. “I don’t know.”
I must look and sound as awful as I feel because after looking at me for a long moment, Tom swears quietly under his breath instead of loudly in my face like I’m pretty sure he wants to.
Tom drops both of our suitcases into the snow and reaches out, pulling at my forearms until I uncross them.
Muttering to himself, he pulls off his gloves and roughly shoves one over my right hand, then my left.
I let out a little whimper of gratitude. As far as gloves go, these aren’t great. They’re meant for his five-minute commute to work in a brisk chill, not traipsing through the snow. Still, they’re such a welcome respite from the brutal cold that I nearly cry.
Before I can summon up a proper thank-you, Tom jerks me toward him.
I collide against his chest with a startled gasp as I feel him unzip his jacket, still muttering. Then he opens the coat, wrapping both sides around me so I’m cuddled against his chest.
“I told you to pack gloves,” he grumbles. “And what did you say?”
“Gloves are for babies,” I say, burrowing into his wonderful warmth.
“That’s right,” he says. “Don’t suppose you want to revise that opinion?”
My teeth are chattering too much to respond.
I feel movement against my cheek as Tom pulls his cell phone from his suit breast pocket. He holds it up behind my head so he can hold me close with one arm and check his phone with the other.
“You remember when you wanted to switch cell phone carriers?” he asks. “Because you were convinced that a different one would give you cell service in the elevators?”
I nod.
“You switched, didn’t you? After we split.”
I nod again. The new carrier cuts out in the elevator too, but I don’t tell him this, for obvious reasons.
“Well, I win,” he says, more tired than victorious. “I kept the old carrier, and I’ve got two bars, even all the way out here.”
“Well, la-di-da,” I manage.
He tucks his phone back in his pocket and eases me away from him. I bite back a whine at the loss of warmth.
“Come on,” Tom says, giving my upper arms a quick rub before nodding in the opposite direction. “It’s just ahead, and I’m using it the proper way, as in a two-minute walk, not your way, which is a thirty-minute walk. We’d probably be able to see it if not for all the snow.”
I nod and start to pull off his gloves.
“Don’t. Keep them.” And then, he reaches out, taking my laptop bag from me and hoisting it over his shoulder along with his own laptop bag.
He picks up the suitcases and resumes walking. Slower this time, which I know is more for my sake than it is because the bags slow him down.
And for the first time in a long time, I let myself admit the truth.
I may have been a fool to let this one slip away.
TWENTY-SEVEN
KATHERINE
December 23, 11:36 p.m.
True to Tom’s Boy Scout of a phone carrier’s claims, the motel really is two minutes ahead, and considering how awful I felt just a moment ago, I can’t believe I’m even thinking this, but . . .
“Damn,” Tom says from beside me. “We should have taken our chances on the bus.”
Yeah. Tom’s voiced my thought exactly. The motel is . . .
Hell. Literally.
On the map, it was called the Blue Shell Motel.
In real life, most of the blue neon lights are out, so it reads:
The Blue hell Mote
And it looks exactly like a “blue hell mote” should. It’s one of those two-story deals, with all the doors facing outward and open to the outside. It was probably painted blue once upon a time, but now it’s a dingy gray. The doors are a darker gray, so the whole structure resembles a skull with mostly missing teeth.
Also, if the roof survives this snowstorm, it’ll be a Christmas miracle.
“Hey. You remember the day we met?” Tom asks over the wind, looking over at me.
“You want to rehash that now?” I ask, incredulous as I force myself to push toward the front door. “Is that hypothermia at work?”
“I just want to say, for the record, Katherine,” he says, trudging along beside me, “if I could go back and do things differently, I would. I’d have let that man with the gum on his shoe have you.”
“Have me?” I repeat. “Would he have gotten my dowry too, if my Pa would have consented? Also, I just want to say, for the record, Thomas: it was I who had you.”
“Really.” His skepticism is plain. “So, when you ordered me to go get peanut butter, that was your idea of seduction? I don’t think so. I came onto you.”
“And how’d that work out for you back then?” I snap, a little surprised at how painful this trip down memory lane suddenly feels. “Also, when you find that time machine, let me know because I want a ride on it. There are a few things I’d do differently too.”
“Like what?” he asks, doubtful. As though he’s the only one who gets to play the game of if only.
“We are not doing this now,” I mutter as we finally make it to the motel’s front door. The awning provides a bit of relief from the dumping snow, but that’s got nothing on the moment when I push open the rickety door, and we’re greeted by a blast of warmth and the jingle of a bell.
The bell is the old-fashioned kind I thought only existed on the sets of small-town romantic comedies. It’s also adorned with a sprig of holly, a big red bow, and a little sign that says “Jingle All the Way,” but I’m so happy to be out of the storm that I can’t even find the Grinch version of myself.
I always thought the point of a bell tied to a door was to alert people that someone had entered a room, but the motel clerk must not have gotten that memo because he doesn’t look up from the video he’s watching on his phone.
“Hi,” Tom says to the employee as we approach the counter. His tone is about as lacking in charm as I’ve ever heard. Apparently it only takes one ex-wife, one blizzard, a missed flight, jumping off a train, getting in a bus accident, and a blue hell mote to break him.