“Not everyone.” He gives me a pointed look.
“Almost everyone. And you never get cold.”
“I get cold.” He burrows a hand inside the blanket, presses his fingers to my arm. And he’s right; he is cold. But he’s also nowhere close to being frostbitten, which is what I would be if I’d stood out here this long in just a hoodie.
I give him a look and try to pretend that, despite the chill, his hand on my arm doesn’t flood every cell of my body with heat. “You know what I mean.”
“So let me get this straight. Because I: one, am the hottest person alive”—he smirks as he says it—“two, make everyone genuflect, and three, don’t get cold very often, you’ve decided I’m an alien.”
“Do you have a better explanation?”
He pauses, considers. “I do, actually.”
“And it is what exactly?”
“I could tell you…”
“But then you’d have to kill me?” I roll my eyes. “Seriously? We’ve reverted to tired old Top Gun lines?”
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
“Oh yeah?” It’s my turn to cock my head to the side. “So what were you going to say?”
“I was going to say, ‘You can’t handle the truth.’”
He totally deadpans it, but I burst out laughing anyway. Because how can I not when he’s quoting A Few Good Men to me? “So you’re an old-movie buff? Or just an old-Tom Cruise-movie buff?”
“Ugh.” He makes a face. “Definitely not the second. As for old movies, I’ve seen a few.”
“So if I mentioned starving women and making a dress out of their skin, you’d know I meant—”
“Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs? Yeah.”
I grin at him. “So maybe not an alien after all.”
“Definitely not an alien.”
Silence stretches between us for a while. It’s not awkward. In fact, it’s kind of nice to just be able to be for a little while. But eventually the cold works its way through his magic blanket. I pull it more closely around myself and ask, “Are you going to tell me what we’re doing out here?”
“I told you I was going to show you my favorite place today.”
“This is your favorite place?” I look around with new eyes, determined to figure out what he likes about it.
“I can see for miles up here, and no one ever bothers me. Plus…” He glances at his phone, then very deliberately looks up at the sky. “You’ll figure it out in about three minutes.”
“Is it the aurora borealis?” I ask, trepidation replaced instantly by excitement. “I’ve been dying to see it.”
“Sorry. You’ve got to be up in the middle of the night to get a look at the northern lights.”
“So then what—？” I break off as what appears to be a giant fireball streaks its way across the sky. Seconds later, another one follows it.
“What’s going on?” I wonder aloud.
“A meteor shower. We don’t get many up here because they tend to take place in the summer, when we’ve got daylight most of the time and can’t see them. But when we do have one in the winter, it’s pretty spectacular.”
I gasp as another three meteors fly by, leaving long, glowing tails in their wake. “That’s an understatement. This is incredible.”
“I thought you might like it.”
“I do. I really do.” I glance at him, suddenly shy, though I don’t know why. “Thank you.”
He doesn’t answer, but then I’m not expecting him to.
We stand out on the parapet for a good half an hour, not talking, not even looking at each other much, just watching the most brilliant show I’ve ever seen light up the sky. And I love every second of it.
It’s weird, but something about being out here, looking at the vast night sky overlooking the vast, snowy mountains…it puts things in perspective. Reminds me of how tiny I really am in the grand scheme of things, of how fleeting my problems and my grief are, no matter how painful and all-encompassing they feel right now.
Maybe that’s what Jaxon intended when he brought me out here.
When the shower ends, it comes with a burst of seven or eight comets in a row. I can’t help oohing and aahing as they burn their way across the sky. When it’s over, I expect to feel let down—like what happens at the end of a really good movie or fireworks show. That little pang of disappointment that something so wonderful is over forever.