Kiss Her Once for Me (2)

“Twenty-year plan,” I correct. “I don’t want to be unrealistic.”

“Ellie,” she says, her tone surprisingly serious. “I have full faith that you will accomplish whatever you set your mind to. Now.” She holds up her phone again. “Look like you don’t want to murder me, please.”

I drop my arms limply to my sides and shrug, as if to say, Like this?

She shakes her head. “No, show me you. This does not capture your essence.”

“I’m not sure you’ve known me long enough to comment on my essence.”

She eyes me through her phone screen. “I know your essence is not an awkward shrug.”

“Are you sure? An awkward shrug could definitely be my essence.”

She makes a restless, impatient sound with her tongue, and, not knowing what else to do, I lift my arms in the air, like a standing snow angel, and I twirl on one foot in a slow, sweeping arc in the middle of the bridge. Eyes closed, tongue out.

“How was that?” I ask, slightly dizzy and struggling to reorient myself.

She studies her phone with an unreadable expression, then takes a step closer to me. “Here.” She shows me. The photo is blurry, a few snowflakes sharply in focus in the foreground, and me in the background, a contrasting swirl of color: the muted dark brown of my braid and the pale white of my skin against the purple of my jacket, the blue of my hand-knitted scarf, the little slice of red that is smile and tongue.

“I think it’s perfect,” she says.

“My turn.” I snatch her phone and wheel it around on her. There she is, in portrait mode, nearly six feet tall, steady with her feet in the snow. “Show me your essence.”

She shoves her fists into the pockets of her khaki coat, flashes me a sideways smile, and leans back against the guardrail separating the bridge from the river below. Her essence: perfectly distilled into a single pose, as if she knows, so unequivocally, who she is.

I take the picture.

She reaches out for me. “One more,” she murmurs before she wraps an arm around my waist. I know I can’t really feel her body between all our layers, but I imagine I can, imagine what it would be like to have her skin against my skin. I can smell the eggnog, the maple-bacon donuts from Voodoo, and the freshly baked bread scent that lingers on her clothes. She looks like she should smell like pine trees and campfire, like the wild and untamed parts of the Pacific Northwest. Rainwater and damp soil and moss.

But actually, she smells like bread. Like warmth. Like something that would fill you up.

“On the count of three,” she starts, and on the screen of her iPhone, I can see our faces cheek to cheek. Me and the beautiful girl with the impractical jacket and the half-moon smile. Snowflakes in her black hair and city lights sparkling behind us.

We both smile.

“One… two… three.”

Her thumb swipes at the screen to pull up the photo, and I stare at the girl captured on her phone.

“On a snow day,” I tell her, “you can be a different person.”

With her arm still around my waist, she asks, “What kind of person do you want to be?”

Not an awkward shrug. I want to be the kind of person who pulls a stranger close in the snow, so I do it. I wrap my arms around her, pull her in, until our bodies are flush, entangled, moving slightly to stay warm.

And then we’re slow-dancing in the snow. She’s humming the tune to “White Christmas” in my ear, and the rest of the world falls away as we dance on a bridge while the minutes tick down until Christmas. All that exists is her breath, her voice, her arms, and all the places our bodies meet. We’re suspended in a perfect snow globe built for two.

On a snow day in Portland, you could fall in love.





Chapter One


Tuesday, December 13, 2022

There is almost an inch of snow on the ground, so naturally, the entire city is on the verge of collapse.

Since buses are delayed, I tighten the red, hand-knitted scarf around my neck and plow angrily down Belmont Street. Cars are Tetrised bumper to bumper from the arcade all the way to the dispensary because no one here knows how to drive in the snow. Schools have prematurely closed for the day, and children appear in every doorway and walkway, dancing joyfully, catching snowflakes on their tongues. Up ahead, I watch two kids attempt to make snowballs that are at least 90 percent dirt.

Leave it to Portland, Oregon, to be simultaneously so delighted and so horrified by such a modest amount of snow.

And, quite frankly: fuck the snow.

By most meteorological definitions, this doesn’t even constitute snow. It’s small and wet, falls too quickly, and halfway melts into the concrete as soon as it lands. Still, it’s enough to delay the buses and completely derail my day.

I reach into the pocket of my puffy jacket and pull out my phone to check the time again.

Three minutes. I have three minutes and ten blocks to go, which means I’m going to be late for work. And if I’m late for work, I definitely won’t get the promotion and pay raise I so desperately need. And I’ll probably get fired. Again. And if I get fired again, I’ll probably lose my apartment.

Two days ago, the neon-yellow flyer appeared in the slit of my front door, informing me of the raise in rent January first. Fourteen hundred dollars a month for four hundred square feet of subterranean hellscape in Southeast Portland.