Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances Read Online Free PDF Page A

thought time to what you’ve said. Double that when the person is wearing tinfoil.
    “Too big,” he finally replied, shaking his head. “Won’t work.”
    Don-Keun shook his head as well and gave me a back-away-while-you-can—it-is-too-late-to-save-me look.
    I smiled and tried to develop a sudden and all-consuming interest in the menu. It only seemed right to order something. I scanned it over and over, as if I just couldn’t decide between the waffle sandwich or the hash browns covered in cheese.
    “Have some coffee,” Don-Keun said, coming over and handing me a cup. The coffee was completely burned and had a rank smell, but this was not the time to be picky. I think he was just offering me backup, anyway.
    “You said you were on a train?” he asked.
    “Yeah,” I said, pointing out the window. Both Don-Keun and Tinfoil Guy turned to look, but the storm had picked up. The train was invisible.
    “No,” Tinfoil Guy said again. “Trains won’t work.”
    He adjusted his tin cuffs to punctuate this remark.
    “Does that help?” I asked, finally feeling the need to mention the obvious.
    “Does what help?”
    “That stuff. Is it like that stuff runners have to wear when they finish marathons?”
    “Which stuff?”
    “The tinfoil.”
    “What tinfoil?” he asked.
    On that, I abandoned both politeness and Don-Keun and went and sat by the window, watching the pane shudder as the snow and wind hit it.
    Far away, the Smorgasbord was at full tilt. All the food would be out by this point: the freakish hams, multiple turkeys, meatballs, potatoes baked in cream, rice pudding, cookies, the four kinds of pickled fish . . .
    In other words, this would be a bad time to call Noah. Except he had told me to call when I got there. This was as far as I was getting.
    So I called, and was immediately shuffled off to voice mail. I hadn’t planned out what I was going to say or what kind of attitude I was going to adopt. I defaulted into “funny-ha-ha,” and left a quick, probably incomprehensible message about being stranded in a strange town, along an interstate, at a Waffle House, with a man dressed in foil. It wasn’t until I hung up that I realized he would think I was joking— weirdly joking—and calling him when he was busy to boot. The message would probably annoy him.
    I was about to call back and use a more sincere and sad voice to clarify that all of the above was not a joke . . . when there was a rush of wind, a bit of suction as the outside doors were opened, and then another person in our midst. He was tall, and thin, and apparently male. But it was hard to tell much else because he had wet plastic shopping bags on his head, his hands, and his feet. That made two people using non-clothing items for clothes.
    I was starting to dislike Gracetown.
    “I lost control of my car on Sunrise,” the guy said to the room in general. “Had to ditch it.”
    Don-Keun nodded in understanding.
    “Need a tow?” Tinfoil Guy said.
    “No, that’s okay. It’s snowing so hard, I don’t even know if I could find it again.”
    As he peeled off the bags, the guy turned out to be very normal-looking, with damp and dark curly hair, kind of skinny, jeans a little too big for him. He looked at the counter, then headed over to me.
    “Is it okay if I sit here?” he asked in a low voice. He nodded slightly in the direction of Tinfoil Guy. Obviously, he didn’t want to sit over there, either.
    “Sure,” I said.
    “He’s harmless,” the guy said, still very quietly. “But he can talk a lot. I got stuck with him for about a half an hour once. He really likes cups. He can talk about cups for a long time.”
    “Does he always wear tinfoil?”
    “I don’t think I’d recognize him without it. I’m Stuart, by the way.”
    “I’m . . . Julie.”
    “How did you get here?” he asked.
    “My train,” I said, pointing to the vista of snow and darkness. “We got stuck.”
    “Where were you going?” he asked.
    “To