Winter Longing Read Online Free PDF Page B

there to say? Sorry the boy you’ve loved since you were eight finally kissed you, then died the next day?
    She couldn’t even say that, because she didn’t know about our kisses. The only person who did was Lindsay, and for some reason, now I wished she didn’t.
    I curled farther down into the chair and refocused my meandering thoughts, visualizing Spencer alive and working his way down the mountain toward me. I daydreamed of all the things we’d do together. Our first date. The Snow Ball. Admitting we loved each other. Eventually expressing our love for each other, maybe beneath a thick blanket while the northern lights performed their magical dance overhead.
    I liked these fantasies.
    Reality intruded in the form of Lindsay. How had I not heard the front door?
    “Hey.” She sat on the ottoman at my feet and eyed me with her worried expression. “Have you eaten today?”
    I pointed toward the half-eaten sandwich.
    “Lots of people at school asked about you.”
    Several ticks of the clock went by. “I just . . . couldn’t.”
    She stood and walked to the window, staring out at the waning day. “I couldn’t sit at home.”
    I still didn’t know how she could face going to school so soon after our best friend had died, but I didn’t have the energy to figure it out. Or to examine the anger that was welling up inside me.
    I lowered my gaze to the open photo album on my lap, at a picture of Spencer and me at last year’s Labor Day cookout. I closed my eyes and remembered the details of the day.
    “Here you go,” Spencer had said as he extended a plate piled with food to me.
    “Dude, that’s enough food for three people,” I’d replied as I looked at the huge barbecue sandwich, mountain of chips, and two brownies.
    “You need to eat. Helps you heal.”
    I rolled my eyes at him. “I twisted my ankle, genius. I don’t have the flu.”
    He shrugged, sat on the ground beside my lawn chair, and dug into his own food. “I feel guilty, so I’m groveling, okay?”
    “Oh, yes, this is your fault, isn’t it?” I pointed at my wrapped ankle propped on another lawn chair. I’d tripped while chasing him up the stairs after he’d come into the living room, wearing the flapper-style costume I’d been working on for Halloween.
    “Yep. Guess you’ll have to think of an appropriate way to scold me,” he said suggestively, prompting me to give him a smack to the back of his head.
    I wanted to laugh at the memory, but I couldn’t. I ran my fingertips over his glossy, smiling image. I’d been an idiot not to tell him how I felt sooner.
    Only the impending start of our senior year, the last year we might spend together, had prompted me to risk our friendship by telling him I liked him much more than just as a friend. I could still feel the soft, warm, tentative first kiss we’d shared on the banks of the Naknek River and how it had ignited the boom, color, and sizzle of the Fourth of July inside me. The taste of the cherry Twizzlers he constantly munched on at the store still lingered.
    Lindsay took my hand and squeezed it. I opened my eyes, hating her for pulling me out of my sweet memories. I pulled my hand out of hers and stared out the window. Another day fading away. Another day without Spencer.
    I didn’t even turn my head when Lindsay sighed and slid off the ottoman. A few seconds passed before she returned and took my hand again. She’d been running a bath.
    “Come on.”
    I followed wordlessly, thankful she’d skipped the platitudes. When she left me alone, I sank onto the closed toilet seat and stared at the steamy, foam-filled water, inhaling the lavender scent of the bath salts. I silently scolded myself—it seemed wrong to indulge in comfort when Spencer might never enjoy warmth and smell favorite scents again.
    As if my body had a will of its own, I found myself slipping into the water. When the delicious warmth soaked into me, my chin began to quiver.
    “Forgive me,” I whispered.
    “Which