Falling in Love with a Blue Haired Girl

Chapter 4: Close your Eyes

     "Katelyn..." I groan. I lie defeated on an un-shoveled driveway. "We've been doing this for hours." I throw my arm over my face.
     "It hasn't even been an hour and a half, weakling." She mutters, working away diligently. I close my eyes a we fall into silence, the only sounds being the scraping of a snow shovel and the tossing of snow. It was the good kind of silence, not the awkward kind.
     "Ughhh" She sighs. Despite her efforts, she had not shoveled a lot of snow. Hardly even down to the asphalt. She's breathing heavily. I feel her join me on the snow. We stay like that, snowflakes dusting our faces. She stands up without warning, and goes inside, calling over her shoulder, "I'll be right back!"
     I lay peacefully until she returns a few minutes later.
    "Aphmau close your eyes." Katelyn says suddenly. I didn't even hear her come back out.
     "They're already closed, but I can just keep them closed." I decide to play along with whatever she's doing.
     I shriek as pile of snow lands on my face. "Katelyn!" I scream, starting to go after her. She's giggling uncontrollably, and clambering up onto the snow. I do my best to follow her, my gloves slipping on the snow. She's standing triumphantly, sunken into the snow. When I'm finally able to get a foothold, I chase her, and we traverse the snowy wonderland as fast as two people in five feet of snow with full winter clothing can go.
     I make ball of snow and chuck it in her general direction. Surprisingly, it hits her right in the neck. She gasps and turns around, a sly grin on her face. I squeal and crouch down trying in vain to make a snow fort, while she pelts me with snowballs.
     "Back off blue menace!" I yell from behind my pile of snow.
     "Or what?" She says, laughing. I let out my best war cry as I throw my secret weapon at her, a boulder of snow. Or try to, at least. It was so much better in my head, since I didn't expect it to be this heavy. All I can do is pitifully drop it right in front of me. She stands there in disbelief. When she snorts and starts laughing, I start laughing to, which turns to full on hollering. She's hunched over, laughing so hard no sound comes out. I'm not doing much better, frozen tears pricking my eyelashes.
     We finally calm down, and it's me and her laying down side by side again.
     "Aphmau, close your eyes." Katelyn says softly. I tense up. "Chill I'm not going to drop anything on your face."
     "Fine." I mutter, and shut my eyes. I feel her hand on mine.
     "I'm sorry that I can't be more open with you, I'm really trying. It's just not who I am." She murmurs. Where is this coming from? What else does she want to be more open about? Unless...No!  I won't even let the thought cross my mind.
     "Katelyn, you've already opened up to me a lot. You should be proud of yourself for that. You really have changed since high school, you know." I comfort her.
     "Aw, thanks Aph." Katelyn releases my hand. "Hey, um." She starts. "Do you want to build a snowman?" She sings quietly.
     "Yes!" I leap to my feet and begin rolling a snow ball. She starts rolling another one. After a while, my snowball gets heavy to push, and I just leave it there. When I help her lift her medium snow ball onto mine, our hands touch. She doesn't seem to mind, and neither do I. I start smoothing out the headless snowman. Katelyn comes over with a small ball for the head, and gingerly places it on. I step beside her to admire our work. It's a good snowman, not too big, not too small.
     "One last thing." Katelyn unwraps her scarf, and puts it around the snowman. I smile at her.
     "Nice work." I say as we walk back.
     "Same to you." She says. We walk by the spot where we were lying down, holding hands. It's already mostly covered by snow, but seeing the imprint where our hands were fills me with a feeling I can't describe.