Before The Snow Falls | Holiday Novella

The Quoter

Ithaca, New York

2019

Finishing Felix's reply, I glanced over at Hale. He was bent over his phone, scrolling on it with his thumb. I was surprised that he wasn't hanging onto every word that Felix had written, especially considering that we were still trying to figure out if the British aristocrat was related to me.

Without looking up at me, Hale muttered, "I was just double-checking what I knew about the Tremont Hotel."

"You know things about the Tremont Hotel?"

"Of course." Hale glanced at me like I had asked a stupid question. "The Tremont Hotel was the first hotel in America."

"Alright," I said tentatively. "I know that you're supposed to be the history buff, but I'm pretty sure that there were hotels before 1867."

Hale finally put his phone down, locking it with a click. He sighed before smirking and saying, "Yeah, you're right. What I meant to say was that the Tremont Hotel was the first modern hotel in America. Like the first one with running water and electricity and all that stuff."

"Ah, that makes more sense," I replied, returning his smirk. "I was a little concerned about your fact-checking at first."

Hale gave his head a little shake as if to clear it. "Sorry about that. Yeah, the Tremont Hotel was built in 1829, according to Google. Some pretty famous people have stayed there, too."

"Like who?" I asked, curious.

"Charles Dickens. And Lord Felix Graham, of course." He winked.

"I don't think that my great-great-grandpops is considered famous, Hale," I laughed.

Hale chuckled and smiled widely. He seemed thoroughly entertained by this entire conversation, and I realized that I should talk to him about history more often. I mean, he never complained about listening to me babble on about my tedious accounting job and the latest episodes of Grey's Anatomy. Actually, he was always happy to lend an ear whenever I had something I wanted to talk about. But it was nothing compared to his expression today.

Not wanting his smile to fade, I continued the conversation on the Tremont Hotel. Admittedly, I was moderately intrigued by it, too. "Alright, so I lived in Boston for over four years, and I'd never heard of this place. Why is that?" 

"Well, it burned down in the 1890s," Hale pointed out. He paused for a moment before adding, "Also, sometimes it was referred to as the Tremont House."

"Oh, wait!" I exclaimed, a light bulb going on in my head. "Like the pizza place?" There was a hole-in-the-wall pizzeria that had been about twenty minutes from campus in Boston. Hale and I went there once or twice during our freshman year of college.

"Exactly like the pizza place." He had a look on his face that told me he'd been waiting for me to make the connection.

"Tremont House of Pizza sounds so good right now," I moaned, my mind getting distracted at the mention of food.

"Well, we can order some if you want," Hale offered. "I mean, I don't think that Tremont House of Pizza will deliver to Ithaca, but we can order from somewhere else."

"Hm," I considered. "Are you hungry?"

"I am now that we keep talking about food." He unlocked his phone again, presumably to look for delivery places. "I vote we order pizza," he said decidedly.

"I will second that vote," I agreed and kicked back while Hale took care of ordering the food. I had very few preferences when it came to pizza—only that I wasn't a fan of olives, which Hale already knew. Other than that, I didn't really care what we ordered. I didn't mind if it came in squares or triangles, thick crust or thin crust. Pizza was pizza.