Before The Snow Falls | Holiday Novella

The Planner

Ithaca, New York

2019

Hale laid the letter down in front of me as he finished reading and then threw an arm over my side, tugging me closer to his chest.

"Well shit," I said, staring into the low-burning fire. "She loves him. Honestly, I did not see that coming."

"I think there's a lot you didn't see coming," Hale mumbled into my hair. I could hear the smile in his voice.

"True," I admitted, my grin hidden from him to see.

He bolted upward then before patting down the many blankets and discarded clothing that surrounded us.

"What are you doing?" I asked, swiveling to watch him pound at the ground like a lunatic.

"Trying to...find...my.." He peeked under one particularly white and fuzzy blanket. "Aha!" Producing his phone, he beamed at me. "My phone. I was trying to find my phone."

I gave him a peculiar look, and he threw his hands up in defense. "I'm just going to google it, okay? I won't pay for ancestry.com or any of that other shit, just good ole' Google."

I fell down into the blankets again, chuckling. "I highly doubt that Felix Graham is going to pop up in any google searches. And we don't even know Nora's last name."

But Hale was ignoring me, already eagerly typing on his phone. I watched as he tilted his head back and forth, waiting for the page to load. Unfortunately, my wifi was often unreliable. When his head stopped moving, I knew the connection had gone through. Hale's cheeks dimpled, and a crease appeared in his forehead as he read something.

"What?" I asked.

"Give me a second," he mumbled.

He continued to scroll on his phone, so I let my head hit the blankets and stared at the ceiling. It was as white as the snow falling outside, but the shadows from the darkening room made my living space feel almost cavernous—as if Hale and I were someplace far away, in a time not our own.

I heard Hale shifting around and glanced over to see that he was sliding down on his back, lying parallel beside me. He was still scrolling on his phone, holding it above his face.

With him totally engrossed in his research, I took the opportunity to admire him—just everything about him. I mean, did he go to the gym? I honestly wasn't sure, but if he didn't, I had no idea how the muscles on his chest were so defined. For crying out loud, the man was a librarian.

There must be a lot of heavy books at Cornell.

He was chewing on his bottom lip, and I resisted the urge to fling the phone out of his hands and kiss him again. Now that I could, I didn't want to stop.

Sighing, I looked back at the ceiling. Moments later, however, I heard a definitive thud.

"Ow," Hale complained, and I twisted my head to see his phone lying on his cheek.

"Did you just drop your phone on your face?" 

He threw me a dirty look before promptly picking the phone up again. "Like you've never done it."

I couldn't help but laugh at him, lying there looking so indignant. There was an irony to it all—Hale the genius, not even able to hold his phone straight. But he was ignoring my obvious amusement at his expense, reading something on his screen before jerking forward.

His phone fell onto the floor from his hands, and he looked at me with a bewildered expression.

"Lana," he exclaimed. But he didn't finish his thought, instead jumping to his feet, pacing across the apartment. The still only had his sweatpants on-nothing else-and I found it very distracting.