Tastes Like Winter by Cece Carroll

would.”
    He ends with what I am learning is his signature wink.
    I grab my bag and deposit my now-empty cup in the bin by the door.
South Station is a fifteen-minute walk away, and after covering most of the
distance in silence, I’m afraid weird Jake has returned. I don’t know what set
him off this time, and as I am about to work up the nerve and ask if it was
something I said or did, he speaks.
    He stops himself, searching for the correct words, and for a moment, I
pray he is going to mention my mysteriously gifted book. Yet when he starts
again, he instead surprises me in a different way.
    “Your mom reminds me a lot of my own.”
    “You mean annoying?” I bite my tongue as soon as the words are out,
realizing how insensitive I sound. God, I’m an asshole.
    “No.” He continues, unflinching, “Kind. Well-meaning. I was so angry
with her, thinking that it was all an act. I’m beginning to realize that it
wasn’t.”
    His moment of openness gives me pause, but curiosity gets the better
of me. Since he is sharing tonight, I want to take advantage.
    “What happened?” When he hesitates, I add, “I’m sorry. You don’t have
to talk about it if you don’t want.”
    “It’s okay. I’ll tell you.” He stops, considering his words again.
“She and my dad died in a car accident. It was my fault.”
    He stops, and I’m afraid he is done talking. I want to know him so
bad, not the surface things that make up our discussions so far, but the real
him, his past, his strengths, his weaknesses.
    I can see him deciding to close himself off again, so I probe him
slightly before he has the chance. “You must know that it wasn’t actually your
fault, Jake.”
    He shakes his head. “It was. I was a messed-up kid, Em . Still am. During their divorce, I turned into more of
an asshole. I was drunk or high all the time and often stayed out late. One
night, I didn’t come home at all. They were out together looking for me,
thought I’d gone too far this time and gotten myself in trouble—or worse,
hurt.”
    He continues talking, but his eyes have shifted, and instead of
looking in front of him, he is inside of his head, reliving the tragic events.
    “They hit a deer and wrapped around a tree. Those fuckers are always
sprinting across Shore Boulevard, and knowing my parents, they were probably
distracted, fighting about me. They were always fighting about me.”
    His shoulders slump under the weight of the memory. “I was walking
home from a bonfire party up at Cliff Beach when I found the crushed car on the
side of the road. It must have just happened because there weren’t any police
or anything yet. I should have called someone for help. But at that point,
coming home from the party, I was three sheets to the wind and too fucked up to
have the sense to call anyone.”
    “I’m so sorry.” I am filled with compassion after hearing his first-person
recount of the night. It sounds like too much pain for one person to carry, and
my heart swells as I realize how much I want to help shoulder his burden.
Instinctively, I reach my hand out to touch his.
    He looks down, analyzing my hand before looping his fingers through my
own.
    “Jake, do you still use?” I know it probably isn’t the best time to
ask, but I have to know.
    “Never.” He shakes his head, and we cover the rest of the distance in
silence.
    He doesn’t volunteer any additional details, and while I am desperate
to know more, I am too afraid to overstep any boundaries by asking. Jake
usually avoids talking about himself, and with his tendency towards being hot
and cold, I don’t want to push him too hard and give him a reason to turn on me
and close up again.
    We approach South Station, and with the big stone terminal looming
before us, he stops me short of the doors. “Well, here you are, as promised.
Would you like me to walk you in?”
    “I’ve got it from here,” I say, but I am reluctant.
    He too delays in saying good-bye. His eyebrows