Tastes Like Winter by Cece Carroll Page B

doesn’t feel
right sharing my feelings about Jake, not yet. Not that I know what those
feelings are.
    What happened tonight? The question repeats in my mind.
    When I get into bed still without an answer, sleep doesn’t come, and I
spend all night staring at the ceiling, searching for one.
    ***
    The days pass by, and before I know it,
Christmas break has arrived. Unlike Thanksgiving, I insist on working during my
time off of school. Since it is between semesters, Jake is home too, an added
benefit. He texted when he got back into town, informing me that he plans on
spending a lot of time working during his break, and if I want to get together,
I could ring him up anytime. I was surprised by the invitation, considering the
way we left things in the city that night. He hasn’t mentioned the evening, and
the events have begun to take on a dreamlike quality in my memory, blurring
around the edges as if I might have made the whole thing up. To spare my
fragile ego any additional trauma or risk shifting the patterns of his behavior
once again, I too keep my lips sealed and refrain from bringing it up.
    While at Starbucks a few days after my evening in the city, I recounted
the events of that fateful evening to Genna while we enjoyed our first peppermint
mocha lattes of the season. She spent much of our coffee date tirelessly lecturing
me and maintaining that I needed to ask him about it and set the whole thing
straight. I am long past the days where she is simply happy for me.
    “If you can’t stand feeling like he is playing mind games with you,
why do you keep letting him? It makes no sense! You have to call him on his
shit. Don’t let him tell you a sad story then get so caught up in feeling bad
for him that you won’t set him straight.”
    But I stick to sipping my latte and trying to focus on the chocolaty
coffee goodness in front of me instead of the truth I hear ringing in her
words.
    While it’s proving more and more obvious that I am a glutton for
punishment, Friendly Jake is back this week, and right now, Friendly Jake is
more important to me than sorting all of that out. Our relationship has even
progressed as we spend more and more time together at the shop over break.
Sitting at the counter talking, while I play with his shoelaces, has become a
routine thing over the past week. We even went so far as to friend each other
online a few days ago and have begun expanding our daytime conversations to
nighttime online chats. Our Internet conversations range from the involved
discussions like we have most days while we are working to smaller “Hey, what’s
up’s?” that don’t go anywhere.
    But isn’t that the way the Internet works? You can’t read too much
into all of the pauses. If he doesn’t respond right after saying “Hi,” well, he
probably went downstairs to fix himself a sandwich, right?
    Anyway, our work conversations these days more than make up for the less-than-stellar
online messages. We’ve started using downtime at the store to play a new
bookish game I created. It goes like this: When it’s your turn, you select a
book from the shelves. Then, the other person has to try to figure out what
that book means to you and why you choose it. I was hoping it would be a good
way to learn more about Jake.
    Since our night in the city, he has closed down on talking about
himself again, and I am desperate for him to open up to me so that I can
continue learning and unraveling his mysteries. Secretly, I hope he will pick
up Ethan Frome one of these days, giving me the
opportunity to challenge him on it. Too much time has passed at this point to
randomly bring it up in conversation, myself.
    My game choices include a lot of nonfiction and travel books, which
never surprise him. After my first few picks of this sort, I asked what he
thought of my selections. He replied simply, “I get it, kitten. You’re an
explorer at heart.” I never thought of myself that way, but after he said it, as
if it was the