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Holly
“A snowman?” I asked. “At night?”
“There are tons of lights,” Lawson said. “The whole town is lit up right now, and the bed-and-breakfast is covered in them. Plus, there is a spotlight out there in the garage where the sleds were. We can set that up and point it where we need it if we want to.”
“You know what? I love it,” I said, surprising even myself.
The smile that spread across Lawson’s face was worth it.
Weirdly, I found that it was true. I did love it. I loved the idea of spending more time with Lawson, first off. But I also loved the idea of continuing this day, one where the cliché celebrations of the wintertime were observed in a way that I had never really bothered to do. I always looked at them as annoying kid’s stuff. Things other people did because they had children to appease, not because anyone actually wanted to do them.
But as we drove toward the bed-and-breakfast, I found myself excited to do yet another thing that was on the list of silly winter things of Lawson’s. Ice-skating may have been a bit of a disaster and sledding had been an adventure of how many times I could get up after tumbling off a rocketing vehicle on a hill, but they had been a while ago now. I had warmed up, and the dinner and the carriage ride through the magical forest of lights, curled up in Lawson’s arm, had made me glow.
“Wait,” he said suddenly, making me jump as we pulled onto our street.
“What?”
“Do you have carrots?”
I must have stared at him for a good ten seconds as I tried to put together why he was in a sudden need of carrots. Then it hit me. The snowman. I laughed loudly, and when I recovered, he was still looking at me, mild amusement wrestling with the slight panic in his expression.
“Yes,” I said. “I think. The vegetable drawer of the refrigerator should have a bag of them.” Lawson visibly relaxed and then a thought occurred to me. “They might be baby carrots, though.”
“What?” he exclaimed. “That’s no good. We need real ones.”
“Why?” I laughed. “Can’t a snowman just have a cute tiny nose?”
“Maybe. It just won’t look right.”
“Maybe he had a nose job,” I said, giggling. “He’s trying out for a reality show. Real Snowmen of Beverly Hills.”
Lawson guffawed at that and kept driving.
“Alright, but we have to Gucci this guy up if that’s his cover story. We need the most ridiculous snowman in the history of Snowflake Hollow.”
“I have no idea how to do that,” I said. “Maybe jewelry? I don’t know.”
“I have an idea,” Lawson muttered. “You know what? This is perfect. I’ve never made a snowman that was a snob before.”
“Christmas adventure,” I said.
“I like those,” Lawson said, grinning. “We have to make the base first. Then I’ll get him dressed up really nice.”
Lawson parked in the driveway, and I noticed the revelry already going on inside through the windows. The fire was roaring in the main room and it looked like the guests had served themselves some of the eggnog. I wondered how much of it was the rum that I had placed in a very visible cupboard for them.
I hopped out of the car, and Lawson joined me in the front yard, already diving to his knees like a kid and making a ball of snow. He sat it down in a pile and rolled, picking up most of the snow that was under it, and kept rolling it. It got impressively big very quickly, and I helped him continue rolling it until it was a couple of feet tall and had created a large swath of nearly snowless grass in its wake.
“Keep rolling,” he muttered as we flipped the increasingly unwieldly ball again. “It should be right by the door so everyone can see it when they come out.”
“Like a snow doorman?” I laughed.
“Yes. His name is Carl. Carl the fancy-ass doorman.”
I doubled over as he pushed the ball again, landing almost on the pathway leading to the porch. One more roll and it should be a foot or two inside the yard by the sidewalk and in perfect position to say hello to anyone coming out of the doors in the morning.
“Alright, last shove,” I said. “Here we go.”
I went to launch myself at it and push it again, but my foot slipped, and I tumbled into the snow, laughing.
“Are you okay?” Lawson chuckled as he reached down to offer me his hand. As I grabbed it, I yanked him down with me and he fell with a silly yell.
“There, now I’m not the only one getting snow all over me,” I said.
“You are cruising for a snowball fight,” Lawson said, pulling me close to him so our noses nearly touched.
“Well, we wouldn’t want that, would we?”
Our lips were nearly touching. My heart was thumping in my chest, and I could feel it pulsing in my ears.
“We would have a lot of warming up to do after,” he said.
“Oh no.”
He kissed me hard, and I melted into his arms. Then he pulled away suddenly and smiled.
“I look forward to that,” he said.
He sat up and balled up a new batch of snow and looked suspiciously at me for a moment, as if he was judging if he wanted to lob it at me.
“Don’t you dare,” I said.
He laughed and continued rolling, beginning to build up a massive new ball to sit as the middle portion of the snowman. I joined him after a few moments and, when it came time to lift it to add it to the first batch, helped him get it up in the air. From there, he waddled over, placing it down as gently as possible on the first one and we stood back.
“Good heavens, that’s a tall snowman,” I said.
“He’ll be about six feet,” he said. “Not the biggest one I’ve ever made. But it’ll do.”
“Wait, you routinely make snowmen over six feet tall? How?”
“Ladders,” he said. “If I need them, that is. Usually, I only do to add the hat. You have to stuff it down on top pretty good or else it comes off the first time wind hits it.”
“You take snowman building seriously, don’t you?” I giggled.
“Extremely. It’s my solemn duty that when I build a snowman, he needs to be one that will last until the snow is gone and he is all that remains.”
“Well, this one should last,” I said.
“Come on,” he said. “Help me build the head.”
We went back to rolling, and when we had a large enough ball, he shaped it expertly with his gloved hands, smoothing it out and making it head shaped rather than a ball. Easily, he placed it on the top of the torso of the snowman and we both took a moment to admire it.
“So, those baby carrots. Still think they will look okay?”
“Let’s find out,” I said.
Running to the door, I opened it up and the warmth of the inside was like a blast of peppermint-scented heaven. Voices in the main room sounded jovial and fun, but not overly rowdy. I snuck into the kitchen, grabbing a baby carrot from the zip-top bag in the crisper, and came back out.
“Here we go,” he said, shoving it in. It looked ridiculous.
“Hmm,” I said. “Hold on, let me try something.”
I tried to reach it but couldn’t quite get a hold of it. Lawson laughed and grabbed it for me. I took it and stuck it on vertically rather than digging into the snow. Lawson helped by pushing it into the snow a bit so it was recessed, and we both cocked our heads to the side, staring at it.
“It could work,” he said. “Let’s get him some eyes and a mouth.”
A few minutes later and the snowman’s face was taking shape. He looked weird, but in an adorable sort of way, and as I placed the last of the rocks we were using to be his mouth in, Lawson ran inside to get something. When he came back out, I laughed and shook my head.
“Seriously?” I said.
“Yeah,” he laughed.
Two shiny leather shoes were stuck into his base, and a thick, extremely long and ugly scarf was tied around his neck. It had a giant logo on it from a fashion designer I didn’t recognize and fell all the way down to the snow below him.
“There,” Lawson said. “How does he look now?”
“Amazing,” I said.
I wasn’t looking at the snowman anymore, though. I was looking at Lawson.
This was the kind of Christmas feeling I had never really had before, and something about it was softening me. I was completely falling head over heels for Lawson. Quite literally, actually.
“Not bad for a first snow,” Lawson said, turning to me.
“Not bad at all.”
