Tuttle Corner was officially in the midst of the polar vortex. The roads were covered in ice and sleet, the wind had ratcheted up to a steady twenty-five miles per hour, with gusts up to forty. Temperatures dropped to the twenties overnight, and the sleet changed over to snow. The news was warning everyone to stay home, stay inside, stay off the roads. Holman ended up spending the night on my couch, even though I offered him the second bedroom.
“But then where is Ash going to sleep?” he asked, giving me a look like I had just wandered out from under a bridge. “After all, he was here first.”
So, Ash slept in the guest room, which was best considering my bed wasn’t big enough for three (Coltrane fell asleep before the movie ended and basically played dead so he didn’t have to move). In the morning, Holman made waffles as we watched the big, fat snowflakes pile up outside. It was kind of fun, actually, like an old-school slumber party.
Over breakfast, we chatted about the upcoming party.
“So, what did Camilla send you to wear?” I asked Holman.
“A black tuxedo. It’s very elegant,” he said. “It used to belong to my father.”
Holman didn’t talk much about his father, but I knew he hadn’t seen or talked to him in years. Camilla told me that Nicholas Holman had left her and Will after it became clear to him that “Will was never going to be the son he imagined.” The cruelty of that took my breath away every time I thought about it. I wondered how Holman felt about wearing his father’s tux.
“I’ve decided to dress as a newsie instead,” he said, settling the question.
Ash looked confused. “What’s a newsie?”
“A newsie, you know?” Holman repeated the word, as if saying it a second time might force understanding. Ash’s blank face proved that it did not. “They were young men, boys actually, around the turn of the twentieth century who used to buy up copies of the newspapers and spend all day and night trying to resell every last copy because the newspaper companies refused to buy back their unsold papers.”
“Okaaaaay,” Ash said.
Holman was getting agitated. “Surely you’ve heard of the Broadway musical Newsies? It tells the story, albeit the Disney version, of the famous newsboys’ strike of 1899.”
“Kind of, but tell me why you’re going to a Gatsby party dressed like a newsie?”
Holman sighed. “Some credit that strike with the ultimate reforms of the despicable child labor practices, which by the 1920s had vastly been improved. And The Great Gatsby is set in the 1920s, so naturally you see the connection.”
I tried to communicate to Ash with my eyes that it was best to drop it. Holman was his own man, and if he wanted to spend all night dressed as a newsboy, repeating this esoteric explanation to everyone at the party, that was his choice.
I saw Ash open his mouth, probably to say that he did not see the connection, and I decided to seize the moment to tell Holman that Lindsey was coming to the party with us. “Maybe you should see if she wants to go as a newsie with you?”
“Why?”
“Well,” I started to explain, “Ash is going as Nick Carraway and I’m going as Jordan Baker—and since we’re all going together, maybe you and Lindsey could coordinate too?”
Holman blinked at me. “But she’s a female. Newsies are male.”
“Yeah, but it’s a costume.”
“Yes. A costume for a male.”
“I don’t think gender roles really apply to costumes,” Ash said.
Holman looked at me, then Ash, as if we were speaking Farsi.
“Never mind,” I said. “I’m sure you’ll look great.”
By about nine-thirty, Ash said he was going to try to brave the roads to see if he could get home. I walked him to the door.
Holman was doing the last of the breakfast dishes and probably couldn’t hear us, but Ash lowered his voice to a whisper anyway. “Thanks for letting me spend the night,” he said. “I had fun.”
I smiled. “Me too.”
“So, I’ll see you tomorrow night?”
“Uh-huh.”
He leaned in to kiss me goodbye, which felt like anything but a farewell. As he pulled back, a self-conscious laugh bubbled up out of me.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
“Nothing,” I repeated, lowering my voice. “It’s just thinking about last night and what almost happened…it’s just kind of weird, that’s all. Everything looks different in the daylight, I guess.”
“You don’t,” he said. “You look every bit as amazing as you did last night.”
My cheeks instantly flushed. I pulled the middle-school move of hitting him on the shoulder. “Stop.”
“Stop. Go. Stop. Go…make up your mind, Ellison,” he said, laughing. Then he gave me another kiss, this one sweeter than before.
I watched him shuffle across the icy driveway and get into his car, then I floated back to the kitchen where Holman was loading the last of the plates into the dishwasher. I knew I was probably still blushing and wondered if Holman had picked up on the change in status of me and Ash.
“Is Ash your boyfriend now?”
“No,” I said quickly, then added, “I mean, I don’t think so—or um, I mean, I don’t know exactly what we are right now.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I guess I am.”
Holman carefully folded the tea towel and set it next to my sink. “It’s nice to see you happy, Riley.”
That made my smile even bigger. I refilled my coffee cup from the pot and topped off Holman’s mug. “Should we call Kay and see if she wants us to try to come in today?” I asked, looking out the front window at the mounting snow.
Holman leaned against the countertop next to the sink; he was looking out the window on my back door. He didn’t answer.
“Holman?”
“Is it worth it?”
“Well, if it’s too icy out, we just won’t go—”
“No,” he said. “I mean, is getting close to someone worth the risk of getting hurt?”
There was no one who could surprise me quite the way Will Holman could. I was seized by a visceral desire to hug him, but I knew better—Holman was not a big fan of physical displays of affection. So instead I took a couple of moments to think about what to say. Holman didn’t ask questions like this often, and I felt a responsibility to answer truthfully.
“Most of the time.”
Holman stared at me his patented wide-eyed way and after a beat he said, “Maybe Lindsey would consider dressing up as a newsie?”
And that comment brought about my biggest smile of the day so far.