A Snowfall Kind of Love

Summary: There's one thing on my grown-up Christmas list, and while it includes a number of specifics in varying degrees of dirtiness, it really all boils to the one thing I've wanted for a year and a half: a do-gooder with unruly hair and a Mister Rogers sweater, and a lifetime of nights that would land me squarely on the naughty list.

Under boughs of evergreen

We find a hiding spot

While the other children play

We pray we don't get caught.

Hide 'n' seeking all the day

On and on into the night

Til we start a snowball fight

Beneath the winter moon

I remember when I fell for you.

(Mindy Gledhill, "Winter Moon")

December 13

(12 days until Christmas)

"Want to order pizza tonight?" Alice asks, rummaging in her purse for her car keys.

"Sure. I'm on at the House until six, but I'm free after."

Slender arm all but disappearing into her colossal bag, she eyes me knowingly. "Even though the semester is technically over?"

"Shut up."

Her laughter follows her to the front door, and I return my focus to the newspaper before me. Just as I'm lifting my coffee mug to my lips, though, her voice comes trilling back to the kitchen from the entryway. "Hey, there's something out here for you!"

I frown, slipping from the kitchen stool and padding through the apartment in my socked feet. I don't remember ordering anything offline, despite the fact that I'm alarmingly behind in my Christmas shopping. But when I reach where Alice is gazing at the front stoop, I spy something that clearly hasn't been delivered via UPS. There's a large, flat box expertly wrapped in shimmering gold gift wrap and adorned with a festive red bow. Beside it sits a travel mug, and when I bend to pick it up, its weight tells me that it's full. Frowning, I pick up the box as well and step back into the warmth of the apartment, shivering slightly in my thin flannel pajama bottoms and thermal shirt.

"What is it?" Alice breathes, eyes alight with curiosity and her tardiness momentarily forgotten.

"No clue," I reply, warily placing the coffee mug on the small table that houses a lamp and answering machine and, more often than not, an alarmingly large stack of unopened mail. My first instinct is to dump whatever's inside the mug down the sink because I don't care what's in the box – there is no way in hell I'm drinking something that was left on my doorstep. Plucking the bow from the box, I stick it to the table; as I move to peel the thick wrapping paper from the parcel, I spy a small card peeking out from beneath the bow. Diverting for a moment, I reach out for the tiny red envelope that has my name printed on it in shimmery gold ink and tear it open. Inside is a small card in heavy ivory cardstock; when I open it, the writing inside is in the same gold script.

Dear Bella,

With twelve days 'til Christmas…I didn't think you'd take too kindly to being serenaded by twelve drummers. Nor, I suspect, would your neighbors.

That said, you once told me that coconut-filled chocolates are your favorite things in the world.

You're mine.

Merry Christmas.

I read the letter four times before I even remotely grasp its implications. And immediately, my heart begins to race.

"Do you think it's from Emmett?" Alice asks from where she's apparently been reading the card over my shoulder.

I turn, silently cursing the fact that the first face that floated through my mind was my boss's and not my far-more-likely ex-boyfriend's.

"I have no idea," I reply, even though her guess seems likely. Emmett would always buy me chocolate when he thought I was having a bad day, and he knows that the coconut-filled ones are my weakness. Still, the penmanship is foreign – not Emmett's neat, blockish print, but not Edward's serial-killer-esque scrawl, either – and the wrap is more elegant than I'd expect of either of them. "Probably," I add, setting the card on the table and slipping my finger beneath the elegant wrapping paper. When I peel it off, there's a flat box with a gold lid. When I open it, I'm faced with a tray of what I can only guess are, in fact, coconut-filled chocolates. And, judging by the fact that each one is individually wrapped in gold foil, they're not the working man's version I occasionally treat myself to, but the real, fancy McCoy.

"Damn," Alice says, eyes pinging between my face and the tray of indulgence before me.

"Want one?" I ask, holding it toward her.

She wrinkles her nose. "No, thanks. Not a coconut fan."

I shrug, lifting one from the tray. "What are the odds that some psycho left these on our doorstep and I'm going to drop dead of some kind of poisoning if I eat one?" My concern, I admit, is probably offset by the fact that I'm already peeling the wrapper off.

"And that this unknown psycho knew they were your favorite?" Alice asks. "Pretty slim."

"Terrific," I say, popping it into my mouth. Then, through a mouthful of chocolately, coconutty awesomeness, I add, "Holy shit."

"Good?"

"Oh my God." I pick up the card again, and even though I'm pretty sure I've never told Edward about my affinity for coconut chocolates, and even though I know for a fact that I did tell Emmett, my heart hopes. In the unlikely face of elegant gift wrap and gorgeous calligraphy and chocolates that probably cost more than a ticket to Wrigley Field, I hope.

"You could always thank him by making that exact sound for him in person," Alice grins, and I begin to blush before realizing that she's still talking about Emmett.

"Go to work, Alice."

"You're right. I'll leave you two – er, twelve – alone." She gives me a smirk and disappears out the door.

And, left to my own devices, I treat myself to four more in lieu of a more traditional breakfast. Hello, season of indulgence.

"Look up when you walk, Isabella." It was a familiar refrain in the six years I spent under my mother's roof; one of the too-numerous-to-count things that I did that always seemed to irritate her was walking with my head down. I couldn't say for certain whether I ignored her advice out of spite or if walking with my head down was simply meant to be how I fumbled my way through life, but when a snowball hits me smack in the chest as I'm walking up the stone walkway to the front steps of Grove House, still ruminating over my mysterious gift, it's possibly the first time in my life that I wish, however fleetingly, that I'd listened to my mother.

"What the—"

"Language!" I hear before the expletive can fall from my lips, and I look up to see Edward half-crouched behind the porch railing, a snowball in his hand and a cheeky grin on his face.

"What are you—" My words are cut off by another snowball hitting me between the shoulder blades, and I spin to see Jake half-obscured by a shrub. He's grinning, and the expression is so foreign on his usually serious face that I can't help but return it. He's cocking his arm back to let another clump of soggy snow fly when he's hit in the chest, a shower of white exploding against his jacket.

"Direct hit!" I hear from behind me, and I whirl again to see Sam on the opposite side of the yard. In that instant, I realize that I'm smack in the middle of a snowball fight, and as I glance up at Edward again, he grins down at me before letting his own snowball fly. I duck just in time for it to sail over my head and smash against the concrete, and I drop my messenger bag on the sidewalk before dashing over to Sam who, I assume from his shot at Jake, is on my team. "You, me, Seth, and Riley against Edward, Mike, Jake, and James," he says as I scrape powder into clumps.

"Got it," I say, grabbing a snowball in each hand and making a dash for a large bush.

What ensues is snowball-hurling chaos, and almost immediately my inadequate gloves are soaked through and my hands frozen. I'm hurling snowballs from numb fingers as quickly as I can, and Sam and I manage to keep each other alert as James creeps around the yard with the stealthy silence of a lion hunting its prey, launching projectiles before his opponents even spot him. Riley is attempting the same subterfuge with marginal success. When I feel a snowball burst against the back of my neck and clumps of ice slide down my spine, I howl. Edward's answering laugh is loud enough that Sam gets him in the shoulder with a particularly large snowball almost immediately. The battle rages for a good fifteen minutes before James attempts to catch Jake unaware; Jake spins just in time to see him approaching and launches himself at him, taking a half-formed snowball and flattening it against the top of James's head. Riley, Seth, and Sam join in and the snowball fight morphs into a snow-wrestling match with giant boys rolling around in the snow and attempting to mash each other's faces into the packed powder and dump handfuls down each other's shirts. Unwilling to miss the fun, I hit a sprint in their direction, but before I can launch myself on top of the pile I'm tackled to the ground and pinned beneath Edward.

I gaze up into his face, breathing hard and feeling a flash of heat rush through me even as the cold from the snow seeps through my jeans and my hair. "Where do you think you're going?" he demands, grinning down at me, and I attempt to catch my breath. His nose, ears, and cheeks are flushed bright pink, and his eyes are the color of evergreens. He is holding his upper body propped with gloved hands planted in the snow on either side of my head, and his lips are red from the cold. "An all-out melee of boys is no place for a girl."

"Nice hair," I mock him, flicking my eyes up to the ice-caked strands. "Looks like some 'girl' hit you pretty square in the melon."

He laughs, and I can feel it rumble through his body, which is pressed along the length of mine. "Touché."

I lick my lips to wet them, knowing I'm going to need ChapStik after this little event, and almost instantly his eyes drop to my mouth. The light teasing is gone from his face, something in his smile softening as he stares down at me, and we breathe against each other for a few beats before he rolls off me. "Jesus, it's cold out here," he says, eyes traveling to where the rest of the boys have resorted to halfhearted shoves and lazy lobs of ill-formed handfuls of snow; after a few more breaths they all collapse into the snow, breathing hard. Edward rubs his gloved hands through his hair, and a shower of small snow clumps falls to his lap as I pull myself to sitting in the snow beside him.

"Boys," I mutter, wrapping my arms around my knees. "You guys never grow up, do you?" But this is the first time I've ever seen all of them – Edward included – act like kids, and my tone is far more affectionate than reproachful.

"Nope," he says, and I can tell by looking at him that he's thinking along the same lines I am. "We never do." But there's a wistful note to his voice and a faint trace of melancholy in his eyes, and I follow his gaze to where the boys are standing and attempting to brush the snow and ice from their clothing. When I peek back at the man next to me, at the adult whose insides are still one of those parentless, homeless, lonely boys covered in snow, the words we don't share pierce my heart.

They never grow up. But sometimes life does its best to force them to do so too quickly.

. . .

My soggy mittens are draped over the radiator in the kitchen and my hair is only slightly damp – the only lingering evidence of the battle on the front lawn an hour earlier. The world is growing dark beyond the windows, and the kitchen smells of nothing but sugar, thanks to the sheet of cookies already in the oven.

There's a smear of flour at the stubbled curve of Edward's jaw, and it's taking every ounce of willpower I possess not to wipe it – or lick it – off.

"How much longer?"

I laugh, stirring the bowl of flour, walnuts, salt, and sugar as I glance at the clock above the oven. "About two more minutes."

Edward heaves a sigh, eyeing the bowl on the counter before me. "And those ones are called what?"

"Well, that depends. Some people call them Russian tea cakes, some people call them Mexican wedding cookies, and some people call them nut balls."

"Nut balls?" he echoes, one eyebrow arched as he gives me a skeptical look, and I laugh again, borderline giddy from the sugar and the season and the proximity of the man beside me.

"Yeah. I tend to call them snowball cookies. More seasonal. And descriptive."

"Hm."

"Can you measure me out a teaspoon of vanilla?" I ask, tipping my head toward the small bottle of extract on the counter and reaching for the bowl of softened butter near my elbow. He does as asked, an adorable furrow appearing between his thick brows as he maneuvers the tiny measuring spoon and miniature bottle in his large hands, and when he holds it out toward me, I nod at the bowl. "Go ahead." He tips it in and I add the butter in segments before pushing the bowl toward him. "Okay. Mix."

He glances around the counter. "Spoon or mixer?"

"Hands." When surprised eyes find mine, I grin. "Just…squish it together until it looks sort of…mealy."

"This is why I hired a cook, you know," he grouses as he pushes his sleeves farther up his arms, leaving faint traces of flour on both of his forearms.

"I don't think this is in her job description," I argue. "Besides, Christmas cookies are fun."

He's opening his mouth – no doubt to argue – when the oven timer dings and all traces of grouchiness vanish from his eyes, which widen as they fly to me. "They're done!"

Trying unsuccessfully to hide my smile, I grab the potholder from the corner of the counter and cross the kitchen to the oven. "Let me check." I turn on the oven light and peek in; sure enough, the sugar cookies are baked perfectly golden. "Yep. Done." I switch off the timer and bend to pull the sheets from the racks; as I straighten and place them atop the stove, I can feel Edward's presence at my back. Suddenly, his flour-dusted forearm appears over my shoulder, and I swat at it before he can do himself harm.

"Dork. Those are hot."

"They're the best when they're hot," he argues, making another move to swipe one, and I swat him again, this time with the potholder.

"Warm," I correct him. "If you wind up with a second-degree burn on your tongue, your cookie binge is going to be quickly and tragically derailed."

He pouts, an expression that shouldn't be nearly so attractive on a grown man, and retreats back to the bowl of half-mixed snowball cookies. "I'm giving them two minutes, tops, to cool."

I watch him mix the batter for a minute, the muscles of his shoulders shifting beneath his long-sleeved, dark gray thermal shirt, his forearms flexing as he squeezes, before I resituate myself beside him. "Can I ask you a question?" I ask thirty seconds into his two minutes of allotted cooling time.

"Shoot," he says, eyes trained on the bowl.

"What's with the Scrooge act?"

I feel him look at me, but I keep my own focus trained on the peanut butter blossom recipe on the counter in front of me. I haven't made these cookies more than a couple of times, and as a result the ingredients aren't ingrained in my mind like the two batches we've already got in progress. "Scrooge act?" he repeats, and there's a careful, guarded tenor to his voice that I know too well.

"Yeah," I reply, my tone purposely casual. "Like, you pretend you hate Christmas, but then you get ridiculously into things like snowball fights and Christmas cookies. So I know you don't hate it nearly as much as you pretend to." I glance up at him, and his evergreen eyes are back on the batter bowl in front of him, the movements of his hands suddenly very deliberate. He's quiet for long enough that I'm convinced he's not going to answer. "Sorry," I say finally, feeling equal parts disappointed and guilty at my apparent faux pas. The few glimpses of excited Edward I've been privy to over the past week or so have been unexpected treasures, like the extra gift you find hiding behind the Christmas tree on Boxing Day, and I realize suddenly that by pointing them out to him, I've likely done nothing but ensure that I won't see one again. Just as I'm searching for a graceful change of subject, he speaks, his voice soft.

"I don't hate Christmas." The muscles in his forearm are tensing as he squeezes the dough, and it's mixed more than enough, but I don't have the heart to stop him. "And I don't love it, either. I sort of…" Squeeze. Release. Squeeze. "I guess I have sort of a love-hate relationship with the holidays."

"Love-hate?" I repeat carefully, focusing resolutely on my recipe card.

He sighs. "When I was six, I woke up on Christmas Eve because I heard a thump." He reaches up and scratches the hinge of his jaw, fingers leaving another smear of flour in their wake. "I thought it was Santa. There weren't any windows in my bedroom, so I went out into the hall, hoping I could see outside. I thought maybe I'd see a sleigh or a reindeer or something." My heart aches already at the foreboding disappointment in his voice. "It wasn't until I got out there that I realized the sound wasn't coming from the roof, but from the room next to mine." A pause. "My mother's room." The dough before him is mixed to within an inch of its life, but he keeps kneading. "I pushed her door open just as my father was chucking her against the wall again. When he saw me standing in the doorway, he asked what the hell I thought I was doing out of bed. When I explained that I thought I heard Santa on the roof, he said, 'There's no such fucking thing as Santa' and told me to get my ass back in bed." He shakes his head as if he's shaking the memory off, but my heart aches for the six-year-old that he was. "Then, when I was twelve, my mom OD'ed on Christmas Eve. For the last time." I swallow against the knot of tears that has formed at the base of my throat, but when he looks up and into my face, he smiles softly. "And then, the following year, the week before Christmas, I tried to steal a coat from the Salvation Army. And I met Esme." Suddenly, as if realizing that the dough in his hands has been mangled, he drops it into the bowl with an audible "plop" and props his hands on the lip of the counter. His eyes find mine, and he's daring me to feel sorry for him. "So. Like I said. Love-hate."

"That's…entirely understandable," I say, staring at the jar of Jif on the counter before me. What I sort of want to say is that it's a miracle that he can still love it at all, with memories like those. That the fact that he does is a clear example of the man he is: optimistic, caring, warm-hearted. That I respect him more than I think I've ever respected anyone in my life, save Charlie.

And that I might actually love him – not just want him, not just have a crush on him – and never has it been more clear to me than in this moment.

. . .

"Oh my God," Alice breathes, biting into a snowball cookie. "I forgot how amazing these are. Why don't you ever make them except at Christmas? Wait, no, strike that – if you made these all year long, I'd look like Santa Claus. Forget I said anything."

I laugh, zipping up another tiny plastic bag holding a tiny red pom-pom ball, a googly eye, a small curl of red ribbon, half a red pipe cleaner, and a tiny square of brown construction paper. "What are these going to be, again?"

Alice's small hands reach for one of the aforementioned supplies from each tiny pile and begin to construct a mock-up of the craft she's planning to do with her kindergarten class tomorrow. A nearly empty pizza box sits abandoned on the coffee table behind us, and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation plays silently on the glowing television screen in the corner.

"Well, they're going to trace their hands and make a cutout with the brown paper. The red pom-pom is the nose, the eye is self-explanatory, and the pipe cleaner is for the antlers. The ribbon's going through a small hole we'll punch in its back, and voila!" she announces. "Rudolph ornament!"

I smile, even as my mind floats back to the ugly handmade ornaments Charlie would proudly display on our tree every year. A macaroni Christmas wreath heavy enough to be a paperweight that always had to be hung from the thickest branch. A tiny Christmas tree made out of loops of green construction paper. A candy cane made from a bent pipe cleaner and a handful of red and white beads. A pinecone angel.

"Those will look cute," I say, pulling myself forcibly away from the memory.

"I hope so," Alice replies, looking faintly dubious as she eyes the supplies around us. "Though I'm sure I'll have more than one Rudolph with its nose stuck to its butt."

I laugh, the sudden pang of melancholy chased away. "Probably."

She grins, starting to fill another little baggie. "So. Any sudden inspiration as to your mystery gift this morning?"

I shrug, reaching for another plastic bag. "You were right. It's probably Emmett."

"But you're hoping it wasn't."

Filling the bag, I chew on my lip. "Emmett's really great. But I don't—" I trail off, unsure. I don't what? I don't want to date him. I don't want to love him. I don't want to be with just anyone when my heart is so desperately aching for a specific someone. I zip the bag closed and add it to the box of finished ones. "I just don't feel that way about him."

"Because you just don't, or because of Edward?"

"I don't know," I admit. And suddenly, I want to talk about it, to get it all out of me, to free the words and the doubts and the wondering and the longing that feel like they're chewing at my insides. "I mean, I don't know if I'm just hardcore crushing on him because he's smart and sexy and serious, and if someone perfect for me came along, I'd get over it, or whether I'm really…" But I can't. I can't say that out loud. It's too ridiculous.

"In love with him?" Alice finishes, sharing none of my fear of ridiculousness.

"You can't be in love with someone you've never even kissed," I argue with only half a heart, and Alice shakes her head.

"Bullshit." I'm surprised by the strength in her voice.

"What?"

"Loving someone doesn't have to do with kissing them, or screwing them, or anything else physical. That's attraction. That's lust. That's chemistry. But love is different. Love is…" She breaks off, frowning at the brown square of cardboard in her hand. "Love is about…who do you want to spend time with, when there's nothing to do? When you're just…being together, doing nothing. Like…reading the newspaper. Or cleaning out the refrigerator. It's easy to want to kiss someone and screw someone and get all the romantic stuff. That's simple. But love is more than that. Love is…respecting someone for who he is. Knowing the awesome stuff but also the not-so-awesome stuff and still wanting him regardless. Wanting to be around someone when there's nothing romantic about it. And if you can know the answer to that without ever having done anything physical with him, then…yes, you can absolutely be in love with someone you've never kissed. You don't have to know that side of a person to love who he is."

When I look up from the pipe cleaner I've been twisting in my hands, Alice's eyes are fierce. And expectant.

I blow out a breath. "Yeah."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. In love with him."

"You really don't know?" Her voice is gentle, but I can hear her teacher's scolding voice beneath it. Tell the truth, Bella.

"I know," I whisper, feeling at once relieved and utterly spent. "I do know." When I look down at the pipe cleaner, I realize it's twisted into the crude shape of a heart.

"I know you do."

"I just don't know what to do about it."

"Yeah," my friend agrees, her voice soft. "Me either."

Thanks for reading. xo