A Pocketful of Miracles
By Lillie Bell, Alicia Blade, and Kaitlyn Fall
Chapter Thirteen
"I feel like I should offer you my jacket."
Darien struggled to pull his eyes away from the swirling, blistering snowfall that surrounded them and looked down at Serena still sprawled out on the sidewalk. She was trying not to smirk as she stared at his lightweight shirt and arms covered in goosebumps.
Clearing his throat, he rubbed at his exposed skin. "I left my jacket at the arcade. I didn't think—it wasn't that cold when I left." He looked at her puffy coat and thick scarf. "But no, you definitely still need it more than I do.
The smirk won. "I wasn't actually offering it to you, goofball. After you mocked me for my attire this morning? Please."
He couldn't keep his lips from twitching as he stood up and offered her his hand. Her gloved fingers slipped into his without hesitation and he lifted her from the pavement, where he stood dumbly watching her dust herself off and smooth down her hair. Snowflakes were gathering in the meatballs and dusting her shoulders and in the haze of the mall's pale lights she looked rather . . . angelic.
"What?"
He snapped from his thoughts. "Oh. Um. You dropped your stuff." He shuffled toward the scattered shopping bags and gathered them up. The sprig of mistletoe had tumbled out onto the pavement and left a little silhouette in the powdered snow when Darien picked it up and shook it off.
"My ice cream!" Serena said, standing over the cone, arms akimbo. She harrumphed. "I guess it's too cold for it now anyway."
"Andrew will have lots of sweets," Darien said half-heartedly, his thoughts back in the florists, seeing Serena's dreamy face as she clutched this branch of mistletoe to her chest.
Fearing for his sanity, he shoved the mistletoe into the bag. Serena was watching him with a concerned frown, but she quickly dropped her gaze as she took her shopping bags away from him. He shoved his icy hands into his pockets.
"We're running late," Serena said, making a show of arranging the bag handles just so—and not making eye contact with him. "Andrew will be wondering where we are."
Darien couldn't stop watching her, couldn't avoid trying to dissect her every look, every word, the way she fiddled with her purse, the way she swayed uncomfortably from foot to foot. Her giddiness was gone. The radiant joy of a white Christmas, disappeared.
He had always imagined her as all-bubbly, all the time. Had he just missed these momentary bouts of discomfort and sadness, or was this something new? And if the latter, what had caused it?
"You should go ahead to the party," he said, gesturing back to the mall doors. "I came to get a last-minute gift."
"But the mall is closed. Or, closing soon, anyway."
Turning, he peered through the glass doors just as a row of shopkeepers pulled the metal grates over their storefronts. "You've got to be kidding me."
"It closes early for the holiday," she said, then added with a teasing smirk, "I thought you never procrastinated."
He shivered as another burst of cold air crept up his spine, ignoring the taunting voice. The snow was deepening quickly. It was already over half an inch, and showing no sign of stopping. He looked apologetically at Serena, his shoulders drooping. "All right, I might as well tell you. The gift was for you."
He saw her eyes widen. Surprise, for sure. Hope? He couldn't tell.
"Andrew didn't have time to finish his shopping. He got gifts for all the girls but you and he asked me to come get you something . . . and I failed. And I'm sorry. It isn't Andrew's fault. Well, it is because he shouldn't have put off his shopping for so long, but still. I'm really sorry."
"Oh," she said, and if there had been hope, it had flickered out. "That's okay. I don't mind." A half-smile as her eyes grazed over the snowdrifts. "I got what I wanted."
All she'd wanted was snow for Christmas.
All she'd wanted was snow.
But that was a lie, according to Mina and Lita. There was still something he could give her.
He gulped and pulled his hands, suddenly warm, from his pockets.
"Right, I know, but I still feel bad about it."
"Don't," she said. With a cursory glance up at the sky, she started walking toward the bus stop. Darien had no choice but to follow, stepping gingerly over the shards of a used-up miracle. "Did you, um, decide what to get for . . . that girl?"
"Hm?" He'd still been mulling over Mina's words, wondering if there was any chance he'd mistaken her meaning. Or if she'd incorrectly assessed Serena's feelings.
"The girl you were buying the flowers for? Did you end up going with roses or . . . I'm just curious."
He looked at her profile, sad again, and then down at the little florist bag with the mistletoe hidden inside.
"Oh—that was for you. I'd meant you."
Her brow furrowed. She looked at him suspiciously from the corner of her eye. "Me?"
"Yeah, I was just trying to figure out what to get you. I mean, for Andrew, of course."
Her gaze dropped. The wind whipped at her scarf and pigtails, tangling them around her petite body as they walked. He could see her mulling the words over his head, piecing the clues together, before realization dawned.
"So . . . there's no . . . other girl?"
Darien's feet came to a slow, unsteady stop. She paused a few feet ahead and turned back, her gaze an uncanny mixture of panic and, there it was again, that peculiar glistening hope.
No. Other. Girl.
That's why she'd looked so upset at the florist. That's why she'd gotten sad when he'd picked up the mistletoe. That's what was bothering her so much. The thought that he, Darien, was interested in another girl.
But if that could upset her so much, then there was only one possible conclusion. Mina was right. Serena had a crush on him.
"Darien?"
"No," he said, more forcefully than he'd meant to. "There's no other girl."
She jumped at his vehemence. Her mouth formed a little O, then she ducked her head, hiding whatever expression crept up as if she knew just how easy it was to read her expressions, now that he was on the lookout for them.
When she lifted her head a second later, there was only smug indifference there, coupled with a shrug. "Not that it's any of my business," she said. "I mean, what do I care, right? I just . . . just the way you'd been talking about it, I'd assumed. . . . But I don't really care." She sniffed loudly as evidence of her supreme not-caring.
But Darien knew better, and he was having a much more difficult time playing nonchalance than she was. A smile was brimming, climbing slowly from his chest, up his throat, and warming up his entire face. He could not have been sure where the smile was coming from, or what exactly was causing it, but there it was.
Happiness. And all because silly, klutzy Meatball Head liked him.
Serena turned away from him before she could notice the abnormal expression, still chattering about how little difference it made to her if Darien had a million girlfriends, how it meant nothing to her, in fact, she wasn't even curious and honestly didn't know why he'd thought she would want to know in the first place, obviously she was only asking to be nice, not because—
Her galoshes slipped on a patch of ice.
Serena screamed. Bags flew. Arms windmilled. Darien barely caught her as she fell back into his arms sending them both sprawling on the pavement.
Amidst the shock of surprise at being on the ground—again—with Serena on top of him—again—and his back side throbbing with pain—again, Darien started laughing.
"Honestly, Meatball Head, three klutz-attacks in one day?"
"Oh, shut up!" she said. But then she started laughing too as she struggled to sit up, struggling to untwine herself from scarf and locks of hair and finding it near impossible to gain purchase on the slick concrete. She managed to roll off him and they lay in the snow—now over an inch thick—unheeding the harried shoppers that jostled around them.
With one arm still caught beneath Serena's shoulders, Darien suddenly stopped laughing. His silence prompted Serena's silence and she swiveled her face toward him, but he was staring up at the snowing sky, the clouds pale pink from the city lights.
"Mistletoe," he said.
He did not see Serena's expression, but a moment later he felt her small mittened hands beneath his head. "Now who's hallucinating?" she said. She tried to lift him to seated, but he grabbed her other wrist.
"No, look."
She turned her face upward and spotted the little sprig of mistletoe, its gold ribbon caught on the branch of a leafless maple tree.
"Oh. Right. Mistletoe."
"Good shot," murmured Darien, loosening his grip on her wrist. She did not pull her hand away from the back of his head and he could feel her beginning to tremble.
He looked at her, propped up on one elbow, lingering over him. She slowly returned his gaze, licking her lips. Wide-eyed. Pink-cheeked.
Inhaling a quick breath, he sat up and shook the snowflakes from his hair. "We're going to miss the bus."
She jerked away from him. A second later they were both on their feet, bags gathered up, meandering toward the bus stop.
A second passed that, they saw their bus pull away from the curb and zoom off down the street.
"We're going to be really late," Darien said, sans emotion. "Andrew's not going to be happy with us."
"Guess we should start walking," said Serena, equally unconcerned.
So they started walking, leaving a safe distance between them as they made their way through the familiar streets toward the arcade. He could tell Serena was walking carefully, even in her haste. He could sense embarrassment and disappointment steaming off of her.
He could tell that the falling snow was not the ultimate miracle she'd been hoping for.
"Mistletoe is such a weird tradition," he said after too long of being engulfed in blizzarding awkwardness.
"Very weird," she was quick to agree. "And dumb. I mean, forcing people to . . . yeah. Weird."
"It seems like a tradition that could cause a lot of trouble, right? It's kind of like . . . like valentines."
She stiffened on the other side of the sidewalk. "What's wrong with valentines?"
"Well, nothing's wrong with them, but . . . well, did you ever get a valentine from someone that you liked and you didn't know if it meant that they liked you back, or if they were just giving it to you because they felt obligated to? It's the same sort of thing with mistletoe. Even if . . . if you like somebody and you catch them under the mistletoe and get to k-kiss them, then sure you'd be happy about it and all, but afterwards you would always wonder. Did they kiss you because they wanted to, or because they had to?"
This time, it took Serena a while to respond with a subtle, "I guess you're right. How would you know?"
"The uncertainty could drive a person crazy."
Serena held out a hand and watched her mitten gather snowflakes. "Still," she said, eyelashes drooping, "a kiss would be nice."
"Not if you got caught under the mistletoe with someone you didn't like at all. And had to kiss them. That would be terrible, right?"
Serena pursed her lips and didn't answer.
"What happened back there was a perfect example. I mean, if you and I really cared about the tradition, I would have had to kiss you. Or . . . you, me. But—we hate each other. So that would have been awkward. Right?"
"Awkward," she whispered. "Because you hate me."
"No, because you hate me."
She dropped her hand, and all lingering happiness seemed to melt away as she trudged through the snow. He watched cautiously as she sighed a heavy, heartbreaking sigh that dissipated in white steam before her.
He waited for the sigh to fade away before reaching for her hand. They stopped walking. She angled toward him, her face miserable beneath his penetrating gaze.
"But you don't hate me, do you?" he said, still, despite all the evidence to the contrary, unsure just what her response would be.
She rubbed snow from her bangs with her free hand and slowly shook her head.
He inched closer to her, pulse thrumming, his entire body overheated despite the cold. "I don't hate you either."
Her lips quirked, but it was a sad, sarcastic quirk. "I know that, Darien."
He froze. "You do?"
"Of course. You may be a jerk sometimes, but you don't hate people for no good reason."
Darien was rendered momentarily speechless as he mulled this insight over. He had not exactly known that about himself.
"But you're right," she continued. "Kisses are probably too important to be doled out willy-nilly because of—" Another frosty sigh. "—some dumb tradition."
"Exactly," he said, shaking himself from his stupor. "That's exactly what I meant."
She nodded, appearing both glad and yet supremely unhappy that they'd reached this agreement.
"And I would really hate for you to misunderstand this."
He dared not risk her lips. Instead, with fumbling fingers on her waist, he dipped his head and placed a kiss at the corner of her mouth. She tensed, with the whole world still between them save their hands interlocked and his fingers on her side and his lips hovering, tentative, beside her cheek.
As the significance of what he'd just done settled around him, Darien slowly drew back, anxious to know her reaction.
Shock was evident, and expected. Wide, unblinking eyes and captured breath, proof that he really had just kissed her, surprising them both.
"I-I think I misunderstand," she stammered.
"No, you don't." He tried to smile, but it was too difficult with nerves sizzling inside him.
"You—" She paused with puckered lips, blinked three times, and slowly allowed the crease between her eyebrows to soften. "And me?"
"Crazy, I know. But. But yes." He gulped. "Um. Merry Christmas?"
Her lips curved, still baffled. She squirmed closer to him, tucking her head beneath his chin, accepting his arms around her, gigantic coat and all. "Your lips were cold," she said, watching from the circle of his arms as the impossible snow whitewashed the city.
"Sorry."
Sparkling eyes turned up, meeting his gaze. "Merry Christmas," she whispered and stood on her tiptoes.
The second kiss left no room for uncertainty.
Life's a carousel, far as I can tell,
And I'm riding for free.
I've got a pocketful of miracles.
But if I had to pick a miracle,
My favorite miracle of all is you and me.
Epilogue to follow.
xoxo