Let It Snow

By Paul Hina

Annie and Eric are hosting a dinner party. Annie is edgy, having spent days obsessing over the fact that her old lover, Max, is in town for the holidays. And when Eric tells her he's invited Max, who's also Eric's brother, Annie is mortified. It's been years since she's seen Max, and their relationship had a peculiar end that left Annie feeling jilted.

Meanwhile, the dinner party was originally planned to fix up their friends Michael and Holly. Michael has been pining after Holly, but she has been emotionally unavailable. Holly's husband died years ago, and, though she's fond of Michael, she's unsure she'll ever love again. Annie and Eric hoped getting them together over dinner, among friends, might help Holly warm to Michael. But when Holly arrives with a date, Michael's feeling humiliated, and Eric and Annie are wondering if their party is doomed before it even begins.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Hina
• Release date: Jan 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301276844

Paul Hina

Paul Hina is the author of eight novels including Imeros, Let it Snow, and Double Play. His eighth novel, The Other Shore, was released in March 2016 with the story From the Boathouse in a single volume, The Other Shore: Two Stories of Love and Death. The Lavender Haze: Three Stories of Flirting with an Affair is his most recent release and includes three new stories. Hina has also published four collections of poetry including Such Deliberate Loveliness, Of Wanting and Rain, Origami Moonlight and Music Only We Know. Paul currently lives in Athens, Ohio with his wife, Sarah, and their two children.

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Let it Snow

Paul Hina

Published by Paul Hina at Smashwords.com

Copyright ©2012 by Paul Hina

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Table of Contents

Let It Snow

I. Clouds

II. Dinner

III. Storms

Let it Snow

I. Clouds

Annie's sitting on the half-made bed in her and Eric's bedroom. The winter sun is reflecting off the snow on the ground outside, making the light that shines through their bedroom window all the more severe. She stares out into that great, bright whiteness, tries hard to keep her thoughts from Max, tries to erase how sick inside she is for him.

She told herself that she wouldn't react this way, that his coming back home would have little effect on her. But it's been almost ten years since she last saw him, and, as those years accumulated, she had taught herself to think of him less often. And, over time, he seemed to become more distant, more faded in her memory. His life, to her, had become something lived in the past, rather than a thing presently living. It helped that he lived so far away, and the benefit of this geographical distance between them was that it acted as a safe buffer between their lives. She was able to push him far away because he was far away.

At first, after they separated, she couldn't get him out of her mind. His absence from her life was ever-present. She was constantly aware that she was missing something, that the part of her that he used to fill up was empty. There was something pure and true that he used to give her that she hungered for after he was gone. And there was a time where that emptiness only seemed to grow, and she wondered if it might eventually hollow her out completely.

But those thoughts, those holes were eventually filled by time, and the forgetfulness that time offers. And, at some point, thinking of him went from something she did every second to merely every hour. Then every hour eventually became everyday, or just once in awhile.

She can't say she's ever been rid of him completely, but she's kept the emotional noise of him quiet enough to build a life without him.

But when Eric told her that Max was coming home, that hole inside her, that hunger she had hidden, began to stir. Pangs that she hadn't known in years became familiar to her again. Memories woke up and bent out in front of her. These memories grew fantasies. And, though she's happy with her life, she's not happy enough that these sorts of fantasies don't coax her into dangerous places.

Still, she knew that she would have to deal with Max at some point. He wasn't going to stay away forever. But she'd hoped that the effect of all that time without him would better prepare her to deal with his coming home again. But that's not how it's playing out.

Max has been back for three days, looming just down the road at his childhood home. He's hardly escaped her thoughts at any point over these past few days, even at night, even while sleeping. She just can't push him away. Mercifully, though, she's been able to avoid him. Eric, too, had successfully avoided him. She could tell he was putting the inevitable visit off until the last minute. It's not as if Eric didn't want to see his brother. He did. It's just been so long since they'd shared even a single word that the weight of uncertainty was something to dread. But the time had come, and he's over at his parents' house visiting Max now. Then, tomorrow, Max will be off again, and Annie will be free to return to her life without him, without the nearness of him following her wherever she goes.

But, even with all the turmoil his arrival has brought to Annie, she's happy that Eric has been able to see his brother again. Their fraternal relationship seemed irreparable after she and Eric were married. And Eric has been riddled by guilt, and confusion, ever since. He never quite understood the extent of Annie and Max's relationship. There was much she hadn't told him, and, even if she had told him, it's impossible to properly convey the weight of love.

It's interesting that Eric didn't ask her to come with him today. It wasn't just that he didn't ask. He almost acted as if he were hiding something from her. He only told her about the visit at the last minute, and treated it very casually, as if it weren't a big deal that he was going to see his younger brother for the first time in nearly a decade. Maybe Max had specifically requested that she not come. Or, perhaps, Eric just thought it was best to keep things simple.

And it's still a complex situation—at least it is to Annie.

If Max's return has shown her anything, it's that she's still capable of a level of emotional complexity she thought she'd lost, or misremembered. For days she's been feeling some mysterious combination of hope and fear, a confused feeling that might only be remedied by seeing him again. But she's successfully avoided the emotional clarity of Max for too long to muddle things with his presence now.

She's become frightened by the intensity of her desire to keep these new emotions awake inside her, desperate to prolong this sense of reverie, clinging to the whimsy and the terror that Max's arrival has brought to her.

She startles at the sound of the jolt and pull of the garage door.

Eric is home.

She gets up from the bed and starts tugging the sheet taut over her side of the mattress, going through the motions of being busy, which is what she should've been doing this whole time. Keeping busy would've been one way to keep her thoughts from Max. But, then again, nothing else she's done these past several days has successfully kept him from her.

She wonders what he looks like now, all this time later. How much has he changed?

How much has she changed?

She can hear Eric come in the house through the garage. She shakes herself from thoughts of Max and tucks the corner of the sheet under the foot of the mattress.

I thought you already made the bed, Eric says, as he enters the bedroom.

I did, but I laid down for a minute after you left.

You feeling alright?

Yeah, just a little tired.

Well, I wouldn't worry about it. I doubt anyone will be coming in here tonight anyway, he says, walking over to the closet by the window. The severe light from outside shines its white spotlight on him.

No, probably not, she says, smoothing the wrinkles from the sheet with a practiced hand. How was your brother?

Fine. He seemed in good spirits, he says. He places his coat in the closet, and moves toward the other side of the bed. I hope you don't mind, but I asked him for dinner.

What? she asks, her hands frozen, clutching at their comforter.

I asked him to come to the dinner party.

Tonight?

Are we having a dinner party another night I don't know about?

Why did you do that, Eric? she asks, moving on with her bed making, trying hard to ignore the panic that's rising up inside her, trying to steady the dizziness that's suddenly filled her head.

We were getting on so well, and it's been so long since I'd seen him, and I had to leave to make it back for the party, and I just thought—

You just thought that we could add another chair to the table, that we'd have enough food for—

Two chairs. He's bringing someone. Stacy's her name, I think.

As if it weren't bad enough to find out that Max was coming to their house, now Annie has to see him with another woman. In all her fantasies, he's still alone, living a tortured life without her, pining for their old days together. She pulls the comforter over the edge of the bed, leaves the wrinkles. She sits, or, rather, allows herself to fall on the bed.

You sure you're alright? Eric asks.

You couldn't have called first to ask if I was alright with this?

Honestly, I didn't think it would be a big deal. You're the one who's always telling me to try harder to reach out to Max.

And you did. You saw him, and that's good, but—

Our table sits eight, Annie. And I helped you pick up the food. Remember? There's plenty.

That's not it.

What then?

It's been a long time since I've seen him too. I would've liked a little consideration.

I'm sorry. I guess I just didn't think about it. It's been so long, I just thought—

No, it's fine.

If you want, I can call him. Tell him that something came up.

No, you can't do that. He'd know it was me that… she starts to say, but trails off and stares out the window again. The sun is just beginning to set, and its light is so bright that it makes it hard to keep her eyes open, but she's afraid if she closes them… No. She's not going to let herself cry.

There's nothing left for her to say. What's done is done. He'll be here soon. In their house. Sitting at their dining room table. He'll look at her, see all those emotions she's been hiding.

Well, I've got a couple things to finish up before…

Me too, she says, only half-aware that she's speaking.

You going to be okay?

Yeah, I just… You know… The party. That's all. Just a lot of stuff to think about. All the little details.

Right. Well, I'm going to go and… he says, and leaves the bedroom.

Okay, she says, not looking at him, not even quite aware that he's gone.

Eric moves down the hall to the kitchen. He reaches into an overhead cabinet and grabs two plates, opens a drawer and shuffles through the silver until he finds what he needs. He adds the new plates and silver to the stack of plates and silver he had set out on the counter earlier today, and takes everything to the dining room. He sets the stack on the table. Then he slides the two chairs on each side of the table over enough to make room for the two added guests—one more on either side of the table. He grabs the napkins from the sideboard in front of the window, and lays each one in its proper spot. Then he moves the two stray chairs that bookend the sideboard, and squeezes them into their new places on either side of the table. There. That makes eight. Not so hard.

Of course, he knows that Annie's problem with Max coming for dinner has very little to do with how many guests they can fit comfortably at their table, or how much food they have to serve.

For years, he's been aware of the torch she still carries for Max. In the beginning, before they were married, he didn't see it manifest itself as much in her behavior, even unconsciously. The emotional tells—her verbal tics, or nervous body language—that she exhibits now were nonexistent in those budding stages of their romance. Eric likes to believe that the seeming absence of her desire for Max was because she was as caught up as he was in the joy of their relationship's beginning. But, after they were married, he would notice far off looks in her eyes when someone would mention Max, and it became hard to ignore her self-consciousness, the utter vulnerability written on her face, the shaking in her voice, on the rare occasions she would summon the courage to ask Eric's parents about Max.

Then