“No wonder you and Theo couldn’t risk being late the night he wanted to take you to the park,” I say.
I think this was really mature of me to bring that up, by the way. You owe me a high five.
“Exactly,” Jackson says.
“We should have a back-up plan, just in case.” My heart isn’t trying to blast its way out of my chest anymore. Helping Jackson out is rescuing me from my own head. “Think of it as a snow-day plan for your snow-day birthday plans. What else would you want to do? Something you can only do in New York?”
“Theo used to talk about the High Line,” Jackson says.
I move away from the window so Jackson doesn’t see me blushing. I am blushing, right? My face is burning again. I wonder if you brought up my name when you mentioned the High Line, if you told him how we would buy lemonades and laugh at the ice vendor who was sneakily eating Popsicles when she thought nobody was looking. Maybe you avoided telling him about how we would hold hands and create stories about the lives of the people we could see working in offices. Maybe you left me out completely so you wouldn’t hurt his feelings.
“If your friends suck, we will go to the High Line,” I promise. It’s been a while since I’ve been there. “Jackson?”
“Yeah?”
“Happy birthday, by the way.”
Jackson finally looks away from the window and smiles. There’s no mistaking the sadness in his smile, like maybe he was hoping to find you when he turned around. But when someone is grieving, a genuine smile is a small victory in the big battle. “Thanks, Griffin.”
I don’t mean to speak for you, but I know you’ll feel better having these words of yours thrown out into the universe. “And a happy birthday from Theo, too.”
Jackson is a little surprised, but his smile doesn’t break—no sadder, no happier. Sometimes neutrality is a victory, too.
“What’s a colder word for freezing?” Jackson asks, bundled from head to toe in my dad’s coat, hat, gloves, and the scarf I forced on him.
“Fucking freezing?”
Jackson nods. “It’s fucking freezing. I’m not sure I really want a snowman best friend anymore.”
I smooth out the snowman’s base. “Nope. No backing out. We didn’t work this hard on his ass to give up now.”
“Maybe we should make it a snowwoman,” Jackson suggests through chattering teeth. “You only see snowwomen when it’s a family in need of a mother for the children. But whenever it’s one snowperson, everyone automatically makes it a snowman.”
“Revolutionary snowwoman it is! Some snowperson will write sonnets about you,” I say. I cup the snow and begin molding the snowwoman’s breasts. “That’s some Theo thinking of yours, by the way. We didn’t get much play in the snow because I’m not a big fan, but I think if I did it anyway, Theo would’ve had the lightbulb moment to create a snowwoman just because.”
“I can’t think of a better person to channel,” Jackson says over the howling winds. There’s no smile this time.
He and I build and build, convincing ourselves not to go back inside and take a break to warm up because it’ll be too brutal to come back outside. The snowwoman’s breasts look more like cones, but I move on to her head because Jackson and I are not exactly teenage boys obsessed with breasts. The snowwoman’s head isn’t proportionate to her body, just like her body isn’t proportionate to her leg ball.
“She needs a face now,” Jackson says.
I feel guilty for two reasons. The first is because I should’ve done this with you and not put it off because I assumed we’d have all the time in the world once we got back together. I also feel guilty because I wouldn’t have been able to be as happy about this as Jackson is.
“I’ll find her a face.” My teeth are chattering. I walk around for a little bit, grateful to have my knees and legs out of the wet snow. I go into the trashcan, collecting items—well, let’s call it what it is, garbage—that can be useful in giving the snowwoman a face. I return and drop our options, everything colorful against the white snow.
Jackson immediately reaches for the shard of dark green glass from a broken Heineken bottle.
“Really? Are you about to shank her?” I take the glass from Jackson and give the snowwoman her smile—well, smirk.
“Not bad,” Jackson admits.
“Don’t doubt my vision again.”
Jackson uses the filthy green top from a water bottle as the snowwoman’s nose. I empty out a popcorn bag, using handfuls for clustered eyes and the bag as really flat hair.
“She’s beautiful,” Jackson says, laughing a little.
“Beautiful in the sense that she’s made of nothing but snow and garbage, right?”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t date her,” Jackson says.
“Not your type?”