My hands are as cold as the car windows I pressed against to get here. I shove them under his duvet but they refuse warm. He’s plucking something electric into his guitar because he doesn’t have anything new to say. I have plenty. I’m thinking about rock salt covered sidewalks with no footprints.

​

     He is stuck on the same slidy riff. I look out his window, the sliver that isn’t covered by the crooked blinds. Still empty. Still rock salt. And here, still his fingers working over the strings, reddening the tips, too loud. Doesn’t he know his hands are too soft to be doing that?

​

     He plucks a wrong note somewhere in his sliding. It reverbs pitchily around the small room. I watch him get mad, working the same note again and again, eyebrows and mouth pulled tight. 

​

     I’m thinking about gloves when he tosses his guitar to his feet. It bounces on the pile of blankets there. “Let’s go for a walk,” I say. 

​

     He whips his head around as if he’d forgotten I was still here.

​

     “It’s cold,” I acknowledge before he can. “But nobody’s outside. It’d be nice.”

​

     He looks at his guitar. The window. His reddened fingertips curl and uncurl, fist and open palm. “Alright.”

​

     Alright, we walk. My jacket reaches to my knees and we hold hands out of necessity. Boots crunch on the sidewalk. His neighborhood is speechless in the same way he is. There’s fenced-in yards but no dogs to speak of, sidewalks covered in salt to stop nobody from tripping. Nobody but us. 

​

     Sun reflects off the melting snow along the street. He is handsome even with his eyebrows pulled tight against the glare. I’m thinking about going home and staying there. 

​

     “I got you some stickers for your guitar. They’re in my bag back home,” I say. 

 

     Home. Did I mean that? I don’t think I did.

​

     “Is this your way of asking to go back?” he asks. 

​

     “No,” I say. “No, I just wanted to tell you.” 

​

     He hums, and then does something surprising. He wraps an arm around my shoulders, easy for him considering his elbows end at about my shoulders when we’re standing next to each other. It’s something I’ve always thought and something he never really acted upon. 

​

     “Thank you,” he says. “I can’t wait to see them.”

​

     The gesture is not born of necessity. It’s a little awkward, actually, with me leaning into his chest with every forward step, him pushing back just as hard when he walks. But he doesn’t let go and I don’t either. 

 

     He smells like the heat turning on. 

​

     “Oh.” 

     

      We turn around, start heading back. He pulls me further under his arm. 

 

     “I wrote you a song,” he says, a little shyly. I crane my neck to look up at him. Cold has drained all the color from his face except in splotches on his nose and cheeks. Pretty, I used to tell him. “I’ve been practicing it. I guess. I wasn’t ready for you to hear it yet. But, you know, I’ll put your stickers on my guitar, and I think I could play it now.”

 

     We walk through a section of untouched snow. He looks down as if cataloging his boots’ movement through it. His jacket sleeve presses little icicles into my cheek. It’s not as cold anymore. 

 

     Usually it was him that didn’t know what to say. “Thank you,” I settle on.

 

     And then we’re home. We climb the front steps, crunchy with rock salt, and go through the unlocked front door. The heat is blasting and it gets to work unfreezing my fingers. 

 

     He takes off my jacket and hangs it next to his own.