'Tis The Damn Season

          "Sam," she stupidly mumbles, too astonished to form a more coherent sentence. She glances at the mailbox with the Lawrence's written over it behind her and the red rocking chair on the porch. It's only then that she notices the blue truck on the side of the house beneath a thin blanket of snow. She drops her head back. "Shoot. It's your house."

          "Um, yeah," Samuel says, scratching the back of his head. "You okay?"

          "Yeah, I just–" She sighs. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have knocked. I'll just... I'll just go."

          As she turns on her heel to walk down the steps on the porch and go back to the road, she wonders what kind of dark irony the universe has going on. Out of all the houses she could've knocked on, Sam's is the first one she finds in the middle of the town's worst snowstorm in ten years. Someone out there must really hate her.

          "Wait!" He calls. "It's snowing like hell out there. Are you going home?"

          "Yeah," She replies without looking back. "But it's fine, it's not even snowing that much."

          A blatant lie, and the worst part is that she doesn't even expect him to believe it. He's not blind. But she tries anyway.

          "You can't go home when it's snowing like this. Get in here."

          "Sam, I–"

          "Just get in here, Dorothea." He orders, and it's strange to hear him call her by her full name instead of the usual Dottie.

         She considers her options, but as much as she doesn't want him to be, he's right. There's no way she'll be able to walk home in this snowstorm. She'd die before she got there. That's the only thing that gets her to walk through the door after Sam.

        He offers to take Dottie's coat, but she crosses her arms over it and looks away to the fireplace. Just getting inside the house is enough to warm her up all the way to her freezing bones, but it does nothing to melt the ice between them. She watches him in the corner of her eye.

       He doesn't say anything.

       Neither does she.

       The sharp silence is only filled by the crackling fire. She looks around the living room. It's arranged differently than when she last saw it, but he still owns the same couch and clock on the wall, and has his father's record player sitting quietly against a wall. The smell of wood and chocolate fills the air.

       "I..." she turns her head back when he speaks, but he stops himself like he's measuring every word carefully. "I have something on the stove." He mumbles and points loosely to the kitchen on the left.

      Dorothea nods. He stops for a second, like he's going to say something else, but instead just rushes to the kitchen. It takes a few moments for her to follow him. It feels strange to be in his living room when he's not there.

     He is stirring something in a pan on the stove when she gets there. He stops to try it and pauses again before dropping a spoonful of something she can't see.

     "What are you making?" She asks.

     Sam flinches, almost like he forgot that she was there.

     "Um... Hot cocoa." He stutters faster than she can wish to take her words back.

     She nods again, not sure what to say.

     He goes back to stirring the pot.

     "Can I–" She interrupts again and he glances at her over his shoulder. "Can I use your phone? I should call my parents."