Room Service

Snow’s only acceptable when it comes in the night. Not the dead of night when everyone’s asleep, like you did slinking in past curfew to make sure you wouldn’t wake the family dog. There’s that precious time of night just after dark when the automatic sensors go off and porch lights illuminate soft patches of watch zones. The corners of gutters. The tops of brick patio posts. Between the garage doors or the strategic lamp post keeping watch over the sidewalk. The best snow creeps when the world’s caught in a drowsy battle to keep its eyes open.

I had no trouble keeping mine open in wait for the first great storm of the year to break. It helped that a plastic container of cheesecake from the rehearsal dinner fit between the crook of my crossed legs. I shoveled another forkful into my mouth and dared another glance out the window. It’s too dark to see anything, but a streetlight watched over the cars settled snug beside one another in the hotel parking lot. Some have their windshield wipers up. Northerners. The streetlight cast a quiet swath of pale white light undeterred by a gentler dusting than before.

It’s time.

The storm moved in like Great Aunt Marge on a wedding she actually wasn’t invited to, and on my trip home to an unsuspecting North Carolina, I wasn’t prepared. Still, I had a coat concealing the yoga pants and flannel long sleeve shirt from bystanders. A knock came at the door as I fought to regain my balance twisting my heel into the not-so-water-proof sneakers I packed for the hotel fitness center. I wriggled my way to the door and caught the handle just as I fell. It allowed in a rush of carpet cleaner and hotel bath soap.

“Room service.”

“I don’t need any extra - who are you?” He didn’t have a cart with him. No silver platters or the golden embroidery of a hotel uniform. Just an easy smile that showed no hint of embarrassment that he had the wrong room.

And he had to have had the wrong room. 

He seemed to have noticed my staring. I cleared my throat, my cheeks hot, forgetting I’d actually left the ball in his court. “Going out?” He asked.

“That doesn’t answer my question.” I hugged my coat closed over my pjs, very aware of my clean skin rubbed raw by makeup remover.

“Details. I’m Tanner.”

“Who?”

“Tanner? Fraizer. Best man.” Ah. The one who’s flight was delayed because of the snow.

“That’s thinking a little highly of yourself.”

“I didn’t pick the title.” He shrugged and reached out a gloved hand. “You’re Beth. The girl who doesn’t need any extra…”

It took me a minute to realize what he meant. Then I remembered how we started this whole awkward debacle and my voice grew shakey. “Oh. Towels. You did say room service.”

“I had something a little different in mind. Scott and Rachel thought it’d be a good idea for us to get to know each other. Second-in-command duties and all.”

My mind went to a lot of different places, none of which dealt with snow. Judging by the rising temperature in the hall, though, it was time I made it out into the frigid night air.

“Right. Well, I was just going for a walk.”

“I’ll join you.”

“My brother went to school at Alabama,” Tanner remarked as we stepped off the elevator. “What did you major in?”

“English, mostly. I started in education.”

“No point in being an educator here. They can’t make a living.”

We passed an older couple with sleep in their eyes and suitcases trailing behind them. “It keeps you humble. Besides, it wasn’t about the money.”

“Oh?”

I offered a shy smile. “It was the complaining. I didn’t want to be around a bunch of Debby Downers all the time.”

“Students are pretty brutal.”

“Not the students. The teachers.”

Tanner seemed to approve of what I said, allowed an amused tilt to his chin as we made it through the automatic doors into the erratic embrace of below-freezing temps.

Most of my snows in North Carolina were spent in suburban backyards where our patio reached out to those of the people behind us. Like the promise of a new year, a fresh start, or a clean slate, every untouched inch seemed to wink, frozen ice crystals scattered beneath the porch lights that yawned across the transformed landscape. The best part about snow wasn’t that it clung to the earth. It also dusted the wisps of branches and plant life separating our backyard from the rest. To visit friends meant brushing beneath the branches and laughing as snow tickled, then stung our ears, our necks beneath the unlined gap in our collars.

The hotel parking lot didn’t have that magical Narnia vibe. But it did have inches of untouched snow. And as if the inches weren’t enough, the lingering storm decided to give us an encore. The sound of silence - because silence has a sound, a vibrant ringing that’s tethered to an awakeness - roared to life.

I glanced down at my gloveless hands. Patted my exposed ears.

“So what do you say, MOH? Wanna build a snowman?”

Tanner plunged into the nearest patch of fresh grass beneath the set of flag poles greeting visitors by the carport. He collapsed onto his knees and got to work. I stood at the border of wonderland and brick emporium where the snow had melted to water beneath the harsh beam of a bellhop’s heat lamp.

“Help me out, will ya? Oh.” He cast a concerned look over his shoulder, taking in the chapped, angry lines of my bare knuckles. Tanner tugged at the fingers of one of his gloves. “Here.”

It slapped the astonishment off my face before falling into the puddle. “You can’t make snowballs with one glove,” I said.

“And you can’t make snowmen with one snow enthusiast.”

I ventured a step into the falling kiss of winter. Snow entangled with my eyelashes and I blinked, smiled. Picked up the glove. There was no one else out here but Tanner and I. Winter had a way of making lonesome look peaceful. Until a renegade snowball exploded against my shoulder. “Dude! I’m working on it.”

“Work faster!”

Half my hands may be covered, but my shoes still weren’t waterproof. I puckered my lips to one side and scouted the best path to where Tanner already had a hefty base collecting both grass and dirt and the several inches of compacted snow. Southern Chique. I was prepared for a snowy stroll, not a snowmageddon. Tanner, noticing my frustration, abandoned the bottom half of the snowman and dusted snow off his damp jeans. The white stuff salted his dart hair before melting it to his temples and a brightness took over his cheeks, his nose. Snow suited him.

“Alright,” he said lifting his arms out in front of him. “Come on.”

“Um. What?”

He made a bendy motion with his knees as if hoisting something. “I’ll carry you so your feet don’t get wet.”

I huffed a surprised laugh and a puff of hot air vanished as it escaped. “I don’t exactly let perfect strangers hoist me off my feet, but thanks.”

“We’re not strangers. Both of us know Scott and Rachel. We were probably both at their ridiculously overdone, gala-slash-engagement-shindig, and you know my name.”

“Ah yes. What’s in a name?”

That quirked a smile. “Fun fact. I’m afraid of clowns. I’ve never actually been out of the state of North Carolina - I went to NC State so I could stay close to home and earn a little money to help my mom. Though joke’s on me because now I can hardly afford rent myself due to my rager of a job as a PE teacher at Panther Creek.”

Our previous conversation from the lobby made a lot more sense now. Of course Tanner didn’t exactly push an education degree - he’s they byproduct of the negative teacher-talk I had so flippantly waved off earlier. My cheeks flushed, and not from the cold. 

“I’m not light.”

“You’re telling me.”

I rolled my eyes. “I meant my weight, genius.”

“PE teacher, yeah?”

Maybe it was the snow. Maybe I really wanted to be light, feel lighter than I’d felt since moving back home after school. It was uncharacteristic, sure, but the same could be said about snow in North Carolina. It happened, not frequently but enough to become magical.

I leapt off my feet, my heart pounding. As I fell, the arms that caught me stunned us both to stillness. “What are you waiting for? We have a snowman to build!” I smiled.

Tanner took easy strides across the snow and as I looked over his shoulder, I realized how large his footprints were. How even though we were in motion, I didn’t leave any footprints beside his. That’s kind of how life worked at 25. You do a lot to find the beauty in life - the play, the wonder - and eventually you remember you forgot to leave your mark along the way. Fleeting, like the snow. 

“So, MOH - Beth - what are you thinking about?” Tanner carefully lowered me to the jacket he left like a picnic cloth in the snow.

“I’m thinking how funny it will look having two people here and only one set of footprints.” I scooped up a handful of snow. The nerve endings on my exposed hand screamed in surprise. 

The best man took the ball of snow I created and scrounged around on his knees rolling. “Isn’t there a poem about that?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should - you’re the english major.” He laughed, plopped the second large snowball on top of the grass-speckled base. 

Except I did know, but it didn’t seem like something that would be particularly impressive or noteworthy to mention. It decorated the local church wall as a reminder of why people go to church to begin with: “When you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.” I wasn’t sure if he realized the poem was about God, or what he believed about God. No surprise, considering I’d just met the guy. That saying also had a lot to say about leaning on something in the universe greater than ourselves. The very same thing that made impromptu snowmageddon a great start to a trip home I wasn’t too sure about. I’d have to thank Scott and Rachel - though mostly Rachel, I’m sure she had more to do with it - sometime after the wedding. 

“And you, Best Man.” I fit a disproportionate head onto our derpy snowman. “What are you thinking about? Did you learn enough about me to say you know me now?”

He scooped me up without asking and we abandoned the chaos of disturbed snow. My insides fluttered. “Close. How ‘bout you save me a dance tomorrow so I can learn a bit more?”

I watched him retrace the one set of deep footprints and thought again about the ones I didn’t leave behind. Maybe I did, only, I didn’t leave them in the snow. I smiled.