“I’ll get two of my buddies, we can all go together.”

Buddy! It was the first she had thought of him since setting her eyes on Nick. Well, she supposed he had found another girl long ago. “All right,” she said, feeling better, at least for the moment, prolonging the inevitable good-bye. She leaned her head briefly on Nick’s uniformed chest, and she could hear the pounding of his heart.

They were a group of seven when assembled: Nick and his friends Everett and Sam, the three girls, and a soldier named Paul who had made previous arrangements to walk Betty home. As they set off down the street, Betty made a show of having two escorts, linking her arms with both of them, and then abruptly told the boys they’d have to leave the girls a block from her house.

“You mean to tell me,” complained Everett, who was walking with Muriel, “we go out of our way and we can’t even walk y’all up to the porch?”

The discussion continued, but Elissa, walking behind the others on Nick’s arm, paid no attention. She stayed in step with Nick; he kept casting sidelong glances her way, with that little heart-stopping smile, and slowing his steps to separate them from the rest of the group. The night was frozen, still and quiet, except for the sounds of their friends up ahead and of Elissa’s heels clicking down the cleared walk that tunneled through knee-high banks of snow. The houses on either side of the street were hushed and dark; the bare branches of the overhanging trees were skeletal in the moonlight. Elissa sighed, watched her breath make a cloud. Pressing her shoulder closer to Nick’s, she hunched up a little inside her coat.

“I think you’re real sweet,” Nick said suddenly. “You’re not like anyone I’ve met before. The way you cried a little back there. Were you crying because you had to say good-bye to me?”

She didn’t know how to answer. She didn’t want him to think her overly emotional, though she supposed it was too late for that.

“I’m sorry,” he said, after a moment. “I reckon that’s out of line. You don’t need to say. But I think you’re the sweetest thing, and I hope you’ll write to me. I hope I’ll get to see you again. I think I’ve been waiting for somebody like you.”

“But, Nick, how can you tell?” Elissa said quickly. “It isn’t possible, is it?”

“You tell me,” he said.