I can’t seem to stop my body from shaking. I wrap my arms around Paul Hollywood to get warm, but it’s useless, because it’s not the cold that’s causing me to tremble like this. It’s everything else.

It’s Jack really liking me. It’s Jack keeping my scarf. Jack here, in this car, smelling like bread and telling me about her divorce. She pulls over on the side of the road and reaches for my hand. “Here, this is the only heat vent that works. Let’s get you warm.”

Her fingers circle my wrist as she tugs my hand closer to the middle vent, and the feeling of her skin against mine sparks my nerve endings, floods my empty insides with an overwhelming swarm of feelings. Jack touches me, and the ache in my chest fills with warmth instead. With wholeness.

Jack looks down at the place where her skin is touching my skin. Then she looks up, and there are the freckles. There’s the white scar. In the low light of the truck, there is that stupid strand of hair I want to brush out of her face. She’s close enough that I would only have to move a few inches to press my lips to hers.

And I want to. I hate that I want to kiss her again, but I do. I want to make all the same mistakes I made a year ago right here, right now, with this beautiful woman who liked me very much.

I think about our first kiss in the snow, our first almost kiss beneath a heater like this one.

I could kiss her. It would cost me two hundred thousand dollars, but I could kiss her.

Paul Hollywood startles in my lap, and the moment breaks. Jack quickly releases my hand, leaving me to warm myself by the only working heater vent.

“I’m sorry,” Jack says, but she doesn’t admit what she’s apologizing for. “I just… I really hope that despite everything, we can find a way to be friends, Elle.”

I squeeze my eyes closed. “Yes,” I whisper back. “Friends.”

A Webcomic

By Oliverartssometimes

Episode 4: The Bathroom
(Christmas Eve, 4:13 p.m.)

Uploaded: January 14, 2022

“Sledding was not part of the plan.”

I glare at Jack from across the single-stall Burgerville bathroom, but all she does is flash me that ridiculous grin. “Okay but admit it: you had fun.”

We had a plan. We were going to walk straight across the Burnside Bridge so we could get home before the snow got any worse. But then we heard the sound of laughing children, and Jack just had to follow it, just had to trace the source of that unrestrained glee.