DECEMBER 2000, BEAVER FALLS, PENNSYLVANIA

Winter in Western Pennsylvania hurt. It bit your cheeks, chapped your lips, stung your throat. Worst of all was when you didn’t wear weather-appropriate shoes. Then it froze your toes numb until they felt like blocks of ice weighing fifty pounds each.

Trudging uphill with feet so encumbered was another torture winter sadistically enjoyed. I had just finished my last class of the semester, of the year actually, and I couldn’t wait to reach my dorm where I hoped Lily and Mackenzie had mugs of steaming hot cocoa waiting. Boxed mac ’n’ cheese, popcorn, and hot cocoa were about the only things we used our kitchenette for, and even the mac ’n’ cheese usually tasted inedible when we didn’t have milk and butter on hand. If you’ve never tried watery mac ’n’ cheese, don’t start now. The box tastes better.

“Hey, wait up!” someone yelled behind me, but I didn’t recognize the masculine voice. A crowd of freshmen rushed along the sidewalk around me, but no one else stopped. I certainly wasn’t about to.

“Chick with the long brown hair and impractical shoes!” So it was me he was calling to. I turned around. By the glow of a solitary streetlight I could just make out the figure approaching me in the dusk through the cascade of falling snow.

“Do I know you?” I asked.

His eyes widened with excitement or recognition, I wasn’t sure which. “Yeah, I’d know a face that pretty anywhere. We’ve definitely met.”

He stepped into a patch of light along the curb, giving me a better look at him. His cheeks were rosy from the cold and his hair was flocked with snowflakes. He looked faintly familiar, but not anyone I knew. Not from my classes, at least.

“Are you a student here?”

By here I was referring to the only college in Beaver Falls; it was the only thing that put the small town on the map.

“No, but I know I’ve seen you before. You ever eat at Pizza Joe’s?” he asked.

Bingo. That’s where I knew him from. I’d probably seen him countless times, since the pizza shop was a local college favorite, especially for those of us who only knew how to cook watery mac ’n’ cheese and popcorn.

“Oh yeah. I think I remember you now.” It was Cute Waiter Guy. His name began with a juh sound, but it flittered at the edge of my tongue. John? James?

He was still cute—cute enough to introduce myself to, but not quite cute enough to be memorable. College life was full of new crushes, and even I could admit I was a tad boy crazy. He looked about my age, maybe a couple years older. I suddenly felt naked without makeup, so I pulled out my metallic lip gloss and puckered up, swiping my lips before pocketing the gloss.

“I’m Robin.”