Peter wandered back down Mainstreet. The sheriff had offered him a ride back to the apartment, but Peter decided to take a walk and made his excuses before he could press him any further. At least, he presumed he’d done that. He had no memory of leaving the Jeep or crossing back across the parking lot. His feet had carried him so he could be left alone with his thoughts and he was halfway home, with the neon signs burning dully inside the veiling snow, before a set of rippling lights called out from the other side of the street and stopped him.

The marquee of the old movie theatre thrust out over the sidewalk. The underside was studded with hundreds of golden light bulbs that rippled in waves towards a glass-fronted ticket booth and two sets of double doors on either side. Like a hand beckoning you to come closer, it was as if the lights were tempting you to leave your troubles outside and join them. A billboard sat above the marquee. It was illuminated so the film’s title, spelled out in big black capitals in front of it, seemed to announce itself. it’s a wonderful life. Peter had never heard of it. It wasn’t one Bud had told Cooper about as far as he was aware, and yet a whole world of possibilities lived inside those words alone. High above all this, a host of tiny amber light bulbs chased each other around the Wranglestone Roxy sign. Peter gazed up, wiping snowflakes from his lashes and smiled. It was easily the tallest sign in town. And merry. The little lights couldn’t get enough of chasing each other, round and round. Round and round. Perhaps he and Cooper could come here one night. Call it a date. Apart from that night in the boathouse where they’d first kissed, they’d never had a date. Now, they could sit at the back of the movie theatre kissing and walk back home in the middle of the street hand in hand with neither one of them having the faintest clue what’d happened at the end of the movie, but with a neck full of hickies.

Peter looked back up the road towards the supermarket. They hadn’t even said I love you since they got here. Or Cooper hadn’t said it back, and sometimes, hearing it back was better than being the one to say it first. Hearing Cooper say I love you too was like hearing the mountains echo your own voice. What bounced back was always so much bigger.