“Yeah, I know what you mean.” I thought about Gretchen and our argument the night before. Maybe we’d never be that much alike, but I’d knock down any guy—anyone, period—who tried to hurt her.

“Aunt Kirsten likes boys, Aunt Kirsten likes Sean…”

“Conor,” I tried to correct Brett for the umpteenth time.

The four—make that five, counting Bear—of us were standing outside by Conor’s pickup. A light snow was falling, and we’d just spent the required five minutes discussing the weather as we prepared to take off for the Groundhog weekend.

Gretchen had tried to give me some advice over breakfast, in terms of how far to go with Conor on our first weekend away together. I told her that one, I didn’t plan on sleeping with him or any guy until I was older, and two, we’d be sleeping in a cabin with a bunch of other people, so not to worry. That seemed to put her mind at ease.

“Don’t break your leg,” she said to me.

“I won’t!” I said. “Will you quit saying that already?”

All of a sudden, Brett stopped chanting my name, and got this big lower lip as I opened the passenger door to the rusty pickup truck. His eyes filled with tears and he started to cry.

I crouched down, wrapped my arms around him and gave him a big hug. “I’ll be back soon. I promise.”

“You’d better be,” Gretchen said. “I need a driver.” Then she smiled. “And a friend.”

We gave each other a quick hug, and then I climbed into the pickup beside Conor.

Gretchen leaned into his window. “Take care of her.”

“Got it,” he said.

“And drive really carefully.”

“No problem. It’s a light snow. I think it’ll taper off soon.”

“Okay, bye!” I called out as we pulled away from the curb. “Man,” I sighed. “I thought we’d never get out of there. Could you and Gretchen talk about cold fronts any longer?”

“Well, what else are we supposed to talk about?” Conor said. “Uh oh. I think we’ve got a problem.” He kept glancing in the rearview mirror. “Look behind us.”

I was afraid to look. I figured it must be Gretchen waving her arms, yelling “Stop! Stop!”

But when I finally turned around, I saw Bear. He was running at top speed, like an Iditarod sled dog competitor, bounding along the middle of the street after us.

“Loyal, isn’t he?” Conor remarked as we slowed to a stop.

By the time we got Bear back home and got on the highway, the snow had started coming down harder. Then it fell even more heavily. After a while, we were going so slowly due to ice buildup, and lack of visibility, that we had only made it about ten miles in an hour.

“This has kind of turned into a blizzard,” I commented. “Did we even hit St. Paul yet?”

Conor laughed. “Yeah. We’re about fifty miles out of town.”

“We’re actually not going to make it to the cabin. Are we?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

I started laughing. After all that. After everything I’d gone through to get a date for this silly weekend, after all the money I’d spent, the risky deposit for two. Now we weren’t even going to get there.

“I think we should pull over here,” Conor said as he peered at the exit sign in the distance. “It’s only getting worse. We can sit for a while and see if the storm’s going to stop.”

We made it to a SuperAmerica gas station, where several other cars had pulled in to assess the situation. I went inside to buy us a few sodas and asked the clerk what the roads looked like, going north. “They’ve got a foot already in Duluth,” she said. “Lots of cars are stuck, and there’s this real icy section where people are going off the road, near Hinckley.”

That did not sound good. I pulled out my cell phone and called Jones, but she didn’t answer. I hoped she’d made it okay. I left her a message, then called Emma. She was already at the cabin with Donny, her latest, and Crystal and Eric were there with them. They had had a much shorter drive to the cabin, and they’d left home before the storm, so they were already settled in, sitting by the fire and watching the snow come down.

“Kirsten, it’s okay, you can admit it,” Emma said. “You didn’t find a date for the weekend. Come on up anyway.”

“I’m serious!” I said. “We’re stranded.” I looked out at Conor, who was scraping the ice off the windshield because the truck’s aging defroster was overwhelmed.

“Wait—here’s Jones! Hey, you made it!” I heard everyone laughing and talking, and then Jones picked up the phone.

“Where are you, Kirst?”

“We’re trying to get there, but the roads are awful,” I said.

“You are cursed, Kirst. You realize that.”

“I know. We’re going to stay here for a while until it stops snowing and sleeting and whatever else. Hopefully we’ll make it later tonight, or else tomorrow.”

“You and…?”

Just then, Conor walked into the store, shaking the snow off his jacket.

I’d kept the secret this long. Why not a few more hours? “See you tomorrow, for sure. Okay?” I said to Jones. “Bye!”

Conor and I left the gas station shop and ran to the pickup truck. Just before we got in, I made a snowball and quickly tossed it at him. It was the perfect snow for making snowballs—wet, heavy and easy to clump together. We circled the truck, and the gas pumps, hiding out, tossing them at each other. Soon other people got out of their cars and joined in—soon the entire gas station was filled with people hiding behind their cars and pelting whoever dared come out from behind their car to walk into the shop.

We were laughing so hard when we finally got back into the truck to warm up. “Well. Should we settle in for the night, or what?” Conor asked.

“I guess so,” I said with a shrug.

We had our sleeping bags in the back, under the truck cap, and Conor made a little nest with blankets and some of our clothes.

We climbed in together, and snuggled up close. As I was lying there, trying to fall asleep, I scraped a little part of frost off the window. K + C, I traced with my fingernail. Then I drew a heart around it.

“Are you seeing things again? Hearts in the ice? Like you saw hearts in your lattes?” Conor teased me.

“Did you, or did you not, intentionally make a pattern in my coffee that morning?”

“I did not,” Conor said. “But I take full credit for it anyway.”

“That is so like you!” I giggled as Conor pulled me over toward him, taking a chunk of snow out of my hair.

“I can’t believe we’re spending the night in the truck,” Conor said. “I’ve never done something like this before. Well, except for the time I ran away from home.”

“When was that?”

“When I was sixteen. I got so mad at everyone that I just left, you know? The problem was, I forgot the sleeping bag and blankets part.” He snuggled closer. “It was February.”

“You went home. End of story,” I said.

“No, I made a snow mattress,” Conor said. “You know, the way animals do? If you lie on the snow it’s really warm.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “I think I’m just going to take your word on that. For a change.” I turned slightly so that I was lying on my back. “Though it would be cool to lie outside and look at the stars right now.”

“Yeah, but it’s still snowing,” Conor said. He turned over, too, and we laid side by side, holding hands. “So…what’s it going to be like tomorrow?”

“We’ll have to see, I guess,” I said.

And then I fell asleep, cuddled next to Conor, completely toasty warm in the cold truck in the middle of a snowstorm.