to my lips and Amanda pressed herself close, shielding me from the bitter wind that had started to blow, burning any exposed skin, freezing our faces still. I started to shake myself, and with the stiffness in my hands it was difficult to get the match alight. After a couple of failed attempts, I managed to strike it, hold it to the cigarette end, and breathe its end orange and alive. It was my first cigarette and, in the fashion of all first-time smokers, I began coughing so fiercely that I thought my lungs would seize up. I was afraid that Amanda would laugh at me, but she didn’t. Instead, she took the cigarette from my grasp, put it hungrily to her lips, and rubbed her palm soothingly over my back. “I’m sorry, Jesse,” she said between big, urgent drags. “I shouldn’t have made you do that. It’s bad enough that I’ve got this dirty habit, never mind encouraging you to pick it up.”
“It’s all right,” I said when my coughing fit was done. “I don’t mind, I really don’t.” It was true. At that moment, I would have done anything for Amanda. If she had asked me to throw myself into the path of the next oncoming car, I probably would have. I was so thrilled to be with her, nothing else mattered. Nothing. “I’m glad I was around when you fell off the bike. I mean, I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself and have no one there. Well, I suppose Stan was there—”
“Stan? Stan is history.”
I tried not to smile, but it was impossible. I’d never been so happy. She turned, put her arm through mine, and we began to walk home again. We were moving in unison now, as I timed my steps to match hers. She walked slowly, a little clumsily. I wasn’t sure if she was bruised from the accident or this was the effect of all that whiskey she’d drunk at the disco. But all that mattered was that she was there, holding on to me. Even through my coat I could feel the heat of her against my side. I wished that it was ten miles rather than two from Reatton to Midham, so that we could walk together for hours along a winding road in the dark.
When we reached the village high street, she pulled me toward the enormous Christmas tree that stood in front of the Co-op. Its lights were still on, illuminating the thick night with yellow, red, orange, and green.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” she said. She drew in a deep breath through her nose. “And the smell—I love that smell. Always makes me want to be in the middle of a pine forest. I’ve never been in a forest.” She looked at me and pulled a soft and slightly crooked smile. She still wore her silver crown of tinsel, though now it sat askew, pulled down over her tangled and unruly hair. Still, with the lights of the tree behind her and the glaze of snow over everything, I saw her as an angel, smiling down at me, pulling me into her beatific light. “Have you ever been in a forest, Jesse?”
“No,” I said, though I had written about riding through a forest with Amanda in one of my letters, when we’d been fleeing vampires together.
“I think it would be nice.” She looked up at the tree and then at me. “You go home that way, don’t you, Jesse?” She pointed to where the high street veered away from the village.
“Yes, but I can walk you home if you like.” I did not want to leave her. I really could have stayed there with her all night. The accident had made her seem so vulnerable, fragile—the way I’d imagined her in so many of my letters, needing me to take care of her, rescue her, make sure she was safe. “I’d feel better if I walked you home,” I said.
She laughed. “It’s all right, Jesse. I’m a big girl, I can find my way back. And me getting home this late—well … there’s going to be bloody hell to pay. I wouldn’t want you to get stuck in the middle of that.”
“But it’s not your fault, you—”
“Yeah, well, you try telling my dad that.” She pressed her lips together and sighed. Then she smiled again. “Anyway, it’s nice of you to offer. More than Stan would ever do. Bloody wanker. Mind you, that’s all most lads are, you know,