A Springful of Winters

by Dawn Sister

  I gasp as the icy water seeps through my layers of clothes. For a moment, time stands still as Stephan’s arms wrap firmly around me and hold me in position to stop me struggling.

  “Steady on. You’re all right. I’ve got you,” he says in a soothing tone much like the one Yenta uses to help me calm down.

  It does the job and I stop thrashing about and sit still in his lap. The water is cold, but I somehow don’t notice it so much as I do the warmth of his arms around me and the look on his face as I fix my gaze on the spring light sparkling in his eyes.

  “That’s the second time you’ve ended up in my lap, Kit. We have to stop meeting like this.” He smiles.

  “Huh.” I try to smile in response to his smile, but my teeth are chattering with the cold. “I have to stand up.”

  I wish I could have said something different. Something a little more appropriate. I recognise the way he spoke, because it sounded like a line from a movie, when the two main characters are flirting. I want to be able to flirt back, but I can never think of anything to say in the time allowed. Now it’s too late, because he’s already pushing me off his lap and letting me pull myself to my feet using the long, thick marsh grass that grows along this side of the track.

  Once I’m up, I turn and extend my hand to him again. “Second try,” I say, trying to smile and make it sound light-hearted. The truth is I’m worried that the same thing will happen again if I don’t call Bessie to heel, but if I stop to do that, then Stephan will be left longer in that pool of freezing water, and I can’t help noticing that he’s wearing a lot less than I am. He’s in danger of getting hypothermia. I know that because of the first-aid course I did.

  There are too many thoughts in my head now. I need to organise them into a list. My hands cover my ears as I try to sort it all into a workable order, then I click my fingers as I mutter to myself.

  “Bessie first, then Stephan, then think about first aid.” Finally having everything sorted in the order I need to do it, I say, “Bessie. Heel.” I keep my tone firm. She does as she is told. I can now concentrate on Stephan. “Sorry. I’ll help you up now. Did you say if you were hurt?”

  “I can’t tell, I’m so bloody frozen,” he replies through teeth that are chattering more than mine.

  “Oh dear.” I grab his hand and pull.

  He scrambles up the side of the ditch with my help and ends up on the track, on his knees, breathing hard and looking rather pale. Muddy water drips off his hair and down his arms. I look him over and see he has lost a shoe. He’s wearing running gear. Something is connecting in my brain. Was he running when I phoned him? Was that why he sounded out of breath? Did he fall when he was speaking to me?

  “Oh god, was this my fault?” I ask him in shock. “Did you fall because I phoned you?”

  He looks up at me, his expression one of surprise.

  “No!” He gasps. “How could this have been your fault? It was my own stupid fault for answering the phone. I shouldn’t have, but I’ve been, you know, waiting for this important phone call for days now.”

  I grimace. “And instead you got me. Oh god, Stephan, I’m sorry.”

  His expression has changed again. Good lord, I can’t keep up with all the emotions he’s feeling. He looks like he wants to say something, then thinks better of it. Instead, he heaves another sigh, then holds out his hand.

  “Help me up, will you?”

  I pull him to his feet, and he takes a step then immediately collapses to the ground with a loud cry. I understand the expression on his face now as he grabs his right ankle and begins to massage it. He’s in agony.

  “You are hurt.” I fall to my knees beside him but don’t touch him in case he doesn’t want me to.

  “Yes, I must have twisted my bloody ankle.” He hisses through his teeth. “I’ll need some help to get home, Kit. Will you help me?”

  “Of course I will, although—” Oh dear. Now I’m in a pickle. “I don’t have a plan for this. “I was going to make a plan for getting to your house once I’d asked where you live, but I haven’t asked yet, and I haven’t asked if it’s okay for Bessie to come along as well, since she’s here and I can’t leave her. So, yes, I’ll help you, but I don’t know where you live.”

  Stephan smiles, and snorts a small laugh through his nose, his eyes twinkling, reflecting the sparkle of my torchlight. “Oh my god, you are so…” He chuckles. “That’s okay, lovely boy. I know where I live. I’ll tell you. You can even put it into Google maps so you can see where it is.”

  “Oh, that’s okay. That’s okay. Thank you.” I smile and nod as I get out my phone. “But I’m not a boy, just so you know. I’m twenty-four.”

  I’m just opening the map app when he makes another noise that sounds like frustration. I put my phone away quickly, but he stops me with a hand on my wrist.

  “It’s okay, I’m not angry with you. I just realised, I dropped my phone in that stupid ditch.”

  “Oh, that’s okay. Bessie will find it. That’s what she’s trained to do. Bessie.” I call her over from the position I made her stay just a few minutes before. “Find Stephan’s phone.” I tell her. “His phone, Bessie. Find the phone.”

  Bessie regards me with her head tipped to one side and her tongue lolling out, in her ‘thinking pose’, before jumping feet first into the icy, muddy ditch. There’s a fair bit of scrabbling about, whining, grunting and yelping and Stephan laughs out loud as he shuffles to get a better view. After about a minute of searching Bessie jumps back out of the ditch with something in her mouth. She shakes herself dry, showering both of us in great globs of freezing mud and slush before dropping Stephan’s shoe at my feet. She immediately turns, jumps back into the ditch and repeats the process, this time dropping the retrieved phone at my feet and sitting back waiting for her reward.

  “Bloody hell,” Stephan exclaims and I can’t help smiling. “She’s found it. That’s my phone and my shoe. She’s a beaut. What a star, owned by a star.”

  I never know how to respond to praise without sounding either bad-tempered or awkward. Instead I make a fuss of my lovely dog, because she is the true star, even though she is covered in mud and worse. I fish in my pocket for a treat, give it to her, and then hand Stephan his phone and shoe.

  “I’m afraid your phone is a bit wet and probably knackered,” I say with a note of regret and sympathy.

  He shrugs. “I can put it in rice when I get home. Heard that does the trick. And if it doesn’t…shit happens, I suppose.” He shrugs again and puts the phone in a holder he’s wearing around his arm. “Now, how about getting me home, because I’m bloody freezing. Important parts of my anatomy are going to start falling off if I don’t get warm soon.”

  “Oh no!” I gasp. “Here, you can have my coat.” I unfasten it and hand it to him. “It’s wet as well, but not quite so soaked as you are, since it’s waterproof and kept some of the water out.”

  “I can’t take your coat, then you’ll be cold.”

  “No I won’t. I’ve still got two jumpers on, a T-shirt and a vest. Yenta always says I should wear layers to keep warm when I’m walking Bessie in the winter. Although, technically this is now spring, but with winter weather. That’s very confusing.”

  “It is, yes.” Stephan is looking at me in a funny way, and it makes me feel a bit awkward. I don’t really know what he’s feeling now, but he accepts my coat, so that’s okay. Now I don’t need to worry about him getting cold. I just need to worry about how I’m going to help him home because he’s quite a bit taller than me and I’m not very strong.

  Turns out he doesn’t live far. At the hotel, in fact.

  “You live in the hotel?” I ask in surprise after he tells me. “Like, where you work? Just like me, living above Yenta’s shop.”

  “Yes. That’s something we have in common.” His voice sounds strained, and he’s gritting his teeth, probably because he’s in pain. I wish I could take it away, or somehow take it into myself. I always feel so helpless in situatio
ns like this. That’s why I did that first-aid course. But it still can’t help him when he’s in pain. I hate to think he’s in this situation because I picked that precise moment to phone him. Especially when he was waiting for another phone call, which he won’t get now because his phone is waterlogged.

  “I’m sorry you won’t get your important phone call now, Stephan. Did the person have your landline? Maybe they’ll call you on that.”

  “That’s okay, Kit. I already got the phone call I was waiting for.”

  I give him a puzzled look. “You said you answered the phone because you were waiting for an important call but instead you got me.”

  “No, not instead. Yours was the call I was waiting for, Kit.”

  “Oh. I—er—okay.” I can’t think why my call would be so important, since it was just to ask him if it was okay if we either went to eat at Subway or ate pizza at my flat for our date. Of course, he doesn’t know this, because he fell into the ditch before I got the chance to ask him. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d fallen into a ditch? I would have come to help. I wasn’t far away.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t know that at the time, Kit, and it was kind of embarrassing.”

  “No more embarrassing than the things I’ve done. You caught me googling you in the library.”

  “Ooer, it’s terrible when someone googles you in the library.” He giggles.

  “Yes, I know, and I already apologised for that, but I didn’t know your name.”

  “I was joking, Kit, and I know you apologised. Now you know my name, and I know yours.” He grunts as we stumble over a bump in the track. “Jesus, that hurt. Could you g-give me a minute?”

  He looks very pale, and I’m afraid he might pass out. Fortunately, I remember how to help because of that first-aid course.

  “If you pass out, I know what to do,” I reassure him. “I know what to do if you suffer a heart attack, a fit, bleeding, vomiting, lacerations, fainting, going into medical shock, migraine, nosebleed—”

  “Kit, I get the idea, but I’ve just hurt my ankle, mate. I don’t think I’m going to die.”

  “I don’t think you are either. At least I hope you’re not. I don’t even know your last name yet. I can’t keep calling you Mr. Spring.”

  “Mr. what?” He gapes at me. Oh god, he thinks I’m a freak. “My last name is Cassillis,” he adds, thankfully not asking about the Spring thing.

  “Oh good. I can put that in my phone now. Stephan Cassillis. It sounds nice.”

  “Not as nice as Kit Winters. And I like that you called me Spring. Winter and Spring go together quite nicely.”

  “I was just thinking that, yes, they do, if one lets the other in. This spring has been full of winters.”

  “Yes, and I wish this Spring was full of Winters too.” Stephan mutters beneath his breath, words I don’t think I’m supposed to have heard. He coughs, clearing his throat and smiling as if to hide the fact he’s said something wrong. “I’m good to go now,” he says, still smiling. “And while we’re walking, why don’t you tell me all about that first-aid course?”

  “Really?” I ask, wondering if he’s serious. “Because I can, but you know, if you’re being funny, or sarcastic, I can’t always tell.”

  “I’m not being sarcastic. Talk to me, Kit. You could read me the Shipping Forecast and I’d be mesmerised. You’ve got the loveliest voice, and I want to know everything about you.”

  So, with Bessie bounding around our feet like she’s trying to herd us and me trying very hard to make sure Stephan doesn’t put much weight on his injured ankle, we make our way to Stephan’s hotel and I tell him all about first aid.

  Chapter Five

  Bessie Is Almost a YouTube Sensation

  or

  I Don’t like Wearing Other People’s Clothes

  “And that doesn’t actually work, you know. Rice doesn’t absorb the water fast enough for it not to do any damage. What you need is a desiccant. I’ve got some in my flat. I collect all those little packets you get in shoe boxes because I once dropped my phone down the toilet and had to get a new one, and it took me ages to decide what to get because they’d stopped making the model I dropped. Now I know how to dry it out properly so I don’t have to go through all the rigmarole of finding a new phone.”

  Stephan is still listening avidly to everything I say as we finally hobble into the foyer of his hotel. I’d finished talking about first aid, and when he told me to talk about something else, anything, I started talking about drying phones out, because that seemed relevant.

  “Steph.” A voice startles me into silence, as a large, tall man, with grey eyes and wearing a smart suit strides quickly across the foyer to join us. “What happened, son?”

  “Dad, I’m okay. I fell when I was out running. Kit rescued me. This is Kit.” He smiles as he waves his free hand at me. I’m still standing with Stephan’s other arm over my shoulder.

  The man regards me with narrowed eyes. “Oh, so you’re Kit,” he says in an ominous way that makes me want to hide, and my hands are full of Stephan, so I can’t shake this man’s hand, not that he offers his to shake, but that means I can’t say hello properly. He’s turned away before I can do anything about it.

  “It’s okay,” Stephan whispers in my ear, the sensation sending shivers down my spine that aren’t unpleasant. “You can say hello properly when he’s heard what happened to me. He won’t mind that it’s all in the wrong order. He’s my dad, by the way. George. George Cassillis.”

  I nod, feeling a little disconcerted that he knew to even say that to me. How did he know? Is he psychic? I mean, I know that’s not a real thing, but Stephan seems to have some sort of magic all of his own. It’s almost as if he has a contingency plan just for dealing with me and all my quirks before he even knows what any of those quirks are.

  “Right, Kit, take him into the lounge, while I get him some decent clothes to wear.” He looks Stephan up and down and snorts. “What the hell are you wearing anyway? Running shorts? Steph, you’ve never gone running in your life.”

  Stephan looks a little embarrassed as I help him towards the large, well-lit room his dad has indicated.

  “Oh god, Dad. There’s a first time for everything, y’know. And Kit got a bit wet as well. He might need a change of clothes.”

  “Oh, no, thank you. I’m not… I mean, I don’t want to seem ungrateful, and thank you for the offer, but I don’t like…” I grimace. How can I tell Stephan that I don’t like to wear other people’s clothes without seeming like a bit of a snob?

  “That’s okay, lovely boy. I understand,” Stephan whispers, saving me the job of explaining. What does he understand, though? I didn’t explain anything. “Bessie here will probably need a rub down with a towel or something,” Stephan continues, pointing at my very wet, muddy dog.

  “Good god, it’s the bloody Beast of Bodmin that crashed the wedding the other night,” Stephan’s dad exclaims.

  I grimace, waiting for the inevitable fallout that I have managed to avoid for an entire week now. I prepare to deliver the apology of the century, but am surprised to find that Stephan and his dad are laughing.

  “Oh my god, Kit.” Stephan’s dad directs his smile at me. “I have watched the footage of your dog having a blast at that wedding party on CCTV so many times in the last week. If I could, I’d upload it to YouTube. It would go viral for sure. The wedding party was a bit of a disaster from beginning to end, however, ending in a massive bust-up in the car park.”

  “Yes, Stephan told me.” I glance at Stephan for reassurance and he nods encouragement.

  He’s settled in a comfy sofa now, with a footstool to elevate his injured ankle.

  “Right.” Stephan’s dad chuckles. “I’ll be with you in a sec with a towel and some clean clothes for the wounded soldier, and then we can decide whether he needs an amputation, or just a stiff drink.”

  I try to make sense of what he’s saying as I take a seat next to Stephan, trying to keep Bessie from makin
g a mess of anywhere by jumping up onto the sofa with us.

  “There aren’t any soldiers here, Stephan,” I whisper as Stephan’s dad disappears from the room. I know what he really means, of course, but things like this, they play over and over in my mind when I’m a little stressed and I have to talk them out or they drive me crazy. “And he’s not really going to cut your foot off, is he? I mean, I’m not a doctor, but I think it’s only sprained. And even if it was broken, that doesn’t warrant an amputation, not in the twenty-first century, anyway. Maybe if we were living in the eighteen hundreds, as pirates, then you’d probably end up with a wooden leg. That would be pretty cool. I mean, to be a pirate, obviously, not to lose your leg.”

  “Oh, god, Kit, you’re so bloody adorable, I could eat you in a sandwich,” Stephan says in response to my anxious mumblings, his forehead leaning very close to mine.

  I lean back a little and give him a startled look. He smiles.

  “Not literally, obviously,” he clarifies. “I don’t really want to make you into a sandwich and eat you, it’s just a way of saying that I…” He doesn’t finish the sentence because we are interrupted by another man entering the room.

  “All right, sport?” He has a bit of an accent, a smirk on his face, and he’s wearing a chef’s hat and an apron. “What the fuck happened to you, then?” He looks Stephan up and down and snorts. “And what the hell are you wearing? Are they running shorts?”

  “Yes, Guy, they are. What of it?” Stephan asks, sounding just a little unhappy. Maybe because it is the second time he’s been asked this. Why would it be so surprising? People wear running shorts all the time.

  Guy just snorts again in response but says nothing more about Stephan’s clothes. Another person joins us, a woman, possibly my age. She bypasses me and goes straight to Stephan’s side.

  “Steph, what happened?”