A Springful of Winters

by Dawn Sister

  I pass Stephan’s dad as I leave. He smiles and nods.

  “Goodbye, Kit.”

  I’m a little fazed, because I haven’t really said hello to him properly yet, but then I remember Stephan telling me that his dad won’t mind if we do things the wrong way around, so I smile and nod back at him.

  “Bye, Mr., erm, Stephan’s dad.”

  He walks into the lounge and I can hear him talking to Stephan as I fasten Bessie’s lead to her collar.

  “He’s a bit of an oddbod, isn’t he, Steph?”

  I freeze, my heart suddenly pounding in my ears and the air roaring as I gulp in shallow breaths. Is he talking about me? Describing me the way almost everyone in the world sees me.

  “Dad, don’t say that,” Stephan corrects him, and I can suddenly breathe a little easier. “I think he’s perfect.”

  I leave through the main door as quickly as I can so that no one can think I might have been eavesdropping.

  All the way home, Stephan’s words play over and over in my head—I think he’s perfect. I think he’s perfect—until I end up saying them out loud like a chant.

  How can he think that? But then, I’ve never been able to fathom the way others think, or what they mean when they say things like that about me.

  I’m not perfect, but if Stephan wants to think that, who am I to argue?

  Chapter Six

  Planning Dates

  or

  Water Does Not Taste the Same from Other People’s Taps

  Morning break in the bookshop is for catching up on news. Yenta likes to hear about the things I’ve been doing when not at work, so today, I tell her everything that happened with Stephan the night before. Well, almost everything. I leave out the bit about kissing because I’m still processing that.

  “His ankle is only sprained,” I explain. “He texted me last night and I replied with a smiley face emoji, followed by a sad-faced one just in case he thought I was smiling at his misfortune and not just the fact that his ankle isn’t actually broken.”

  “You could have called and spoken to him, Lapushka,” Yenta chides gently.

  I purse my lips then blow out my cheeks. “Yenta, you know I don’t understand the rules of talking on the phone. I mean, I don’t want Stephan to think I’m stupid.”

  “He won’t think that, he likes you.”

  “Yes, I know.” I nod, thinking a little more about our kiss and smiling. “He wants me to visit him today. He said so in his text and asked me last night. I replied with a thumbs up emoji.”

  Yenta sighs and shakes her head. “You should take him some flowers,” she suggests as we finish our tea and get back to work.

  “Flowers?” I ask in disgust. “Yenta, you know how I feel about flowers. I mean they’re technically dead as soon as you pick them. And they stink, and the smell only gets worse as they sit there in the vase slowly decaying before your very eyes. Why anyone thought cutting the heads off living things and presenting them as a—”

  “Most people think it’s romantic, Kit,” She stops me in mid-rant. “And it’s a traditional gift when visiting someone who is ill.”

  “But Stephan isn’t ill. It’s not as if he’s going to die or anything. He hurt his ankle.”

  “Or when they’re injured,” she adds. I can see her rolling her eyes. She isn’t going to convince me. “Chocolates, then.” She suggests as an alternative.

  “Chocolates would be better.” I give the matter some thought. “But which brand? I can’t just give him any old chocolates and hope he likes them. Maybe I should ask him.” I get out my phone, glad of an excuse to send him a text that is more than a simple picture expressing emotion.

  “Kit, you can’t ask him what he likes, that would spoil the surprise,” Yenta exclaims with a degree of frustration in her tone that even I can hear.

  I put away my phone with a sigh. “Okay, but I still need to think about what brand he would like.”

  “Go to the chocolatier’s along the high street and pick out some special ones.”

  “But Yenta, it’s Wednesday!” I gasp. “You know I don’t go shopping on a Wednesday.”

  “Not even for a special occasion?”

  I scowl. She’s right of course, but I hate to change my routine. Oh, I know I’m older now and have developed strategies to cope when my routine changes, but that doesn’t stop me resisting any unnecessary deviations.

  “Perhaps I could make him a cake,” I suggest, mostly to myself, but Yenta hears and shakes her head.

  “He lives in a hotel, Kit. He probably has cakes coming out of his ears.”

  “Out of his ears?” I repeat, and then it dawns on me that she doesn’t literally mean the cakes are coming out of his ears. Still, the mental image the phrase conjures up makes me smile.

  “What are you smiling at?” Yenta asks, smiling in return.

  I smirk. “Just a mental image of Stephan.”

  “Oh, I probably don’t even want to know, then.” Yenta raises her eyebrows and returns her attention to her clipboard. I feel myself blushing.

  “Oh no, nothing rude, Yenta. I promise.”

  “And why not?” she asks, her eyes twinkling and her eyebrows flicking up and down. “He’s a good-looking boy.”

  “Yenta!” I exclaim in shock, laughing when she grins like a wicked witch. “He’s hardly a boy, and neither am I, for that matter.” I frown, thinking about the kiss we shared the night before.

  I stare down at my feet, my cheeks burning. I’ve never felt comfortable discussing these things with anyone, but for some reason, Yenta seems a lot more accepting than anyone else I have ever met. Even my mum had difficulty understanding my attraction to men and not women. She never understood why I didn’t want to follow the rules when it came to relationships and I never understood why she thought her set of rules were the only ones to follow.

  And Yenta’s take on the whole relationship thing?

  “We make our own rules, Lapushka.”

  Of course, this makes no sense to me at all, because, if we all make our own rules, how am I supposed to know if my rules are compatible with someone else’s? It’s all very confusing, and then there’s Stephan, who asked my permission before he kissed me. No one has done that before.

  Apparently, Stephan has a set of rules that are completely unique, and I’m intrigued to say the least.

  “He asked to kiss me, Yenta,” I confess, still staring at my feet.

  “Oh, did he indeed?” She leans a little closer. “And did you allow it?”

  “Yes.” My cheeks are flaming now.

  “And, it was good, yes?”

  “Yes, but that’s not the point. I mean, it is the point, because the point was the kiss, that’s why he asked, but it was the way he asked, like he understood. Just like everything else he does, it’s like he understands me. I don’t know how he can. We’ve only met five times. I know I said I wanted to write a manual about me, but it’s as if he’s already read it.”

  “I told you, it was obvious to me that he likes you a lot.” She nods, pushing her glasses up her nose and stretching out her back muscles after being stooped over the box of books for too long. “When someone feels that way, they are willing to make an effort to learn all they can about the object of their affections.”

  “Affections?” I gasp. “But how can I be the object of his affections after such a short time?”

  “Perhaps it is even love at first sight.” She has a far-off look in her eyes, one that I recognise because she has it when she’s discussing romance with some of her bookshop friends. I snort.

  “Huh, don’t be silly. That sort of thing only happens in stories and movies. Not in real life.”

  “It happened for me, Lapushka, when I met my Samuel. We knew the very first time we met.”

  “Knew what?” I ask, stepping down from the stool I was using to reach the top shelf.

  I want to focus fully on what she’s saying. When she talks about her husband, she always has such a gleam
in her eyes, and when she should be sad because Samuel is dead and has been for fifteen years, she always seems so happy. The memories are still so vivid for her. It makes me wonder if I could ever have something like that with someone special. Should I even allow myself to hope that Stephan might be that someone special?

  “I knew I would spend the rest of my life with that man.” Yenta sighs with a dreamy look before shrugging and picking up her clip board again. “Oh, well, he got to spend the rest of his life with me, at least.”

  “I thought I’d found that with Harry, but he wanted something different.” I feel the familiar panic whenever I think of my ex-boyfriend. “I didn’t know until he left. He never told me. Left it for me to guess and I just can’t guess things like that, but he didn’t understand that. He thought I was just being deliberately stupid. And now I’ve met Stephan, I wonder if what I felt for Harry was anything like love at all. Not that I’m saying I love Stephan. I don’t really know him, but everything feels different with him. I now understand what people mean when they say they have butterflies in their stomach. It does feel like there’s something fluttering around in there.”

  Yenta steps up to me and smooths down the front of my T-shirt before flicking away a piece of fluff from my sleeve. “Love is different for everyone, Lapushka, and different every time.”

  That doesn’t help me at all!

  “So how am I supposed to know, if it’s always different? How can I make any kind of contingency plan for that? It would take up reams and reams of note paper and probably take a lifetime to write.”

  “You understand more than you think you do, sometimes, Lapushka. Give yourself some credit.” She reaches up and plants a kiss on my cheek. “And contingency plans aren’t always appropriate. Sometimes you have to just go with the flow. In fact…” She smiles, tipping her head to one side. “Why don’t you make that your contingency plan?”

  “What? Going with the flow?” I gape at her. “I mean, I understand what you’re trying to say, but there are far too many variables to just go with the flow, Yenta. Far too many.”

  Although, with Stephan, there’s only him, and no one else. I suppose I could just listen to what the rest of my senses are telling me instead of planning it all in advance. He does seem very patient. I suppose I could do that with the chocolates as well, but this is assuming that whoever is serving in the chocolate shop today is going to be equally as patient.

  “Yenta, I might just have a plan that isn’t really a plan.”

  “Now that doesn’t make any sense at all, whilst it makes every sense in the world. Tell me.”

  I frown as I try to sort out the order I will be doing things. “I’m going to go to the chocolate shop and ask the person behind the counter to choose the chocolates. That way, they won’t ask me a million and one questions that I won’t be able to answer. And then I’m going to take them to Stephan, sit beside him and wait to see what happens next.”

  “No contingency plans for making conversation?”

  “Nope.” I smile. “He always seems to have so much to say I probably won’t need to speak, and when I do, he listens. He told me I could read the Shipping Forecast and he’d be mesmerised.”

  Yenta laughs. “You’re not actually going to do that, are you?”

  “Well, no, I hadn’t planned on doing it.” I regard her with one eye closed. “Do you think I should?”

  “No! Goodness me, no.” She grasps my shoulders and turns me towards the door. “Now go and get those chocolates for this man of yours, and while you’re out there, get us some sandwiches for lunch. You have a contingency plan for that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Yenta.” I tell her automatically, but I’m smiling as I leave the shop.

  ***

  After the bookshop closes I walk over to Stephan’s hotel. Well, I know it isn’t technically his, but it is where he works and lives so, it is his in a way. I bring Bessie, because I’m always better when she is nearby, especially when I’m going into new situations. I just hope yesterday wasn’t a one-off and she’ll still be welcome.

  I haven’t made a plan. In the foyer of the hotel, I realise my mistake. Until Bessiegate, I’d never been inside a hotel. I have no idea how this works.

  Do I walk up to the reception and ask for him? He isn’t staying here, he lives here. Does that mean there is a different set of rules? I could phone him to tell him I’m here, but he can’t come out and meet me because he can’t walk. What do I do now?

  Bessie whines softly by my side, doing her best to calm me down, whilst I am stuck in an indecision feedback loop, fully aware that I am rocking backwards and forwards from my heels to my toes and trying not to wring my hands. A voice startles me.

  “Kit?”

  I whirl around to see Stephan’s dad standing behind me. I look quickly at his face to check it is him, and then I look away. I’m already beginning to feel stressed. Looking will overwhelm me with information I don’t really need. I’m pretty sure what his expression will be anyway. It will be the same as Stephan’s sister’s yesterday, when she just kept frowning at me as if I was some sort of alien.

  “Hello, Mr., erm…” I am very bad at remembering names. I have forgotten his. “Mr., erm, Stephan’s dad.” I smile, glancing quickly at his face again. The smile seems to do the trick, because he smiles back, and if there was any sort of confused look on his face, it is gone now.

  “You can call me George,” Stephan’s dad tells me. “I really don’t mind.” He crouches down to make a fuss of Bessie. “And you brought Bessie with you. Hello, girl.”

  “George, of course,” I exclaim, clicking my fingers whilst his attention is on my dog and not me. “I remember now. Hello, George. I’m Kit.” I hold out my hand for him to shake. When he gives me a startled look I grimace and tuck my hand behind my back. “I’m sorry. I mean, you know that already, but we weren’t introduced properly yesterday, and I like to do things like that properly, and Stephan said you wouldn’t mind if we did it the wrong way around, plus, I’m really bad at remembering names unless I’ve done things the right way around. Sorry, that didn’t make any sense at all.”

  “It made perfect sense, Kit. And I might add that you don’t seem to have any trouble remembering Stephan’s name,” George muses as he leads me towards a doorway.

  “Oh, well, Stephan is different.” I hope he won’t ask for an explanation because I haven’t got one. Instead, I open my mouth, and complete and utter rubbish comes out of it. “Of course, I didn’t know his name at first so I had to keep calling him Mr. Spring.”

  “Mr. what?” George stops to look at me.

  I grimace again. Oh god, why did I tell him that?

  “I mean, sorry, it was just a silly nickname I gave him until I knew his real name, and it kind of matched mine, you know: Spring, Winter. It just fits.” I stop because I know I’ve said too much by the glassy look in George’s eyes. I’m glad I didn’t blurt out the real reason I called Stephan ‘Spring’. That would have really made me sound odd.

  George narrows his eyes and then shakes his head. He looks as if he is smiling and trying not to laugh.

  “Come on, I’ll take you to where Stephan has set up his throne room.”

  “Throne room? Does he think he’s a king?”

  “Ha, he wishes.” George laughs. “No, but he’s acting like one, ordering us all about and having us pander to his every whim because he has to stay off his feet for a few days. He’s driving me batty, I can tell you. I’m glad you’re finally here so I don’t have to listen to his bellyaching for a few hours.”

  “Does he have a bellyache too?” I’m worried now that he might really be ill as well as broken.

  “No.” George gives me a sideways look, stretching the word out. “But he will if he keeps on stuffing himself with cakes. Guy made him a get-well-soon selection.”

  “Oh, I knew that would happen. I almost baked him a cake, but I decided not to because I knew he’d already have some.”

  “Y
es, he does. So many they’re coming out of his ears.”

  This is so close to the mental image Yenta conjured up earlier, I laugh out loud, a noise that startles George, making him jump, but then smile and laugh as well.

  He stretches out a hand towards the nearest door and I think he wants me to walk through first. This door looks like an exit, rather than a door into another room, however. I hesitate.

  “W-why are we going outside?” I ask in a sudden panic. Is this when he finally tells me that dogs aren’t allowed in his hotel? I knew I should have asked. I knew I should have…

  “It’s okay, Kit.” George steps forward and tries to meet my gaze. “Stephan told me I should explain and I forgot. I’m sorry. We have to go this way to get to the private family apartment at the back of the hotel. The only other way is through the kitchens, and Stephan says you don’t like the smells.”

  “That’s right. I don’t.” I follow George through the door feeling a little more relaxed, but I keep a tight hold of Bessie’s lead just the same.

  I’m completely astounded that Stephan even gave this any thought. Most people dismiss my sensitivity to smells because they just don’t understand how it can affect me in such an adverse way. I told Stephan about this only yesterday and he’s made a whole plan about the route I’d need to take to get to him without passing through my worst nightmare: a commercial kitchen.

  I follow George through a garden area, around the back of the hotel and into a conservatory which is currently very pleasantly warm because the sun is finally shining after a week of adverse winter weather.

  The place has a domestic feel, like it is lived in, as opposed to the hotel foyer, which felt very clinical and intimidating. The fact that Stephan is here also helps the feelings of comfort.

  “Hello, Kit.” He smiles at me from a large, comfy sofa, his spring-light eyes setting those pretend butterflies fluttering about in my stomach again.

  What is the matter with me? I only saw him yesterday. I’m acting like I haven’t seen him in weeks and even then, I don’t usually get this worked up about meeting someone.