Ice Angel
Twelve suitcases and a cocoa seemed the right way to cap off a blizzard, though Gail couldn't quite understand why Billy liked the idea of marshmallow crème in his cocoa.
"It's a Midwestern thing." He explained, "Instead of puffed, dry marshmallows, you wanted something that was going to melt. I guess it spices up the Swiss Miss blend."
"I don't know. Where I come from, hot chocolate's homemade."
He shrugged, leaning against the thin plasterboard of the hotel's wall. "They say the snow's going to let up anytime soon?"
She shook her head. "They said another hour. Bad enough the show's going to be cancelled, right?"
"I'm sure they'll pay our expenses."
Gail widened her eyes. "They do that?"
"Hey, Garea owes all of us, right?"
She laughed. "You ask Hunter if he owes us. He knows everything, after all."
He watched her sink down beside him, their toes almost brushing together. "Have you ever made a snow angel?"
"Of course. De Riguer for someone my age."
"They have a little courtyard out back...."
***
The snow was impossibly white, the sky a strange heather gray, out in the courtyard. Two blooming orange trees were frozen, their white blossoms paralyzed in the heavy slush.
Gail moved her arms with amazing grace, Billy thought, for a woman who almost but not quite had it together in the ring. He sunk into the snow; it came up to his waist when standing, but he had the weirdest feeling of being buried.
A mouthful of snow smacked his lips. "Whoops." Gail said merrily.
Billy wiped his soaked face. "Whoops?" He saw her leonine grin....and responded with a salvo of his own snow.
"Whoops." He echoed. Suddenly, they were six years old, tumbling through the deep snows in the tiny brick courtyard, whooping and giggling.
She cornered him against a wall, pressing her warm form against his. Her lips drew closer.
And a cough interrupted.
"Uh, I need to shovel this walkway." Explained a brown-uniformed hotel employee. They had enough grace to wave and duck back into the warm hotel.
Where she shoved him into a chair.
"Whatt're you doing?"
"Finishing what I started." She said, kneeling against his outspread knees.
This kiss provided far more warmth than his sodden, icy underwear.