#notcrypticbutcoy

  “I hate this.”

Aline wrapped the scarf that Helen had knitted her for Christmas around her neck, her fingers trailing along the smooth wool. “I had no idea. In fact, this is the first time you’ve ever mentioned it.”

Helen pouted, trying to fold her arms against her chest, only for the bulk of her winter coat to restrict her movement. “I wouldn’t have to mention it if you didn’t keep making me join you.”

“I would never make you do anything.” Aline pointed out. “I asked if you wanted to come, and you said yes. It’s not my fault that you forgot you hated the cold.”

Helen glanced down at her snow boots, despite the fact there’d barely been a flutter since the morning. “Yeah. Guess I’ll know better than to forget that, again.”

Aline frowned, tugging on her favourite gloves, a soft, rosy pink that is only a few shades off her scarf - they were a temporary stakeholder until Helen was able to figure out how to make gloves herself, her last few attempts not quite working out the way she wanted.

(Aline had tried to tell her that it didn’t matter much to her, the thought already meant the world, but Helen insisted that it had to be perfect, and Aline hadn’t been able to speak over the butterflies in her throat.)

“Hey, are you okay? We really don’t have to go through with this if you don’t want to.”

Helen quickly shook her head, though her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I made a promise. I’m not going to break that.”

“If you’re sure…”

Helen reached out, and Aline felt the touch even through the barriers their gloves made. “There’s nothing else I’d rather do, okay?”

Aline wasn’t sure that was true, but then, she didn’t really feel like doing much without Helen, and any way she could keep Helen by her side was an opportunity she wasn’t stupid enough to pass on.

“Okay.”

Aline had always loved the cold.

There was something enchanting about it all - the sky looked clearer without the sun’s intense rays bearing down; when it rained, it filled the air with beautiful petrichor, and the soothing soft patter of raindrops; when it snowed, it was like watching magic in real time, the pretty snowflakes with their own unique designs, and the way it blanketed the ground and the trees and the roofs of houses, sparkling white under the morning sun.

Helen had always hated the cold. For as long as Aline could remember - and they’d been neighbours since they were six - Helen had complained about it all, the chilly air and the raging thunderstorms and the pesky rain and the way she always got stuck in the snow whenever she tried to leave the house.

Helen adored the summer so much that she held a party as soon as it got warm enough for her to wear dresses without a jacket just in case, although they’ve evolved from fairy cakes and fruit punch to lounging on the grass on beach towels and sipping champagne with their parents sly permission, champagne that they pretended to like because it made them feel cool, especially when they slipped cut strawberries in the glasses just to make the drink fizzle; to inviting their closest friends around to laugh over cheap pizza and two litre soda bottles, pretending they weren’t trying to recapture the youth quickly running from them.

They’d all be off at different colleges soon, Helen to UCLA to study Psychology, Aline to study Political Science (perhaps by the end of it, they’ll be able to come together to figure out what really makes Jia Penhallow tick.) This was the last winter they’d probably get to share together for a long, long time, and Aline wanted to soak it up as much as she could.

Because, yeah, Aline loved the cold. But she kind of loved Helen more.

Not that she’d ever been able to tell Helen this. Somewhere between thinking that her hair looked golden under sunlight and not wanting to spend even a day apart, Aline had fallen for her best friend, and she hadn’t been able to find a way to get back up since. Nor had she been able to find the right time to admit it, because there was always something in the way; new step-siblings for Helen, a forced summer internship for Aline, exams and senior year and crippling finals and their impending future looming over the horizon threatening to split them apart-

Helen was the best thing in Aline’s life, and maybe it made her a coward to keep her feelings a secret, but that was something she was willing to do - she’d do anything, if it meant she got to keep her best friend for as long as they both had left.

Once they went to college, whether they liked it or not, everything was going to change. This was their last winter, their last chance to just be themselves, stable and unchanged and together. Aline just wanted to make the most of it.

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

“Helen.” Aline tugged on Helen’s hands, walking backwards despite the increasingly alarmed look in Helen’s eyes. “Trust me, okay? I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”

Helen didn’t look convinced. “I’m a little more worried about the possibility that you’ve already hit your head and hurt yourself. This is insane.”

“Snow angels are a very common winter practice-”

“Not when the snow is like, four feet deep! We’ll get stuck.”

Aline smiled. “Good thing we have each other then, huh?”

Helen shook her head, but she was smiling too, and Aline knew that she’d won. The snow wasn’t that deep, the sun had already started to melt it in patches, and besides they couldn’t do snow angels without a little bit of actual snow.

“You’re a menace,” Helen declared, letting Aline tug her towards the front lawn - better padding underneath, Aline had reasoned, in case the snow truly did melt too much.

“You love me,” Aline quipped back, not realising once the words were already out how they might have sounded.

Helen just squeezed Aline’s hand and sighed, not looking up from where her boots were sinking into the snow. “Yeah. I do.”

The air felt heavy with something Aline couldn’t name, something she wasn’t sure if she wanted to, her heart pounding against her ribs hard enough for the sound to echo in her ears.

“Are we doing this at the same time?” Helen asked, unaware of Aline’s internal struggles. “Just, flopping onto the ground and hoping it doesn’t completely shatter our bones?”

Aline rolled her eyes, impossibly fond. “You’re acting like we’ve never done this before.”

Helen looked up to the sky. “I tried to block it out, but there are some things you just never forget.”

“Oh, my god, you’re so dramatic-”

Helen tugged sharply on their joined hands, and they fell back into the snow at the same time, the oxygen rushing from their lungs, instantly replaced with bright and uncontrollable laughter. Helen didn’t let go of Aline’s hand, and Aline tried not to think too much about the contact of warmth, or how it felt like nothing else in the world existed but the two of them.

“Payback.” Helen wheezed slightly, her eyes alight with mirth. “Bet you didn’t see that coming.”

Aline gasped out a short laugh. “All I saw coming was the sky as the world tilted around me.”

Helen glanced up at the sky, a clear cloudless blue, fooling itself slightly that the sun would be able to do much, despite it’s warm glow. “It is a beautiful sky.”

“Yeah,” Aline whispered, unable to take her eyes off of Helen, the way her golden hair fanned out in loose curls above her, her cheeks pink from the cold and pulled into a smile almost bright enough to rival the one in her eyes. “Beautiful.”

Helen wiggled slightly, her legs shifting in the snow. “I don’t know if this will be an actual snow angel or just a vaguely human-sized indentation…”

Aline let her head roll to the side, so that she can watch Helen try and make a lasting form in the snow without craning her neck - in for a penny, in for a pound, or whatever the saying was. If she was going to stare - and it was unlikely that anything else was going to steal her attention away - she might as well be comfortable doing it.

“Is there some quantifiable proof that angels even exist?”

Helen frowned. “No…”

Aline quirked an eyebrow, watching as Helen finally clicked on where Aline was going with it. “Then who’s to say that your vaguely human-sized indentation isn’t an angel? I mean, anybody who tries to argue that it isn’t is just being disrespectful to actual, blob-like angels that may or may not exist. They deserve respect too.”

Helen laughed like there were champagne bubbles in her throat, gentle and warm, and it lit a fire deep in Aline that chased away any cold the snow might have been trying to creep in. It was a wonder that Aline was able to even function with the emotional rollercoaster tracking through her body each time Helen did … well, anything.

“You’re so full of it,” Helen rolled over, with only a slight amount of struggle, until she was properly facing Aline, as though they were lying on Aline’s stupidly big bed and not her front lawn, bound in so many sweaters and coats that they barely through the fairly expansive front door.

“I’m just trying to support your dreams and aspirations.” Aline protested. “Like a good friend.”

Helen smiled gently - it wasn’t her ‘that’s funny’ smile, or her trademark ‘you’re such a dork, Aline’ smile, it was softer, quirked at the corner with a hesitation that easy to read but hard to follow, because this was Helen, and she didn’t hesitate about anything. It was one of the limitless things that Aline admired about her - Helen was, strong and empowered and she went after what she wanted without a thought to anybody who might want to stop her. Helen was beautiful, and smart, caring and supportive and inspiring, she … she was the best person that Aline had ever met.

“You know how, I don’t have good timing with like, anything?” Helen asked, glancing up shyly.

Aline nodded, as best she could anyway. “Your dad banned you from baking after that time when were nine and I wanted to set the timer, but you said that you’d be able to remember and then we smoked the kitchen up so badly that the fire department were called.”

Helen huffed a nervous laugh. “Dad still won’t let me in there unsupervised.”

“Smart man.”

“He is,” Helen agreed. “Thing is, baking isn’t the only thing I’m not that good at. I get complacent really easily, and it can be hard for me sometimes to realise when time isn’t on my side.”

“Are you having a quarter-life-crisis at nineteen?” Aline wasn’t sure if she was meant to be greatly concerned or find it terribly relatable - she was hovering somewhere in a weird limbo between both. “Do we need to crack out the cookie-dough ice-cream and Golden Age Disney films?”

“I mean, that actually doesn’t sound too bad, but it’s not, what I’m trying to get at either.”

Helen pursed her lips together. Aline’s heart started doing hurdles in her chest, as though it was getting ready for a marathon that she wasn’t aware of yet.

“I know, that I should have said something ages ago, but I was scared, and now we’re both going to college soon and we’ll be so far away, and I already can’t stand the thought of being away from you but what makes it worse is the idea that I’ll leave you here without being totally, and completely honest.”

Aline’s heart tumbled over a few hurdles, but seemed quite adamant at not giving up just yet.

“Aline Penhallow,” Helen sucked in a deep breath. “I have loved you since I knew what love meant, since we were six and my father moved Mark and I into the house next to yours, and you came to the door with a plate of store-bought cookies because your mom insisted that you couldn’t say hello without a gift and you were too impatient to wait for her to bake something herself. Since were we were eleven, and you fixed my knee up with a Hello Kitty band-aid after Victor Aldertree tripped me over in the park, and then you kissed above the scratch because in your words, kisses made everything better. Since we were fourteen, and you stayed up all night making me a Valentine’s Card with smelly stickers and a whole tube of glitter covering the front, because love between best friends was just as worthy of celebrating. Since we were sixteen, and you took a whole week off from your internship to look after me while I had a summer cold, and when you drove me four hours to meet with my biological mom when we were seventeen, and spent the next four hours back letting me cry into your favourite sweater, promising me that if she didn’t want to know me, that was her loss.”

Helen exhaled a shaky breath, and it was only then that Aline realised that she was crying - that they both were.

“I can’t go to college knowing that you’re not aware how much I love you. You’re my best friend, you’re - you’re my soulmate, and even if you don’t feel the same, it’s fine, it won’t change anything, because the only thing I ever need is you. I needed you at six, and eleven, fourteen and sixteen and seventeen, and I’ll need you still when I’m thirty, and fifty, and creeping into my nineties.”

“You,” Aline shook her head, tugging Helen forward, until their heads bumped together, both of them sprawled awkwardly, half on their sides. “You beautiful, impossible dork. Those cookies tasted like chalk, the band-aid didn’t even stay on, and you were getting glitter out of your carpet for a month.”

Helen lifted her hand, cupping Aline’s cheek, the fabric of her worn gloves soft against Aline’s skin. “I don’t regret any of it. I’d eat a hundred chalky cookies and set fire to a hundred more fire alarms if it meant I got to spend time with you.”

“I love you more than snow,” Aline blurted out, eyes wide. “You know that, right? Like, I know that snow is one of my favourite things in the world, but you’re at the top of that list. You’re my favourite thing, ever, my favourite person and I - I love you too. I always have. Like, that.”

Helen’s nose scrunched adorably. “I know that, now. Glad we’re on the same page.”

“We’re so on the same page.”

Aline tipped her head down, until the edge of her nose bumped against Helen’s. Helen’s smile pressed against the corner of Aline’s mouth, her hand curling against Aline’s cheek. It wasn’t the most sensible place for a first kiss, but neither found a reason to stop; their giggles seeped into each other’s skin even as the snow threatened to do the same, their smiles matching in perfect harmony as they were pressed together, their hearts dancing in tender synchronicity.

College would be calling in the fall, pulling them apart, and there’d be new experiences and new people and new lives to embark on, but just like winter, and summer, they’d always come back.