Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

A Winter Love Story

She was 19, and young, and far from home.
So was he.
Her roommate knew him from class and working together as EMTs, and she introduced them. One midwinter evening they found themselves both volunteering together in the coatroom at a theatre event. It held the warmth of a tedious evening made special by being shared with a soulmate newly discovered.
They were young and they were poor, and when one elegant matron checked her fur coat, he promised that if the owner did not return for it, she could have it. They played games like that all evening. Later, the owner did return, and upon receiving her coat she let them know, in terms of great disgust, that "This is not fur! This is an imposter!" Apparently not all the elegant ladies in attendance that evening were wearing the real thing!
They were still laughing about her outrage when they left at last, fresh snow spiraling down in the glow of the street lights. The warmth of the mood was lingering, and she was considering the implications of wrapping his bare hand in her mittened one, when suddenly he gave her a shove. She tumbled into the nearest snowbank, cold flakes leaping down her back. The shock propelled her to her feet, furious. Thoughts of hand holding were gone. Instead, she delivered a vicious kick to his shin.
She didn't get his sense of humor yet.
And she couldn't get him out of her mind. A week later she sent him a green carnation for St. Patty's Day to apologize. The first of many misunderstandings. The first of many apologies. The beginning of a long, long love affair, which I have to thank for my existence and for that of my own children, and for generations to come. Love is an amazing and beautiful thing, warmth to wrap ourselves in when the coldness of Winter blows.
35 years later they are no longer young. Where they are together is home. And she still doesn't get his sense of humor.

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