Read The Promise of Snow for Free Online

The Promise of Snow
     
    N EXT TO the mall, Jungle Jim’s was Brandon’s least favorite place to go this time of year. Just finding a spot in the behemoth grocery store’s parking lot was a harrowing adventure. Especially a week before Christmas with freezing rain predicted for the weekend.
    “Are we there yet?” Brandi asked as Brandon pulled up the parking brake. Her hand was still covering her eyes as he shut off the engine. She was a nervous passenger, but it was preferable to her particular brand of neurotic holiday driver, so Brandon didn’t comment.
    “Come on,” Brandon said. “The sooner we get this over with, the better. This place is a zoo.” He grabbed the reusable grocery bags and his mother’s extensive shopping list. The neighborhood Christmas party was in a few days, and his parents were hosting this year. Thus, instead of going with appetizers that could be made with ingredients from the corner Kroger, she’d planned a significantly more exotic menu knowing she could send her only son to Cincinnati’s premier international market, and Brandon’s inner Scrooge had taken over with a vengeance. He had to do the grocery shopping anyway.
    “Do you have the wine bag?” Brandi asked. “We are definitely getting you some wine.” She’d been his best friend since freshman year of high school due to a random homeroom seating chart and the matchy-matchness of their first names, and moments like these only cemented the bond. She wouldn’t be able to make the neighborhood party, so she’d thrown her support into the shopping trip from hell.
    “The wine bag was the first thing I grabbed,” Brandon told her, “but I’ll choose not to take that as an insult.”
    “I’m only looking out for you.” Brandi hooked her arm around his elbow as they made their way across the parking lot, which was still slick in spots from their last snowstorm. Despite the nature of their errand, she was, as usual, dressed to the nines, including impractical yet gorgeous leather wedge boots. Brandon was her human support rail; they had a very symbiotic relationship.
    “Oh my God, I don’t think I told you,” Brandon said as they made their way through the produce toward the meat counter. “On top of the Christmas party BS, my mom wants me to call this jerk-off I used to play with as a kid.”
    “What jerk-off?”
    “You know Maxine?”
    “The little old lady who has lived across the street from your parents the entire time I’ve known you? I vaguely recall.”
    “Sometimes all you have to say is yes,” Brandon told her. “It’s short, simple, to the point.”
    “Speaking of the point?”
    “Right. So he’s her grandson, and he and his parents used to come visit her over Christmas when Walter was still alive. Since I was the only kid on the block, we were forced to play together. I think he’s, like, two or three years older than me? Anyway, he just moved to Cincinnati for work or something, and my mom thinks I should show him around.” Brandon had managed to avoid the task so far, but he wasn’t sure he could hold his mom off forever. “The dude was such a dick. He would always show me the cool presents he got, but he wouldn’t let me touch them, and he would hog the Nintendo.”
    “Thank God you’re over it.”
    “He called me BJ.”
    Brandi snorted. “He was hardly the only one to ever come up with that.”
    It was true. Had J been his middle initial, Brandon might’ve been able to keep it a secret and avoid the obnoxious moniker, but his last name was Jacobs, and kids weren’t all that clever. Not that he’d known what it meant at the time, but he knew by the dickish laughter that followed that it wasn’t good.
    “Still,” Brandon said, because it was irrelevant. “So, his name is AJ, so I called him Asshole Jerk.” He laughed at the memory, then frowned when he caught Brandi’s unimpressed look. “I was like ten, give me a break. It was very clever at the time.”
    “Whatever.”