On Friday night it snows, and not a little polite dusting that melts by morning, but a lot, the kind of snow that makes campus go quiet and soft and white, the kind that makes everything look clean for a few hours.
Practice is cancelled by text at four, and by six they cancel classes for Monday already, which means everyone loses their minds in the group chat. Roman and I are stuck in the room because the wind is too loud to walk anywhere, and he's on his bed watching hockey highlights with one headphone in and one out so I can hear the commentators mumbling, and I'm at my desk trying to write my Gatsby essay, but I keep opening the drawer and looking at the journal instead of actually writing anything, just flipping it open to that one page and then closing it again like I'm checking that the words are still there.
At 8 p.m., my phone lights up on my desk.
Maya: *snow day party at my place. bring snacks and your cute roommate*
Roman reads it over my shoulder because he's leaning over my chair to steal a chip from my bag. "We going?" he asks, his chin almost on my shoulder.
I shrug without looking up from my blank document. "It's snowing."
"So we walk slow," he says, like that's an answer, like that's a plan.
We end up going because there's nothing else to do and because Maya will never let us hear the end of it if we don't. Maya's dorm is only two buildings over but it feels like an expedition, we have to walk through the snow with our boots sinking up to our ankles and the wind biting at our faces, and halfway there Roman scoops up a handful of snow and throws a snowball at the back of my head. It explodes cold down my neck and I yelp, and I throw one back without thinking and hit him right in the face, square on the cheek, and he laughs so loud it echoes off the brick buildings and across the empty quad, and for a second I forget that it's freezing.
Maya's room is warm and full of people and smells like pizza and perfume, Priya is curled up on the beanbag, Jamal is already on his third slice, a few girls from the dance team are on the floor painting each other's nails. The music is low, some old playlist from high school, and the fairy lights Maya has strung everywhere make everything glow gold.
I sit on the floor by the heater with my plate because it's the warmest spot and because I can watch the door from there, and Roman sits next to me without asking, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, close enough that I can feel the cold coming off his jeans where the snow melted. He doesn't move away, he just settles in and steals a pepperoni off my pizza like he lives here too.
After an hour, Maya turns the big light off and puts on a movie, some old comedy from the early 2000s that everyone has seen a hundred times. Nobody is actually watching, everyone is talking over it anyway, laughing at jokes they've already memorized.
Halfway through, Roman leans over so his mouth is close to my ear so I can hear him over the movie and the talking. "You cold?" he asks, quiet, just for me.
"A little," I say, because I am, because my socks are still damp from the walk.
He lifts his arm, just a little, just enough to make space, like an invitation, like a question he's not asking out loud. I freeze for a second with my pizza halfway to my mouth because my brain is suddenly very loud, and then I lean in, just a little, just enough so my shoulder is under his arm and his hoodie is warm around me and smells like his laundry detergent. He doesn't move away, he doesn't make a joke, he just lets his arm settle and goes back to watching the movie like this is normal, like we do this all the time.
Maya sees from across the room where she's sitting on her bed, and she catches my eye and winks at me, slow and deliberate. I ignore her and stare very hard at the TV and try not to think about how fast my heart is beating.
We walk back at midnight, and the snow is still falling, big slow flakes that catch in our eyelashes. Campus is empty and completely white, no footprints except ours, and our boots make that fresh squeaking sound in the new snow. We don't talk much, we just walk side by side, close enough that our shoulders bump every few steps.
Back in the room, we're both wet and cold, our jeans dark at the cuffs and our hair damp. Roman tosses me a dry shirt without looking, just reaches into his drawer and throws it, his, soft and worn. I put it on without thinking, without checking whose it is, and it smells like him and hangs past my hips.
He's at his desk with his laptop open, I'm on my bed with the journal open in my lap, and I'm not writing, I'm just looking at the page, at the list I've been building without meaning to. Safe. Roman. Mom. Maya. Papa. Party. Stayed. Stay. нравится.
Roman looks over from his screen, his eyes catching on the open pages. "What are you writing?" he asks, casual.
"Nothing," I say too fast and close it with a snap that sounds loud in the quiet room.
He smiles, that small crooked one he does when he knows I'm lying. "You always write in Russian when it's nothing?"
My stomach drops straight to the floor. "You saw?"
"Just the letters," he says, holding his hands up like he's surrendering. "I don't read Russian, Orlov, you know that. I failed Spanish twice. What does it say?"
I hold the journal tight against my chest like he might try to take it, which he never would. "It's private."
"Okay," he says, easy, no push, no teasing, just acceptance. "Private is good. Everyone should have private."
He turns back to his laptop and starts typing again, and I open the journal again with my heart beating hard enough that I can feel it in my throat. Under *нравится*, I write a new word in English this time, careful block letters, so he could read it if he ever saw, so maybe someday I wouldn't have to say it out loud.
*Scared.*
Then I write another word right under that, because it's true too, because both things can be true at the same time like Dr. Amara says.
*Happy.*
Both true. Both sitting right next to each other on the page like they belong together.
I close the journal and put it back in the drawer and push it shut with my foot.
Roman turns his light off and the room goes dim except for his laptop screen. "You want the rest of my pizza? It's in the fridge," he says, not looking up.
"Yeah," I say, because I'm suddenly starving.
"Get it yourself, princess," he says, but he's smiling, I can hear it in his voice.
I get up and get the pizza and eat it cold standing in front of the open fridge, the cold air on my bare legs, and when I get back into bed Roman is already half asleep, his breathing gone slow and deep.
"Viktor?" he mumbles into his pillow, barely awake.
"Yeah?" I whisper back.
"Thanks for sharing my hoodie," he says, words all sleepy and slurred together.
I look down. I'm still wearing his shirt from earlier, the one he tossed me when we got back, soft and too big. I forgot to change. "You're welcome," I whisper, and I pull the sleeves down over my hands.
He falls asleep, and I lay awake listening to the snow hit the window in soft little taps, and thinking about the two new words in my journal, sitting right under the Russian one I was too scared to translate.
Scared and happy.
I've never felt both at the same time before, not really, not like this, where the scared doesn't cancel out the happy and the happy doesn't make the scared go away, they just exist together, side by side on the same page, in the same chest.
I pull his shirt sleeves over my cold hands and close my eyes and let myself feel both.