• He had pale blonde hair and pale eyes — beige, yellow, washed out. Either the colour of muddy snow or a warmly lit window on a winter night. It all depended on his mood. When I say that, you have no idea how much I mean.
    I met him at the bus stop between Govern and Third the day Autumn shifted into Winter, sometime deep in November. His coat was gray as the sky, and there was a single amber teardrop earing in his left ear, like the last leaves gripping the trees above our heads.
    “Hey,” I said. I remember being lonely, and wanting him to look at me. He did — sideways — not frisky, but appraising. Withheld was the best word for it, but it was explicitly there. Interest, not sparking nor warm, but expanding, growing quietly like frost over a window. I played with my hair — it was falling back into dirty blonde without the sun to lighten it. He watched me with those cool eyes. They made him seem strong, like someone my weak self could cling to.
    “Hey. I’m Jack.” As he talked I realized how purple-blue his lips were, as if her were freezing. I knew my hands were chapped with cold, too.
    “Jack,” I said, “Like in Titanic.”
    Jack let a small breath out, almost like a laugh and shrugged. He didn’t argue, but his idea of that was apparent and unmoving.
    “So.” I slouched against the bus sign. “So, what brings you downtown, Jack?” My voice slipped out neatly, my body language half-calculated, the whole thought process behind the flirting a veritable river under ice. But those pale, buttery eyes saw clearly. Jack went along with it anyways, and I was so cold and alone that I didn’t care.
    “I’m dying my hair,” he said as the bright orange bus pulled up. There was a cologne advertisement plastered across its side and graffiti on the dented bumper. We climbed in, he looking at a map, I at his blonde hair.
    “How are you planning on dying it?” I asked. His hair looked good as it was — pale and straight.
    “I’ll get blue streaks in it,” Jack explained, looking first at me, then at his bangs, then out the window. We sped into the city. I imagined him with blue trails amongst his white locks. Jack sat still as death under my inspection, grey sidewalks and alleys flashing behind him in the window. Blotches of condensation on the window were slowly turning to feathers of frost, obscuring the view. I turned my attention back to Jack as it began to snow lightly.
    “This is my stop,” he said in his almost-grim way, but for a moment his eyes looked like heatless lanterns in a window at night, promising relief from the elements. I dug out a chocolate and popped it into my mouth, cold and minty with the filling.
    “You going to be around?” I asked, fiddling with my hair again. He hung onto the metal handhold near the door as the bus jerked to a stop.
    “I won’t be around after it gets warm.” Outside, the snow picked up. The first snow of the year, I realized. I sat up as Jack hopped down the steps.
    “Who are you, Frosty the Snowman?” I called. He did laugh then, like wind on stone and dead branches; like Christmas bells, and trailed his fingertips across a glass store front, frost blooming in their wakes.