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Jackie jolted awake, dragged from an uneasy dream by the thundering rasp of her alarm clock.
"I'm up, I'm up," she mumbled, casting around on her nightstand—but no, it wasn't her alarm, it was Shauna's, and Shauna was still fast asleep. In the end she had to push herself half out from under the covers and clamber over Shauna's snoring body to silence the offending noise.
7:01 AM, said Shauna's digital clock. Jackie groaned. Seven o'clock—the sun was barely up. Seven in the morning was far too early for any self-respecting human to be awake, if you asked Jackie; she felt like someone had ripped away all warmth from the world and replaced it with a torrent of ice water.
Or maybe that was simply the air in their bedroom—Jackie was just beginning to realize it was cold enough to see her own breath, and that enough brilliant white light was pouring from the window to drench the room even through the blinds. The weather had taken a sharp turn overnight, it seemed. It'd snowed, and both she and Shauna had neglected to turn on the heating before bed.
Jackie groaned again, longer this time.
"I'm up," mumbled Shauna beside her, who was even less 'up' than Jackie felt.
Jackie breathed a chuckle that morphed into a sigh as it dragged on, and reluctantly slid out of bed to tiptoe across the frigid hardwood floor on her way to the wall thermostat.
She turned it up as high as it went.
On her way back, she twisted the blinds half-open—and gasped.
The intense morning sun mellowed itself through heavy clouds and falling flakes, painting the landscape in golden-white so soft and omnipresent it was like the air itself was alive with light. The two hills she could see from the window melted into indistinct haze as they receded into low-lying clouds, the trees lining streets and yards bowed heavy under blankets of their own, and below the window she could see what looked like at least a foot and a half (if not two feet!) of snow almost entirely burying Shauna's car. The roads themselves had disappeared without so much as a trace. No sign of plows, not yet. No sign of any human activity whatsoever—the entire landscape laid out before Jackie's eyes was a dazzling, pristine wilderness. It was enough to take her breath away.
The spell was soon broken by the click of the thermostat, and at that little disturbance Jackie's rapidly-cooling toes resumed their complaints about the lack of in-floor heat. She danced her way away from the window and flopped back onto the bed as fast as she could.
Once safely back under the covers, she absently ran her thumb back and forth over Shauna's shoulder, waiting in silence for the other shoe to drop.
About a minute—or two thermostat clicks—later, Shauna inhaled sharply and began moving to sit up. "Shit, what time is it?" she asked. "Why did you let me sleep in?"
Jackie shook her head and tightened her grip on Shauna's shoulder, gesturing with her other hand at the window. "Slow down, babe," she giggled. "It snowed like crazy. I don't think either of us are gonna make it to work today."
Shauna propped herself up on an elbow just enough to follow Jackie's gaze to the window and see the snow for herself. "Oh... shit," she sighed. "Yeah, I'm not driving in that."
Jackie chuckled again, softly. "No, you are not. Sooo... that means you can sleep in. I get you all to myself today."
"Hmmm," Shauna murmured. She pulled the comforter down slightly, then looked over at Jackie with eyes so brown and sleepy and yearning they made Jackie's heart ache. "C'mere," she whined. "You're too cold."
Jackie scoffed in mock annoyance. "Yeah, because someone forgot to turn on the heat last night," she teased. But she still wiggled her way into Shauna's outstretched arms, pulling the blankets over them both and breathing a long, deep sigh.
Jackie loved snow days.