Cold Feet Official

“You told me,” Mark said, “that your feet were cold because you’d forgotten your wool socks. But the rest of you was warm. And that was enough.”

Emma turned to look at him. The porch light caught the side of his face, the stubble he hadn’t shaved in three days, the faint lines at the corners of his eyes that hadn’t been there on their wedding day.

“I don’t know when my feet got cold again,” Mark said. “But I think… I think maybe they’ve been cold for a while. And I just kept walking anyway.”

A long pause. The neighbor’s cat wound between the porch railings, gave them both a disdainful look, and disappeared into the bushes. Cold Feet

“I’m not good at this,” Mark said quietly. “The talking. The… feeling stuff out loud. You know that.”

She remembered. She’d meant it as a joke. But he’d taken off his own boots, pulled off his thick wool socks, and knelt in the snow to put them on her feet. His hands had been red and shaking. His smile had been the warmest thing she’d ever seen.

Emma pulled out her phone. Not to call anyone. Just to look. “You told me,” Mark said, “that your feet

Emma reached down and touched the back of his head. His hair was soft. She’d forgotten how soft.

He looked up. His eyes were red, his nose running from the cold. He looked nothing like the man who’d proposed on a frozen pond. He looked better. He looked real.

“I know.”

She hadn’t meant to say I feel like a ghost in my own house . But she had. And Mark hadn’t denied it. He’d just looked at her with that new, tired expression—the one that said here we go again —and walked away.

When did we stop taking pictures of each other?

She’d cried. He’d kissed her frozen nose. And they’d walked home wrapped in the same coat, clumsy and giddy and so sure that love was a thing that burned hot enough to melt any winter. The porch light caught the side of his

Emma stared at the socks. Then at him. Then at the door to the house they’d bought together, the one with the leaky faucet and the crooked shelf and the bedroom where they’d stopped sleeping close.