Young Love in Old Chicago

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  Later that night, I lay awake in my bed with the clock I’d taken off of my wall resting against my stomach. I’d held it up every ten or fifteen minutes since eleven o’clock to check the time by what little moonlight there was. I held it up again. “Finally.” Only seven minutes to midnight.

  Silently, I climbed out of bed and took the curlers out of my hair. My dress was still on. It was easy enough to hide under my blanket when my mother came for what must have been the longest good night we’d ever had. She couldn’t stop talking and asking about Mason, of course.

  I crept to the closed door and waited a few minutes before I heard the faint creak of a board out in the hallway. My heart fluttered as I opened the door very slowly. A tall, dark figure stood only three feet away from me. Mason smiled as he stepped barefooted into my room and shut the door behind him. He shook his dark hair, messier than usual, away from his face and held up a glass ball. “Merry Christmas,” he leaned over to whisper.

  “Merry Christmas.” I took it and held it up to see it better by the weak light filtering in through my window. It was an apple-shaped snow globe with a miniature Statue of Liberty inside, surrounded by snow and silver glitter. “Thank you, Mason. Your present’s under the tree downstairs.” My mother told me when she came to say good night that she’d tucked it safely away under there while Mason and my father were setting up the cot.

  He leaned over and kissed me. Then his hand slid up over the back of my neck and into my hair as he nuzzled it out of the way with his nose so he could get closer to my ear. “My angel.” His warm breath against my ear sent a shiver through me before he leaned up and kissed me again. “I better get back to bed, but I’ll be here when you wake up. I love you, Alexandra,” he whispered as he pulled away and reached for the door.

  “I love you too, Mason.” He stopped and looked back, leaning over to kiss me once more before he left the room.

  I set the snow globe on my night table and hung the clock back up.

  “I knew he would come.”

  As I climbed into bed, I couldn’t wait for morning to come, not because of what day it was, but because of who I knew I would find standing at my door when I opened it.