Slowly, we paced around the park, making casual chatter as we did so, the atmosphere around us both cheerful and light compared to what it was moments ago. As we walked, it felt as if a weight had been lifted off my chest. No longer did I find myself feeling suffocated or with a sense of panic settled in the back of my mind. I felt free.
"Let's get some ice cream." Helen suddenly said while pointing across the park to a stationary Ice cream van.
"In this weather?" I asked incredulously, wrapping my hoodie even tighter around myself as if to demonstrate how cold it was.
"It's never too cold for ice cream." Helen shrugged, seemingly unbothered by the cold winter chill that surrounded us.
Now that I was no longer plagued with the worries of the talk we had just had, I was able to notice how she was only wearing a thin black long-sleeved top along with a pair of skinny blue jeans. The sight of which left me gobsmacked, thinking it was a miracle she hadn't frozen over. And so, believing it would be the gentlemanly thing to do, I went to take off my hoodie and give it to her. Something which, when she noticed, she put a stop to pronto.
"What in the hell are you doing?"
"Giving you my hoodie?" I questioned.
"No way José. I appreciate the thought, but I'm fine. You're the one who needs to keep wrapped up. If anything, we should go shopping afterwards and get you a proper coat or something for winter."
"Woah, woah, there's no need for that. I'm fine, trust me." I tried to state, but it was clear my words were falling on deaf ears.
"Nope, too late. After this, we're going shopping." And with that, she began walking away towards the ice cream van.
Far too shocked to argue, I simply followed along as Helen quietly hummed a tune I couldn't quite place. The moment we got there, as I had suspected, I noticed that there wasn't a single other adult or child waiting in line. An impressive feat considering how busy the park was. I stared at the large laminated poster on the side of the van displaying all the possible choices. Instantly, my eyes were drawn to the double chocolate swirl shown in the corner. Yet before I could even say a single word, Helen walked up to the counter of the van.
"Hey, can we get one vanilla scoop and one double chocolate swirl please?" The man inside merely nodded before proceeding to go further in his van. The sound of clunking and machinery followed in his wake.
"Hey, why did you already order? I didn't even get a chance to properly look over the choices." Helen just looked at me once again with a deadpan stare. A look that, to my annoyance, I was sure she had learnt from Sam.
"We both know what you were going to end up choosing. I swear you love chocolate more than anything." She remarked while rolling her eyes.
"Well, not anything." I replied while wiggling my eyebrows and staring into her eyes as I did so, causing Helen to explode with laughter from my obvious meaning.
"When did you become such a flirt?" She choked out once she finally caught her breath, to which I merely shrugged, noticing to my extreme amusement the bright red blush that had formed on her face, making her as red as a tomato.
It was at that moment that the ice cream man came back into view, carrying both a vanilla and a chocolate ice cream in his hand. After grabbing and paying for them both, I handed the vanilla one to Helen, noticing how her blush, while diminished, was still present. With ice cream in hand, we continued our walk, observing the goings-on of the park that morning. The rugby match that was being held only twenty feet away, the laughing and screaming of children being cajoled by their parents, the rampant number of dogs sprinting left and right, constantly almost charging into every other passerby nearby, including us. It was kind of beautiful in a way to see so many people in one spot living such vastly different lives, completely independent from everyone else.
"Brrr. God, why does it have to be so cold?" I heard Helen mutter after one particularly cold breeze, her right arm crossed against her chest in a vain attempt to shield herself from the cold, her ice cream cone in her left hand having been completely forgotten, with it already starting to slowly drip down towards her hand. Seeing this, I quickly placed my ice cone in my mouth, having already eaten more than half of it, before unzipping my hoodie and placing it onto her shoulders.
"Stop, I already told you I'm fine, really. I actually like the cold." She replied, however, her bright red nose and the occasional sniffle she let out told a completely different story.
"Stop being stubborn and take it. After all, we can't have you getting sick now, can we, Rudolph?" I joked while squeezing the tip of her nose, earning myself a swat to the shoulder.
"But what about you? You're going to be freezing with just that t-shirt on." Yet even as she spoke, she was already zipping up the hoodie, hiding her face underneath its front. Eyes closed in delight at the small amount of heat it no doubt provided.
"I'll be fine, anyway, you said yourself, we're going to go coat shopping after this. I'll be fine in the meantime. Besides, I'm already dying, what's a small cold in comparison?"
The moment the words left my lips, I knew I had made a mistake. I was so used to joking about my condition with Sam that I didn't even stop to consider what Helen's reaction would be. And it wasn't good. Her body froze, her face turned to stone, and her lips pressed thin against one another as her eyes filled with grief and hurt. Immediately, I wished I could have taken those words back. Unfortunately for me, wishing didn't help me in the slightest.
"How could you even joke about that?" She asked quietly, voice wavering as she stared unblinkingly at me.
"Hey, hey," I whispered quickly, placing my hands on the side of her cheeks as I stood in front of her. "I'm sorry, that was in poor taste." A part of me found it slightly bizarre that I was apologising for a joke about myself, but I knew it needed to be done. This wasn't like with Sam and me. Unlike Helen, we had both had months to come to terms with my death, while for her, it was still brand new.
Seeing her still clearly upset face, it was clear that she wasn't entirely satisfied with my apology. I thought about what I could say to improve her mood before deciding the best thing to do was something I hadn't done in a while. Be honest. "The truth is, I have to make jokes about what's going on. It's the only way I can go about my day, knowing what I do, that I haven't got many more left. Knowing very soon it will all come to an end. So please don't be mad. I'll try to tone them down when I'm around you."
Hearing my confession, something I hadn't told either Sam or my father before, Helen simply continued her stare, not moving an inch or saying a word. Just as I was beginning to fret that she was still angry and raced through my mind for any potential solutions I could think of, no matter how stupid, Helen suddenly flung herself towards me, encompassing me in yet another hug, almost forcing me onto the floor with the strength she produced.
"I'm sorry," She muttered, her voice muffled against my t-shirt. "I know I don't have any right to get angry at you, it's just… I'm still trying to process everything you said. I don't think I can really handle any more talk about it at the moment."
With that said, she lifted her head off my chest while still staying within my arms, a position we stayed in for minutes on end until I felt a sudden wetness on the top of my head, like a drop of water, but only lighter. It was then, as I looked up in confusion, that I was met with the sight of hundreds of droplets of snow as they slowly fell down towards us, carried by the cold, flowing wind.
"It's beautiful." I heard Helen Murmur, looking up in the sky in wonderment as tiny specks of snow landed on her face.
"I wish we could stay like this for hours," She whispered, a statement I entirely agreed with. "Saying that we should probably head inside before it gets colder and you freeze to death." She said with a smirk, disentangling our limbs and wrapping her arms around herself as if flaunting the hoodie I had given her.
"Smirk at me like that again and I'm going to take back that hoodie."
"I would like to see you try." Her eyes danced with mirth as she spoke while a predatory grin stretched across my face. In seconds, I was on her, attempting to capture her between my arms. Unfortunately for me, I underestimated her reflexes as she was able to quickly slip in between them and backpedal away, sticking out her tongue in the process.
"Oh, you're on." And that was how we spent the next fifteen minutes chasing one another across the grass-filled fields, tackling and wrestling one another as the snow drifted down around us. We laughed and laughed, acting like the kids we actually were, the atmosphere no longer filled with tension and sorrow. Yet even still, as I stared up into the sky after a failed tackle, I couldn't help but wonder whether I would ever get to see snow again or whether this would be the last time.