The Cold September

Oscar was lying on his couch, hands under his back, and the today’s paper over his face. “Aaw,” Alice’s voice said from across the living room, “aren’t you just adorable.”
Oscar jerked up, the paper falling to the floor, and looked bewildered around him. “I wasn’t sleeping,” he said, as if someone had accused him of something. “Of course you weren’t. I know you like to make those snoring noises when you’re widely awake,” Alice answered with a laugh. Oscar flushed, as he tended to do, and sat up straight. “Why are you home so early?” he answered, while at the same time managing to warm his hands with his breath. “The heat-thingies at the office broke, and they sent us home because it was like, -20 Celsius in there.”
Oscar shuddered at the thought. All the heaters in the apartment were turned to a maximum, and he was still freezing his butt off. “You’d think we lived in the North Pole with this cold,” Oscar said. Alice shrugged in a “Tell me about it”-way, and put down the groceries she’d been carrying. “Hey,” she said, picking something up from one of the bags. “I bought you your favorite chocolate,” and she tossed it to him. He caught it beautifully, having been a basketball player in his youth, and grinned. “Oh, you shouldn’t have,” he smiled. He didn’t mean it, of course, as you could see by the way he hungrily ripped the wrapper of the Twix-bar and shoved it into his mouth. Alice shook her head. “Where on earth was your mother when you learned to eat?”
She picked up the bags filled with bread and milk and god knows what, and put them on the kitchen counter. “You know,” she called into the living room. “I met Ely on the way home.”
“No, really?” Oscar said, interested. “Yeah, really,” Alice answered. “Apparently, she was in town for a really important meeting, and she sure didn’t have any time to catch up. She couldn’t really say why she was so busy, though, she just was.” Alice sounded a little sullen. Ely had been a good friend of her from high-school, which was also where she had met Oscar, but lately, they had stopped talking. It had only been, what, 7 years since she finished high-school? “Ouch,” Oscar said. “Funny, I’d never really thought of her as a business woman.”
“Yeah,” Alice answered. “She always wanted to be a teacher.”
She walked back into the living room, and sat next to Oscar on the couch. “Then again,” she said, snuggling closer to him, “When I was fifteen, I’d never in my wildest imaginations thought I’d end up here with you years later.”