The first Saturday of the winter break felt unnaturally still. With the hallways of the academy now empty and the usual hum of school drama silenced, New York felt like a different city.
The snow from the night of Noah's party had settled into a thick, sparkling crust that muffled the usual roar of Manhattan traffic.
I spent the morning watching Layla's boxes pile up in the foyer. It was a good kind of chaos, but by noon, the silence of the rest of the house started to itch.
My dad was out at the office, and while Martha was humming in the kitchen, the house felt cavernous.
I needed to get out. I needed flour, sugar, and a distraction that didn't involve staring at the walls of my room.
"I'm heading to Brianna's!" I called out to Layla, who was currently rearranging books in the study.
"Have fun, sweetie! Bring back something edible!" she laughed, waving a bubble-wrap-covered hand at me.
The drive to Brianna's was a slow crawl. The city in 2026 was beautiful under a blanket of white, but the slush made every turn a gamble.
When I finally pulled up to her family's brownstone, she was already at the door, wearing a flour-dusted apron over a pair of fuzzy Lululemon leggings.
"You're late! The butter is already softened!" she shouted, pulling me inside into the warmth of a kitchen that smelled like vanilla and expensive Jo Malone candles.
"The roads are a disaster, Bri," I complained, shedding my heavy winter coat. "But I'm here. What's the plan?"
"Macarons," she said, her eyes gleaming with a challenge. "I saw this TikTok tutorial where this girl made them look like tiny, intricate snowflakes. If she can do it, we can definitely do it."
For the next two hours, the kitchen became a battlefield of almond flour and pastel food coloring. We put on a Spotify playlist and lost ourselves in the process.
There's something therapeutic about baking; you have to be so precise with the measurements that there's no room to think about anything else.
"Okay, piping time," Brianna said, handing me a bag of pale blue batter.
"Concentrate, Andrea. If you mess up the circles, they won't have the 'feet' at the bottom when they bake."
"I'm trying!" I laughed, leaning over the parchment paper. "My hands are shaking. I think I had way too much caffeine before I came over."
"It's just the 'end of term' jitters," Brianna said, expertly piping perfect, uniform circles.
"Everyone is scattered right now. It feels weird with Hailey and the others gone, doesn't it?"I sighed, setting the piping bag down for a moment to rest my hand.
"It feels surreal. Like the whole social ecosystem of the school just evaporated overnight. I looked at Instagram this morning and everyone is posting from airports or ski resorts."
"I know," Brianna agreed, sliding the first tray into the oven. "It's that weird winter vacuum. But honestly? I think we needed the break. Things were getting so heavy at school. The whispers, the tension... it was a lot to carry every day."I leaned against the marble island, watching the timer count down on the oven.
"I just feel like I'm in a waiting room. Waiting for the holidays to be over, waiting for Layla to finish moving in, waiting to see what happens next year."
Brianna stopped what she was doing and looked at me, her expression softening.
"You spend a lot of time waiting for other people to make the first move, Andrea. Maybe this break is for you to just... be. No school gossip, no boys to worry about, just us and these potentially failed cookies."
"You're right," I admitted, picking up a stray white chocolate chip and popping it into my mouth. "It's nice to just be 'Andrea' without a headline attached to my name for once."
"Exactly," Brianna said, checking the oven light. "And once Layla is fully settled at your place, it'll feel more like a home and less like a museum. That'll help."
We fell back into a lighter conversation as the macarons baked, moving on to gossip about our favorite fashion influencers and debating which winter boots were actually worth the splurge this season. Once the shells were out and cooling, we started on the filling—a white chocolate ganache that we ended up eating half of with spoons before it even made it into the cookies."These actually look... okay?" I said, looking at our finished product.
They weren't the perfect snowflake masterpieces from the video, but they were pretty, with a soft blue hue that matched the winter sky outside."They look amazing," Brianna declared, snapping a photo for her Pinterest board.
I also took a picture and sent it to Hailey, since she's missing out on this fun.
"And they taste even better. Here, pack some for Layla and your dad. They'll need the sugar rush for all that unpacking."
As I was packing a small box of the blue cookies, my phone buzzed on the counter with a group chat notification. I ignored it, choosing instead to focus on the feeling of the warm kitchen and the sound of Brianna's laughter.
We spent the rest of the afternoon curled up on her sofa, watching old movies and ignoring the rest of the world. It was the most normal I'd felt in weeks. No drama, no complications—just sugar, spice, and a quiet afternoon with my friend.
As I eventually went home in the darkening twilight, the box of blue macarons sitting beside me at the back seat of the Uber, I looked at the snow-covered trees lining the streets.
The 'quiet' winter I'd been dreading was actually starting to feel like a relief.the driver pulled into my driveway, seeing the warm glow of the lights in my house. Layla was officially part of the household now, and as I grabbed the cookies and my bag, I realized that maybe being 'alone' in New York wasn't going to be so bad after all.
According to Google Maps, it was only a few minutes from my house to the nearest park, and I decided right then that tomorrow, I'd take a long walk in the snow—just for myself.