The regrets are ganging up on me, screaming in my ears.Did you seriously just blow up this whole relationship? Walk away from the boy you’ve been obsessed with for months? And why? Because he saidhe loved you? You could still be kissing him right now if you weren’t so melodramatic.
But even as my guilty verdict is being prepared by my brain, some other, more visceral part of me is pulling up wordless images in my defense. That icy expression on Richard’s face, the way he put his hands behind his head like he’d already lost interest, the gross smugness of it all. It was like he was trying to make me out as some sort of prude, which is completely unfair, because I’m not against sex, not at all. I’m not even afraid of it, really. None of that part of the Catholic Church ever rubbed off on me; it doesn’t feel true in my body to think of sex as bad. I just want it to mean something. And I guess, yeah, that’s especially true for my first time. But I could have seen us getting there in a few weeks or months, and doing a lot of amazing fooling around in the meantime. Fuck! Why did he have to push it? Why did it have to be today?
After I’ve circled the lodge three times, I’m too cold to be upset. I’m numb inside and out. All my nose hairs are frozen and the chill I felt in my limbs now feels like straight-up pain. I can’t avoid my room anymore. I decide to pop in and grab my coat, act like I’m meeting Richard without saying that explicitly.
When I get there, Amanda is inside as expected, trying to do a French braid around the top of her head like a crown, but her hair is so silky and fine it keeps falling out. Fortunately, this appears to be taking up all her concentration, and she doesn’t grill me on anything boy related. You would almost neverknow that she is seething with jealousy. She is a pro at hiding her feelings, which in this situation is fine by me.
“Shoot! I can’t believe I have to start over again! My arms are going to fall off.” She pulls out the braid and brushes her hair smooth. “Hattie, would you help me? I want to look Swiss, like I belong in a ski chalet with a big tray of beer steins.”
She wants to look like a waitress? “I think steins are a German thing,” I say, then feel cringy about correcting a factual technicality and go to help her. I take the brush and separate the hair by her left temple into three sections to start braiding. I notice that she’s completing the look in a blouse with a bodice and ribbons and everything. Her boobs are pressed together for some impressive cleavage. Guys may come and go, but she’ll have those babies for life. I wonder if my jealousy for her physical attributes is more obvious than her jealousy for what she thinks is my romantic situation.
“German, Swiss, whatever,” she laughs, then looks determined. “I want to look like I’m inThe Sound of Music.” I almost blurt, “They were Austrian,” but manage to stifle it in time. After all, who doesn’t want to look like the Baroness in her gold lamégown, or Liesl in the greenhouse in the pouring rain? Of course, they don’t have braids, and Julie Andrews has no hairstyle at all in that movie, unless “chopped” is considered a hairstyle, but I get what she’s driving at, and I’m definitely not going to correct her again.
I nod and keep braiding, soothed by the meditative quality of it, the ability to concentrate on something outside of myroiling thoughts. I get all the way across the top of her head and then stop, stuck. “Now what?” I ask.
She laughs again. “You know what, I have no fucking clue.”
“Wait, let me try something.” I start to grab strands behind the braid until I am braiding back in the opposite direction. After another full braid across the top of her head, I secure the rubber band low behind her ear and cover it up with the hair spilling down her back. I examine her in the mirror, proud of my work. As I do, I realize I’m admiring how my efforts have made my main competitor look more attractive. I snort at the irony.
“I know, I know, it’s way over the top, but I’m into it,” she says, misunderstanding my noise. “Okay, I’m off to après-ski!”
There’s that phrase again. I make a mental note to look it up. I smile and make a thumbs-up, which I instantly regret. Something about Amanda’s energy makes me my uncoolest self. She goes and I exhale into the quiet of the room.
I need a second opinion on the Richard situation. Was I overreacting? “Mason?” I ask softly, seeing if I can conjure him up at will. Nope. No Mason. Was there ever really? It’s so hard to be sure. In any case, time to turn to the land of the living.
I pull my phone out of my bag and call Asha. She’ll be able to break this down for me. If anything, she’ll be harder on him, which I would appreciate, since the idea that this was somehow all my fault keeps creeping into my mind.
“You have not reached Asha,” her familiar message tells me. “Guess she’s too busy for you. But here comes a beep you can talk to. Go ahead. Talk to it.”Beep.
Shit. I hang up and call my mom, not sure yet how much of the story I even want to tell her. It’s more just to hear the voice of someone who is definitely on Team Hattie. My dad answers. I guess he counts?
“Hi, Dad.”
“Well, my other child is in the house with me so I guess this must be Hattie!” he says, making an attempt at a dad joke.
“Ha, you got it. Why do you have Mom’s phone?”
“Apparently she left it behind when she went off to book club.” Ah, no wonder my dad sounds so jovial. He’s probably having an extra beer without the tsking disapproval of his wife.
“Okay, well, I won’t bother you.” I don’t feel like I can talk to him, but if he asks me what’s going on, I might. Maybe this could be the start of us finally understanding each oth—
“I’ll tell her you called,” he says, like he’s merely Mom’s assistant and not also my parent. “We’ll look forward to your triumphant return tomorrow.”Click.God, he is so, so weird.
So this is the culmination of all the big “we need to talk” lectures my parents have foisted on me since before I was even getting my period. All the promises of “always being there for me” and “available whenever I want to talk” evaporated by a book club and an oblivious dad. Guess I’m on my own.
Richard has appeared next to the lobby fireplace, where I’m reading a book in a rocking chair made entirely out of antlers.
“Hey, I’ve been looking for you,” he says. “We’re going night skiing. Come with.”
I turn toward him and the chair pokes me hard in the ribs, like there’s a dead deer teasing me for my absurdity from beyond the grave. I may or may not have been sitting in this incredibly uncomfortable chair for the last half hour with the hopes that I looked perfectly at one with ski lodge life to any onlookers. Particularly onlookers named Richard.
“Come with.” That’s how he says it, simple and easy, like we didn’t just have a stand-off about meaningless sex in his tiny room. Like he hadn’t implied that there was something wrong with me at a very basic level because I didn’t want to lose my virginity to an acquaintance. After all, he’d gone to the care and preparation of putting a sock on the door.
And night skiing? To a total novice like me who doesn’t do well in the dark, this sounds terrifying on several levels. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Richard approached me with, “Hey, Hatts. We’re going skydiving. Oh, and we’re going to be naked except for our parachutes. In fact, maybe we’ll skip the parachutes. Come with.”
But his eyes have lost their cold edge and regained theirtwinkly playfulness. He seems human again, and so part of me wants to. Not the part that was in the bedroom a couple of hours ago, but the part that was on the bus with him, the part that is playing opposite him in the school musical, the part that watchedDoctor Zhivagowith him. That part wants to give him the benefit of the doubt, to wipe the slate clean and move forward. After all, he didn’t force me to do anything I didn’t want to. And have I mentioned how excruciatingly good he smells?
Still, at night? “That sounds so fun, but it’s really dark out. I don’t—well—I just don’t see that great in the dark.” Congratulations to Hattie Murphy on the Understatement of the Year Award.
