Frankie’s weight shifted slightly into me. Everything about the simple gesture grounded me in the moment. Her body pressed against mine felt like the most natural thing in the world.
I had a sneaking suspicion Frankie was exaggerating her injury. She’d been tired and cranky toward the end, and the moment I asked if she was okay after that last fall, she’d clutched her wrist delicately and gave a pitiful moan.Butwhen we reached the bottom of the hill, she had picked up hersnowboard with the same supposedly injured hand before I snatched it away from her.
I wouldn’t press it though.
“Do you believe me now that snowboarding isn’t meant for me?” she asked.
“You want to try skiing instead? I’m not as skilled of an instructor, but I can give it a try?—”
“Oliver.” She elbowed me in the ribs.
My arm was still draped over her shoulders. It felt heavy and I was hyperaware of it. It was probably past the point of a friendly gesture, but I couldn’t get myself to pull away. It felt too good to have her tucked into me. She didn’t move away either.
“Sorry if I pushed you,” I finally said. “It’s kind of my thing.”
She tilted her head so that she could glance at me. It wasn’t lost on me that our lips were only inches apart.
“Do all of your hobbies involve defying death?” she asked.
“Pretty much. What else is there?”
“I don’t know. Knitting?”
The grin spread easily across my face as I continued to stare into her eyes. “Can you really picture me knitting?”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
“You’d have to teach me.”
She scrunched up her cute little button nose and finally looked away. “I don’t know how to knit.”
That made me laugh. “Then why are you trying to force it on me?”
“I wasn’t,” she said defensively. “I was just offering it as an option for a more relaxed hobby that doesn’t land you in the emergency room.”
“I’ve never broken a bone,” I said.
Her forehead crinkled with disbelief. “Never?”
“Never,” I repeated, intentionally leaving out the time I had fallen while skateboarding when I was fourteen. Eleven stitches for a gash on my upper arm. Still had the scar to prove it.
“What are your hobbies if you don’t knit?” I asked.
That question seemed to take her by surprise. “Oh, um…” Frankie thought for a moment but the silence was becoming drawn out.
“You don’t have any hobbies, do you?” I asked.
Damn. When I had insisted on showing Frankie a good time while she was in town, I hadn’t realized how badly she needed it.
“I have hobbies,” she insisted.
“Then name one.”
“What is this, a job interview?” she asked, shrugging my arm off her shoulder. I instantly felt the loss as she shifted an inch away from me.
“No, but shouldn’t you be preparing anyway?”
I’d meant it as a joke but I could tell by the way Frankie stiffened that I’d said the wrong thing. The quietness in the room nearly strangled me. I slipped off the bed and moved in front of her so that I could better search her face. She was chewing on her lip, deep in thought. Her eyes stared straight through my chest.
