Page 74 of Head Over Skis

‘Let me take those for you,’ he says, gesturing towards my poles and the skis still attached to my boots.

‘Thanks,’ I say, sensing Rory stiffening behind me, clearly keeping tabs on our interaction. I use my poles to unclick my boots, but one keeps slipping out of the circular hole. I go to try again, only for a foot to appear, heel pressing down on the clasp and freeing my boot.

I look up, Rory’s body temptingly close to mine and I get the bizarre feeling that he might kiss me. Instead, his eyes flick to Adam, his voice so quiet only the two of us can hear it when he speaks.

‘That was fast.’

I try to keep the shock from my face at the way he spits the words out, accusing me of something he surely knows isn’t true. I want to tell him nothing’s going on with Adam, that this meeting is about putting a lid on things, and not restarting anything.

But the fact he’s even had those thoughts and thinks it’s such an inevitability shows he doesn’t know anything about me at all. For someone who I thought was so good at reading me, I’m hurt he can get things so wrong. I reach down and scoop up my skis, handing them to Adam and turning away from Rory without giving him a response. Let him think what he likes, it shouldn’t matter to me anyway.

I follow Adam to one of the bars on the slope, and we snake through the tables full of groups drinking and toasting to another good day until we reach a quiet corner.

‘Cider?’

I nod, and he disappears to the bar while I try and get my thoughts together. It’s clear after the tussle between him and Rory two days ago that he still loves me. The last few weeks haven’t been easy, and I’ve often found myself trying not to think about our relationship at all to avoid coming to terms with the state it’s in. But the more I’ve reflected on it, the more I’ve come to realise the writing was on the wall long before the day I found him in bed with his colleague.

He returns from the bar, a pint glass in each hand, and he places the lighter-coloured one in front of me. Both of us take long sips, neither eager to be the one to start this off, but I take the plunge. ‘How are you doing?’

A simple question on the surface, but he knows I mean more than how he’s doing in this moment.

‘Could be better,’ he says with a sad smile, and I wait, encouraging him to go on. Today is about laying everything out on the table, and I know we need to allow each other time.

‘It’s hard… to accept that it’s over?’ His voice goes up at the end, like he’s questioning if that’s the truth.

My stomach twists as I take another sip from my glass, trying to delay having to respond. ‘I know. But I think if we’re being honest with ourselves, it was over a long time ago.’

His shoulders slump, that hope he’d held that there was a chance of something more happening between us again gone. But I know if he really thinks about it, he’ll see that I’m right.

‘Why do you think it didn’t work out? Why did I fuck it up?’ He tries to say that last bit jokily, but I can tell he really thinks he did.

I shake my head and reach across the table to squeeze his hands as I watch the emotions play out across his face. ‘It wasn’t all on you. It was me, too.’

Until now, I felt like I was in the dark about why things hadn’t worked out, when I’d thought it was all I wanted. But I’ve been going over and over some of the things Rory said this morning, and Tilly earlier in the week, and it’s made me realise some things about myself.

‘I was so set on making our relationship work, I don’t think I let myself stop and wonder if ours was really the right relationship. I think I was trying to jam us together into something long-term, when maybe what we had was only supposed to be temporary. A little wild, chaotic, wonderful too, but fleeting. Something we’d both grow from, not something that we’d be stunted by.’

It took Tilly telling me plainly that I need to loosen up, and Rory asking me what I’m so afraid of, to realise the cycle I was stuck in. I may not be at the point to throw it all away like he wants me to, but I am at the point to realise I don’t need to hold onto everything if it’s only out of fear of disrupting the status quo.

Adam squeezes my hands back, drawing me back to our conversation. ‘I’m sorry too. I’m sorry I handled things so badly after we ended. You didn’t deserve that.’

An image flashes in my mind of that night, of opening the door and discovering him with her, and it still makes my heart twist.

‘I never wanted to be like him, but the way I treated you then, and at times on this trip—’

‘Look at me,’ I cut him off, reaching forward to rest my hand against his cheek and lifting his gaze back in line with mine. ‘You’re nothing like him.’

I watch as he tries to believe me, but the doubts are still flickering there.

I wonder if another reason why I tried so hard to make us work was because I wanted to show him good relationships could happen. But now I worry that in doing so even when the relationship wasn’t right, I’ve done the opposite.

‘But maybe I am. The things I did, and how I didn’t fight for you—’

‘But maybe I fought too hard,’ I say, interrupting him again before he spirals.

Neither of us says anything else for a long time. Instead, we remain just as we are, hands still held tightly. Both of us sensing the ending of something, but also a new beginning. When that feeling of finality settles, I find myself smiling.

‘We had a good run, didn’t we? Final weeks aside.’