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I stay quiet. It’s fairly easy to guess who she was here with and I can’t help but wonder where he is now. She hasn’t mentioned her boyfriend once, and with New Year’s Eve just days away, one would think that they would be together. Maybe he’s meeting her here at the lake and with this thought my stomach turns acrid. I’d rather not think about the two of them together, but she keeps on rambling while loose pieces of her hair blow around in the wind.
“Avery, Cora, and I try to come down a few times a season. Avery just likes to ski, but Cora, she loves it all. Her family takes these elaborate trips all over the world every year, and she’s spent a lot of time on slopes just trying to avoid them.”
“She doesn’t like her family?” This surprises me. What I know of Cora is that she likes everyone.
“Actually, I think it’s more that they don’t like her,” she says, frowning.
“Why?” Cora is lovely. I’m not sure how anyone could not like her.
She shrugs one shoulder. “Rich people like their image, and she doesn’t fit into the one her family has created.”
Doesn’t fit. This is absurd to me. Cora’s very classy, talented, funny, and kind. Of the three of them, she’s the one who puts herself out there the most. Avery is indefinitely shy, but she has her reasons. Emma, while she’s beautiful and outgoing, is small. Her presence isn’t as large as Cora’s because she’s tall and she usually commands the room.
“Hmm,” I murmur.
Once we reach the top, both of us easily slide out of the lift and shuffle toward the black slope. I’m not sure if she should be on this run, but I guess she knows what she can do and what she can’t. Taking a moment, I strap my other foot into the board and stare out across the white horizons.
So beautiful. So calming. So my place.
“See you at the bottom,” Emma says, quickly pulling me from my reverie, and then I watch as she drops over the edge and glides back and forth down the mountain looking like every fantasy I’ve ever had come true.
Damn.
Raising my hand to my chest, I rub it a few times in hopes of wiping away the ache, an ache that always seems to come with this girl. With the sun reflecting off the snow, I pull down my goggles and follow her. I should do my own run and just go, but I find myself weaving around her until a blur of purple whizzes past me, quickly followed by the adorable sound of her laugh.
I wasn’t expecting her to keep up with me, but she did. Looking like a skilled athlete, she owned the mountain as she cut left and right, handled the fresh powder, and came real close to beating me.
No one comes close to beating me.
She cuts her board, and snow flies as she stops next to me, yanks her googles up, and full-on grins. Her cheeks are red, her eyes are bright, and my insides squeeze hard at the sight.
“Oh my gosh, that was so much fun.” There is visible delight and joy radiating off her from the adrenaline, and I have a hard time not letting it affect me. “You were right, this is definitely something we needed.”
I don’t say anything, I just nod in acknowledgment while unclipping my boots. Switching from one hand to the other, I wipe the snow off my gloves and do my best not to look at her.
“I’ve forgotten how much I love the feeling of racing down the mountain. And you—” Her grin grows into a full-blown smile. “Wow, I didn’t know you could snowboard like that.”
“Grew up near here.”
“I know, I remember.” Placing one of her hands on my arm for balance, she leans over to unclip too. She touched me when she was on the back of the snowmobile out of necessity, but this, now, is her touching me because she’s comfortable doing so. I’m not sure how this makes me feel. “But there are people who snowboard and people who snowboard, if you know what I mean. And you definitely snowboard.”
“Thanks,” I mumble, not certain if I should be feeling proud or indifferent. Proud wins out. I’m never indifferent to her, no matter how hard I try, no matter what I say.
Turning away from me, she looks back up the hill to watch the people coming in, but all I can do is stare at her. She’s happy to be here, and surprisingly, I think I’m happy to have her here.
“Who taught you to snowboard?” I ask, breaking the silence.
“My brother,” she answers without looking at me.
My brows rise in confusion. “You have a brother? I didn’t know this.”
She nods and looks at her feet, knocking some of the snow off the boot. “Yep. He’s six years older than me, married, lives near my parents and has two kids. We’re close, but not close at the same time if that makes any sense.”
“How was this not mentioned before?” I ask her, instantly regretting the question, and she knows I’m referencing last year when we were texting every day.
“I don’t know. I think there are a lot of things we didn’t talk about during that time frame. There are a lot of things we don’t know about each other.”
I know she’s right. All this time, I’ve put all the blame on her, but the truth is, there are plenty of things I could have and should have told her but didn’t. She was exciting, us together was new and thrilling, and I do recognize that it was naïve of me to think there would be no hiccups, to think a relationship between us would be easy. Everyone has a past. It never occurred to me to ask her what hers was.
