“Hey!” he protests, looking down.
I lob another one at him. This one nails him right in the head. Whoops. “Oh, sorry, seriously. I wasn’t aiming at your . . .” My voice trails off as he calmly sticks his poles in the snow, reaches down to remove his skis, which he then also thrusts upright in the snowbank.
“What are you doing?”
“Preparing,” he replies.
“For what?”
“For this,” he says, and then he yells and runs at me.
I scream as he picks me up and tosses me into the snow.
“Not in my coat!” I cry as he stuffs a handful of snow inside my collar. Icy water trickles down my neck. I grab a handful of snow and smear it into his face, pushing back his goggles, then use a burst of my angel strength to hurl him off me, flipping him onto his back and throwing my legs over his. He tries in vain to stop me, but I manage to pin down his arms and get a few clumps of snow into the neck of his jacket. I crow in victory.
“Time to surrender,” I laugh.
He smiles up at me. “Okay,” he says.
Oh.
I stop. We’re both breathing heavy, snow clinging to our hair, melting on our clothes. I stare down at him. Snow floats around us. His eyes are flooded with golden warmth. He’s letting me do this. He’s as strong as I am, or even stronger, but he’s stopped fighting me.
He sucks in his bottom lip for a second, the quickest, tiniest motion, to moisten it.
All I would have to do is close my eyes and let go.
Try it, he says without words, so softly it’s like the brush of a feather in my mind. Let’s find out what’s next.
But there’s hesitation in him too; I feel it.
I sling myself off him awkwardly, and do my best to pretend that what almost happened didn’t almost happen. He sits up and starts brushing snow from his shoulders. Then from the top of the hill a voice suddenly booms down on us. Ski patrol. “Everybody all right down there?”
“Yeah,” Christian calls back. “We’re fine.” He looks at me and his expression suddenly changes. “I found it,” he says, reaching into the snow beside him. “It was here all along.”
“What?” I ask a bit dazedly.
“Your ski.”
That and something else.
“You look like you’ve been having fun.” This from Tucker, who I happen to bump into in the lodge at lunchtime. I feel my cheeks burn, and for a moment I can hardly take a breath, although I try to act calm. Christian, thankfully, is off getting us some food.
“Yep, fun, fun, fun,” I finally respond. “I think I know what I’m doing now. On the slopes, I mean. I’m solidly blue square. Not sure I’m up to black diamonds yet.” He grins. “I’m glad you finally decided to come up. You hardly ever use that fancy season pass your mom bought you at Christmas.” This is a serious accusation, coming from him. A season pass is more than two thousand smackers. Not using it is like tossing money into the fireplace. It’s a crime.
“Yeah, well, I’ve been kind of preoccupied lately.”
He immediately shifts gears into super-supportive-boyfriend mode.
“Everything going okay?” he asks. “How’s your mom?”
“She’s all right. Having a harder time getting around, I guess.”
“Anything I can do, you holler,” he says. “I’m here for you.”
“Thanks.”
“Want to ski later? I’m teaching Tiny Tot lessons until four, but then we can carve up this mountain. I bet I could still teach you a thing or two.”
“That sounds great, but . . .”
“You probably have to get home to your mom,” he assumes, his eyes sympathetic.
“No, I . . .”
Christian picks this minute to appear behind Tucker, carrying a tray.
“Sorry that took so long. I put everything on it,” he says, nodding at my cheeseburger. “I didn’t know what you liked.”
Tucker turns, looks at Christian, looks at the food, looks at Christian again. “She doesn’t like onions,” he says. He turns back to me. “You came up here with him?”
“Uh, he asked me and I thought it sounded like a good idea. I kind of needed to get out of the house for a while.”
Tucker nods absently, and I’m suddenly aware of how my hair is still wet from the snow melting into it, my cheeks flushed, my skin bright, and it’s not just from the cold.
Get a grip, Clara, I tell myself. Nothing happened. You and Christian are friends, and Tucker gets that, and it’s okay to go skiing with your friend. Nothing happened.
Sorry, Christian says in my head. I’m getting you in trouble, aren’t I?
No. It’s all good, I reply, mortified that he can hear me thinking right now, picking out the guilty thoughts from my brain.
“I was a bit afraid to ask her, frankly,” Christian says to Tucker.
Tucker crosses his arms. “Is that right?”
“I went skiing with her last year, and she almost killed us both.” Hey, I protest silently . I did not almost kill us. Don’t tell him that.
“Come on, don’t bother denying it,” Christian aims at me.
“It was my first time on a chairlift. Cut me some slack,” I shoot back.
“Well, she was just telling me that she’s getting so much better now,” Tucker says.
“I took her up to Dog Face,” Christian tells him. “You should have seen the wipeout she had. Killer.”
“Oh yeah? I didn’t know she ever fell,” Tucker says.
It’s like watching a train wreck, this conversation.
“Partial yard sale,” Christian says. “Biffed it big-time.”
“Hello? I’m standing right here.” I punch him on the arm.
“It was pretty damn—”
“It was not funny,” I cut him off. “It was cold.”
“You’re supposed to be immune to cold,” he says. “It’s good practice.”
“Right. Uh-huh.” I try not to smile. “Practice.”
“Sounds hilarious,” Tucker says. He glances at his watch. “Okay, so I have to go. Some of us have to work.” He leans in and kisses my cheek, which is a bit awkward with the ski boots and the full winter gear and all, but we manage. “So, meet me at four at the bottom of the Moose Creek quad? I can take you home, if Chris here doesn’t mind.”
“No problem,” Christian says like it doesn’t bother him at all. “At four o’clock, she’s all yours. That still leaves us what, three good hours of skiing?”