The Winter Games

by Sharp, Dr. Rebecca

  “Ally, you can’t blame yourself. The man whose only ever had a two-night-stand at most hears that his best friend’s sister loves him just before his mother dies only to bring her back home and be confronted by said-brother. He may be King of the Mountain, but anyone would be reeling from that.”

  “I don’t know, Jess… I don’t know that he’ll ever let himself find his way back to me. And honestly, I don’t know that he even wants to.”

  Nothing. Fucking. Mattered.

  Miriam was gone. Ally was gone.

  It was just me, my boards, and my blunt. Back to basics.

  I lit up a second one before I went back to the lay up for the last board I had to finish before the Open in a few days. Shit. How many days was it again?

  I’d been sleeping on the couch and living in the basement since the day I’d left Ally’s house. Protein shakes and whiskey out of a mason jar that used to hold carving tools had been my diet. Well, and the weed. I’d turned my workshop into a fucking hotbox; Frost would be proud.

  Then again, I’d texted him to bring me the weed as soon as I got home. He’d come and with that frosty fucking grin, handed me the goods. I could have gotten a hook-up from elsewhere, but I needed him for one more thing. I made him go up and get the snowboard from the loft and take it to Ally.

  It was made for her; she should have it. And God knows I didn’t want to see it again.

  There was no day or night because Ally was my sun. With her gone, my world was only darkness. I just worked on my boards and tried to drink and smoke my way away from the reminders of anything else.

  I should check what day it was.

  Digging underneath the scraps and shavings on the floor, I finally found the damn thing; I’d thrown it down there the other day when it wouldn’t stop fucking ringing.

  Ruth. Nick. Ruth. Jessa.

  But neither Ryder.

  In a way that only I could make happen, I managed to lose my mother, one of my best friends, and my fucking heart all in one day.

  King of the Mountain. King of Misery is what they should have called me.

  Wednesday. Which meant that I had two more days to finish these boards before they had to be delivered for the Open next week.

  I climbed the stairs to the main floor, wincing at all of the sunlight flooding in. It was times like this when I fucking hated all the damn windows. I wanted it as dark as my fucking soul in here.

  I came up here to make shakes and for the couch to sleep on. I hadn’t been in the loft or near the bed since… and I was hard again. Goddammit.

  In my mind, she was still up there sleeping in my bed. Naked. Well-fucked. And with her leg draped over the board I’d made for her. That right there was my slice of heaven which is why I couldn’t go up there.

  Honestly though, she was fucking everywhere. It took all I had to come up to sleep on the couch. If a snowboard was long enough, I would have just slept on one of them. Not that it mattered where I slept. I always saw her in my dreams—my wet fucking dreams. I would never get the images of her pretty ass up in the air bent over my couch. Or the way my dick looked sliding in between those tits. Or the way she felt as I took her right over the fucking edge and she came around me.

  Or the way that she looked at me when she said that she loved me. That was what haunted me the most because that was what I wanted the most—the goddamn sappy shit.

  I finished the blunt and tossed it in the toilet. I was going to need another drink after my shower, that was for sure.

  She’d given me everything—her anger, her hate, her passion, her innocence, and her love. And I fought every breath not to leave this house and crawl back to her on my knees, begging for her forgiveness for leaving her.

  I loved her. There was no question about it. I loved her with every depraved, degenerate, and undeserving cell of my body. But if there was one thing I couldn’t forgive myself for, it was coming between her and Chance. I knew how much they loved each other, just as much as I knew what it was like to care about family that you’d estranged yourself from; I couldn’t do that to her. I wouldn’t do that to her.

  20. I hate how he showed me what love was and what it really felt like to lose it.

  WHEN I’D LEFT FLORIDA, I thought nothing could be more painful than my broken heart.

  I hadn’t been wrong.

  My heart just hadn’t been broken then.

  I’d been hurt, shocked, grief-stricken… My heart had ached for Dylan, for the life he would never have, for losing him, for losing my friend, and for loving him in the only way that I knew how at the time.

  But, I hadn’t been broken.

  Now, I knew. I felt the true depth behind my thought. Now, I knew what a broken heart felt like because now, I knew what love was.

  Some say that love is heaven. But then why do we fall into it?

  No, I’d fallen so far in love with Emmett that the only conclusion I could draw from the decimated pieces of my heart was that love was, in fact, hell.

  And without my girls, I’m not sure I would have survived the following days. When I finally calmed down enough to move from my bed that night, Jessa helped me pack a bag and we called Tammy. Ever the mom, she had hot chocolate and ‘Friends’ already up on the TV by the time that we got there. It certainly wasn’t a fix for either of our heartaches, but if you can’t fix it, you can at least try to forget it.

  Chance tried to call me the next day. I ignored it. I wasn’t ready to talk to him now—or ever. I didn’t go back home and I knew he wouldn’t come here, not with Jessa being around. My friends were my foundation and my shield.

  I went to work with Tammy in the morning while Jessa studied or went on interviews. There was a local physical therapy office that was really interested in hiring her as soon as she became licensed. And she’d finally scheduled her exam for next month, so I’m sure the stress that I dumped into her life at this moment wasn’t appreciated—but she didn’t say anything. I put on a brave face for them most of the time; my new motto for life: Fake it until you make it.

  So, I faked normal. I faked happy. Practice makes perfect.

  The one thing I didn’t fake though was the fact that I still wanted to snowboard. At first, I thought I’d never want to look at the thing again—that being out on the mountain without Emmett would only make everything a thousand times worse. But, oddly enough, I wandered over to the ski school after my shift and Tammy was there almost like she was waiting for me.

  “Hey. I don’t want to upset you so if you don’t want it; I’ll get rid of it you don’t have to worry about a thing,” she quickly prefaced. “Nick dropped off your board this morning.” I followed her eyes over to the building where the pristine, glossy-white masterpiece with my sun on it was propped up against the wall.

  It stung. I almost told her to give it away. But that thought only hurt worse. That was my sunshine. The sunshine that I’d drawn to remind me that even after the darkest of nights comes the dawn.

  “No. It’s ok. I want to try it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. For some reason, I feel like time on the mountain is something that I need.”

  I stayed on the beginner trails because I didn’t have a death wish. I wasn’t trying to turn my emotional hurt into a physical one and I wasn’t trying to injure myself in an attempt to lure Emmett back to my side. I made my way slowly and carefully up and down the mountain, losing myself to it in the process.

  Strange how mountain winds began to sound a lot like ocean waves.

  I’d lost a lot when I lost Emmett. But, strangely enough, he’d also given me closure. In spite of the mind-numbing pain, I also no longer felt the guilt that I’d carried here about Dylan. In trying to make Emmett see that he couldn’t blame himself for what happened to Miriam, I’d had to accept that I could no longer blame myself for what happened to Dyl; to convince Emmett of his innocence, I had to be convinced of my own. And, after two years, I finally began to feel that part of me begin to heal. He had
given me that… and this, I thought as I looked down at my custom snowboard—neither of which he could take back.

  So, every day this week, I left my shift at Cup of Joe, grabbed my own snowboard—which made riding so much more predictable than the stupid rental boards—and rode. The mountain didn’t erase my pain, but it soothed me while I was there; it made being alone not seem so bad. I began to realize why my siblings had become enraptured with this place and this sport so easily.

  Mountains keep us on the edge yet wrap us in the sensation of safety all at once.

  Sometimes Tammy would join me for a run or two. Jessa promised that next week when she was done with her exam that we would all go out for a girls’ day on the slopes.

  Jessa had gone back to her apartment on Monday, but I’d imposed and stayed with Tammy—not that she’d ever say that. I just couldn’t be at my house with all of the memories and none of the people. Tonight was my last night away though. Tomorrow, Channing and Wyatt would be back and I wanted to be there to see them.

  “Tammy, can I ask you something?” I was sitting at her kitchen table eating my bowl of mac-and-cheese while she cleaned the kitchen.

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  “What happened the other week after my birthday? You were going to the doctors a bunch and then you were really sick.” She froze in the middle of wiping down the sink.

  A second later, she looked over to me with a sad smile. “Ally, you have so much going on right now, I don’t want you to be worrying about me when I’ll be just fine.”

  I pushed my bowl to the side. “That’s not convincing, number one. Number two, Tammy, you are one of my best friends. Just because I will probably need a heart transplant if I ever can stomach wanting to love someone again doesn’t mean that I can’t be there for you. You need to let us take care of you every once in a while.”

  She didn’t respond but went back to cleaning the dishes.

  “You don’t have to tell me. Just like I don’t have to put the throw pillows back or fold the sheets or make sure I don’t eat anything on the couch…”

  Sassy threats always did the trick.

  “It’s my endometriosis. Well, it was. Usually the pain and the bleeding isn’t that bad so I went to see my normal doctor. She sent me for bloodwork, ultrasound, and some other tests which is what I had to have done last week.” Tammy pulled out my wine from the fridge. That’s when I knew this was serious. “The tests weren’t back yet but after what happened at your birthday, they did a biopsy on the inside of my right ovary and found abnormal cells.”

  “You mean cancer?” I wasn’t an idiot.

  She looked at me over the wine that she was pouring for me. “They’re not sure. The sample was inconclusive. It could just be from the endometriosis.”

  She pushed the glass to me but I ignored it.

  “Oh, Tammy…”

  She gave me a brave smile and said, “If it is cancer, they will have caught it early.”

  “What does that mean though? Radiation? Chemo?”

  “I-I don’t know,” she stuttered, her head dropping.

  My insides felt like they were being twisted around and around imagining just what was going through Tammy’s mind. She loved kids—it was why she worked at the daycare. She was one of those women who was born to be a mom. But with her endometriosis being so severe, her ability to have kids was always questionable, but still possible.

  “Will they…” I couldn’t even bring myself to say the words out loud.

  She reached back in the cabinet and poured herself a glass of wine; that’s when I knew she’d lost hope. “I don’t know. And there’s no sense in worrying until I do.”

  I was around the counter hugging her before she even had a chance to take a sip.

  “I’m so sorry, Tam.”

  “Don’t be sorry.” I could hear the tears in her voice even though she tried to speak reassuringly. “It will be fine.”

  She didn’t sound convinced.

  I pulled back and she quickly wiped her eyes like I didn’t already know she was crying. She gave me a brave smile before picking up her glass and taking a long sip.

  “I’m fine, Ally. Drink your wine.”

  “I don’t believe you, but I will drink with you.”

  “Did I tell you what Lila did the other day?” Tam asked, changing the subject to something brighter.

  Lila was a little girl at the daycare that Tammy would never admit was her favorite, but we could all tell that she was. She’d first stuck out to Tammy because the girl’s parents never brought her. It was always a nanny or maid of some sort, but all of it had been worked out with the owners ahead of time so no one knew whose child that she was. Obviously, we assumed that she must be the child of someone rich and famous who was trying to protect their anonymity.

  “No, you didn’t.” I appeased her. There would be no more talk of deadly diseases tonight, including love.

  I watched her find her happy place, talking about the kids she took care of. She loved them like they were her own. I knew that finding out she could never have any of her own was the only thing that might break my beautiful friend.

  “I’m engaged!” My sister shoved her hand in my face where a giant diamond sat on her finger.

  I screamed and threw my arms around her. Good thing she was a snowboarder and had crazy-strong legs, otherwise I might have knocked her to the ground.

  Channing and Wyatt had gotten back late last night. I wasn’t even sure I would see them this morning before I had to go into work, but I’d just finished my bowl of cereal when Channing came rushing down the stairs.

  “I can’t believe this! I’m so happy for you!” For the first time in… well, let’s not think about that; let’s just say I was glad to be crying happy tears. “When? How?”

  The next ten minutes proved that my tomboyish sister could in fact blubber like a teenage girl if the perfect conditions were met; those conditions seemed to occur frequently with Wyatt.

  “I-I thought he was acting weird when we were out at Lake Louise, but we spent the whole day on the mountain and nothing happened. I just assumed that it was the school stuff making him nervous and excited. You know how I am,” she groaned, “I hardly know why the man wants me let alone any clue as to why he’d want to marry me.” I gave her my best ‘really?’ stare. “Kidding!”

  “C’mon! Finish the story, I gotta get to work.”

  “Oh! I’m taking you. Let me grab shoes,” she said. I followed her as she continued to talk while searching for her boots. “Anyway, so we ate dinner and then he’d signed us up for one of the horse-drawn sleigh rides. Still, I thought nothing of it. We’d gone on a Northern Lights hunt a few nights before. He was always planning these things.”

  I grabbed my purse and bag of snow clothes as we walked out the door. We moved quickly to my sister’s Jeep because it was freezing outside.

  “So we’re in this sleigh and we get half-way through the ride where they stop and give you snacks and hot chocolate. He reached down like he was going to grab the desserts and next thing I know, there’s this giant ring in front of my face.”

  I could just imagine what happened next. “What did he say? What did you do? Did you scream? Cry? I’m assuming—hoping—you said yes first.”

  “He told me that I had given him a future to look forward to and not because I’d helped him find a passion besides competing; I’d given him a future to look forward to because I was in it. He said that from the first moment that he’d been on a snowboard, he’d known that was his passion and from the first moment he saw me, he’d known I would be his wife.”

  Shit. I burst into tears.

  “How are you not crying right now?” I yelled at her. “God, I hope you cried like a baby when it came from him at least.”

  She laughed, “I did. Oh, I did. It was very, very ugly. I’m just trying to spare you.”

  “Yeah, I bet.” I wiped my face. “So what did you say?”

  “Once I was coh
erent again,” she sighed, “well, you know me so, of course, I looked at him and was like ‘what if this doesn’t fit underneath my snowboard gloves?’”

  And just like that my tears turned into torrents of laughter.

  “I know. I know. To which he quickly clarified that that meant I was saying ‘yes.’”

  “Oh… my… God…” I couldn’t breathe I was laughing so hard.

  She slapped my arm. “Alright already! I still have the ring so I must be doing something right…”

  “Wow…” I gulped in air. “I needed that. Do mom and dad know?”

  She nodded. “I have to tell Chance yet and then I think we are going to have a small party here—nothing fancy. Just maybe grabbing drinks at the pub or something next week.”

  And there went all my humor.

  “Ally?”

  “Yeah?” I gave her my best blank face.

  “Ok, I spilled the beans. Now, it’s your turn. Why do you have a duffel bag of snow gear with you? Last I checked, Cup of Joe didn’t serve coffee actually out on the slopes.”

  “I’ve… uhh… actually been learning to snowboard,” I admitted cheekily.

  “What!” Her excitement rivaled mine on hearing the engagement news. “How? Who?”

  “I started taking classes—your class actually—so that I could surprise you.”

  “Wait… you took my class… with Emmett?” I stayed silent. “Ally… what’s going on? What happened while I was gone?” She pulled to a stop in one of the parking spots where she usually dropped me off and locked the doors before I tried to escape. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Haven’t you talked to Chance?” I almost wished our brother would have ratted me out. At least then I could just respond without having to relive.

  “No. His phone has been off. I was going to go over Nick’s after I dropped you,” she said, looking completely confused.

  I flung my head against the headrest, staring up at the roof of the car.

  “Just remember… you asked for it,” I warned her, my eyes drifting to the ceiling as I confessed, “Emmett and I had a thing. He taught me to snowboard. He made me my own snowboard. I went with him to Denver for a day and Chance found out that we were… that we had… Anyway, now, Chance isn’t talking to me. He also beat the crap out of Emmett and I’m sure he’s not talking to him either. Oh, and Emmett’s not talking to me either. So yeah, I think that covers the basics.”