by Audrey Bell
“Why don’t I teach you how to ski?”
“Because I know how to ski and it’s stupid,” he grumbles.
“You sound like you’re four.”
“Because I’m dying to teach you how to snowboard.”
There’s no reason not to. “What the hell,” I say. “Fine.”
He grins like the cat that ate the canary. “Really?”
“I said fine.”
“You’re going to go snowboarding with me?”
“Yes,” I say.
“It’s really hard.”
“It can’t be that hard,” I say. I roll my eyes. “One ski sideways. Sounds peachy.”
***
“I hate you,” I say, as he holds his hands out to me to pull me off my ass for the fifth time in as many seconds. “This is too much exertion for one day.”
He laughs at me. “You’re rocking it. Come on.”
I make it to the ski lift sure of two things: I hate Hunter Dawson as much as I hate snowboards.
It’s a recipe for a disaster—my feet want to separate, but they’re trapped, and I just can’t get my head wrapped around the notion that moving down the hill with my feed perpendicular to its angle is safe or normal or healthy. How does anyone ever stick it out long enough to get good at this?
We take a short lift up to an easy green run. Hunter grabs my hands coming off the lift—and it’s a good thing he does, because I nearly knock the both of us over.
“Easy, Pippa,” he cautions, pulling me down, so I’m sitting in between his legs. He tightens the straps on my snowboard.
“I hate you right now.”
He laughs. “Trust me—when you get it—it’s like the best feeling in the world.”
I grin, trying to focus on the rush of advice he’s giving me, trying to get a feel of the board on my feet—but just when I feel like I’ve got it, I tumble.
“Use your back leg,” he says. He catches me waist. “Here. Chill. I’m not going to get you hurt. Just, use your back leg.”
“You’re going up again,” he insists at the bottom of the slope.
“I’m going to murder you.”
“You know what, I’m a fucking good snowboarder. I’m going to teach you how to snowboard,” he says.
I sit on his lap on the lift this time, despite the obvious annoyance of the snow patrolman who waves at us to move. But if there’s one person who is never going to get hurt on a ski lift, it’s Hunter Dawson.
He wraps his arms around my waist and I press my board against his feet and he slides the both of us safely down the short slope from the lift.
“Alright,” he says, dropping me well out of the way of the foot traffic.
“I cannot believe I consented to this.”
“Shut up,” he mutters.
This time, I get it—at least I start to get it. I feel the ground moving out beneath me and I turn, and control. I stumble, but I control it.
“Good,” he shouts. “Hey, that’s hell good. Fuck yeah.”
I laugh, managing a shaky stop.
I fall a bunch more times, but he’s right, once I have my feet under me, I love it. It’s like floating.
***
“I’m done,” I breathe after our third run. “Done, done, done, done.”
He laughs as I kick off the board. He takes me by the waist and kisses me. We’re on the foot of a mountain—anyone could see. But he kisses me hard like he doesn’t care and for a second, I don’t either.
We grab food and hot chocolate up at the eagle’s nest, on the second floor of the Snowbird Center, overlooking the major blue run that leads back to the center, and the lifts running high up into the mountain.
“What did you do this weekend?”
He shrugs. “Hung out with Shane.”
“Your brother?”
He nods. “Yeah. Might take him to Europe with me.”
I blink twice. “Europe?”
“Yeah—I’m going on this tour for Red Bull,” he sighs. “We’re shooting a back country video.”
I hesitate. Is this the sort of thing he’s supposed to tell me?
He glances at me. “Sorry. I guess I should have mentioned that sooner.”
“When do you leave?
“Christmas Eve.”
I nod. Soon, then. Less than week. “For how long.”
“I dunno,” he bites his lip. “Won’t be more than a month. It depends on the guys and the footage they get.” He shrugs.
“Got it,” I say. A month. I look at his green eyes, which meet mine searchingly.
“Is that okay?”
I smile. “Yeah.” I laugh. “Hunter, we just started…dating. You don’t need to change your work schedule for me.”
“Is that what were doing?”
“Dating? I thought that’s what they called it.”
He pauses. “So, are you my girlfriend or what?”
I shrug. “Or what?”
He smiles. “Come on. Don’t make me make a fool of myself.”
“I can be your girlfriend,” I offer. “If you want me to be your girlfriend.”
“I’d like that.”
I smile. “I feel like you probably have to Google what that entails.”
“Sh,” he says. “Don’t ruin the moment.”
I look at him, the glee and vulnerability on his face making me want to laugh and touch him at once. I take a sip of hot chocolate to keep myself from saying something stupid, like I’m kind of obsessed with you. And when I lower my eyes, he catches my chin and kisses me briefly. And I think that I could really, really get used to this, too.
Chapter Nineteen
I’m lying in bed with Hunter, lazy and boneless and happy, when my phone rings. Lottie.
I ignore it.
It rings again. Lottie once more. “Hey?” I say. “Everything okay?”
“Um, yeah, I mean,” she pauses. “I tried to come to your room.”
I don’t say anything for a moment. “Okay?”
“You weren’t there.”
“That’s right. I’m not there.”
“Are you with him?”
I nod. “Um, yeah. Yeah, I am.”
I can hear her hesitation across the line.
“I can talk though,” I say getting out of bed.
“Well, it’s, just—look, I think Laurel’s behind it, but there are some nasty posts on a few skiing blogs,” she pauses. “About you and Hunter. I just—I don’t know. I thought I should let you go.”
“Wait what?”
“I-I think Laurel. I think she’s jealous? I just. I thought you should know. I didn’t want you to…”
“Send them to me,” I say. “What do they say?”
“They’re not—you don’t want to read them.”
“You can’t honestly expect me to not want to read them after this, Lo.”
“I don’t…”
“Send them,” I repeat. I pull on a sweatshirt of Hunter’s, sort of surprised by how boldly I grab his clothing. I hang up after she promises to email me.
“Can I borrow your laptop?”
Hunter yawns. “Fuck, don’t look at my internet history.”
“I won’t.”
I pick it up and curl up at the desk in the corner, banging the enter key to get it to load. I log into my Gmail and click on the first of two links.
And start to read.
The words blur before my eyes—I struggle to put them together, since there’s so much bitter anger here. So many accusations.
Whore.
Her boyfriend hasn’t even been dead a year.
Using him for his money.
Thinks Doug Cannon’s son can help her win races…
My fingers curl, watching Hunter resting in bed, totally oblivious to the fact that I’m seething, not sure whether I’m furious or humiliated. How dare Laurel use Danny like this? She wasn’t ever even nice to him. He fucking hated her as much as I do.
Someone has uploaded the pictures from the benefi
t—the same ones that Lottie saw at Jackson. Me in a red dress and Hunter in a tuxedo. We look like we’re in love. I shudder at the captions.
slut….
Danny deserves better…I always thought he was too good for her.
I swallow the vitriol. I shouldn’t read every comment but I do. And Hunter, and the way he makes me feel, disappears to this tiny white pinprick against a sea of black hatred.
I know Laurel has to be behind this—at least partly. But, I don’t know why Lottie would have shown it to me. I probably would never have found it on my own.
I close the laptop screen after I’ve read every word. It’s like it’s not happening to me, because I’m alone in my room and its just text on my page, but there’s a coil in the pit of my stomach and it just seems to be growing tighter.
And there’s a roar in my ears, slut, slut, slut, slut—like some anonymous chorus chanting to me.
I open my phone, to Lottie’s original text message. Even if it feels like I’ve been punched in the gut, I’m not going to let them know that. And for all I know, Lottie could be reporting back to Laurel.
I write back:
haha. how stupid. who has time for that kind of thing? And then I turn off my phone, because I’m so humiliated, it hurts to breathe.
Laurel. Fucking Laurel.
“Hey,” Hunter says, he looks at me. “Hey,” his voice changes. “What’s with you, Speedster?”
“Nothing. Some stupid middle school shit that Lottie sent me.”
He reaches his hand out of the laptop.
“Let me see.”
“I don’t want you to see it.”
“I want to see it. You look like you just saw a ghost.”
I don’t hand him the laptop, so he crawls from the bed and jumps to his feet, lean, naked, gorgeous and snags it off the table.
“Hunt…”
He glances at the screen quickly and then at me. And then back at the screen. “Who the fuck is responsible for this?”
“Probably Laurel.”
“What a cunt,” he mutters.
“Hunter…”
He looks at me. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I say.
“You look kind of…shattered,” he mutters.
“I’m fine.” I swallow. “She’s a bitch.”
“A cunt.”
“I’m fine. Really, Hunter, I’m fine,” I smile at him weakly. “It’s annoying. Girls are annoying sometimes.”
He holds the laptop and looks at one comment in particular. “I’m not using you,” he says softly.
“I know,” I say, although it feels good to hear. “I’m not using you either.”
“I’m not—this isn’t. You’re my girlfriend,” he says quickly. “Laurel was never my girlfriend.”
I smile at him. “That happened kind of fast.”
“Well, get over it. I like you. I like you a lot. You might be one of my favorite people around.”
He crawls back onto the bed. “There are whole blogs that talk about how much I suck at snowboarding. And, trust me, I suck at a lot of shit—but snowboarding is not one of them. You can’t pay attention to stuff like this.”
“I thought you said everyone on Google was a genius.”
“I say a lot of stupid shit,” he says. He reaches for me, pulls me by the hips, and kisses me. “And you’re way too good to be reading this crap.”
I laugh. “Right.”
“I know how you think,” he nuzzles my neck softly. And when he reaches my ear, he whispers: “Don’t believe any of that shit.”
“I don’t,” I say softly.
He pauses, leaning heavily on me. The weight is nice, centering almost. “You okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“Good. Cause I gotcha if you aren’t,” he says softly.
Chapter Twenty
Training gears up. I’m wary of Lottie this time—I decide not to think about what she does, and I start feeling my legs coming back, faster and faster.
Mike signs me up for a confidence-boosting race. I go to the neighboring mountain, Alta, to a small event, just a level below the elite circuit. I sweep every event. It’s meaningless, but my confidence comes back enough for me to not spend the Christmas break in a frenzy over whether I’ll be okay when January races begin.
Things with Hunter start moving quickly after we start sleeping together. Before long, I’m wearing his clothes and he’s eating out of my refrigerator, and when we’re not training, we’re together.
The blogs don’t stop. Lottie, or someone, lets whoever anonymously posts such cruel things know about every thing that’s happening between me and Hunter.
Even Mike gets wind of it, asking me if I’m okay. From the look on his face when he says Hunter’s name, I can tell he thinks Hunter’s a distraction, at best.
“Be careful, Pippa,” he says.
But, I ignore him. Mike never warned me about Laurel or Lottie. And it turns out they’re both more dangerous than Hunter.
***
One lazy morning a few days before he’s set to leave for Europe, Hunter rolls on top of me in bed and rubs his nose against mine. “Want to meet my brother?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Sure.”
“He has a race in Park City,” he says. “I told him I’d come watch.”
We drive forty-five minutes over to the mountain, parking next to a Range Rover. I remember these competitions—intense, rich parents, and kids who didn’t want to be there. Or kids who loved it before it got so serious.
Everything has gotten even more serious in the past ten or fifteen years. These races used to resemble disorganized, youth soccer games. Now, they’ve turned into slick, professionalized events where kids are treated like pros, instead of kids, and fun is thrown out the window in the name of competition.
Hunter frowns when he sees his father walking with Shane, whose small for twelve, with tousled sandy hair, and green eyes just like Hunter’s. “My dad’s pretty intense about this shit,” he mutters. “I think he’s going to give Shane a heart attack.”
“Hi,” Shane calls. He has a soft voice and he’s thrilled to see Hunter. He throws his arms around Hunter’s.
Hunter lifts him off of his feet and swings him around. “Hey, kid.”
I smile at Doug. “It’s nice to see you again.”
Doug shakes my hand and then looks dismissively at Hunter. “Come on, Shane’s gotta get ready.”
Hunter sets Shane down. “You psyched or what?”
“Yeah, man,” Shane says.
“This is my girlfriend, Pippa,” Hunter says, nodding at me.
“Hi.” He shakes my hand with a surprisingly firm grip. “Nice to meet you, Pippa.”
“You too, Shane.”
“Shane, come on,” Doug says. His voice is clipped—like he’s in a rush and he’s annoyed he’s the only one taking it seriously.
“Rock out, buddy,” Hunter says. “You want us to come up with you?”
“Yeah!”
“You need to focus. You can see him after the race, Shane.”
“If he wants me to…”
“Hunter, he doesn’t need any distractions,” Doug says shortly. He pushes Shane towards the lift up to the race’s start line.
Hunter rolls his eyes.
“Shane’s adorable.”
“Yeah,” Hunter nods. He focuses his gaze on Shane and Doug headed up the mountain.
Your dad is kind of intense, huh?
“I hate this shit,” Hunter says.
“What?”
“Kids’ ski races.”
I look around. It seems a little ridiculous, but mostly innocuous. “Why?”
“I don’t know. Bad memories, I guess.”
I kick the snow with the toe of my Sorrell boot. “From racing?”
“From losing,” he says. “My dad getting all…fucking crazy about the fact I couldn’t win races.” He smiles weakly and shakes his head. “I used to get so nervous before these things. Even
when I was like nine or ten, I’d throw up before my races.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah,” he nods and kicks the snow.
“Was your dad just…intense?”
“Yeah, that’s one way of putting it,” he mumbles. I frown. “I guess a lot of these parents are, though.”
I nod. “Yeah.”
It’s definitely more widespread than it should be—parents who ride their kids too hard. You’d think someone like Doug Cannon, who probably saw his competitors crack up and fall apart under the pressure, would know that it never worked out like the parent thought it would. That you ended up with a kid who hated you almost as much as he hated the sport. Or that your kid would end up drug-addicted and miserable, traumatized by never living up to impossible expectations.
Hunter gnaws his lip, watching Shane. He’s nervous for him.
Doug trudges over to us. “You guys are at the wrong race.”
“How is he?” Hunter asks, as we both turn to follow him over the slopes to a run further away.
Doug shrugs. “He gets inside his head too much.”
“He’s eleven.”
“And?” Doug asks.
Hunter turns back to glance at the new slope. It’s steeper and the flags are closer together. The banner reads ‘U14 Park City Boys.’
“Why is he competing up an age division?” Hunter demands incredulously.
“There are twelve years olds competing in the U16 age division,” Doug says dismissively.
“Well, let’s just make Shane feel like shit about that,” Hunter mutters.
“Look, I don’t know why you come to his races if they stress you out so much.”
“They don’t stress me out,” Hunter replies. “I don’t know why you’re pushing him like this.”
“Well,” Doug shrugs. “This is racing. It’s competitive. I don’t know what to tell you. If he’s nervous, he’s nervous. Part of life is performing when you’re nervous.”
“I don’t know why you’d move him up an age division when he was having such a hard time against kids his own age.”
“He wasn’t having a hard time against kids his own age and he’ll have a head start a year from now.”
“Yeah, if he doesn’t have a nervous breakdown first,” Hunter says with a scowl.
“Not everyone looks at every challenge like a reason to have nervous breakdown, Hunter,” Doug says. “Just because you couldn’t handle it doesn’t mean he can’t.”