by Ania Ahlborn
Oona padded across the kitchen and nudged Jane’s elbow with her nose. Instinctively, Jane scratched behind the dog’s ears before getting up, flipping off the kitchen lights, and moving down the hall, the husky at her heels.
It was only after she was halfway up the stairs that she realized it hadn’t been Oona she’d heard outside.
“I’m in love.” Despite her wet hair, Lauren was already in bed when Jane came into the master bedroom, the covers tucked beneath her arms, a Vogue magazine she’d found in the bathroom opened to a Chanel ad. “I just thought it fair to tell you now rather than springing it on you later, when I’m knee-deep in wedding planning and packing my bags for Switzerland.”
Jane shook her head as she closed the door behind her, and Lauren’s smile faded when she saw Jane’s shoulders slump.
“What?” she asked. “Why were you down there so long? What happened?” She sat up, tossing the magazine aside. “Did that chick go back downstairs, looking all frou-frou French even though she’s totally not? Did you see her all quiet and demure at dinner, like she was too good to participate in the conversation? What the hell was that all about?”
Jane pushed her fingers through her hair.
“So?” Lauren pressed. “What happened?”
“Nothing. I’m just tired.”
Lauren frowned. “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Pretend like nothing’s wrong? It’s okay, Janey; the world won’t crumble if you show some weakness.”
Jane sighed and moved across the room to her bag, crouching beside it before fishing through her things.
“Do you want to go home?” It was the right thing to ask—the best-friend thing to ask. Lauren was sure Ryan would understand, confident that if he knew Jane was having a hard time he’d pack them up and drive back to Phoenix at first light. She saw the way they were with each other, amazed that a pair of siblings could be as in sync as they were. It made her jealous. She could never be like that with Kevin. She’d hardly spoken to her older brother, or any of her crazy family, in over a year. They were all two-faced, dramatic, needy. But Jane and Ryan both had this one perfect person they could tell everything to. They probably didn’t even have to speak for one to know what the other was thinking.
“No,” Jane said from the floor, tossing a pair of pajama pants onto the carpet beside her. Lauren said nothing as she watched her friend slip into thoughtfulness, Jane’s eyes fixed upon the floor, her short hair framing her face. Feeling the sadness waft off her friend like waves of heat, Lauren crawled across the bed to get closer. She hadn’t seen Jane like this before.
“Janey…”
“I could stay here forever,” Jane confessed. “Isn’t that sad?” When she looked up, Lauren offered her a faint smile.
“Sawyer isn’t what I expected,” Lauren said.
“He isn’t what anyone ever expects.”
“There’s definitely something about him,” Lauren agreed. “Mystery.”
“Grace,” Jane said softly. “He doesn’t walk; he floats. His feet don’t touch the ground.”
“Well, he’s obviously human,” Lauren assured her. “Look at the girl he picked to be with. There’s something wrong with him for sure.”
“Maybe.” Jane shrugged.
“Oh, come on, Jane. Stop being so fair all the time. She sucks. You can hate her.”
“I don’t want to hate her. I want him to be happy.”
“And what about you?” Lauren asked. “Don’t you count?”
Jane frowned at that and Lauren sighed. She pushed the blankets away from herself, crawled across the bed, and slid onto the floor next to her friend.
“Why don’t you just tell him?”
“I can’t,” Jane said. “It wouldn’t be right.”
“Except that you invited him to your wedding because you wanted him to crash it,” Lauren reminded her. “You probably shouldn’t have ever married Alex at all.”
Jane opened her mouth to protest, but Lauren shook her head, refusing to let her talk her way out of it.
“Who does that, Janey? Who invites a guy to her wedding with the sole hope of that guy sweeping her away from the altar? It’s insane. It’s always been insane, and maybe that’s why it didn’t work with Alex. I know you loved him, and he’s a bastard for cheating on you—I hope that asshole burns in hell—but have you ever stopped to think that maybe all of this fell apart because it wasn’t meant to be in the first place? Have you ever stopped to think that maybe you should screw all this fairness and finally tell Sawyer how you feel?”
Jane shook her head, her bottom lip trembling.
“Why?” Lauren demanded. “Because it’ll put him in an awkward position?”
Jane covered her face with her hands.
“And what if he’s in the same boat?” Lauren asked. “What if he’s just as tortured as you? What if all he wants is to be with you again?”
“Then why would he come here with his stupid girlfriend?” Jane spit out.
“Because he’s a guy,” Lauren said flatly. “And guys are morons.”
They both went silent for a moment, and eventually Jane pulled in a steadying breath and looked up at Lauren. “You really like him?” she asked softly.
“Sure,” Lauren said. “I mean, I don’t really know him very well, but—”
“No,” Jane cut in. “I mean Ryan.”
Lauren diverted her eyes to the carpet as she tucked a strand of damp hair behind an ear, a bashful smile coiling across her mouth.
“He likes you too,” Jane said softly. “I can tell.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “You’re not afraid of him. Most girls are.”
“What’s there to be afraid of?”
“He’s aggressive, determined,” Jane listed off. “He stole my share of ambition; that’s what our dad used to say.”
“How sweet of him.”
“It’s true.” Jane shrugged. “You can’t argue with facts.”
“You also can’t argue that your dad has a way with words,” Lauren scoffed.
Crumpling her pajamas in her hand, Jane got to her feet and moved to the bathroom.
Lauren listened to the sound of an electric toothbrush. “You still haven’t answered my question,” she said after the water shut off, staring down at her hands, wondering how much aspiration was too much to bear. She knew about Ryan’s inability to keep a relationship, and maybe that was his problem—his inextinguishable drive, his determination to be something bigger than himself. Maybe that resolve eclipsed everyone around him, dooming him to a life of solitude despite his smile, despite his undeniable appeal. “You were down there a lot longer than it takes to stick dishes in the washer, and I know that look.”
Jane stepped out of the bathroom, tossing her clothes onto the floor next to her bag before crawling into bed. Lauren slid back onto the mattress as well, fluffing her pillow before sticking her legs beneath the sheets.
“If you know that look, then you shouldn’t be asking,” Jane told her.
“Did he stay down there with you?”
Pressing her lips together in a tight line, Jane offered Lauren a hesitant smile.
“Seriously?” Lauren asked. Jane slid beneath the comforter and grabbed the Vogue from the center of the bed. “What did he say?”
“Nothing.”
Lauren snatched the magazine from her grasp, and Jane chuckled at her insistence.
“Don’t be an ass,” Lauren told her. “Spill it.”
Jane lifted her shoulders in a faint shrug. “How about this; I won’t ask you what Ryan said when you both end up behind a tree.”
Lauren rolled her eyes, but Jane didn’t give in. She pulled the sheets up to her chin and shut her eyes shut against the light. Lauren tossed the magazine onto the floor and followed suit after clicking off the lamp next to the bed.
They lay in the darkness together for a long while, the wood crackling in the fireplace, the flames casting
weird shadows across the walls. Eventually, Jane’s voice whispered through the shadows.
“We have the same problem.”
And for a while Lauren couldn’t put together what Jane meant—not until she remembered what she had said the second Jane had stepped into the room.
I’m in love.
Except that Lauren had mostly been joking, and Jane was heartbreakingly sincere.
“It’s interesting,” April said, pulling one of Sawyer’s old T-shirts over her head. “I expected them to be…I don’t know, more…” She hesitated, searching for the right words.
“Like us?” Sawyer asked, sliding the can of Coke onto a side table.
April shrugged her shoulders. Stepping over to the window, she parted the slats of the blinds to look outside—nothing but night.
“I guess,” she said after a moment, tossing a look at him over her shoulder. He was throwing cushions onto the floor, their bed a foldout couch that would have her hunchbacked and sore by morning. She had been irked when Ryan had led them to the farthest room down the hall, away from everyone else, parking them in a room that was more a makeshift library than it was meant for guests, but she’d held her tongue. She hadn’t mentioned that it seemed like they were being quarantined from the rest of the group, doubting that if Sawyer had come alone he’d have been stationed so far from everyone else. Sawyer hadn’t mentioned their room assignment either, and April wondered if he simply hadn’t noticed or was keeping quiet like she was.
“It just seems like something you would have told me,” she said, stepping across the room to grab the can of soda while Sawyer unfolded the bed, the stiff metal springs creaking in the quiet of the room. She cracked the can open and turned away from him, her gaze scanning the spines of hardback books squeezed tight onto a shelf. They were all classics—Austen and Brontë and Sir Walter Scott. Her fingers drifted across Stoker’s Dracula, one of the few she’d read. All those books made her feel small, uneducated, but they also made her inwardly grimace at how ostentatious they were. Not a trace of King and Koontz, of books people actually read and enjoyed.
“Does it?” Sawyer asked, stepping away from the couch as if to assess his morning back pain. April frowned as she tugged down on the hem of her shirt, her bare legs growing cold.
“Don’t get mad about it,” she said. “I’m just making an observation.”
“Did I say I was mad about it?” he asked, tossing a folded sheet onto the bed. April took a sip of soda before grabbing the end closest to her, sliding an elastic hem over one of the mattress corners.
“You don’t have to say it,” she told him. “It’s kind of obvious.”
“What?” Sawyer straightened, pushing his fingers through his hair. “That I’m upset they aren’t like us?”
She didn’t like the emphasis he put onto that last word. It made it sound like there was no us at all.
“Why are you so touchy?” she asked. Jane had left a folded comforter on the chair in the corner of the room. April grabbed it, tossing it at Sawyer with a scowl. “You’re acting completely weird.”
Sawyer shook his head. “Sorry, it just bothers me.”
“What does?”
“The whole ‘they aren’t like us’ thing. I hate it.”
April stepped around the bed as he straightened the comforter, stopping when she was chest to chest with him. She gave him an apologetic smile before sweeping a strand of his hair behind an ear.
“I’m sorry,” she mewed, tugging on the neckline of his shirt. “I like your friends.”
It was a bald-faced lie. These were the kind of people who made going to school a living hell for her. Ryan all but made her skin crawl with how much he reminded her of the jocks, the preps, the guys who twisted their faces up in judgment as the girl in the combat boots and ankle-length duster tried to make her way to class. Lauren had most certainly been on the volleyball team; probably dated the quarterback and wore the homecoming crown. And Jane…she was the one who piqued April’s curiosity. There was something about her—a shadow of something that April was picking up on but couldn’t place.
“Let’s just go to bed,” Sawyer suggested.
April nodded, allowing her hand to trail down his chest before grabbing the soda he’d brought upstairs for her and turning away. She frowned as soon as he couldn’t see her face. She’d always been a bad liar. If she had been better at it she would have laughed it up at the dinner table with the rest of them, convinced them all that, oh yeah, The Sound of Music was her favorite, that she’d grown up watching Mary Poppins and Oklahoma! and whatever other ridiculous musicals she could think of on the spot. She would have convinced Sawyer that she did like his friends when, in fact, she would have been happy driving back to Denver in the dead of night.
“Ape.”
She crawled onto the bed, waiting for him to say what he was going to say. But Sawyer shook his head after a while, dismissing whatever had been on the tip of his tongue.
“I still say you’re acting weird,” she said.
This time Sawyer didn’t dissuade her uneasiness. He held fast to his silence instead.
Exhaling a sigh, she pulled the covers over herself and closed her eyes. He had been right to discourage her; she shouldn’t have come, but she didn’t like being alone and had figured, hell, if she had already met his parents she might as well meet his friends too.
Sawyer fell asleep almost immediately while April tossed and turned. At first she blamed it on the mattress, but after half an hour of lying in the dark, she realized that it wasn’t the bed; it was the noise outside. She was a light sleeper, and even the faintest of sounds could keep her awake all night or rouse her from sleep. This was an odd moaning noise; a deep, throaty, repetitive groan accompanied by scratching, like something skittering across the porch one story below. Nearly convincing herself to get up to peer out the window, she decided against it. She was warm under the covers, and she wouldn’t be able to see anything anyway. If Ryan wanted to leave his dog outside in the cold, that was his problem. It would have been nice if the guy had an ounce of courtesy and realized the husky was probably keeping people up, but what was she supposed to do, march down the hall and demand Ryan let Oona in? Rolling over, she pulled the comforter over her head with a rough sigh and squeezed her eyes shut, one ear against the pillow, her palm pressed over the other to block out the sound.
CHAPTER FOUR
The sun rose over the hills to reveal new beauty. It had snowed overnight—the lightest dusting, like powdered sugar. The trees sparkled, flocked with a fresh blanket of white, glittering as the sun burned away the early morning haze.
Despite Ryan’s best efforts to keep the group on track, they were late piling into the car, but they were cheerful and warm, bundled up in their gear while the Nissan rolled down the slope of the drive. Jane gazed out the passenger window, oddly quiet; Sawyer sat in the middle of the backseat like a sultan, a girl on each arm. After half an hour of highway, the Nissan coiled up a series of twists and turns, ascending a mountain that only got more gorgeous—leafless aspens shining in the crisp morning air, as though their branches had been dipped in silver. The clouds that had been thousands of feet overhead were suddenly nothing but a fog slithering around the bases of tree trunks, whispering across a glistening onyx tarmac. The ebb of down-tempo music offered the perfect sound track, lulling Ryan into Zen-like contentment. By the time they reached the ski resort’s parking area he felt renewed, ready to embrace the day despite the early hour.
Ryan climbed onto the Nissan’s running board and unstrapped the boards from the roof rack while Jane and Lauren shoved thickly socked feet into their boots, awkwardly waddling around the car after their ankles had been secured. Sawyer concentrated on his iPod, shuffling through playlists, making sure he was ready to go—because when it came to Sawyer, music was key; everything else came second. April sat in the backseat, her legs sticking out of the Xterra, her shoulders pulled up to her ears against the chill. She looked uncomfort
able as she watched everyone busy themselves around her.
When Sawyer had admitted that April hadn’t boarded before, Ryan had been pessimistic. It was hard to tell with novices—they either took to it like a duck to water or had a miserable time. Jane had been in the latter group, having spent two days on her ass, overcome by a few fits of frustration that had reduced her to tears. Ryan had stuck with her, spending days on the bunny hill with his sister. He eventually got her on her feet, but it had taken a lot of time, a lot of patience, and, on Jane’s part, a lot of pain. He wasn’t sure how it was going to work with April: whether she was the type of girl who would stick it out because it was something she really wanted to do, or whether she’d throw her hands up and admit defeat after a handful of falls. After a few minutes the group left the car, the four of them stiffly marching toward the lift ticket windows while April trailed behind.
The closer they got to the ticket counter, the less April wanted to go through with it. There was a ski lift to the right of them—a four-at-a-time monster that whipped around the curve at a speed that seemed impossible; yet people were falling into the chairs, unscathed, laughing as though they were having the times of their lives. Up ahead, a girl in a pink jacket caught the edge of her board on the snow. April winced as the girl flew onto her stomach with a squeal, her hat popping off her head and landing a good three feet ahead of her. For a second April was sure the girl wasn’t going to get up, but she did, giggling madly as a couple of skiers helped her to her feet.
She tugged at one of Sawyer’s many jacket zippers, chewing her bottom lip as they continued to walk forward. Ryan was leading the pack, a good ten paces ahead of everyone, probably trying to make up for lost time.
“I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” she whispered.
Sawyer shook his head and pulled the bud out of his ear.
“This,” she said, waving a hand at the lift. “Me.”
“What?”
“I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” she repeated. “You know…” She gave him a look, willing him to understand without making her explain.