Glacier Gold

by Crystel Greene

  Sure, he told me we shouldn’t see each other again, because he thinks he’s this guy who doesn’t do one-night stands and apparently doesn’t trust himself to act accordingly when I’m around.

  Well, it’s not my job to save him from temptation. I’d say it’s to challenge his self-control for a bit.

  Yes, he piqued my pride when he made it sound like I had none, sleeping around like I do. Perhaps he needs to see he isn’t that much better when he’s free to do as he likes.

  He made me feel a little cheap for wanting to sleep with him, and yeah, sorry, now the game is on. I’d like to know which one of us is actually, truly more desperate for it to happen. Once we are all alone and there’s no reason to hold back, which one of us is going to crack and ask the other for sex first? Yeah, I’d very much like to show him that it’s not me.

  If he keeps up his deal and makes no move on me, he wins. But if it turns out he isn’t so chaste and impervious to a well-built, willing guy’s charms after all, if it turns out that passion I’ve seen in his eyes is real, and that he can’t rein it in when he’s got no good reason to—so much the better.

  A few hours of boarding together might be just the thing to make him see he wants to take me to some shady corner after all, maybe to some handy derelict stable in the woods or something. Or he’ll even spend that night in Innsbruck with me. My last night.

  Yeah, I’m going to book him for a lesson.

  I get all excited at the prospect. I already see myself talking to him about tricks and joking around with him as we ride together. He’s going to loosen up, I’m sure of it. It’s what people do when they go boarding.

  I want his easy, open smile on me. God, I want it almost more than that fuck.

  Yeah, hiring him as my instructor is the way to go. I might even learn a thing or two, like jumping technique and shit. He is quite the prodigy on the board. If he’s only half as gifted in bed—

  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  TEN MINUTES later I enter the little log cabin with the Happy Powder sign on the door next to the base station of the Gletscher Express to tell the girl behind the counter what I want.

  At least the G-rated part of it.

  She’s busy texting, but her orange shirt says she’s Susi and happy to help.

  “Wait a moment, let me check my cousin’s schedule,” she mumbles, blowing her pink bangs out of her face and putting her phone to the side with some reluctance.

  Her cousin. Everyone is fucking related to him. Shit, half of Fitsch is part of the Fankhauser clan. I understand better than ever why he hasn’t had the nerve to come out yet. Literally everyone in the frigging valley is going to be massively interested when it happens at last.

  “Sorry, Andi’s got no free slots. He’s booked out for the whole week,” she says, her eyes already back on her phone.

  No! This can’t be it.

  As I rack my brains trying to come up with a plan B, a poster on the wall behind Susi catches my eye. It’s a photo of Fitsch Glacier at sunrise with a caption saying Heliskiing: Hubschrauber-Erlebnistouren. Ski und Snowboard. Glacier Silver und Glacier Gold.

  This must be the helicopter thingy Rosi from the Gletschergeist mentioned to me the other day.

  “What’s this about, Susi? Glacier Silver….”

  Looking surprised I’m still there, Susi follows my gaze, then translates, “Helicopter adventure tours for ski and snowboard. Glacier Silver or Glacier Gold.”

  She hands me a flyer. It’s in German, Dutch, and English, but suddenly she seems determined to demonstrate her language skills.

  “It’s a special offer for advanced boarders only. A helicopter takes you to the top of the Hexnjoch or the Sunnzeiger, and you go downhill all the way back to the valley, with one of our instructors as your guide. If you want my cousin, we’ll see to it that he’s free on your day of choice.”

  In a matter of seconds, I seem to have been upgraded to a whole other category of customers. Rich guy who is to be satisfied.

  “Right,” I say, trying to sound like a bored millionaire, skimming through the flyer.

  The caption on the front page reads “Test your strength and tame the glacier.” And it would seem some serious strength and glacier-taming skills are actually required for these tours.

  Glacier Silver is a four-to-five-hour tour down the Hexnjoch, while Glacier Gold is a full day of freeriding downhill from the Sunnzeiger, including a lunch break in the Mangeihütte.

  A lonely mountain cabin. Hell, this is exactly what we need!

  “It’s a log cabin,” Susi explains. “Nothing fancy. It’s got bunk beds for four people to spend the night, but we offer that only in the summer. There’s no electricity and no heating. Just a wood-burning stove for cooking tea or coffee. Lunch is sandwiches. You’ll take them with you in your backpacks.”

  The prices are on the back of the booklet. She doesn’t have to translate those.

  €999. That’s this season’s special offer for Glacier Gold.

  Pretty steep.

  But Andi and I are going to be alone in the Mangeihütte. With those bunk beds.

  “You can go in a group, then it’s going to be less expensive, depending on the number of participants,” Susi says brightly. “If you’re traveling with friends, it would make sense to bring them!”

  It so wouldn’t. With Jay and Carl around, all romance that might yet develop between Andi and me is going to go down the toilet faster than you can say “basic concepts of social development,” or “boobs.”

  Talk about defeating the purpose of spending one thousand euros.

  Technically it will be Carl and Jay who’ll be spending that money. I’ll have to ask them to help me with my account balance, else the overdraft fees will kill me. But I’ll worry about that later.

  “I’m going alone, and I want your cousin,” I say firmly. “Tomorrow.”

  “Fine,” she says, looking quite enthusiastic as she moves over to the computer to enter my information. Apparently it doesn’t happen all that often that someone is deluded enough to just walk in here and sign up for Glacier Gold.

  Everything is so incredibly easy and simple I can’t believe it’s happening.

  Susi alerts me to Happy Powder’s policy of advance payment with regard to heliboarding tours. I am about to get out my credit card and overdraw it like never before, focusing my mind on Andi’s fancy jawline and trim hips, when there’s a jingle behind me, and the man himself steps into the shop.

  On seeing me, he stops dead. I grin at him, feeling a solid dose of nerves.

  He told me we shouldn’t see each other again.

  But he’s going to realize you did him a favor eventually, I remind myself. You are going to show him how to spice up a lunch break, and he’s going to thank you in the end.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks as if it were a capital offense for a tourist to be in the local ski school.

  “Booking a day of boarding,” I reply, aiming for cool and failing. He’s really imposing when he stands close to you. He’s six feet plus of pure athlete. And those ice-blue eyes. They look like he could use them to freeze people when they try to ignore his orders, like some superhero in the movies.

  Fucking nerves.

  “I just put you down for Glacier Gold with Mr. Bennet tomorrow, Andi,” Susi says from behind him, clearly expecting him to be thrilled.

  “Glacier Gold,” he echoes.

  “You didn’t get to do any heliboarding this season yet, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t,” he says, his eyes on me. I can feel my face glow with stress and the thrill of simply seeing him again.

  He steps behind the desk as if he needed something solid to separate us. He clears his throat.

  “I’m afraid the weather is going to turn,” he says. “It’s in the forecast. I really think we shouldn’t do this, Mr. Bennet.”

  “Well, I really think we should.”

  That moment a door in the corner of the shop is pushed
open. There’s a sign on it that says Management. And the big, bristle-haired man who steps through is none other than Fankhauser Senior.

  Shit. Happy Powder belongs to Andi’s dad. Shit, the man owns every last brick in this valley, it would seem. Guess I should have known.

  “Andreas?” he says in a questioning tone.

  Andi does some explaining, pointing at a screen showing the weather forecast in a corner under the ceiling.

  Fankhauser Senior shakes his head and says something in German that sounds really bossy. Turning to me, seamlessly switching from super patriarch to obliging service provider, he tells me the weather isn’t going to be a problem.

  Well, I guess he didn’t become the biggest player in the valley by allowing people to fool him and letting one thousand euros slip away right from under his nose.

  I’d much rather have done this just with Susi. She would have told Andi about it later, and after that everything would have been just between him and me. He could still have ducked out of this challenge. It seems the instructors are eager for the chance to do some heliboarding, so if he’s serious about his vow of no-après-ski and doesn’t trust himself to keep his hands and other parts to himself in the Mangeihütte, he could easily have passed me on to a colleague.

  Now, with his father in the picture, neither of us has got much of a choice anymore. If I backpedal now, for no apparent reason, he’s probably going to grill Andi later to find out what’s the deal. And I might end up being the reason why Andi has to come out to his dad.

  When Fankhauser Senior is done typing some stuff into the computer, tells me the day is booked, and to swipe my credit card right through here, please, I just do it.

  Andi stands next to Susi looking on, his arms crossed over his chest, his expression unreadable. Susi looks rather mystified. Fankhauser Senior might not have picked up on any weird vibes, but she sure did.

  She only stops looking back and forth between Andi and me when Andi’s father hands me the receipt with a certain flourish and a genial thank you, then turns to her, starting to talk in German. Together they walk over to the window to inspect a table full of trophy cups and medals. Apparently Susi prepared those for the victory ceremony for the kids’ skiing races that were held on the Samkogel earlier today.

  “I’m looking forward to tomorrow,” I say to Andi. “And I think it makes a lot of sense for us to do this. Test your strength and so on, you know?”

  I casually flick my bandana off my head and toss my hair back, letting the sun coming in through the window catch the highlights. He can’t not like my hair.

  Andi briefly closes his eyes and visibly clenches his jaw.

  He thinks I’m a wacko. Or simply a whore that doesn’t understand the concept of committed sex.

  I don’t know what I am anymore. But I can’t stop imagining him and me alone in that hut over the clouds.

  Even if he pulls through with the no-sex-with-the-tourist thing, I know he won’t deny me a kiss. That much hold I do have over him. He almost kissed me once already.

  Here’s a vow I’ve just taken: I’m going to ask him for it. If nothing happens between us up there on the glacier, I’ll forget my pride and ask for a kiss as a booby prize, and as a memory for both of us.

  At least then, when I’ll be gone, he’ll remember me.

  I want that. Even if I’m just this random tourist to him who can never have a place in his life, I want him to think of me with just a little bit of the longing that I feel for him.

  It hurts like an icicle slowly revolving in my open heart.

  God.

  What do I do if it’ll never pass?

  “YOU BOOKED a solo tour down the glacier with him,” Carl says for the umpteenth time. We’re lying in our beds in the nightly neon shine of Fitsch. I’m trying to get some rest before the big day tomorrow, but my friends don’t seem to be ready to stop discussing my business anytime soon.

  “Because you just don’t know how to give up,” Jay says.

  “Why should I?”

  Carl scoffs.

  “Because he’s been ignoring you for five days straight?”

  “And even ran from you one time?” Jay supplies, forever helpful. He seems to like to bring up this moment a lot. I suspect it’s because he’s secretly still not over Antje. “If you ask me, he might yet cancel the whole thing once he hears what you did,” he adds smugly.

  “Well, he already knows. He was there.”

  “He was?” Carl asks, lifting his head off his pillow. “And what did he say?”

  “Yeah, tell us,” Jay says a little too expectantly.

  I don’t really want to, but then they’re suspecting the worst anyway.

  “He said there was a storm coming in and that we shouldn’t go.”

  “Oookay,” Jay says.

  “And you still think this is a good idea,” Carl says.

  “That storm isn’t due till in two days’ time….”

  “You know what we mean.”

  “Listen, if you’re having second thoughts about lending me all this money, I understand,” I say. “You obviously don’t have to do this for me. I’ll find another way—”

  “It’s not about the money,” Carl interrupts.

  They don’t know about anything that happened between Andi and me during this vacation. Because against all the odds, I’ve managed to keep silent. It’s still starting to irk me that they don’t seem to be able to imagine that Andi might feel anything for me but irritation.

  “Okay, I can’t tell you why, but I happen to know that he likes me. At least from the neck down.”

  “Oh, Justin, don’t you get it?” Carl exclaims. “We just don’t want to have to pick up the pieces when you come home after a whole day of him giving you the cold shoulder!”

  With a soft groan of contentment, Jay wiggles himself yet more snugly under his comforter. He’s holding his phone in his hand. He has kept checking Jaymer’s new follower count all day long since yesterday, and he’s probably doing it yet again.

  “Yeah, because maybe he will, you know,” he says. “Give you the cold shoulder. You know.”

  “Maybe he won’t, and then you’ll look real dumb!” I cry.

  “You haven’t done that much freeriding, have you,” Carl observes, biting into the sandwich he always keeps on his nightstand for nighttime snacking.

  I’ve been thinking about that too.

  “I can do it! All you need for a tour like this is stamina and the will to do it, and I’ve got that!”

  They sigh in unison, and Carl says, “You sure do.”

  Well, I never asked my friends for their blessing. I did ask them to help me balance my bank account, and that they already did.

  NINE O’CLOCK. I’m at the helipad, a small patch of asphalt near the base station of the Gletscher Express.

  There’s just Andi, the pilot, and me. And the helicopter.

  We’ve stored our boards away in the loading area in its belly. Turns out I am at a place where seeing my board lying under Andi’s with the bindings tangled together is a turn-on.

  Andi stared a bit at the boards too. I don’t think he noticed the pink butterflies on mine before.

  His own is a sleek black.

  “I used a stencil for my board design,” I tell him when we are inside the helicopter, fastening our seat belts, as if he had asked me about it. “If you want, I can do up your board too. Anytime. Just say the word, bro.”

  I’m babbling, obviously, but hell, I feel like I’ve got a hundred butterflies bustling about not just on my board, but in my stomach too.

  It’s not as nice a feeling as the pop songs make it sound.

  He doesn’t answer. Of course he doesn’t. He just gives a noncommittal shake of the head.

  Yet again I tell myself that if nothing else comes of this, at least I’ll get to cross heliboarding off my bucket list.

  WE ZOOM past snowy slopes and pinewood forests, quickly gaining height. Soon the trees become scarcer until t
here are only rocks and skiing runs and lifts beneath us. I spot the top station of the Gletscher Express. The Gletscher Hotel’s large panes of steel and glass gleam in the sun.

  A little bit farther up, we pass the last bit of human technology, the old, rusty T-bar lift leading up to the top of the Hexnjoch.

  Then civilization falls away below us, and we are where there is only snow and ice and sky.

  There isn’t a speck of a cloud marring the azure blue around us. The weather is going to change over the next few days. Andi didn’t make that up. Apparently there is a low-pressure system approaching. According to the forecast this morning, it’s going to hit the region of Fitsch sometime tomorrow afternoon. There will be strong winds, and they’ve even issued a heavy snowfall warning.

  Jay and Carl tried to make me cancel until the last minute, arguing it wasn’t worth the risk. I know they really meant to save me from making a fool of myself.

  In spite of what I said to them, I’m aware that might be exactly what I’m doing. But hell, I couldn’t possibly have chickened out of this, not when the Gletschergeist has decided to put off his depression thingy for another day, giving me the chance to follow through with my plan. I told Jay and Carl it was a sure sign the legendary spirit was favorable toward my goals.

  It certainly feels like it is.

  The glacier stretches out till the horizon, its summits glittering and sparkling in the sunlight, full of promise. This is a playground up in the sky, a giant canvas waiting for us to draw on it.

  Hell, just a few more minutes, and I’ll be riding down these untouched planes of crystal white.

  Anticipation is bubbling up inside me, and I can’t keep it in. I feel like a bottle of soda that took a good shake.

  “Oh man, this is fucking fantastic!” I exclaim. “Wow, all that space! All those sick slopes! Wow! I want to do every single one of them!”

  “You’d need months to do that,” Andi says coolly. “Probably years. And you’re going to be gone by tomorrow.”

  He has quite obviously been counting the days. And he got it right too—this is my last day.