If this time it’s really, truly over with Raquel.
Chase isn’t a fool—not in that way, at least. He knows I’m in a funk.
And he’s held this in until now, when it’s almost eleven p.m. and he’s finishing his last preparations for riding with the team tomorrow.
“What the hell? Where?”
“LA. Before I flew out.” Chase says it like it isn’t a big thing. He leans harder onto the board, pressing the plastic scraper flush against it with a grunt of effort. “She asked to see me.”
My mind lags like a computer trying to open too many tabs at once. I don’t have the RAM for this.
“She asked to see you?”
“Uh huh.” Chase straightens to survey his handiwork before he reaches to exchange the plastic scraper for a brush. When he flicks a look up to me, he doesn’t hold it. “She wanted to talk about risk.”
Risk. It’s what everything has come down to, in the end.
Always, throughout our relationship, that constant balance.
What I need to be happy.
What she needs to feel safe.
How we justify the love we feel for each other against the things that it asks from us.
“What did she want to say about it?”
Chase considers that as he begins to brush down the board, moving across it in bold sweeping motions, huffing with the effort of buffing the board down. “She wanted to know how I deal with what Brooke does.”
Hope flares inside of me. My heart has forgotten to beat. “Are you serious?”
I’ve been sure that Raquel is gone. That it’s over. The idea of her talking to Chase…
There’s no other possible reason than that she’s thinking about us.
And if she’s thinking about us…
It’s not over ’til it’s over.
Chase nods, smoothing his hand over the broad to remove the motes of wax that the brush is raising, a layer of dust that he sweeps onto the floor. “I am.”
“You’re going to have to actually say more,” I tell him.
Chase looks at me, and then looks away, and finally shrugs. “I think you need to work out what you actually want.”
“Does she want to get back together? Is she thinking about it?”
I shouldn’t be getting my hopes up. I shouldn’t be setting off down this ride to heartbreak again.
But no matter what’s happened with Raquel, I’ve never been able to stop being excited at the idea of having her back.
“She still loves you,” Chase says to his board. “She never stopped.”
I sit there reeling, and all night I can’t sleep.
* * *
It should hurt, hearing them all head out to the slopes early the next morning. The twenty-odd skiers and snowboarders Vertex sponsors, going out to hit the pow—and I’m not with them.
I thought it would cut me up. Instead I can hardly think about it.
I don’t hang around with the couple of guys and girls who are still resting after arriving late, either. I duck away from the sounds of them beginning to party, popping beers and shouting happily at each other.
I walk away from them, slipping back into my rental car before driving on up to Main Lodge. When I park, I stand beside the car before I lock it, taking a deep, slow breath of fresh mountain air. It’s early in the season, but Mammoth is always good for that. Already there’s enough snow, and all the people come to enjoy it.
Sometimes when you’re surrounded by people doing this at an elite level, you forget what boarding and skiing are for the rest of the world: a hobby or a passion. Something they love, but not something that defines them.
I look at the families walking in the swaying step forced by their rigid boots, parents holding their kids’ tiny skis over their shoulders.
I look at the couples queuing for lift passes.
I look at the huddled group of teenage boys who’ve put so much effort into their cool snow gear, standing as awkward as they’re trying to be smooth as they furtively check out the teenage girls nearby.
For the first time since I arrived, my smile isn’t something that I try for.
I’ve been these people. The awkward teenage boy throwing tricks to impress a pretty girl. The guy enjoying a trip with his girlfriend.
And the families…
I don’t plan to head over toward the tiny inclines where kids have their first days on the snow. My feet wander that way on their own, as if I need to hear some simply happy laughter, the way kids shriek and squeal that’s so pure.
Here they have the magic carpets, moving walkways in the snow for kids too little to use a lift. There are parents standing around watching their sons and daughters, and instructors gathering tiny bundles of enthusiasm and poor coordination.
But there’s one pair that, when I see them, I can’t look away from.
She must be four years old, max. She’s tiny, a powder puff of pink jacket and helmet and boots. On her feet is the littlest snowboard I’ve ever seen. She squats on it with the easy flexibility of a toddler, her arms raised as the board squeaks forward down the tiny slope.
She doesn’t even come up to her dad’s hip. He’s leaning over deep to hold her hands, walking sidelong down the slope, and she leans into him with such absolute trust that my heart skips a beat.
She’s wearing a helmet and goggles. I can’t see her face. But I can see his. I don’t know this guy from Adam. He’s a stranger to me. He looks like any guy I’ve met in a snow bar: in his late twenties or early thirties, with floppy dropout curls escaping from his beanie.
I don’t have to know how he normally looks to see that he’s glowing. There’s a happiness in his smile that I’ve never felt.
“Way to go, Allie! Look at you shred.”
It’s just the standard stuff parents say. Snowboarding parents, at least. But watching this man having the time of his life teaching his kid to board… It goes through me like a knife.
I swallow against my dry throat. Pain blossoms in my chest, a hurt that won’t quit.
“I’m doing it, Daddy!” the little girl squeals. “Daddy, look!”
That man looks so happy he might just about die, moving at a mile an hour down the slope and holding his little girl.
He’s not bombing through deep powder. He’s not carving fresh lines in the backcountry. He’s not jumping out of helicopters or throwing himself into a halfpipe.
He’s teaching his little girl to do the thing he loves, and he doesn’t look like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world.
Around me everyone keeps talking and walking, but I can’t hear them. I’ve stopped, frozen in my tracks, and I don’t know how everyone doesn’t feel this: the world being rearranged in a moment.
Riding’s been so much to me. An escape. A meaning. A source of pride. A way to get closer to my crew. It’s given me friendship, and an identity, and a purpose. It’s been the thing I’m good at, when I haven’t been good at much else.
But when it comes down to it, riding’s about love.
Suddenly I don’t think about medals and contracts and the really big lines.
I think about the way it feels to cut through fresh powder at dawn.
I think about the way Hanne laughs and how Chase grabs me with a whoop after we complete a big line.
I think about all the love boarding has brought me.
Love for my sport.
Love for my crew.
Love for…
Watching this random guy and his daughter, I want to teach my own kid to board so much that it’s a physical ache. Not the vague one day I’ve always had about kids. Now I’m watching them, I realize that it isn’t a one day at all.
I want my daughter to hold my hands with the trust this little girl has for her dad.
I want to share with her the thing I love most in the world. I want to teach her the best parts of it. I want her to enjoy the mountains, and her friends, and the way her body can do something so beautiful.
I
suck in a deep breath, but it doesn’t fix the pain inside of me. A yearning that’s deep in my bones, all the way down in my DNA.
I’m missing someone I’ve never met.
“Hold me, Daddy,” the little girl squeaks, clutching tighter to his hands.
“You can do it,” he encourages. “That’s it. Look, Mommy’s here.”
Mommy’s the woman at the end of the slope, walking up to them with her arms held out. “Nice, Allie!”
The girl squeals, and her dad swoops her up onto his arm. She reaches for her mom and he walks to her, and then they stand together, the three of them.
The guy I don’t know holds his daughter in one arm and his wife in the other, and as he kisses them both I can see that there’s no space between them for anyone—or anything—else.
Sometimes, you get a chance to see another life. One you’ve almost been stupid enough to give up.
The mountains give me joy. They always have.
But I want this, too. This thing I can see so clearly that it hurts, a beautiful aching blossoming pain in my chest.
I want Raquel looking up at me, and our baby in my arms.
Raquel
Why are we alive?
Not for surviving. Not for breathing day after day.
We’re here for joy. We’re here for a greater purpose. We’re here for the love of it.
I can’t fly out to Mammoth in the middle of the night. But I’m at the airport for the first flight, paying whatever I have to for a seat on that plane.
I’m shaking as I press Claire’s name on the screen of my cellphone. The last time I called her I was in Jackson airport, crying my broken heart out.
This time I’m still trembling, but for the first time I know exactly what I want.
It feels good. After all of these months—over a year and a half after I walked away from JJ—it means so much to finally know what I want.
It might not be easy.
It might not be without risk.
A ship can be safe in a harbor… but that’s not what ships are for.
I press the phone to my ear and the ring is as infuriatingly slow as the ticking clock above the departure gate.
“Hey Raquel. Why are you calling so earl—”
“I’m at the airport,” I interrupt her. “I’m flying to Mammoth.”
All of me is burning, sparking with something wild and heady. A nervous rush that quickens my breathing and makes me feel sick to my stomach.
“O-kay,” Claire says slowly, absorbing that information. “What’s in Mammoth?”
“The season starter.” She won’t know what that is. “It’s a meeting for all the Vertex winter athletes. JJ will be there,” I add in a rush.
“Wow,” Claire says. “Is this what I think it is?”
I nod, even if she can’t see. I swallow down the frantic beat of my heart and take a deep, steady breath, and I feel fully alive for the first time in so long.
Even if I don’t know if JJ wants me back…
Even if I don’t know if we can work it out…
I know now that I want to try.
I was made, like he was, to try.
“I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life,” I tell her. “Again.”
Who knew there’d be such a relief in admitting that I fucked up? But I need to tell someone, I need the world to know what I realized.
I love JJ Schneider. All of him. And it’s worth fighting for a compromise that gives him his happiness, as well as giving me mine.
“I’m going to fix it,” I say. “I’m going to try so hard.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Claire’s voice has dropped, low and steady. “You love him so much.”
I have. I always have. I want to tell her: how he’s always been the one, right from the day that I met him. How my heart sings to think of him.
How I’m so afraid of something happening to him. But I’m even more afraid of not being there to hold his hand if it does.
How I love him, and have always loved him.
How I love him happy, and how that makes me brave enough to face whatever comes next.
“It’s okay,” Claire says, so sweet and soft. “You’re going to do it right this time.”
JJ
I can’t get back to the Vertex center fast enough. For the first time since I was a teenager I’m in such a rush to park that I prang my rental car on a metal bollard, and I couldn’t give a shit.
I need to get into the lodge that they’re using as the base for the staff—PR people and coaches, performance consultants like Raquel used to be.
And Mike, the team manager, the head of this particular show.
I barge into the lodge so quickly that the door slams against the wall. Mike is talking with some guys I vaguely recognize. Event organizers. Some PR people. They’ve got publicity shots spread out over the table in front of them and steaming mugs in their hands. They’re laughing at something.
Until they turn to me.
If Mike notices that I’m flushed and breathing heavily, he doesn’t show it. His smile spreads slow and easy as ever.
“Hey, brother,” he says, sounding genuinely pleased to see me. “Have you met Ben and Lila?”
I haven’t. My smile is polite and strained. I don’t have time for this. “Nice to meet you.”
“JJ’s here to sign on again,” Mike begins, but he must have seen that something’s up with me after all. Something unsure tracks along his expression before he corrects it to a self-deprecating smile. “Unless I’ve really screwed up my job. Uh oh. You guys mind giving me a moment?”
Before he disappears to backslapping and shoulder-squeezing, Mike indicates the next room with his head. I head on through.
This is clearly what passes for Mike’s office. It’s also his bedroom while he’s staying here. He entertains people out in the main rooms, but he’s always wanted a place to himself for work shit. He appreciates quiet. As far as I can tell, that’s why he starts working at dark o’clock in the morning, even on his desk days.
I’ve seen a lot of team manager offices. I haven’t always signed in them. I’ve signed in coffee stores and airport lounges and on transatlantic flights. I’ve balanced the contracts on my leg, on crates of beer, on Chase’s back. It’s the once-yearly ritual that confirmed that I’ve made it.
I’ve achieved the thing I’ve dreamed of ever since I was a kid.
The very first time, I was only a teenager. My dad taught me how to read through the contract and showed me where to sign it.
The first time I signed with Vertex, I was twenty-one years old. Our old sponsor had just pulled all that shit with Hanne. We walked right out of there, the three of us together, and fished around. The guy before Mike—the one who signed us—he didn’t want to give Hanne anywhere close to us, either, but Chase made it abundantly fucking clear: he wasn’t signing anywhere that underpaid her. And we weren’t signing anywhere that basically required her to get her top off, either. Hanne was an athlete just like us, and she’d be judged the same way we were. Maybe we couldn’t fix the sexism inherent in sport sponsorship, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t fight it. Even if Hanne wouldn’t let us siphon some of our pay onto her.
I don’t need knights in shining armor, she said, flashing fire. I need you to have my back, not to save me.
So we signed on. As time passed there were some other team managers, some cool, some dicks, same as everywhere. And then, seven, eight years ago, Mike arrived. He’s been my favorite, hands down. Swung Hanne a huge increase. Always been a friend. We laugh about competing together, at the end of his podium time and the first half of Chase and mine. But if he was a great rider, he’s even better as a team manager. He’s great with people.
It shows in the way he grins as he slides into the room, pulling up a chair opposite me and flopping into it. He leans forward, attentive, his elbows on his knees, his hands loosely clasped.
“What’s up?”
I take a deep breath.
; I think of Raquel.
I go all-in.
Raquel
In the movies, you see people running through an airport to find the person they love. To say sorry for what they’ve done. To step up to the plate and fight one final time for what they really want: to be happy.
I never thought that person would be me.
I haven’t done my hair. I haven’t put on any makeup. I’m wearing jeans and a hooded sweater and sneakers, and I’m running through Mammoth airport, dodging around luggage and people, apologizing breathlessly when I almost knock over an innocent old lady.
There isn’t a ticking clock. There isn’t a countdown.
It’s just the racing of my own heart in my chest that’s forcing me forwards, reminding me that there isn’t any time to lose.
I want to spend all of my life with JJ Schneider. I don’t want to miss one moment.
I don’t wait for change when I pay the taxi driver. I need to get out of the car, to sprint towards the group of lodges that Vertex has rented for their athletes.
It’s the middle of the day. Most of them are already out on the snow. But I see a couple of them standing and chatting around a fire pit in the central deck area, and they see me—their mouths falling open, their eyes going wide.
“Raquel,” one of the guys says, standing up. “Are you back with Vertex?”
“That’s fucking awesome,” a woman agrees, following him to her feet. “We’ve missed—”
I don’t even have time for that. My voice is breathless. “Where’s JJ?”
They look between each other.
“Uh, last time I saw him he was in the lodge. That one.” The guy indicates with a wave of his hand.
“He seemed pretty bummed out this morning,” the woman says. “Because of… You know.”
Oh, JJ. He’ll have come here, all smiles and hope, and it will be hurting him. To see his friends ride. To say goodbye when they go do the thing that he loves more than anything.
“Do you think he’ll really get back to it?” one of them asks, his voice dropping low.
Crash: The Wild Sequence, Book Two Page 30