“It’s great that you can laugh at yourself,” he says. He takes the compass from her and holds it to his chest. “I can see that.”
Melissa takes it back, noting how their fingers touch briefly in the exchange. “West, east, who knows where I’ll end up.” She stares at the compass like it’s a crystal ball. “How do you know what direction is the right one?”
Gabe leans back onto the logs. “I don’t know.” He puts his hands in his jacket pockets. “Maybe it’s finding that person. You know, true north? How it’s always there … Maybe that’s how you figure out where or what to do.”
“Do you have that?” she asks, avoiding his eyes, instead looking at their legs, how they form a set of lines, almost touching.
Gabe lets his eyes flick to hers, then rakes his hands through his hair and clears his throat. “Isn’t that what everyone wants? A person … I can’t speak for everyone, I guess….” He doesn’t complete the sentence and instead stands up. “I have to stretch. Want to check out what it’s like outside?”
Melissa wishes he’d finished his thoughts but stands up, then groans. “Oh, man, my legs are sore. And I didn’t even ski!”
“That’s what happens if you sit too long—come on, let’s take a walk and then come back and get some rest.”
Melissa follows Gabe, stepping around people sleeping and the few people still awake, playing cards or eating energy bars from the emergency supply box. “You sure it’s safe to go?”
Gabe shrugs. “Guess we’ll see.”
He opens the heavy door. Outside, Melissa and Gabe crunch on the fallen icy snow, up to their knees in drifts, then up to their waists in other piles. “It’s so soft,” Melissa says. “To think, right now at home people are at the beach.”
“The Fauxcean you mean?”
Melissa shakes her head. “No. My real home—in Australia. It’s summer.”
Gabe laughs. “Sorry, it’s hard to remember sometimes that there’s a real world outside of this place.” He looks up to the sky, then back at Melissa. He reaches into his pocket. “Oh—here’s one more. A Belgian chocolate—let’s split it.” He bites half, then gives the other to Melissa, placing it in her mouth for her. She lets it melt, the sweetness coating her tongue.
“Yum…. Anyway, the Fauxcean can’t compare to the real thing,” Melissa says. I wonder what’s happening there tonight, who’s there, if Harley and Dove are swimming, if James is there—and who he’s with.
“I’m sure—it’s like indoor skiing compared to this.” He points to the mountain.
Melissa breathes deeply, filling her lungs with the cold air. “It’s so peaceful now.”
“Calm after the storm?” Gabe walks through the snow closer to where she is. “Come here.”
He leads her over to the triplechair lift where they’d been caught in the whirlwind before. The empty lift chair sways slightly in the breeze. “Climb up.”
“I don’t want to go for a ride,” Melissa says but starts to climb up the embankment so she can reach the seat.
“It’s stopped for the night.” Gabe climbs in next to her and puts the bar down.
Melissa smiles. “This is fun, actually, Gabe.”
He frowns, joking. “You thought you’d be miserable with me?”
“I don’t know—maybe. Considering …” She stops, not wanting to ruin the moment with issues. Her hands curl around the metal bar next to Gabe’s. They relax back, both tilting up to the sky.
“Check out the stars; aren’t they amazing up here?” Gabe says.
“They are,” Melissa says, “but that sounds like a line.”
Without looking at her, Gabe responds, “You think the worst of me, Melissa. First of all, I’m not the kind of guy who uses a line. Second of all, I’m just pointing out an ecological wonder.”
“Oh, well then.” Melissa smiles. “That’s fine. And yes I agree, the stars are something.”
Gabe clears his throat. “So what if it was a line, anyway?”
Melissa stares at the ink-dark sky, the millions of lights, the flickering stars and thinks about her bad line exchange with James. He’s my buddy, she thinks, flashing back to the laundry room. How he could have kissed her but didn’t. I’m his buddy.
“Lines serve their purpose, I guess.”
Gabe nods. “And if there is no line?” He stops looking at the sky and looks at Melissa. Her hair sways in the wind, mirroring the movement of the chair. She stares at him, feeling every inch of herself in the moment now, with him.
Gabe puts one hand on the back of her neck, the other on her back and kisses her. His lips are plush, his grasp strong. Melissa feels the kiss on her mouth, but it registers everywhere. We have nowhere else we have to be right now, no meal to cook, no race to run. She imagines staying like that for hours, then going inside—back to their little nook in the corner of the Cliff House. Maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to write off a seasonal hookup, Melissa thinks, kissing Gabe again.
When they pause, the stars seem brighter, the snow glows nearly blue from the sky. Melissa can’t fight the smile on her mouth. Gabe puts his hand on hers on the chair rail and they resume looking at the stars. “Maybe I’ll have to come back up here—on my day off…. I can’t believe it’s so soon. The time is flying by here.”
“That’s the way it goes.” Gabe nods. “One minute it’s your first day; the next the season’s over.” He points. Melissa wonders if this means relationships, too. One minute you’re making out on the chair lift; the next you’re ignoring one another at the ice rink. Or not. “Isn’t that Orion?”
“I don’t know—I usually just make up names for the stars. Holiday Week is next week—I hear it’s hectic.” She clears her throat, hoping her next question won’t be overinterpreted. “Gabe? You are sticking around next week, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yeah. I wouldn’t miss Holiday Week for anything. Hectic doesn’t begin to describe it—you’ll see. But it’s the best,” Gabe laughs, taken in by her. “So how exactly do you make up constellations?”
“Well, they all sound fake. Like the seven sisters—Pleiades—the daughters of Atlas and Pleione …”
“That’s not made up—”
“No, that’s real. But how about … there? See the triangle thing—that’s Marvin the Trucker.”
“Ah, yes.” Gabe nods, ultraserious. “Myth has it he was enamored of that right there—the G and B twins.”
“G and B?”
“Great and Busty,” Gabe says, then cracks up. “Not to be confused with that bright star there, Mergatroid.”
“And way over there.” Melissa takes Gabe’s hand, stretches out his finger, and points to a blotch of stars on the other side of the Cliff House. “That’s Stanley and Rose, the old couple who watch over everything—like their daughter Astrid the Obnoxious.”
Melissa laughs. Gabe pushes closer to her, enjoying her warmth.
“What’s so funny?” he asks.
“Nothing—it’s just that until today, I could have done one for you. Named a constellation, I mean.”
“And what would it have been called?” Gabe’s eyes sparkle as he waits for her answer.
Melissa thinks of what to say, again not wanting to ruin the moment but still wanting to be honest. She puts on a deep announcer’s voice. “Gabe the big mistake—note the many dots of regret, the multiple ways you can see the humiliation….”
She stops, feeling like she’s dredged up exactly what she shouldn’t have. Gabe sighs. “Do you know why I did it?”
Melissa looks at him. “What do you mean?”
“Because … someone found your journal, right? They read it aloud. That was wrong. But you left before I got a chance to respond….”
Melissa feels her chest tighten, the old waves of insecurity and embarrassment washing over her. She lifts the chair bar up and hops down, falling into the snow but not caring. She stands up. “You did respond—your response was the worst kind—you did nothing.”
She starts to wal
k away, wishing the lifts ran at night so she could leave. Gabe hadn’t changed—no matter what, he was still the guy who hurt her.
Gabe leaps down, marching through the snow to her. “But I did—after you left—I spoke into the microphone and said it was true—”
“What was true?” Melissa’s green eyes flash with hurt, the tears threatening to spill.
“That I felt the same way.” Gabe grabs her shoulders. “You left, remember? But I said it—I told everyone. You can ask JMB—he has a letter from me stating as much.”
Melissa considers this—it’s all so much to take in. “Gabe …”
He looks at her, about to lean in and kiss her again. All the way down the mountain, parties rage into the next day, but at the top, right where they are by the triplelift, the quiet is all-encompassing. Melissa looks at Gabe, waiting for him to say something—anything—to prove the truth.
“Well?” Melissa asks.
Gabe locks her eyes on to his. “You think I wound up at Les Trois by coincidence?”
18
Seriously, there’s nowhere to hide.
THE NEXT MORNING BRINGS pink light that streaks through the sky in blurry waves, ripples of peach and soft yellow haze that signal the storm is officially over; skiing is at its peak with new snow, and those who spent the night away from their own beds must make the walk back to their chalets.
With the first run of the triple chairlift, Melissa and Gabe are safely deposited back at the base of the mountain, still in their same ski outfits from yesterday, only with memories of having shed some of the items in the dark of the Cliff House the night before.
Melissa doesn’t know what all of it means, but for once doesn’t feel the need to overclarify, to pick through each action and word to figure it out—at least right now.
“So, I’ll catch up with you later?” she says, by the back of the Main House.
“Sounds good,” Gabe says. He leans forward and Melissa is sure he will kiss her good-bye—thinking this will explain what exactly they are, if anything. But instead he picks something off her coat collar. “Mushed-up jelly bean.”
“Yuck,” Melissa says and laughs, looking down at the remnant on Gabe’s fingernail. “Blueberry.”
Gabe nods. “Yeah.” Melissa wonders if that second he’s thinking back to sharing the bag of jelly beans, how she liked the blue ones best, how every time he fished one out he’d give it to her—first putting it in her hand, then later feeding it to her with his lips.
Gabe flicks the bit of gummed-up bean aside. It lands on the snow. “Man, I’ve got a ton of stuff to do.” Melissa smiles, liking that she made the most of being stranded. “So I’ll see you.”
She wants to be the first to leave, and she is, as if it proves to her that she’s in charge of the situation. And is there really a situation? I don’t know. She begins to make the steep trek back from the Main House up to The Tops while Gabe makes tracks toward the Mountain Inn. As she crunches over the snow, Melissa grows more and more aware that the ski troopers out on early patrol, the avid winter sportspeople who rise at dawn, the post-partiers who like to eat breakfast and then head to bed, are looking at her. That they saw her say good-bye to Gabe.
And when she gets back to The Tops, just before coffee is due to be set out on the sideboard, along with sterling silver spoons, sugar cubes, and mugs, she has to open the back door with a squeak, announcing to the entire house that she’s coming in for the first time since yesterday.
Dove is in the shower when Melissa comes back, and heads outside with her hair still wet. One of the newfound pleasures of having such close-cropped hair, she thinks, is being able to go outside and not have icicles form on the ends of your hair. She remembers being at school, having her hair freeze, and how once Max held a lock in his hands, thawing it before the all-school assembly. Then she tries to picture William doing that so she won’t feel weird about thinking about Max in the shower.
She feels her hair again—the white blond is new-chick soft, chic, and very, very different. Just what I want, Dove says, slipping a black cashmere ski cap on and noticing how cold her scalp is without the cover of thick locks. She fights the urge to run inside and check her phone yet again for messages from William—he hasn’t called, still, and she doesn’t want to give him the credit of ruining her mood.
She drags the mats from the mudroom out in back of The Tops and begins to clean them by hanging each one over a railing and whacking it with the wooden side of a broom.
On the steep steps above her, she sees Diggs, looking worse for wear, pulling himself up the path by the railing.
Dove chuckles to herself, watching Diggs struggle to stay upright. Clearly he had a rough night, she thinks. Or perhaps a fantastic night only to be greeted by a rough dawn. The morning shame parade has begun, Dove thinks, and I’m glad I’m not in it.
Slinking out from behind a pine tree a few yards from Dove is Luke, whose laugh echoes through the surrounding air. Dove turns to watch him as she beats the rugs free of debris. Days of mud fall off, and it doesn’t occur to her that sand from the Fauxcean will soon cloak the mat again.
“Whooo hooo!” Luke says, laughing as he leaps out from a big pine tree.
“Shut up!” says a female voice, hissing at him from the shelter of the massive branches.
“Why? I want to tell the world….”
The female voice hisses again and reaches out to put her hand over Luke’s mouth. Then it looks as though Luke is leaning in for a kiss from whomever he’s with. “Not now, you fool. Not in broad daylight,” the female voice says.
Dove peers closer, tucking herself down so as not to be seen. Luke scored, she thinks. Cute Luke with his future hotness. And with whom? Dove squints. On the snow, Luke starts to wobble. “Come lie down with me,” he pleads. “Let’s make snow angels.”
“Not a chance,” says the girl. Dove thinks her voice is familiar.
“Then let’s just take a nap. I’m knackered.” Luke plops himself down in the snow, spread out like a gingerbread man.
“Fine—stay there—just keep quiet and pretend like nothing happened,” says the girl. When she finally turns around to go, leaving Luke to take a very cold nap in the snow, she looks to make sure no one’s watching.
Celia Sinclair. Dove smiles to herself. Celia and Luke. I should come out here more often at this time of day—no wonder the maids always know the juiciest gossip.
As she’s thinking this, the earl’s voice booms from the front stoop and Dove quickly hikes the small hill that separates the front walkway from the back-door area, figuring if she’s going to spy, she might as well do it properly and check out the whole scene.
“Open up!” the earl shouts, pounding his fist on the heavy wooden door. After a minute, the door opens and the countess, ice-queen cool with a coffee mug in hand, stands in the door frame.
“Oh, deciding to come home now, are we?” She gives the earl a stare and then turns back inside.
He walks in and closes the door behind him.
Dove raises her eyebrows and retreats to the relative boring safety of her rugs. One down, two to go. Dove hauls the clean mat inside to the mudroom. Back at the bunkroom, she hears rustling and pokes her head in.
“You’re here!” Dove says to Harley.
From the top bunk, Harley raises her head enough to open one eye. “Yeah.”
“How come I didn’t hear you come in last night?”
“I didn’t,” Harley says. Her hair is tousled and she flops back onto the pillow.
Dove checks her watch. “Not that you want to know this, then, but breakfast is served in eight minutes. And I can smell omelets.”
“So Melissa got back safely?” Harley scratches her head and rubs her face.
Dove nods. “The radio report came in last night—and I heard the water running and now I smell eggs, so …”
“Well, aren’t you just the little detective,” Harley says. “Ugh, I can’t get up now. I haven’t even slept yet.”<
br />
Dove raises her eyebrows and is about to go when she notices sand on the bunkroom floor. “God, Harley, have some consideration! I’m the one that’s got to vacuum here.”
“It wasn’t me,” Harley says. “I didn’t do that.”
“Oh, yeah?” Dove says. “Did it magically get transported from the Fauxcean? Or no, let me guess, the real sea—all the way from …” She stops herself. The real sea makes her think of the islands, which make her think of Nevis, where William is, where he is but from where he hasn’t called.
“I didn’t do it,” Harley protests. She sits up quickly in the top bunk, banging her head on the ceiling. “Shit!”
“Keep your voice down,” Dove says. “People are sleeping.” Of course, she knows this statement isn’t true—the earl and countess are awake, as is Diggs—though with a steady hangover—Melissa’s up, and Luke is semi-awake outside in the snow. Maybe Jemma’s asleep. “And next time don’t track sand in here. That’s what the mudroom is for.”
“It wasn’t Harley’s fault. It was mine.” Next to Harley, rising slowly, is a figure in a navy blue T-shirt with his back turned away from the door.
“Oh,” Dove says, surprised at first to see Harley’s not alone, but then less so once she thinks back to the entire morning’s show.
The figure hops down from Harley’s bed and looks at her. “Bye. Glad you got back here safely.” And to Dove he adds, “Sorry about the sand.”
“That’s okay,” Dove says, wondering what all this means. “Bye, James.”
With even more juice for the gossip cocktail, Dove, though desperate to know what happened with Harley and James, heads back outside to leave them to their good-byes and to take care of the last two mats. The first is small, made of carpet remnant. Dove finishes that with just a few whacks of the stick and brings it back to the mudroom where she can hear sounds of conversation and clinking silverware. Breakfast has started.
Balancing Acts Page 16