One of the Guys (21 page)

So we're stuck as a foursome.

We grab a late lunch from the lodge cafeteria and find a table among the red-cheeked snowboarders. I sit beside a sullen Ben as he picks at the cheese on his pizza. I eat two slices before Shauna scoots closer to Loch and kisses his cheek. Well. I'm full.

“Micah's a genius,” Shauna says, resting her head on Loch's shoulder as she speaks to Ben. “He's going to be a doctor.”

Ben sniffs and stuffs a string of cheese into his mouth. I lean forward and play with the silver tab on my Mountain Dew can. “Oh, yes. Micah is intelligent,” I say. “And ambitious. He's going to be a world-famous proctologist someday. Isn't that right, Micah?”

Loch nearly spits out his Coke.

“What's that?” Ben asks, rasping out the longest sentence I've heard him speak thus far. His voice is low, rough. A smoker's voice.

“It's a doctor who basically stares at—” I begin to explain, but Shauna cuts me short.

“I'm exhausted,” she says with a yawn. “Micah and I were up late last night.”

Shauna proceeds to nibble on Loch's left earlobe. I pop the tab from the Mountain Dew can so hard that the empty can tips over. A string of cheese dangles from Ben's chin as he looks away. I feel sorry for him. He's in love, a condition I imagine isn't easy. He can't help the way he feels. He can't help who he is. Shauna's laying it on pretty thick.
Too
thick.

“Ben, you wanna hit the slopes?” I ask.

He brightens and nods, jumping up. As we toss away our trash, I glance over to see Loch watching me. He looks stricken, a victim left behind with the lioness. I feel bad abandoning him, but this is part of the job. I sure don't want to sit there and watch Shauna nibble on his ear like it's candy. She should back off once Ben is out the door.

Eager for the cold air, I hurry outside. Ben leans against the ski rack and sighs. “Man, that sucked,” he says, pinching his thin nose.

“Yeah.” I peek through the window. Shauna is sitting alone at the table now, scrolling through her phone. Frowning. Good. I don't see Loch anywhere. I feel better now that they're away from each other.

Ben leans toward me. I can smell the cigarette smoke on his jacket. “We have to break them up.”

“Excuse me?” I pull on a pair of gloves.

“Oh, come on,” Ben says, smiling. “You want him. I want her. We have to break them up.”

“First of all, I do not want him,” I say with confidence. “He's Shauna's boyfriend.” I pause. I feel like throwing up, just saying that. “Second of all, that sounds like the plot to an awful romantic comedy.”

Ben shuffles his feet. “You stare at him like you want him.”

I force a smile. “Do you want to ski down the big hill or what?”

“I don't know.” He turns around and looks up at the mountains. “I'm a beginner.”

I slap his back. “You shouldn't let labels deter you from doing exciting things, Ben.”

He turns to look at me. Shrugs. “What the hell,” he says. “If I die, at least I don't have to watch Shauna chew on some other guy's ear again.”

Amen to that.

As I gaze down the slope of track-stamped snow, it dawns on me that I have no clue what I'm doing. I can handle a ball or a pool stick or a video controller. I have general faith in my athletic abilities, but my confidence wavers when Ben gives a thumbs-up, snaps on his goggles, and takes off down the hill, letting out a howl of excitement. His skis cut through the snow with ease. Within seconds, his silver puffy jacket is a blur.

Beginner? Either Ben's very modest or he lowered my expectations on purpose to impress me. Or he's a liar. Like the rest of us.

My stomach flips more times than the snowboarders spinning through the air. I think about Ollie and how much he would love this. People whiz by me one by one like it's no big deal to dive down a mountain.
How does Ollie do this? WHY does Ollie do this?

I'm frozen. I imagine living up here forever. I could attend Purdue by mail. I could send my assignments down with snowboarders. I could be the girl living on the impossible mountain with an unknown path ahead of her.

“Just relax.” A hand lands on my shoulder. I meet Loch's kind eyes. “Don't think about it so much, Toni.”

“How did…?” I clear my throat, which is very dry. “How did you get up here so fast?”

“You've been standing up here for thirty minutes. Ben said you looked ready to hurl. His word, not mine.
Hurl
.”

I lie, embarrassed. “I think I ate a bad slice of pizza.”

Pink splotches Loch's cheeks. He scratches the black whiskers along his chin with his glove. “If you think about it too much, fear will take over and you won't do anything,” he says. “That's my general life theory.”

“Is it too late to do the bunny hill?” I joke.

Loch jabs me in the shoulder. “We'll go together, Toni. I won't leave your side.”

I don't really want to be the girl who lives on the scary mountain forever so I nod, prepared to take the plunge. With him by my side, I'll be okay. This won't be so bad. Together we count to three, push forward, and begin the descent.

All begins well. My legs keep steady. My shoulders straight. The cold wind blasts my cheeks. I relax and realize that I'm actually having fun. So this is why Ollie does this. This is why he wants to travel across country this summer.
The rush
. I fly. I soar. Look at me! A confident business woman mastering her fears!

When I turn to look at Loch, everything goes horribly awry. The look on Loch's face is one of pure fear. Lips pulled back in a silent scream. Jaw twisted. Eyes wild. He's seconds away from landing on his face. His large limbs twist about in every direction, grasping for something, anything to stop the inevitable crash. By some small miracle he remains on his feet, which isn't a good thing because the longer he manages to stay up, the faster he zooms down the slope.

The harder he will fall.

The ski lodge below grows larger, larger, larger. Oh, God. We're going to crash into people. We're going to hurt someone. We're going to die. Oh, God. I'm going to die a virgin. Loch isn't. Loch has lived! Why am I thinking about this right now?!

There's the ski lodge ahead. A crowd of people. Bones will be broken.

I grab Loch's hand and look him in the eye. Seconds later, he's falling forward, and I brace myself for the crash. Loch releases my hand and tumbles. A shower of snow rises to the sky as his body slides. I find my balance until I turn around to see if Loch's okay. That's when my feet fly out from underneath me and everything goes white.

twenty-one

I
HOLD MY CELL AWAY FROM MY
ear as my mother's frantic cries bleed through the receiver. Flames dance in the stone fireplace, brightening the dead animals hanging from the cabin walls. My legs stretched along the couch, I stare at my phone and wait for a break in Mom's panic. Finally, she takes a breath. I seize the opportunity to reassure her again.

“Mom, this isn't the first time I've broken my arm,” I say. “I'm fine. I didn't even cry.”

There were various swear words flying about on the ride to the hospital, but no tears. This break isn't nearly as bad as when I broke my arm in the sixth grade jumping off the tool shed in Cowboy's backyard. Because Ollie dared me to. This incident is also less humiliating.

“You need to come home,” Mom replies between sobs. “I want my only baby home now.”

I'd much rather be curled up beside Mom with a large bowl of popcorn right now, watching a seasonally inappropriate movie like
Christmas Vacation
or
Home Alone
, but alas, that heavenly scenario is not in the cards tonight.

“There's a winter storm.” I glance out the cabin window. Thick snowflakes plummet to the ground in a cluster of rage. “It's too dangerous to come home tonight. This is your responsible teenage daughter speaking. Tell Brian I said that.”

Mom sighs into the phone. “I shouldn't have let you go in the first place.”

Twenty minutes later, she calms down after I promise a thousand times to call the minute we leave tomorrow morning. She tells me that she loves me and I tell her that I love her and I hang up with a huge guilt pit in my stomach.

“I shouldn't have told her,” I tell Loch. He sits across from me in a moose-themed arm chair. He lowers the
Vermont Monsters
book he's reading.

“You did the right thing.” He raises the hood of his gray sweatshirt over his ears. “I bet you twenty bucks she'll have pumpkin pie waiting for you when you get home.”

“I'll take that bet.” I scribble on my white cast with a black marker. I draw a stick-figure skiing down a steep hill. The skier has wings, one of which is broken.

Shauna's parents felt awful about the accident. Both were in freak-out mode the whole time. At the hospital, Mr. Hamilton kept telling me that a lawsuit wouldn't be a good idea, as if I were considering such an option as my arm twisted in an unnatural way. I assured him I didn't plan on suing anyone until I was at least thirty, but he didn't find that funny.

The adult gang went to bed an hour ago, but I can't sleep. I like watching the snow drop onto the ground like a thousand tiny white bullets. I like Loch near me. I like the quiet, which is now interrupted by the sound of Shauna's pink slippers scraping across the floor. She enters the living room dressed in a red silk bathrobe. Where do you even buy something like that? She balances three large mugs of steaming something and sets them on the coffee table.

“A nice treat after a hard day's work,” she whispers.

Shauna plops down in the deer-themed chair next to Loch, sighs, and takes a drink from her mug. She looks at me like she wants to say something. I'm really not in the mood for confrontation. Ben's been in the shower for thirty minutes. I'm actually starting to worry he may have passed out from the pain of his unrequited love. I'll give him another ten minutes before I send Shauna in to check on him.

I take a large gulp from the mug. “Yum. What is this?” I ask, bringing the cup to my lips for seconds.

“It's my mom's special cider,” Shauna replies, adjusting her robe.

Loch drinks and coughs. “Rum. That's rum. And maybe a teaspoon of cider.”

I set the mug on the coffee table and push it away. “I probably shouldn't mix that with the pain medication.”

“Toni Valentine. Always so responsible,” Shauna says with a smile. “Who would guess that you run the business that you do.”

“What business?” Ben appears like a freaking ghost, drying his hair with a towel. He's wearing gray sweatpants and a white tank top. Shauna realizes her slip-up and stumbles for an explanation, but she comes up with nothing more than a few strange gurgling sounds.

“Toni teaches a pole-dancing class,” Loch chimes in. I glare at him. Seriously? A subtle smile forms on his lips.

“No kidding?” Ben asks, stepping further into the room. “Let's see some moves, Toni.”

I continue to draw on my cast. “Can't.”

“She's shy.” Loch sighs and sets his book on the coffee table. He's so teasing me.

“I'm not shy,” I reply. “If you want to see my moves, you've got to pay. Like everybody else.”

Ben leans against the wall and folds his arms across his chest. “Can we get a free sample? Every good business gives a free sample.”

I continue to scribble on my cast, tired, a little cranky. I'm earning every penny for this job, that's for sure. “I don't think so.”

“Spoken like a true
chicken
,” Loch says. I stop drawing and look up. Loch's eyes glimmer with mischief. With that indirect dare, I'm on my feet. I yank at the bottom of my
Mario Brothers
T-shirt and move to the center of the room. Ben claps, Shauna appears horrified, and Loch's expression is hidden behind his mug of special cider. He doesn't think I'll actually do this. Well,
watch me
.