Page 54 of Crashing into Love

“Who cares?” Selma asked.

“Yeah, who cares?” Gia echoed.

Drew laughed a little and said, “Okay. I’ll send it and get on FaceTime. Give me a minute.”

She hurried to her bedroom and changed out of the tank-top-and-no-bra combination she’d tossed on when she’d gotten home, and put on a sports bra and a T-shirt instead. Then, she sent the recording to Selma and decided to FaceTime from her iPad so that she could rest it on its stand and wouldn’t have to hold her phone while they talked.

“Your turn there was nuts, Drew,” Selma said as they watched on their computer.

Drew had the video on her phone, and they’d pressed play at the same time to try to sync up their viewing.

“Yeah, they fixed the course. It was much better today. And I only had that window to get by her.”

“The course was broken?” Gia asked.

“We sometimes say that when the course is too slow,” Drew explained. “You know all about friction, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. So, your board glides over the snow. If the snow is loose, like the snowflakes just kind of piled up, the board doesn’t go as fast, right?”

“Right,” Gia confirmed.

“So, when you’re in snowboard cross, you want the snow to be packed hard. It makes you go faster. And you put wax on your board to make it go even faster. Your mom had some trouble in her race because why?” Drew asked, hoping Selma had told Gia.

“She said it was hot, so the snow was melting, and it wasn’t packed,” Gia replied. “So, the wax wasn’t helping, either.”

“You got it,” Drew said with a smile aimed at Gia, who wasn’t looking at her face because she was still watching the video.

Drew turned her attention to Selma then, hoping to be able to stare at the woman for a second because she would be watching the video, too. Selma wasn’t watching the video or Gia, though. She was looking at Drew, and she gave her a soft smile when their eyes met. Drew smiled the same way back.

“You won by so much,” Gia noted.

“Not by that much. It’s microseconds in our sport, right?”

“Right,” Gia confirmed with a nod. “When do you race again? Is it here?”

“No, baby. Drew’s not racing here.”

“It’s not far off, though, my next competition.”

As a silent response to that, Selma gave her a wide-eyed expression that told Drew not to say anything else, which she understood because while she’d be going back to train with the team soon, their next competition was an international one, where she’d be representing Team USA, and Selma would be representing Canada. Meaning, if Drew mentioned that, Gia would want to go, and Selma probably didn’t want to cause any problems with that right now.

“Hey, Gia, can you go back to your room for a few minutes and work on your drawing? I’ll call you when it’s time for dinner, okay?”

“I wanted to talk to Drew more.”

“I know. Another time, okay?”

“Fine,” Gia reluctantly agreed and marched off with her computer.

Selma’s phone had been resting against something, but she picked it up and moved to lie on her side. Drew felt like all she had to do was lie down on her own sofa, and it would be as if they were in the same room, staring at each other.

“Congrats on the win again,” Selma told her. “You killed it.”

“Thanks. Did you kick her out because of–”

“Yeah. She’d want to go, and she can’t. She has school. This new program is turning out great for her, but now that she’s actually excited about school, I don’t want to pull her out for a week.”

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