Page 71 of Unforgivable Ties

“I found an old picture of you doing it when I was cleaning,” I confessed. “I thought maybe it was something you liked...and I wanted to try it with you.”

“You really need to stop going through my things.” He grabbed my hands and gently pulled me off the snow. “Thank you,” he said softly, placing a cold kiss on my lips that made my heart flutter in response.

Using my free back foot, I pushed the snowboard forward like it was a skateboard until we reached the ski lift. Vincenzo was right in front of me, making it look easy. I was following behind him, and I was glad he couldn’t see how awkward and out of place I looked.

“You alright?” he asked as we arrived at the lift.

“Yeah,” I responded, trying to hide that I was already panting from the short distance we had gone.

He looked at me skeptically, but said nothing. When it was our time to get on the ski lift, he wrapped his arm around my lower back and guided me into the seat. The entire world seemed to fall away as we ascended, leaving behind a quiet calm that only the mountains seemed capable of providing.

“What if we fall off?” I asked, gripping the safety bar tighter.

If it could even be called a safety bar. It was a flimsy piece of metal that loosely hung over our lower waist and looked like it might break after years of use.

“We’re not going to fall off,” he said. “C’mere.”

Vincenzo pulled me into him, leaning my body into his. The chair gently swayed from the motion, tilting slightly now that all the weight was distributed to the right side.

“Now we’re definitely going to fall,” I said, burying my face into his shoulder. My helmet bonked against his and made a clanging noise, the sound echoing throughout the inside of my head.

“You’re from the Midwest. How have you never been snowboarding before?” he laughed.

“I hate the cold,” I grumbled. “I wish I was born in California.”

“Maybe we can visit one day,” he mused. His voice was always so soothing; deep and gravely but smooth.

“Yeah.”

It was a good thing he couldn’t see me under my helmet, because I was bright red. I would never had expected him to say he wanted to travel with me. It felt so couple-y; like something that people in serious relationships did.

I didn’t have too much time to dwell on it, because we had to exit the ski lift. Thank god I had Vincenzo to help me off, or else I would have fallen on my face.

How the hell was I going to make it down the slope? Even though Vincenzo could do the advanced courses, he had come with me to the easiest slope, which was reserved for little kids and their instructors. And, staring down from the top of the hill, even that felt like too much.

“You ready?” he asked, snapping his back boot into the snowboard.

I mimicked him, but it took me three tries to get my boot in. “Y-yeah. Can you go down first and I’ll watch?”

“Sure.”

His stance was perfect. He was parallel to the board, with his knees slightly bent and weight distributed evenly. He pushed off with his front foot, and the world became a blur of white as he zoomed down the slope. I watched from above, my heart thudding as the distance between us grew larger. Vincenzo seemed so natural, part of this icy wilderness in a way that I could never be.

“Ok,” I muttered to myself as he neared the bottom.

My stance was questionable; I looked more like a baby gazelle who was standing for the first time. But I took a deep breath and pushed myself down the slope.

I didn’t consider myself ungraceful, but it was near impossible to keep my balance with how fast I was going. My arms flailed at my sides to keep me upright, and miraculously, it worked. I probably looked stupid, but at least I hadn’t ended up face first in a pile of snow yet.

But I was picking up speed at an alarming rate, and the bottom of the hill was quickly approaching. Curse words were running through my brain at an alarming rate, but Vincenzo’s advice cut through:use your heels.

We watched an entire video on the technique, and he explained it to me in depth, but my execution was very incorrect. I tried stopping, but the edge of my snowboard got caught and I rolled down the last ten feet.

The little kids on the slope stared at me as I laid there, a snow-covered heap of limbs and winter gear. My face burned with both cold and embarrassment and I fought the urge to just lie there and disappear into the ground.

“About what I expected for your first time,” Vincenzo said, pulling up in front of me.

“You could have said something more encouraging,” I grumbled, sitting up and giving him an unseen glare through my helmet.

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