Page 25 of Seduction on the Slopes

“No more than usual.”

“Are you worried about your race?”

“No more than usual.”

“Have you been getting enough iron?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Is Ted giving you a hard time?”

I smirk in the face of her rapid-fire interrogation, and also because Ted turned when he heard his name. “No more than usual.”

“So it’s this Crash boy, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Fuck it all. She lulls me into a false sense of security and the easy rhythm of answering easy questions, and thenbam.

“What about him? Do you think he’s not ready?”

“He’s as ready as I could get him in the time allotted.”

She smiles, and because she’s my mom, tweaks my nose. “You’re as precise with your language as you are on your skis. A simple ‘no’ wouldn’t suffice. It sounds like he’s going to race fine. You said you’re not worried something happened to him. So it’s . . .”

She narrows her eyes and examines my face. Like a petulant child, I shrug up my shoulders and turn my head, avoiding her like she’s going to give me a wet willy or something. Maybe it’s time for me to get my own place. I don’t think I can live with this all the time now that I won’t be living at training facilities for a good part of the year.

“I’ve got all night, Miles.”

I love my mom, and I have her to thank for my perseverance, but I could seriously do without her being this way with me. “Fine, okay? I give up. I can go head to head with the meanest people on skis, survive hours of below-freezing temperatures, endure hours of brutal conditioning, but you . . .” I cluck my tongue.

My parents know I’m gay. They’ve never seemed to care much. They also know I’m far more dedicated to skiing than to finding someone to settle down with, so they don’t ask about my partners much. Probably because I don’t have much to say. One-night stands aren’t really something you want to chat about with your parents over Sunday dinner.

I take a breath, and let it out through my nose. “He said he’d be here. He’s not here.”

“Casper’s not here either.”

That’s true. But he’d also never said he would be. In fact, he’d told me he couldn’t come because he and his wife—who’s a good bet for a medal in the half-pipe—were having a quiet night in before her event tomorrow. Also, while I like Casper . . . he’s not Crash. Not that skinny-assed, floppy-haired, positively maddening man who gives outstanding fellatio.

“Do you maybe . . . like this boy?”

“It would be easier to say yes if you stopped calling him a boy.”

My mother’s eyebrows go up. “I see. So you do. Like this man.”

“Maybe. Sometimes. When I don’t want to strangle him. It’s complicated.”

I can tell that a whole heap of questions is about to flood out of her mouth, but deliverance comes in the form of my father clinking his wine glass with his knife and standing, because the man is physically incapable of not giving a toast at these things.

“Thank you all so much for coming tonight. We’re so pleased to be able to host a dinner for the USA alpine team for the fourth time in a row.”

Ted cups his hands around his mouth and shouts to me over the polite applause. “You know that’s why you keep making the team, right, old man?”

Okay, that’s fine. This is the kind of teasing I can take. Far preferable to my mother’s meddling in my nonexistent love life. I toss a roll at Ted’s head, but end up beaning him in the shoulder. “As good a reason as any.”

Crash

The campground the cab lets me off at isn’t nice. Not that I was expecting it to be. They never are. But this one is worse than usual, the snow piled up in brownish-grey piles crowned with dog shit and yellow spots. Classy.

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