Page 31 of Seduction on the Slopes

“No, it’s fine.” I will myself to go pliant, slack, to recall the way I’d felt right after Miles had blown my mind. It works, sort of. What I’d like is a nice blunt to take the edge off, but that is not an option. Maybe in an attempt to distract the part of me that’s craving a smoke something fierce, curiosity overwhelms me. “What are your parents like?”

Miles looks at me, confused probably, because why would I want to talk about his family right now. But I do. I’ve seen pictures of his parents before because they come to his big events, and now I want to know if they’re as perfect in real life as they look in those glossy magazine retrospectives.

“My parents? Uh, they’re pretty cool. If they weren’t, I don’t think I’d still call Greenwich my home base.”

Right. He travels a lot for training and competitions, but still lists Greenwich as his place of residence.

“You still live with them?”

He shrugs, looks kind of embarrassed. “I’m not in Connecticut all that much, seemed like a waste to have my own place, and my parents’ house is . . .”

Big enough to house an army,but I don’t think he’s going to say that.

“There’s, uh, plenty of space. So yeah, when I’m training, I have my own place, but when I go home I stay with them. They like having me around since I’m away so much.”

What would that be like? To be thirty-one years old and still live with your parents because it made all of you happy? And in the same house you’ve lived in basically your whole life? No wonder Miles is so constant. He grew up on a rock with barnacles for parents. I don’t mean that in an insulting way either, even though being compared to barnacles isn’t usually flattering.

“Did they want you to be a pro skier?”

“Not particularly. Did you know my parents don’t even know how to ski? But they wanted me to learn so I wouldn’t be left out. Started me in lessons when I was four, and I swear I was the only black kid on the mountain until I was thirteen. I think they pictured me going out west with some prep school friends over winter break to resorts, but that’s not what happened, obviously. I never went to prep school.” He smiles, looking out into the distance, wistful. “But I guess that’s the cool thing about my parents? I loved skiing, and I wanted to be the best, so they helped me figure out how to do that. Drove me to mountains, sent me to camps, hired coaches, paid for equipment.”

He trails off and looks at me. It’s in his face, what he’s thinking.All those things your parents didn’t or couldn’t do.

“Anyway, they probably would’ve been happier if I were a brain surgeon or a senator or a professor or something. I know they worry about what I’m going to do with myself after . . . Well, after. But they’ve been really supportive. Still come to my big races and make signs and stuff. It used to embarrass the hell out of me, but now I can’t imagine racing without it, you know? They’re here now, you could meet them. If you wanted to.”

Meet Miles’s parents? Whoa.

“They never really outgrew the team-parent thing. They like knowing who I spend time with, and my mom makes me Skype with her whenever I move someplace new so I can show her where I’m staying. You missed it, they took the team out to dinner tonight. Used to be pizza when I was a kid, but they usually go a little more upscale now.”

Probably lobster and champagne and shit. I don’t even have clothes I could wear someplace like that. But I’d like to meet them. I bet Miles’s dad has that same way of talking as he does. Kind of slow, but not because he’s dumb; just the opposite. I bet they’re both precise and use big words. And I bet he got his smile from his mom. It’ll be like being blinded by the sun to have them both look at me, but worth it, probably. Or maybe his way of talking is from his mom and his smile is from his dad? Now that’s going to bug me. Until I know.

And also I feel like crap because I’d been so in my own head after my mom had called that I’d forgotten about dinner. Didn’t even text. I’m an asshole. “Shit, dinner. I’m so sorry I missed it. And didn’t even let you know I wouldn’t be there—”

Miles cuts me off with a shrug and he stares up at the ceiling. “It’s okay. I wish you would’ve told me you were going to see your folks. I would’ve understood. But anyway, they’ll be around for a while. You’ll get another shot.”

He really doesn’t seem mad, which I would understand if he were. But I want to make sure he knows it wasn’t about him. At all. “Yeah, I’d like to meet them. Maybe after the race.”

Miles strokes a hand down the side of my ribs almost all the way down to my ass. His fingers are in that weird zone where it’s hard to tell what exactly to call it. But it feels good.

“What about your parents? What are they like? I’m imagining flower children who collect crystals and eat bean sprouts and make their own kombucha. Am I close?”

“Yeah, basically.” My voice sounds hollow in my own ears. Like I’m talking from far away. This is where I hide when people talk about my family, like I must’ve grown up on some love-in commune and being some kind of free spirit kid was awesome. No real school, no rules, who wouldn’t want to be Peter Pan?

“Hey.” He squeezes my hip/ass and rolls on his side to look at me. “I don’t mean to tease. Everyone’s family is different. Mine probably sounds super boring and stuffy to you.”

Miles

Crash probably thinks we’re like the goddamn Banks family of Greenwich, but without the Fresh Prince anywhere in sight. He wouldn’t be entirely wrong, except our family wasn’t that big and my dad took the train into Manhattan every day for his job as a TV exec, and doesn’t sit on a bench as a judge.

But Crash is acting weird again. I don’t know what it is about his family that freaks him out, but there’s significant evidence that it does. And because I’m an asshole, I can’t just let it be. “So what are they actually like? I showed you mine, now show me yours.”

I’m trying to kid with him, but if I’m reading the way he turns to look at me with those big hazel eyes right, he doesn’t feel like I’m joking. This is hurting him and I should stop, but I can’t. For everything I’ve done for him, I want something, and there’s some sadistic part of me that’s decided it’s this particular pound of flesh that I want in return. Because asshole.

And because he’s Crash and the kid doesn’t know how to say no to me for better or for worse, he answers. “They’re probably a lot like how you’d imagine. Smoke a lot, do the whole hippie free love thing. I’m probably lucky I was born during a thunderstorm and my sister was already named Rain, because who knows what other shit they could’ve come up with?”

I had wondered about that. If it were back east, it wouldn’t be impossible to know someone named Crash, but it would be far more likely that their full name was Charles Sherbourne Drake V, and all the sensible nicknames had been used up already. But no, the guy’s name is honest-to-god Crash.

Awesome name for an extreme athlete—again, he couldn’t have been a snowboarder, why?—but growing up it couldn’t have been easy. Lot of pressure that name. To be loud, to make an impact, be kind of crazy, reckless.

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