Page 25 of The Lodge

He didn’t call while I was locked out, and he didn’t answer when I gave up waiting and tried calling him myself. I left two voicemails before finally going to bed, one embarrassingly long, the other stilted and short. He had hours to call back overnight while I was asleep—even a text would have been fine.

This silence is maddening.

Does he not care about his own book? Does he not want it to be complex and groundbreaking andreal? That can’t happen unless I know the whole story. I get that he’s in Tahiti right now, but some of us are on deadline. He’d better have a good excuse.

Back to voice memo land I go, I guess.

My penthouse feels suffocatingly stagnant this morning. I try to work in three different locations before realizing I’m just too anxious to sit still—I need movement, maybe a change of scenery. Usually, the quiet would be a good thing. Today, it only amplifies my awareness of how silent my phone is.

I decide to head down to the coffee shop instead. It’s snowing lightly, and I’m up so early it’s still dark outside; I pull on the warmest jacket I can find and triple-check that my phone, wallet, and penthouse key are all safely tucked in my laptop tote before heading out.

Makenna is there when I arrive.

“Honey nut latte for here?” she asks, eyeing my tote.

“Sounds amazing. Can you make it a triple?”

I set up shop at a big table by the window. I’m the only customer in here, so of course I’ve picked the very best spot, one with a cushy single-sided booth made of blue velvet that has a full view of the glorious mountain.

Or, at least, it will once the sun is up.

“How’d your lesson go yesterday?” Makenna asks, setting my honey nut latte down on the table along with an almond croissant I didn’t order. “On the house—they’re fresh out of the oven, and you’vegotto try one.”

“Ooh, thanks! And it went really well, actually. Better than expected after so many years.”

“And Tyler?”

Tyler Fox, according to the ski school pamphlet I read from cover to cover before I went to bed. His name takes me right back to last night: shirtless Tyler and his superhero stomach—the way his eyes crinkle at the corners when he laughs—his amazing hair, and the way that one piece of it is always falling out of place. How he made me anentire dinnerwhen I swooped into his penthouse without warning.

I shrug, like his name means nothing. Nothing more thanSki Instructor Tyler.

“He’s nice. A good teacher.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Makenna says, like she can read every single thing I’m trying not to show. “Going back today?”

“I haven’t skied in years,” I say, busying myself with arranging my workspace in just the right way. “It would be irresponsible of menotto go back, right?”

Makenna laughs. “Soirresponsible.”

“Have you ever taken a lesson with him?”

“It’s best for everyone if I stay off the mountain—one hundred percent, I’d end up breaking both wrists, possibly even my neck. Hard to make coffee with broken wrists.”

“Hard to doanythingwith a broken neck!”

“You see my point,” she says with mock solemnity.

Makenna heads back over to her station at the coffee bar, and I settle in to work. I catch a glimpse of golden light as the sun peeks through the clouds, a sliver of the sunrise radiating from the snow-covered mountains. It’s still snowing outside, delicate little flakes: the perfect writing weather.

I pick up where I left off yesterday—I flagged one of Sebastian’s voice memos to listen to after stumbling on an article about an argument he had with Jett Beckett. The title of this voice memo is the name of the bar mentioned in the article, so I’m hoping it will shed some light on what they were actually arguing about.

I open to a fresh page in my journal and hit play.

This is one of the lengthier voice memos, more than two hours long, but so far it’s not at all what I thought it would be. Instead of juicy details about his heated exchange with Jett, the first half is all about his experience on a reality dating show he starred in a few years ago calledThe Stag.

I’m interested in that, too, of course—it was a huge scandal at the time, one of the most-watched finales in reality dating show history, in which Sebastian was famously rejected by both women at his final choosing ceremony. According to Sebastian, the double dumping was entirely staged: he claims he never intended to continuea relationship with any of the contestants outside the show. He even refused to sign the contract until the producers agreed to his idea of the perfect finale (i.e., one in which Sebastian ended up alone while simultaneously sparking a viral publicity moment for himselfandthe show).

From there, he talks at length about his public image—how the show affected it for better and for worse, how his solo album didn’t quite land in the way he’d always hoped it would.

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