Page 77 of Untouchable

"I've never been," Harp admits. "I'd like to. I've only been skiing once, and I fell off the ski lift."

Parker bursts out laughing, and then covers his mouth.

“Er—I mean, you were okay, right?” Parker clarifies, and when Harp nods, Parker starts smiling again. “Well, if you want to go—we could—I’d teach you—I mean, I’m not great but—there’s a really good bunny slope in near the—...or—I dunno.”

Parker falters. He realizes that, though they’ve decided to be friends, Parker also has no idea what that friendship might look like. Parker has some friends he goes out with, other friends—like Mindy—he’s constantly texting, and some people he goes months without interacting with but still feels close to. He wonders what his friendship with Harp will be like, and he hopes it’s not the latter. He’d miss Harp too much, he realizes.

"I'm not scared of ski lifts now, to be clear. I was just a little Florida kid when it happened, and my parents weren't paying attention. I guess it's like the time your family left you behind, only instead of being good and sitting still, I got my ski hooked and fell off a lift," Harp says.

Parker grins, because despite the picture Harp paints, he’s imagining Harp, fully grown, dangling from a ski lift, frowning down at the skiers below him as he’s towed off into the sky.

* * *

Harp likesthe idea of trying something Parker likes doing, if only because it would help Harp understand how the other man's mind works. The offer sounds suspiciously like the sort of thing people say just to be nice, though, so Harp doesn't push any more planning to try it out.

Parker cocks his head.

“Wait, where can you go skiing in Florida?”

Harp laughs hard and he feels ten times better as he does it.

"There are some dunes down there that might surprise you," he says, wiping the corner of one eye.

Parker narrows his eyes, and then understands.

“Oh,” he says. “You’re joking.”

Harp keeps laughing but he can tell from the way that Parker smiles, he knows Harp isn’t making fun of him.

“So, did you guys go on a lot of vacations and stuff?” Parker asks after a moment.

"No, almost never out of the state. The only reason we went skiing in the first place was because I was an only child at the time and my dad won some sort of trip through work," Harp says. "Once more little Harper brats came along, we stuck to trips to the lakes and springs and beaches—stuff you can do for free."

Christ. There's no way Parker could know, but Harp is panicking that he even brought up swimming. It was true that that had been their main entertainment growing up, but it wasn't a topic he wants to expand on.

“How old are your siblings?” Parker asks.

"Gil is the youngest—he's your age," Harp says, trying not to wince at that. He has to do mental math for the rest since it's been so long since he's thought about how old they all are.

"Agnes is 36, Judy is 34, and Walt would've been 42 this year."

“Would’ve been?”

"Yep," Harp says quickly. "He died when he was 16."

And that's all that Harp plans on saying about Walt. Guilt squeezes around his heart.

"What about you? How old are your sisters?"

* * *

Harp’s expressionis closed and broken all at once, and Parker’s heart hurts for having pushed the conversation.

“Celia’s, um… sixteen years older than me,” he says, trying to do the mental math. “So, like, 42 now, too, I guess. Which means Vanessa is 40. I wasn’t exactly planned.”

Harp nods.

"Does that bother you? Knowing that?"

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