Page 12 of On the Edge

“But why would you forgive him? It doesn’t sound like he deserved it.”

“I held on to that bitterness and hatred for decades. I used it to push me forward in my career, but then every success was just a way to prove I was better than him. In the end, nothing I did was about me,” she says, her voice thick with emotion, “it was always about him. How much happier could I have been if I’d forgiven him and moved on? I could have appreciated and enjoyed my life so much more if I wasn’t holding on to all that negativity. Years ago, I went to his funeral and dropped a rose on his grave. I walked away wishing I could have back the forty years I spent hating him, so I could have spent that time loving someone else instead.”

“Your heart couldn’t handle both hating him and loving someone else?”

“You can’t grow weeds and grass in the same garden. Hatred and bitterness are like those weeds, and unless you spend your time fighting the weeds and nurturing the grass, the weeds just take over. In the end it hurt me more than it hurt him. Sit with that for a minute.”

I do as she says, wondering if that’s what I’ve been doing with Nate—spending so much of my energy hating him that I can’t nurture and grow in other areas of my life? Other relationships?

“You’re much too young to be this bitter.” She shakes her head and I know this is her way of telling me to let go of this hurt I’ve been carrying around for the past five years, but she knows better than anyone how impossible that is. “Anyway, do you want to play a game? Maybe Scrabble?”

“Sure, let’s play Scrabble,” I say, thankful for the opportunity to think about something other than my own baggage. I get the big board out, the one I gave her last Christmas because it has plastic ridges between the squares on the board so she can set the tiles in and they don’t move. It’s hard for her to line them up just right otherwise.

Halfway through the game, she looks up at me. “Thanks for coming, sweetie. I’m sorry for bringing up all that history earlier, but I just had the sense that you needed to hear it.”

I ignore the implication that I’m following in her footsteps, and instead tell her, “I’m always happy to hear about your life.” I hope she knows how much I mean that. Since she has no family, every story and every memory will die with her, except for the ones I can keep alive. And maybe in the end, this is what keeps me coming back week after week. Because we all need someone to listen to us, to know us.

* * *

I return to work more conflicted than I left. I probably would have been better off if I’d just gone to yoga like TJ suggested. Then I’d be relaxed and ready to face Nate later today without losing my cool, and potentially losing my job. Instead, I’m left mulling over my conversation with Ms. Juarez and wondering if I’m determined to end up alone too, bitterness having hollowed me out like it did to her.

No, you’ve moved on.You just need to keep moving forward and not looking back, I remind myself. But that was so much easier to do before Nate showed up.

I slide into my seat at our team meeting right before the men’s head coach, Matt McCarthy, walks in. Josh’s old coach, Lyle, who is one of the team’s assistant coaches is right behind him. The coaches don’t normally join our PT team meetings, but I suspect they’re here to make sure we can take good care of Nate.

“Jackson.” He nods to me as he takes the seat next to mine. “How’re you doing?”

“I’m fine, Coach, how are you?”

He looks at me without answering, just stares at me for fifteen seconds that feel like fifteen minutes, his dark brown eyes assessing me. I swallow and raise my eyebrows, refusing to be intimidated by him. I’ve studied human behavior enough to know how Ishouldact, and when I should act that way. In this case, Coach McCarthy is clearly trying to get me to crack—though I’m not sure what he expects. “Are you really okay?” he finally asks.

“I’m fine, Coach. Why wouldn’t I be?” I don’t know who the “higher-ups” are that TJ claims are making noise about my relationship with Marco. But I do know that he said Coach McCarthy specifically wanted me training Nate. So unless I want to be out of a job, I’d better act like I’m damn pleased to do just that. And if I happen to find another job soon, I can walk out of here with my head held high, having not lost my shit—or my job—just because Nate reappeared like a ghost from my past.

“Good,” he says, the word clipped and decisive.

TJ kicks us off with a status update on each of the returning athletes on the men’s team. There are no surprises there. Even Jeff Beltzer, who had broken his collarbone in a dirt bike accident at the beginning of the summer, is fully recovered. Heading into this season, we’re in an extremely good place in terms of our athletes’ health, probably better than any of the past three seasons I’ve been here.

And then we get to Nate.

“Okay, so what is this guy’s deal?” Lyle asks, and I’m taken aback because I’d assumed he’d been on the team of coaches who granted Nate’s “coaches’ discretion.” But he seems as surprised by this new addition to our team as I am. “How did he go from being social media famous to racing on the men’s alpine team? Because there are some damn qualified men on the C and D teams that were probably hoping for that spot.”

I’ve never seen anyone challenge Coach McCarthy, especially not one of his own coaching staff. I clasp my hands together in my lap because my protective instincts are kicking in even though they have no business doing so. But it’s hard to hold my tongue when what I really want to say is that he shouldn’t underestimate Nate, whose raw talent when it comes to skiing is second to none. He may not have been able to race for years for health reasons, but if he’s half as good as he used to be, he deserves this spot. What he doesn’t deserve is my blind faith in him, but somehow my brain can’t quite convince my heart of that.

Coach glances down at my hands, takes in my fingers seized around each other before meeting my eyes.

“Work with him a bit, Lyle,” Coach says, his flat baritone voice that’s usually devoid of emotion is heated as he swings his eyes across the table to his assistant coach. “You’ll see that he very much belongs on the team.”

“Can you tell us how this happened, at least?” Lyle asks. “I mean, he hasn’t raced on an FIS course in what, a decade? How did he end up on this team?”

“Davenport’s an exceptional skier. You may know he was invited to join the development team during his senior year of high school. I was in your shoes at the time”—he nods his chin to Lyle—“and I was the one who recruited him. He accepted, but then he decided to forgo his skiing career so he could donate one of his kidneys to his mom, who was suffering from kidney failure. You probably also know that he then coached Jackson here,” he says as he nods to me and all heads at the table swivel in my direction, “for a few years when she was still racing.” Blessedly, he doesn’t mention that we were dating, though it’s impossible that there’s anyone sitting at this table who doesn’t already know. “Since then, he’s been out there making Warren Miller-style videos, but that’s a reckless waste of his talent if you ask me. We’ve kept in touch here and there, and when he contacted me about getting back into ski racing, I was open to the idea. Excited for the possibility, actually, because the kid’s still got it. I met with him twice in the last nine months, put him through every test I could think of, set the hardest courses I could imagine. And you know what he did? He skied them faster than anyone else on this team ever has. So yeah, he earned his place,” Coach says, planting his hands firmly on the table on either side of the notebook and tablet stacked in front of him as if to sayConversation closed.

My hands loosen in my lap, mirroring the relief I feel. I don’t want to train Nate. I don’t want him here in my life. But damned if I don’t think he finally deserves his chance to prove himself. If only he could have done this sooner, maybe things between us would have turned out differently.

Nope, don’t go there, Jackson, I tell myself. I recognize that ache in my chest and refuse to give in to this line of thought. I’ve been down this path of imagining different outcomes for me and Nate way too many times over the years.

Now that I’ve moved on, there’s no point in looking back.

Coach McCarthy turns to me. “He has his doctor’s clearance, but I need you to make sure there’s no reason he can’t compete. If you have any hesitation at all, I need to know, and I need to know right away.”

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