Page 13 of Spring Breakup
“Your future-brother-in-law is more my type.”
“Than Dean?”
“Than your brother!”
She laughed. “And Dean?”
“Geez. What about him?” Tyler was uncomfortable with the direction of this conversation.Dean, Dean, Dean.
“He’s a good guy.”
“Is he?”
Hot? Yes. Nice? Question mark.
“Yes. And talented. You should see him when he teaches the figure drawing class at the community center. He’s so in control and poised. He’s enthusiastic about his students and respectful of the nude models. The way his hands move when he draws is masterful, and—”
“Okay, okay. Message received. Are you trying to set me up with Dean? Because I just got out of a relationship, and I’m not—”
“No, Tyler. I promise I’m not. Well, I kind of am, but mostly, I’m being nosy.”
“I’m a disaster and haven’t exactly been putting my best foot forward on this trip.”
“You’re a fantastic teacher and won a lot of money on TV by being smart. Sometimes life is a disaster. People will either accept you for your mess, or they don’t deserve you.”
Tyler’s cheeks went hot. “Thanks, Rosie. And thanks for inviting me. I needed this.”
“Hey!” Leo yelled from up the road. Rosie and Tyler both snapped to attention. Leo was standing on a big boulder right at the curve of the road. On one side of the street, there was a sharp drop into the lake. On the other, there was a small shoulder and a quick ascent up the mountain, making the road feel incredibly narrow. “Come check this out! You can see Skipper Glacier from here!”
A childlike excitement blistered through Tyler. He’d never seen a glacier in person. He took a quick step forward and promptly slipped in that awful silt again, landing hard on his butt and tweaking his knee.
“Oh, fucking perfect,” he groaned.
Then came the rain.
ChapterSix
Dean realized very quicklythat his winter coat was not waterproof. He and Tyler made quite the pair—Tyler shivering and covered in that gray mud again and Dean shivering and soaked through from the cold rain.
They could see the town in the distance, lit up and cozy-looking. Skipper Glacier, which was on the other side of the lake, was visible once you skirted around the edge of the mountain. It fed into Skipper Lake, leaving large icebergs that rose from the frozen water.
Leo was practically having an orgasm about the otherworldly blue crevasses in the glacier. He would be chasing the color all over the place in his next art collection. As they oohed and ahhed over the view, the glacier calved, causing cracks of ice to build up at the base.
Dean whooped in shock at the sight, adrenaline pumping. It almost helped him forget how miserably wet he was.
He wished that seeing such beauty inspired him to draw, but he never captured the magic with his pencils that he saw with his eyes. His work always disappointed him. He could have drawn that glacier a million times, and it would never live up to the view in person. He had all the technical skills but none of the creativity.
“Should we keep going into town?” Rosie asked. She seemed unaffected by the rain, her eyes full of the wanderlust Dean had so often seen in Leo’s.
“Where did those boulders come from?” Tyler asked abruptly, not answering her question. He was staring at the mountain.
There was a mix of snow, rock, and dirt toward the bottom of the slope with a denser slab of snow toward the top. The tips of evergreen trees peeked through the thick blanket.
“Presumably, up there,” Dean said.
“And how deep do you think that snow is?” Tyler asked.
“Really fucking deep.”
