Page 34 of See You Next Winter
“What if you meet someone else?” I ask him, fully aware it’ll happen at some point.
“Well, what ifyoumeet someone else?”
“I guess we… don’t talk about it?”
“So we stay friends when we go back home, live our lives, come back next winter and do it again.” He wiggles his eyebrows. I don't know when that stopped being annoying and started being kind of cute. “Deal?”
“Deal.”
When our families head out to welcome in the new year at the annual fireworks display, I squeeze his hand as the first explosion lights up the valley.
The very next day, my wish comes true.
Chapter 27
Ryan
It’s been weeks sinceKayla and I have found time to talk on the phone, and I finally get it.
She was justified in her concerns. These scraps of time would never amount to any kind of relationship. When I go to bed, she’s waking up. When she gets off work, I’m headed to the studio. Lunch is quick for both of us, if I manage to get away at all, and there’s not a lot of time for texting during the day.
Sometimes weeks go by with only a few messages, but on a couple of occasions we’ve caught each other at the right time, in the right mood, and it hasn’t taken long for our conversations to turn sexual. Phone sex isn’t a patch on the real thing, but I’ll take whatever I can get with her.
Kayla is always quick to remind me afterwards it changes nothing between us. We’re still friends, we still do our own thing, and we’ll still see each other next winter. I’d happily live in the delusion, but she gets a kind of post-nut clarity that brings us back to earth.
There’ve been a flurry of bookings before the season ends, but I know she has today off, so I call her before I’ve even gotten out of bed.
She answers from the sofa; her face a little pale, hair pulled up into a messy bun.
“Oh, honey. How is my friend Kayla doing?”
“Disgusting,” she groans. “I’ve barely moved all day.”
“I thought you might be a little fragile, judging by the tequila photos.”
She covers her face with a pillow and screams into it. “Don’t say that word. I am my own worst enemy.”
Last night was the final Saturday of the winter season, and she headed to Rico’s for a farewell party. Today the chairlifts will stop running, the bars will close, and the instructors and chalet staff head back to wherever they call home.
“What do you have planned now?” I ask her, and she sits up, finishing a nearby glass of water.
“Going back to bed. Ordering pizza for dinner. Might watch A Cinderella Story and really torture myself.”
She must have watched it fifty times by now, and I laugh at the memory of her reciting lines. She grabs her pillow, and I watch her trek through her small apartment and slide into bed. Even hungover, she’s still so beautiful, and I hate the thought of her feeling shitty while she’s alone. If I was there, I’d cook for her, run her a bath, hold her in my arms until she fell asleep.
“I didn’t mean today, by the way.”
“Huh?”
“What do you have planned now winter is over?”
“Lifts open again in June,” she sighs, “but I want to explore as much as I can before then and make sure I have some good biking routes locked in. For now, I just want to be lazy for a bit.”
“It’ll be good for you to take a break.” She keeps her phone held up and burrows deeper under her covers. I do the same, imagining us lying side by side in the same bed. “You look so snuggly. I wish I was there with you.”
“Me too.”
“Was it a good time? At Rico’s?”
