Page 52 of The Season
He turns to give me a blinding smile, and my breath stutters in my chest.
It’s the same smile he gave me five days ago, when we sat together on the chairlift and he told me all about growing up in New Zealand, and what the ski resorts there are like. The same smile he gave me when we were flying through powder, high on adrenaline, our turns in perfect synchronicity, our laughter mingling in the icy air above us.
I haven’t seen that smile from him since, and the sight of it has something like longing pulling behind my ribs. Why did he stop smiling at me?
“Okay,” I say, my voice sounding a little breathless. “I could use the walk.”
I could also use some food. I’m a lightweight, and while I’ve been talking to Tessa, I’ve drunk the entire drink Seth gave me on an empty stomach. I can feel the effects of the bourbon making my head feel light and my limbs heavy.
“Excellent!” Eddie’s smile widens, and he drops his arm from around my shoulders, only to grab my hand, twining his fingers with my own.
Tessa frowns at Eddie, looking annoyed that I’m leaving, but Eddie lifts his chin, sniffing haughtily in her direction. “Don’t give me that look, Tess. It’s my turn to have Lily. You’ve had her since she got here.”
Tessa rolls her eyes at Eddie, not bothering to respond before pulling out her phone and demanding that I give her my number. “So you can call me if any of these assholes get out of hand,” she explains, and there’s a hardness to her smile that has something in me melting. Especially when she makes me promise to text her when I get to work on Monday, so she can show me around the locker room and help me get settled in.
“Tessa is a cool chick,” Eddie says, as we step out into the icy night air, the crisp scent of snow and concrete replacing the humid scent of sweat, booze, and soda. “Second-ranked female snowboard instructor as well, so a good friend to have. She’ll definitely be able to show you the ropes.”
“Awesome.” I grip the handrail as I carefully navigate the icy steps that snake down to the parking lot, the knit gloves I put on doing nothing to stop the cold. “What does that mean, second ranked?” My sneakers slip on the ice, and I silently curse my lack of snow boots. Something to remedy with my first paycheck, if there’s enough left over. “Like, is that based on how long she’s instructed?”
“Sort of…” Eddie looks over his shoulder just in time to see my feet slip on a particularly icy step, then frowns when he notices my shoes. “Hard out, are those your shoes?” He shakes his head, then continues. “Rank is based on a mixture of things. How long someone has taught for, but also what level certification they have. Tessa is a level three. It’s not quite the highest she can get, but not far off it. Liam has a level four—that’s the highest—and it means he’s a trainer too.” He winces, then adds. “You and Matty, and the rest who passed today, you guys don’t even have level one.”
“How would I get a level one?” I ask, thinking out loud. But Eddie answers anyway.
“To be honest, you probably wouldn’t get one. Not now, anyway. You’d be looking at minimum six weeks of intensive training. It took a whole season to train for mine, and even then, the exam had a fifty-percent fail rate.”
“Oh.”
A tired sort of disappointment settles heavy in my stomach at his words. I had known that the certificate I got today only enabled me to teach at the mountain. I guess I just hadn’t understood why.
Just then, both my feet slip out from under me. My death grip on the railing keeps me from hitting my ass on the ice-coated cement steps, but that doesn’t stop Eddie from turning fully around, his lips pulled into a feral scowl.
“What the hell?” He climbs the couple steps separating us, reaching out to grab my free hand. “Honestly, those fucking shoes. Are you trying to break something?”
His hand is warm and strong around my own—surprising, since he’s not even wearing gloves—and I step reflexively toward him.
“Come on.” His hand is like a vise on my own, forcing us to walk side by side as we traverse the last set of stairs. “Let’s get to the dairy and back without an injury, eh? Pretty sure Matty would pummel me if I brought you back injured.” He gives a harsh chuckle, keeping his gaze averted from my own.
“Dairy?” I ask, because I’m not willing to try and unpack the comment about Matty right now. “I don’t think there’s a dairy in Park City…”
Eddie stops, turning to blink at me in confusion before giving a sheepish smile. “Sorry.Convenience store,” he clarifies. “I’ll try to use more Yank-friendly terminology.”
“It’s fine.” Just when I think I’ve gotten the hang of everyone’s different way of speaking, they go and use some new word I’ve never heard of before. To be honest, I kind of like it. “I don’t want you to be anything besides yourself around me.”
Eddie stumbles beside me, his hand tightening around my own. We’re at the base of the steps now, and I pause, turning to give him a questioning look. He’s staring back at me, his brown eyes wide and reflecting the lamplit snow, his lips parted.
“You don’t mean that.” He closes his eyes, his expression shuttering as he dips his chin. An unruly lock of brown hair falls across his forehead, and he flicks it back. “Not really.”
But I do mean it.
I think I got a glimpse of him that day we hiked backcountry—not when he was openly flirting with me on the lift, but after. When his skis hit the snow, when his laughter danced with mine alongside flying powder. In those moments, he’d let down his guard, and it was like watching the sun rise over icy mountains, brilliant and breathtaking and almost painfully real.
And then after—when Antoine and I had been helping him find his ski, playing and rolling in the snow—Eddie might have been worried, but there was a raw honesty in his smiles. And the look he gave me when I pulled his ski from the powder, where it had snagged on an orange plastic boundary fence that had been hidden beneath the surface—it was like I was Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone.
I’ve thought about that day all week. In those few snow-sparkled moments, I’d felt like there had been a connection forged between our two souls.
I’d give anything to see him like that again.
I shiver, and his eyes fly open, a hard edge of determination tightening his jaw. “You’re cold.” His eyes track over my worn snowboard jacket, the thin fabric, the too-big fit, and he shakes his head. “Your gear is shit, Missy. I should have had one of the guys come with me instead.”
