Page 77 of The Season
A smile curves Lily’s lips, and she rolls her head, turning to face me until her cheek is resting against my forearm, giving a slow, knowing nod. “Ah. That’s the Zen philosophy of impermanence, right?”
I gape at her, momentarily stunned. At her other side, Antoine is staring down at her like she’s some sort of a gift, and he isn’t quite sure how she ended up in his arms.
“Yah,” I choke out. “How did you know that?”
Lily lifts her head, and I instantly miss the feel of her skin against mine. She scoots forward, and Antoine’s arm slides into the water behind her, his fingers skating my side again in the process.
“I took Zen philosophy in my first year of college,” she says, with an embarrassed shrug. “Along with a bunch of religious studies classes. All about non-Christian religions, of course.” Her eyes crinkle with mirth. “It was my way of rebelling against my parents.” Her smile drops. “Or, trying to. Turns out, they didn’t really care about all that. As long as the classes I signed up for counted toward my major, and as long as my major led to me going to law school, they really didn’t care about the content at all…”
“Is that what you’re going to do?” I ask, my chest feeling tight for some reason. “When you finish the season here, I mean? You’re going to go to law school?”
It’s hard to imagine her in an office, that wild brown hair coiffed, thick lipstick on those full lips, muscle and softness hidden behind the confines of some black-and-white dress suit. It has its appeal, for sure, and my cock stirs beneath the water, registering its vote of approval for a lawyer-Lily fantasy.
But what would happen to her laugh, to her smiles?
She shrugs, her gaze darting away, to the middle of the hot tub. “I have to finish my undergrad first. Just have one more semester…” She swallows, slender throat bobbing, and then her eyes turn back to me, full of an unguarded vulnerability I haven’t seen before. “I’m not really sure what I want anymore,” she admits. “I don’t think I ever stopped to think about it. Don’t think anyone ever asked.”
I nod, my own throat going tight, my jaw clenching.
I first showed talent when I was ten, and my life has been all about snowboarding for nearly as long as I can remember. Until it wasn’t, and the unchartered waters of my future have been staring at me like a blank canvas ever since.
“I know how that is,” Antoine says, his voice somehow soft as honey and full of bitterness at the same time. “I was at law school up until a few weeks ago.” The skin below his eyes darkens, his mouth tightening. “At Oxford, actually.” His mouth twists on the word Oxford, as if the name of that prestigious institution is nothing but a bad taste.
Lily spins to face him, giving me her back, and I instantly feel the loss of those hazel eyes on me.
“And you came here?” she asks, her voice incredulous. “To teach skiing? Why?”
My eyes go to Antoine’s face, to the tight set of his jaw and the silent rage in his vibrant green eyes, and I’m suddenly desperate for the answer to her question too. Not just that question, but all the ones around it—like why is he living in a flat with six other people, eating food from a food bank, never going out, spending all of his evenings in…
Antoine shrugs. “I hated it. Hated every second of it. My classes, the other students, the horrible English weather…”
Lily laughs, then covers her mouth with her fist. Antoine narrows his eyes at her, but there’s no real anger there. If anything, he seems relieved by her response.
“I’m sorry.” Lily shakes her head. “You hated Oxford because of the weather? That has to be the most French complaint I’ve ever heard.”
Antoine grins, the flash of white stark against his dark skin. “Fair.” He chuckles. “I know, I know. I probably sound like a spoiled, rich kid…”
“No.” Lily reaches forward, presumably to grasp his hands under the water. The move has her sliding toward me on the seat, the round flesh of her ass pressing against the outside of my thigh. “You don’t. At least, not to me. I get it. Trust me.”
I get it too, I want to say. My parents might not have pressured me into university or some profession, but that’s only because I hadtalent. I had agift. And the moment it was gone, it was like they didn’t know what to do with me.
“Thanks, Lily,” Antoine murmurs, his gaze going soft as he stares at her.
He’d looked at me like that once, his skin lit up in reds and pinks on the dancefloor in Montmartre. Looked at me with stars in his eyes and kiss-swollen lips, with the wordsI’ll call you, I promise, sitting between us. I’d lied to him then, given him a fake name, a fake number.
I’d been too scared to do anything different. Too scared of what coming out would mean. To my family, to my career, to my fans.
“Well, you wouldn’t be the first person to kiss someone drunk and regret it later.”Antoine’s words from last weekend come rushing back to me. He’d been speaking to Lily, but his words had been for me, I know it.“… Maybe he’ll hold a grudge against you for years. Maybe it’s a Kiwi thing to hate people who drunk kiss you.”
I think about the way I shouted at him on the ridgeline when we hiked backcountry the other week. How I called him a liar and a tease. The words I’d thrown at him, the names I’d called him.
Fuck. What had I been thinking? What is wrong with me?
Antoine’s eyes meet my own, sharp and cutting as he looks at me over Lily’s shoulder.
My own widen in panic, my mouth suddenly feeling dry, a churning starting in the pit of my stomach.
Without thinking about it, my leg stretches out under the water, seeking out Lily, as if contact with her smooth skin will make some of this right again. Or maybe I just want her attention back on me, instead of him. Who knows why we do things in moments like these, when feelings and hunger and the heat of the water don’t leave any room for rational thought?
