Page 79 of The Mountain
At my look of dismay, her expression softens. “I’m just kidding. You know I’d love to see you in Australia, but I get it. Trust me. Plus, I’ll be coming back here again for the next northern hemisphere season. Especially now they’ve moved me up on the roster, thanks to you.”
I press the toe of my snowboard boot into the snow and bite the inside of my cheek.I didn’t do anything,I want to say.But maybe that’s not quite true.
“I was wondering if you’d give me some tips?” I ask, feeling inexplicably breathless, like I’m back on that ridgeline above Backyards, at ten thousand feet altitude, the oxygen thin. “Just so I’m not completely behind when I start training in New Zealand.”
Because I might have what it takes to teach, but I’m not anywhere close to being able to ride at the level I need to if I want to pass my level one.
Tessa lifts her goggles to her helmet, blue eyes blinking at me in surprise. “What about Liam? I thought… aren’t you guys…?” Her gaze darts back down to the two kids avidly listening to our conversation, and she trails off.
I shrug, my cheeks heating against the cold. “He’s great. And I’m sure he’ll help me too, but…”
I worry my lower lip with my teeth, wondering how to explain it to her. That I love riding with Liam. That I’m probably falling in love with Liam. But I don’t want him to train me. And not just because we’re dating.
I want someone who is going to be brutally honest with me. Someone who I can trust to push me—really push me. Someone who will understand where I’m coming from, who has that shared understanding of what it’s like to be a woman trying to succeed in this sport.
Most of all, I just want to spend time with Tessa.
“Actually, never mind.” Tessa huffs out a laugh, eyes dancing with amusement. “Of course you don’t want Liam training you. He’s terrible. I’m a much better option.” She rubs her gloved hands together. “It’s going to be such a treat to see the look onhis face when I tell him his own girlfriend would rather learn from me than him. Shit, I can’t wait.”
I find myself grinning at her excitement, at the thought of riding more with her, but hurriedly say: “Don’t tell Liam yet though, okay? I mean, don’t tell any of the guys that I’m planning on going to New Zealand or anything.” My booted toe digs deeper into the snow, and I can feel the cold settling deep into my bones. “I haven’t told them yet.”
What if Liam and Eddie don’t want me coming to New Zealand? What if they don’t want what we have to continue on past this season? What if Matty, Seth, and Antoine don’t want to come to New Zealand too?
What if this future I’ve built for the six of us together—what if it’s just a fairytale castle in my head and nothing more?
Tessa nods sagely, and mimes zipping her lips. “Got it. Not a word.” She gives the girls beside her a smile, patting each of them on their helmets. “Right. Let’s get you kids inside before you turn into popsicles, ’kay?”
I watch,heart in my throat, as Jackie makes her way down Esplanade run, her gloved hands trembling, board skidding out as she hesitates in the toe-side turn.
“Knee down,” I bark. “Put your weight into the turn. Shoulder in. That’s it. Good!” I see the second the edge locks in, cutting effectively, if not gracefully, into the side of the mountain. “Great. Now count three beats in your head, and then turn again,” I remind her, although I’m less worried about her heel-side turn. “It’s important to keep the momentum.” Because when she doesn’t—when she’s traversing across on her heel side, staring down the steep black diamond slope that’s become an entire mountain in her head—that’s when fear gets the best of her.
She turns, sliding back across on her heel-side, the edge skittering as her muscles work to hold the traverse. I watch, counting slowly in my head.One. Two. Three.
Her eyes flick to mine, wide enough the whites are showing even through her goggles. I give her a reassuring smile, keeping myself parallel to her, like I’ve been doing the entire run.
“You’ve got it,” I tell her. “Shoulder, knee—yes, that’s it.”
This time, she doesn’t hesitate quite so much, and the turn is smoother, faster, giving her more control and less time free-falling down the mountainside. “Hips forward,” I remind her, when her legs tremble, toe-side edge skidding free. She listens, her board locking in to a smooth, toe-side traverse.
“Amazing!” I feel my smile pulling at my cheeks, the cold-whipped skin tight against my goggles. “Look at you, Jackie!”
When she does the next two turns without any prompting, I want to whoop for joy, to pull her into a hug, to laugh. She’s riding down a black diamond run, her wide smile answering my own. I can practically feel the confidence radiating off of her—it’s visible in the increasing fluidity of each turn, in the relaxed set of her shoulders, in that smile.
Earlier this week, when she was trembling beside me on the beginner’s lift, I wouldn’t have thought it possible. I thought maybe, best case scenario, I’d have her making turns down green runs after five days—though even that had been the least likelyoutcome. More likely, she’d be handing in her snowboard at the end of the day and booking herself for a week-long spa retreat instead.
Honestly, I wouldn’t have blamed her one bit.
“Oh my goodness,” she exclaims, breathless and panting through her smile as the slope flattens out, the black diamond merging onto an easy green run. “Holy crap.”
She pulls to a stop, lifting her goggles up to rest on her helmet with trembling hands as she sits down ungracefully in a snowbank. I pull up beside her, dropping to my knees just downhill of her, my own smile mirroring her own.
“I did it,” she pants, her eyes dancing. “A black run. I just did a black run.”
I press my lips together to stop from laughing, but the smile remains. “You did.” I reach forward, patting the edge of her snowboard with my gloved hand. “I told you you could do it.”
Jackie rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “It was fifty-fifty there for a moment.”
“It was not.” I laugh, shaking my head.
