Page 4 of Sustain

I barely have time for myself, let alone anyone else. My job has been the most important thing to me for a very long time. And I’m fucking good at it. I’m not going to let some guy with bedroom eyes sweep me off my feet only to end up barefoot in the kitchen raising our gaggle of kids.

Not that I have anything against kids. My best friend Chelsie and her husband Noah have two that I adore and just fawned all over when I was back in Vegas a few weeks ago. And maybe someday I’ll be in a place in my life where kids make sense.

Just not now.

So, now I’m currently standing at the top of some mountain in Aspen, killing time before the band plays the music festival that starts downtown in a few days, freezing my ass off.

Our drummer, Skyler, said skiing is supposed to be relaxing. It’s supposed to be fun.

We’re on day two of this skiing thing. Yesterday was spent in a class with about ten other people and a ski instructor, Alexi, who was definitely nice to look at but made it difficult to concentrate on what he was teaching. He might be fun for a quick romp while I’m here. I’ll have to look for him once we get back to the lodge…

The way he showed us yesterday, it seems easy enough. So long as the slope is relatively flat, and I can stop, I’m doing pretty good.

I might be a skier. Who knew?

But that was yesterday. Right now, we’re looking down the mountain, and it doesn’t look like the one we skied before at all. This one looks steep.

It looks like a goddamn Olympic run compared to the gentle incline we practiced on yesterday.

I turn to Skyler, eyes wide. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I hiss under my breath. “That’s a shear drop, not a hill!”

“You saw the same map I did. I think it’s right.”

We continue to watch people expertly jump off the lift and almost immediately start flying down the hill.

I swallow hard. “Okay. We got this. We took a lesson. We know the basics, right?”

“Right,” she nods, more confidently than me.

Doubt and dread knot in the pit of my stomach. I’ve always prided myself on keeping everything tightly controlled. But staring down this mountain, I feel anything but in control.

Can I really do this? If I wipe out on this run, it won’t just be some cute tumble I can laugh off over hot cocoa. We’re talking broken bones or worse.

Just then, another skier whips past us, carving bold slashes into the pristine snow. Maybe I don’t have to be bold. I just have to make it to the bottom intact. I take a deep breath of the cold mountain air and lower my goggles. The falling snow from the looming dark clouds above hits the lenses and melts.

Clenching my jaw, I shove any further doubts aside. If I can conquer stadium tours and crisis PR for Murderous Crows, I can sure as hell handle a fucking ski slope.

“Let’s do this, I guess,” I say, pushing off with my knees shaking. I’m still sore from yesterday’s adventure, but figure it’ll ease up as I get back into it. Motioning for Skyler to go ahead of me I say, “After you.”

“This was my idea, wasn’t it…” she mutters as she pushes past me, easily gliding in a zig-zag pattern down the slope. She did pick up the instructions better than I did. But then, she was paying attention to what the hottie instructor was saying, not imagining what he’d look like in one of the saunas at our cheesy hotel.

I start after her and fall into the pattern of the movement. My knees are complaining slightly as I keep them bent and lean from side to side as I steer, but I’m doing okay for not having gone at this kind of speed before.

Skyler whoops loudly ahead, glancing over her shoulder at me. She’s increasing her speed and her distance away, so I angle myself to go in a straighter line to try to keep up.

I definitely go faster than I was, but now the terrain is changing with more little bumps and hills popping up here andthere. Whenever I approach one, my muscles tense up and I get a weird vertigo feeling like I’m going to fall, but somehow get through it.

If I had a steering wheel, I’d be white-knuckling it. As it is, I’m gripping my ski poles way too tightly.

Up ahead there’s a hill that I’m not going to be able to avoid with my current pattern, so I lean in and brace myself for whatever is going to happen. Instead of wrecking in a pile of skis and poles, I actually do some sort of jump and land solidly. My skis are still facing forward, and I didn’t fall on my ass.

In fact, I’m picking up even more speed.

This skiing thing is fucking amazing. I can totally do this.

That jump gave me more confidence and loosened me up to just go along with the terrain instead of trying to fight it. The cutting of the cold wind on my cheeks is exhilarating as I pick up even more speed.

The only issue I’m having now is the snow that’s falling. It’s almost a whiteout, and I can’t see Skyler anymore. It’s hard to see any distance in front of me at all, so I concentrate on what I can see, and notice another hill like the one I just jumped.

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