Chapter 6 #2
For a moment, the chalet noise recedes. I’m back in that cabin with his heartbeat under my palm and his voice in my ear.
Eva stares at me like I’ve just won Olympic gold. “I am so proud of you I could cry.”
“Please don’t cry,” I say. “I barely survived getting my boots off. I can’t handle tears.”
They both sit back a little at that. The moment stretches, warm and fizzing and a little unreal.
Then my phone, buried in my jacket pocket on the back of the chair, goes off with a sharp, electronic beep.
Start gate beep. Of course.
All three of us jump.
Eva squints at my jacket. “Was that… a start beep?”
Anna blinks. “Please tell me you did not set your notification tone to the start gate beep.”
I feel my face heat. “Maybe.”
“Of course you did,” Eva says, delighted. “You absolute nerd.”
The beep sounds again—a second reminder. Whoever it is isn’t giving up. My stomach does a small, traitorous swoop.
“Okay, okay,” I mutter, fishing my phone out with fingers that suddenly don’t feel like they belong to me. The screen lights up, and there it is.
Instagram. One new message. Sender: the handle I’ve tapped a hundred times this year just to watch a man ski on my tiny screen.
For a heartbeat, I just stare at it. The chalet blurs at the edges; the music turns into white noise. My thumb is damp on the glass.
“Zlata,” Anna says softly. “Breathe.”
“Is it him?” Eva demands, already craning her neck.
I don’t answer. I swipe, open the DM, and the little typing bubble is gone—message fully there, waiting.
Hey.
About earlier… that was special and weird and completely unexpected.
If you want to leave it there, I understand. It was intense, and the situation was not exactly normal.
But if you don’t regret it and you’d like to see me again—
even just for dinner or a drink somewhere the floor doesn’t move—
I’d really like that.
My heart kicks against my ribs so hard I have to set the phone down on the table for a second. The words swim.
He noticed. Not just as a story to tell his teammates, not as fan number 5,206. Me.
Old reflex rears up fast—do not screw this up, you must have impressed him somehow, now don’t say something stupid. Right behind it, newer, smaller, stubborn: you get to choose. This isn’t a prize being handed down.
“Zlata?” Eva is practically vibrating. “What. Did. He. Say.”
I pick the phone back up, thumb tightening around it. My mouth feels dry. “He… uh.” I swallow, then force the words out. “He says it was special and weird. But… he’d like to see me again. Dinner. Or a drink.”
There’s a beat of stunned silence, then the table explodes.
“He wants dinner?” Eva half-shouts, then clamps a hand over her mouth. “Sorry. Indoor voice. He wants dinner?”
Anna’s eyes are wide, but her smile is slow. “That’s… actually very decent of him.”
I scroll back up, just to make sure I didn’t hallucinate it. His words are still there, stubbornly kind.
“What do I do?” I ask, and I hate how desperate it sounds. “Seriously. What do I even do with that?”
Eva doesn’t even hesitate. “You go,” she says. “You put on that black sweater that makes your shoulders look illegal, you have dinner with the sad, hot Austrian, and you live my dreams.”
Anna nudges her. “Let her breathe.” She looks back at me. “You don’t have to answer right now. You just got down from a nightmare lift, you’re shaking, you have schnaps in your veins.”
“Also true,” I mutter.
“Hot bath first,” Anna decrees, in her best teacher voice. “Then food. Then the strategy. Whatever you answer, don’t do it cold, drunk, and on an empty stomach.”
Eva sighs dramatically. “Fine. Responsible adulthood. But after your bath, we are absolutely workshopping your reply.”
I look at the message one more time, then lock my phone and shove it back into my pocket before I can type anything on reflex.
“Deal,” I say, and suddenly the idea of steam and pasta and a room that doesn’t move sounds like the only thing keeping me from floating away entirely.
***
The apartment feels like a different planet.
No wind, no bass, no shouting kids—just the soft hiss of the radiator, the clink of plates, and the smell of garlic and olive oil.
Anna has somehow conjured pasta out of our half-empty cupboards; Eva has contributed a bottle of Riesling and a packet of emergency Pringles.
By the time I’ve had a shower hot enough to peel my skin off and pulled on leggings and an oversized sweater, my hands have stopped shaking. Unfortunately, my brain has not.
“Sit,” Anna says, pointing at the chair opposite her. “Eat. Then we plot.”
Eva tops up my glass the second I sit down. “To Zlata,” she declares, raising hers. “Unhinged, wild, and upgraded from selfies to dinner invitations.”
I click obediently. “It’s not dinner yet,” I say. “It’s… the idea of dinner.”
Anna snorts. “Pretty sure that’s not how it works.” She twirls pasta onto her fork, then looks at me. “Okay. Options. What do you actually want?”
I open my mouth. Close it again. Want feels like a dangerous word.
“I know what I don’t want,” I say finally. “I don’t want a boyfriend. I just got rid of one.”
“Reasonable,” Anna says.
“And I don’t want to sit in some restaurant pretending I’m not one of those girls waiting in line again.” The words come out sharper than I mean them to. “I’ve done my time as the girlfriend hovering at the edge of a room while everybody looked at him.”
Eva leans back, studying me. “Okay, but this time you’re not the plus-one to a local DJ in some smoky bar. You’re… I don’t know, the international mystery woman who blew his mind in a gondola.”
“Helpful,” I say dryly.
She shrugs. “I’m just saying, it’s not the same situation.”
Anna is quiet for a beat. “What if you actually like him?” she asks softly.
I stab at a piece of pasta that hasn’t done anything wrong. “I don’t know him,” I say. “I like his skiing. I like that he listened. That’s not… like Peter.”
“Yet,” Eva says under her breath.
I give her a look. She raises her hands in surrender, then immediately drops them to reach into the Pringles bowl.
They let me eat in relative peace for a few minutes. The food helps. So does the wine. The knot in my chest loosens just enough for honesty to sneak in.
“Dinner means…” I start, then trail off.
“Talking,” Anna offers.
“Being seen,” I say. “By other people. As one of those women at his table. And if he turns out to be an idiot, then what? Do I sit there and nod while he explains my own sport to me?”
Eva winces. “Okay, fair fear.”
“Another gondola is…” I search for the word. “Contained. Short. It’s just us and the storm again. I can put it in a box in my head and keep it as… mine. A wild holiday thing. No witnesses.”
Eva’s eyes light up. “So, you’d pick more sex over small talk with cameras. Honestly, respect.”
Anna tilts her head. “More sex is not inherently a bad choice,” she says. “Just make sure you’re not cutting off anything you might want later just because it scares you.”
I stare at the condensation ring my glass has made on the table.
There’s a small, mean little voice in my head that sounds like Peter—You really think he wants to talk to you?
He just wants to shag you—and a newer one that sounds a lot like the woman in the gondola who put her hand on a world champion’s thigh first.
“He probably messaged five girls today,” Eva says, teasing, breaking the silence. “Efficiency. Copy-paste ‘special and weird’ into every inbox.”
The line hits harder than it should. For a second, I see it: a whole list of names, all with their own gondola, their own side-quest stories. My chest tightens.
Not your business, I tell myself briskly. You asked for sex, not exclusivity. You don’t get to be mad about imaginary copy-pastes.
Out loud, I snort. “If he did, that’s between him and his thumbs. I’m not here for a soap opera.”
“What are you here for, then?” Anna asks.
I take a breath. Let it out slowly. “I don’t want a relationship right now,” I say.
“I want… more of that. Of feeling like my body is mine and I get to decide what to do with it. Something that’s just for me, without adding a whole story about girl meets boy and moves to Austria and waits for him at finish lines. ”
Eva lifts her glass again. “To sex without after-school special feelings,” she toasts.
Anna clinks, but her eyes stay on me, thoughtful. “As long as you’re honest—with him and with yourself,” she says. “Then I’m on board.”
Honest. Right.
***
Later, when they’re cleaning up and arguing about who left the wet socks on the radiator, I sit on my bed with the duvet around my shoulders and my phone in my hand. The DM is still there, patient.
I type: Dinner would be nice.
Stare at it. Delete.
I try again: That was wild, thanks, let’s never speak of it again.
Delete. It tastes like ash even in my head.
In the end, I write:
Hey.
I don’t regret it. It was insane, but… in a good way.
I’m not really the dinner-with-celebrities type.
But if you want to repeat the part where the gondola stops, and the rest of the world disappears,
I’ll be at the bottom station tomorrow at 10:30.
I read it three times. It’s bold without being begging, honest without giving away more than I can stand. My thumb hovers over send.
Then I tap.
The message wooshes away. My stomach drops as if I’ve just missed a gate.
“Oh God,” I whisper to the dark room. “What did you just do?”
I’m halfway through composing a follow-up apology in my head when the start gate beep goes off again.
is reply pops up almost instantly.
Deal.
No dinner. Only high-altitude insanity.
10:30. I’ll be there.
I fall back onto the pillow, phone clutched to my chest, a laugh bubbling up out of nowhere. I feel powerful and reckless and a little bit sick.
For once, I don’t fall asleep wondering if someone will pick me. I fall asleep wondering what I’ll dare to ask for when the gondola doors close again.