Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
BEAU & SIERRA
BEAU
I’m debating the merits of the omelet and the breakfast burrito while simultaneously wondering how long this breakfast will take.
After half a foot of fresh snow last night, Lance and Drew were anxious to get out there and shred this morning, especially since everyone else is packing up and leaving Aspen today.
We’re not leaving until tomorrow, and it’ll feel like we have the mountain to ourselves without the thousands of people that were here for the X Games.
I just have to get through this goodbye breakfast with my family and then I can head up the mountain.
The chair across from me pulls out from the table and my dad slides into the seat. Neither my mom nor Jackson are with him.
He flips his coffee cup over and glances around to see if someone is coming by to fill it, then looks up at me. “I want you to know how proud I am of you, son.”
I look at my dad, how he leans back in his chair and drops his hands in his lap. It couldn’t be more opposite than my own combative stance with my arms crossed on the table in front of me and my flat bill trucker hat pulled low on my forehead.
Sure, he’s proud of me now. I managed a totally unexpected first place finish in Slopestyle and a third place finish in Big Air.
“Yeah, well, now that you’ve actually seen me snowboard and Sierra told you I’m not a total fuckup . . .” It’s easy to be proud of your kid once they’re already successful. It’s the getting there part where you really want the support of people who love you, and he wasn’t there for that.
“I’m sorry that you didn’t know that before.
I always told myself I wouldn’t be like my own father, and here I am in his shoes.
” My dad’s father died before Jackson was born, but from what I’ve gleaned of their relationship, it’s always sounded like getting away from his dad was the reason Dad moved from Ireland to America in the first place.
“I never wanted to be that kind of father that was so hard on his kids they questioned whether they were loved in the first place.”
“You were fifty percent successful. You weren’t like that to Jackson.”
“If true, that would only make it worse. You have to know that I was hard on Jackson. But she fed off that. She took every criticism and disappointment and used it as fuel. I didn’t realize that the same strategy wouldn’t work with you until it was too late, until the damage was done.
” Dad pauses while the waitress fills his coffee, then he takes a long sip of it.
He’s always taken his coffee black and likes it extra-hot.
I’ve never understood how he doesn’t burn his lips right off.
When I don’t reply, he continues, “That’s why I meant what I said about trying to do better.
I want to catch another competition or two this year. ”
I stare at him for a second while I process what he’s saying. “But Dad, you’d have to leave Mom, and she’s still just-barely in remission.” One thing I will give him credit for: during her initial cancer treatment and both her recurrences, he’s been there for her nonstop.
“I can get away for a few days. Besides, now with Jackson and Nate home, it’s easier.
I’m not doing it all by myself.” I don’t think he means to imply that I’m not around to help, but I register it anyway.
“Plus, now that I’m retired and Nate’s basically taken over managing the mountain, I’ve got time.
It shouldn’t have taken retirement for me to start taking an interest in your snowboarding, but I won’t let my shame over the past stop me from being invested now. ”
Instantly, I wish I could tell Sierra about this conversation. Process it with her, because I’m sure she’d have insights I don’t have, and she’d be so happy for me. That knife of guilt twists a little deeper. I wasn’t kind and I don’t think she deserved for me to hurt her the way I did.
“I’ll send you my schedule in the next day or two. Pick one to come to. I’d like that.”
Dad asks me about some of the jumps I landed in the competition here in Aspen, and I’m deep in an explanation about the difference between frontside and backside, and explaining some of the other snowboarding terminology that’s so ingrained in me I use it without thinking, when Mom and Jackson finally arrive.
They claim they were taking too long to pack and Dad didn’t want to wait for them, and he gives me a conspiratorial wink that I have to guess means we both know he just wanted to have a private conversation.
It feels so . . . natural. Like this is how a functional family really works.
And maybe how it has worked all along, just without me, since I was the one who chose to remove myself because I didn’t feel wanted.
We make it all the way through breakfast without any snide comments and without anyone asking about Sierra—the topic we’ve been dancing around since she showed up and then left two days ago.
And then, while we’re waiting for the waitress to return with Dad’s credit card, Jackson has to go and ask, “Have you talked to Sierra yet?”
“No, and I don’t expect to.” I don’t mention how many times in the past couple days my finger has hovered over her number, itching to call her while my mind talked me out of it.
She told me that she didn’t want my family to know about us, then when they found out anyway, she told them my secrets in an attempt to make our relationship more palatable to them.
Hers was the only opinion that mattered to me, and it turns out she didn’t think very highly of me after all.
“Beau, can you just tell me what happened? She’s not talking to me either.” Jackson sounds pained, and while I know it’s not like she talked to Sierra every day, I’m sure that calling her nonstop for two days without a single return call is taking its toll. In fact, I know exactly how that feels.
I fashion my face into a mask of indifference.
“Don’t do that,” Jackson says.
“Do what?” I ask, glancing down as I pick up my coffee cup so I don’t have to look at those green eyes.
When we were kids, Jackson convinced me that her irises were made from shamrocks brought over from Ireland.
She had me believing she was half leprechaun, because I was a really gullible five-year-old.
“Don’t put on that ‘I’m so much better than everyone else’ face you like to wear and pretend that nothing bothers you. What did you do to my best friend?”
“I didn’t do anything to her.” My words are clipped, final. It’s my don’t ask me again voice and I know Jackson recognizes it because it’s indistinguishable from my dad’s.
“Then what did she do to you?” she asks.
Besides make me long for something I didn’t know I wanted, only to show me that I can’t ever have it? To give me hope only to extinguish it?
“Nothing.” I plant my lips in a firm line.
“The way you were yelling at her out on that deck, either she did something wrong or you’re an asshole. I need to know which one of you to be mad at.”
“There’s nothing to be mad about, Jackson. Just let it go.” I wish I could follow my own advice.
The waitress slides the card and receipt back on the table next to Dad and we all push our seats out, anxious to put this conversation that’s going nowhere behind us.
We make it to the door when Jackson steps in front of me, blocking my exit.
“I’ll meet you guys outside,” she says to our parents.
I can see the door just a few steps beyond her. I was almost free.
“I feel like whatever happened between you and Sierra is either directly or indirectly my fault,” she says once our parents are outside.
“I called her and asked what was going on between you two, so I’m sure she didn’t think I approved.
And then I got all worked up in the lodge the day she came here, and she got upset and started defending you.
If your relationship hadn’t put her at odds with me, chances are you’d both be happy right now. ”
I’ve rarely heard Jackson apologize. So I want to bask in this, force her to sit with the guilt for a while. But she’s wrong, she’s not to blame. And there’s no use talking about this, it won’t change the outcome.
“It’s not your fault, Jackson. Sierra would never have been happy with me. I’m not what she’s looking for. I was just a fun fling for her, one she was very clear she wanted to keep hidden.”
“I don’t know, Beau,” she says, her voice dropping low. “She certainly seemed like she cared when she was defending you in the lodge a couple days ago. And she was right about all of those things. Why would she have risked her relationship with our whole family if she didn’t care?”
I push my hands deep into my coat pockets and look off across the restaurant so I don’t have to see her eyes as they try to bore holes into me.
What she’s saying makes sense and I can understand why she’s interpreting it that way.
But what she’s missing is the fact that Sierra told my family those things because it made her look better, like she wasn’t dumb enough to fall for an immature fuckup.
But I don’t want to get into that with Jackson, so I just shrug.
“Your default is to push people away instead of just saying what you mean,” Jackson says, as if I don’t know myself at all.
But I do, and it’s a defense mechanism that’s worked remarkably well for me.
Or has it? “Did you tell her what you were feeling? Try to talk to her about it? Or did you just push her away the minute things got hard, like you do with everyone else?”
I swallow past the lump in my throat, and in a low voice that I hope will broker no discussion, I lay out the truth. “It wouldn’t have mattered because I’m not the guy Sierra needs, and I cared about her too much to let her lose sight of her dreams.”