Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
BEAU & SIERRA
BEAU
I study the New Year’s Eve picture again.
Sierra’s head is tilted toward mine, her temple resting along my jaw and her smile bright.
Her hair cascades over her shoulders in the loose curls she likes to wear when she gets dressed up, and her skin is flushed from all the dancing.
My tie is loose, the top button of my shirt is undone, my jacket is long gone, and the sleeves of my shirt are rolled up to my elbows.
We look . . . happy. Like two people who are about to embark on the adventure of being roommates, blissfully unaware of the dangers to come.
I click forward to the next photo of her, one I took but never showed her or posted.
She’s sitting on the couch, leaning forward, rubbing her nose against Winston’s.
The light coming from the window on the other side of the room illuminates their profiles.
It’s a phenomenal shot, I couldn’t have taken a more perfect picture if I tried.
I flip through the rest of the photos I have of Sierra, all housed in one album I’ve entitled Regret. As I look at photos of us in Vegas, then back in Park City posing with Winston, the longing to see her and talk to her and just be with her is so strong it’s physically painful.
My mom’s words from New Year’s run through my head, a frequent refrain since I told Sierra to leave.
“As long as you love the nomadic life you’re living, then do it.
But the minute it stops being fulfilling, the minute you want more than all the partying and snowboarding—move away from it .
. . I want you to find that thing in life that you can’t live without. ”
Is Sierra the thing in life I can’t live without?
I set my laptop on the coffee table of the rental house where Lance, Drew, and I are staying.
It’s quiet here tonight, the two of them have gone out to visit some of the Laax bars we like to hit up when we’re here, which is often.
Laax is a snowboarder’s paradise, so we treat it like our European home base between competitions and trips for fun or for my photography business.
When they left hours ago, I didn’t feel like going, but now I think maybe it would have been good for me. How else am I going to move on?
As I glance out the window at the picturesque view of heavy loads of snow on sloped roofs, glowing in the light of the street lamps, I can’t help but wonder why I’m here instead of with Sierra.
I could be practicing in Park City. Laax has one of the best snow parks in the world, but so does Park City.
I pull my phone from my pocket and scroll through the weeks on my calendar.
There are a couple of events—competitions or engagements with my sponsors—that I have to be at per month.
But otherwise, my weeks are wide open, like right now.
Do I really need to be traveling all the time, or could I use Park City as my home base for training and make it work with Sierra?
Would she even want that? Could she forgive me for my hotheaded reaction in Aspen?
There’s a huge bang behind me that has my body flying out of the chair. I spin to find Drew face down in the hallway that leads into the living room from the entryway.
“Yeah, total ninja move.” Lance groans as he rolls his eyes and nudges Drew with his foot.
“I can be stealthy,” Drew says as he pushes himself up to his hands and knees, his words slurring together slightly. “I just wanted to show you how not to be a ninja.”
Lance laughs and glances over at me. “He thought he could sneak up on you.” His eye roll is teenage girl-level. “But apparently this invisible snowboard he left leaning against the wall attacked him.”
“You guys are home early.”
Lance gives Drew a hand up and they walk past me into the living room. “It was pretty dead tonight.”
“It is midweek,” I say as I follow them, but when they get to the back of the couch, they stop suddenly.
“What the fuck?” Drew says.
“Is that Sierra?” Lance walks around the couch toward the coffee table where I left my laptop open. On the screen is a gallery view of all my photos of her. “Is this like a shrine to her? You pull your laptop out when we’re not here just to look at her?”
“Of course not.” I roll my eyes. That’s exactly what I was doing. “I was just organizing some photos, and I put these in a folder together.”
“Sure,” Drew says as he sits and clicks on one of the photos on the screen. A picture of Sierra and me on the night of Sydney’s wedding fills the screen. He clicks to another one, and another.
“Dude, stop going through my shit,” I say as I walk around the couch to grab my laptop, but he hands it to Lance before I can reach it.
“Whoa,” Lance says, holding the laptop in his arms. “You seriously walked away from this?”
“From what?” My annoyance seeps out in my tone.
“From being happy.”
Lance’s words are like a slap across the face.
“What are you talking about?”
“Look how happy you look when you’re with her.” He turns the screen around to show me another photo from Vegas. “And you’ve been a miserable prick since we left Park City.”
“Like even more than normal.” Drew smirks.
“If you’re so lost without her,” Lance continues, “why don’t you try to make something work?”
“What makes you think I even want that?” I ask. It’s the antithesis of how I live when I’m on the road with them.
“If you don’t,” Lance says, “then why have you been so miserable for the past two weeks? The whole time we were in Aspen you were pissy, and you haven’t been any better since we got here, even though Laax is supposedly one of your favorite places.
And you haven’t touched a single woman since . . . I don’t even know when.”
“It doesn’t matter what I want”—I shrug and sit back in the chair I was in before they returned—“if she doesn’t want the same.”
“What makes you think she doesn’t?” Drew asks. “Did she say that?” His mind must be filled with memories of Helen and how she broke my heart senior year of college. But that feels like a distant memory at this point.
“She said my family could never find out. But then—” I take a deep breath “—she went and told them anyway. Along with sharing a few other things I’d told her in confidence.”
“Why would she do that?” Lance asks.
“Apparently, she was defending me when my sister said some shit in Aspen.”
“Sierra came to Aspen?” Drew asks.
I nod in response. “Briefly.”
“So what’s your reasoning why this can’t work out?” Lance asks. “Because it sounds like you’re basing this on thinking she doesn’t want your family to know, but then she told them, so. . . ?”
“She completely broke my trust.” I fold my arms across my chest as I lean back against the cushion behind me.
Lance hands the laptop to Drew, who sets it back on the table, then he sits next to him on the couch. “But she broke your trust to try to make things better between you and your family, right?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Let me guess,” Lance says. “You were looking for a reason it wouldn’t work out, like you always are, and seized on that moment to make sure you were right.”
I open my mouth to respond, but his analysis gives me pause. “I wasn’t looking for a reason to end things with her.”
“You sure about that?” Lance asks again. “You didn’t push her away before she could do the same to you?”
“That’s not what I do,” I insist, but his words are a mirror of Jackson’s and maybe they know me well enough to see something I’m not seeing? “Besides, when did you become Dr. Phil?”
“Don’t pull this I’m a guy so I can’t talk about feelings shit,” Lance says. “You’re being an asshole and making us all miserable. If Sierra makes you happy, go make it work with her.”
“What if that means I need to stay in Park City except for events?”
“So stay in Park City,” Drew says. “You can train there as well as anywhere else we normally go.”
“But what about you guys?” I ask. I’ve always assumed that they needed me. It’s been my sponsors that have made most of our travel possible.
“We’ll figure it out,” Lance says.
I grab my phone and open the calendar. “The next thing we have is Austria in two weeks, right?”
“Right,” Lance confirms. “So in the meantime, go make things right with Sierra.”
I glance down at my calendar again. That gives me enough time, but I still don’t know if she wants me back, especially if she can only have me about sixty percent of the time.
Can I be what she needs if I can’t be there day in and day out?
Or would the goodbyes in between be too hard? There’s only one way to find out.
SIERRA
“You are one hundred percent sure this is what you want?” Heather asks.
My stomach feels queasy, like it’s tied up in a knot and trying to push everything out.
Jackson assures me that this feeling is how I know I’m doing the right thing, but I know it’s because I’m terrified of the unknown.
I wouldn’t have described myself as risk adverse, but I’m coming to see that it is maybe the single defining characteristic of my personality.
Aside from Beau, I’ve never done anything in life that wasn’t carefully planned after an extensive cost-benefit analysis.
I breathe in deeply through my nose as I glance around my office, reminding myself that I can always come back if I need to. I’ve left the door wide open. To anyone else, this might not seem like a risk, but for me, it’s still monumental.
“Yes, I’m very sure.”
You’re not chasing after him, I remind myself, you’re choosing to go to him.
The distinction is an important one to me. This isn’t a desperate attempt to hold on to something that was never meant to be mine, it’s an attempt to build something together.
“You’re sure he’s worth it?” she asks. Heather knows me well enough to know how out of character this is, and I was honest with her about my reasons for wanting a leave of absence. She also knows Beau’s reputation.
“I’m positive.”
“Okay, do you want to bring Winston by tomorrow, or do you want me to pick him up?”