11. Bea
11
Bea
I can’t see anything but blue sky. The snow beneath me is icy and hard and I’m pretty sure I got some down my pants.
One ski is facing the wrong direction and it’s wildly uncomfortable. Must fix that ASAP...when my heart stops feeling like it’s going to explode out of my chest.
A red helmet and yellow reflective goggles appear. Gloves come up and remove the goggles to reveal Charlie looking at me with concern in his eyes.
“You okay?” He’s kneeling next to me, which must mean he took his skis off.
“Maybe?”
There’s a whoosh as someone swerves past. I better get up before I get run over.
Charlie must have the same idea, because he grabs my hand and peels my fingers off the pole grip. Huh. I was still hanging on. Oh wait, just with one hand. My other hand clenches on air.
Next, he moves down to my boots and I feel the tug as he pushes hard on the release button of my ski. With a snap, it comes undone, and my left leg can move freely.
When he moves to the right and pushes, a sharp pain shoots up from my ankle and I cry out.
“Shit. Bea?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine. I think I tweaked something?”
“Okay, why don’t we get you up on your other foot and untwist this one?”
Charlie stands over me, reaching down to grab me beneath my armpits and haul me to my feet. My gloves scramble for purchase until I snag his pockets and hold on.
We’re a tripod, him bracing himself in the snow and me leaning into him while the occasional skier passes in a whoosh .
“Okay, just...hang on.” Charlie grunts and shifts as he tries to maneuver his foot around to the back of my boot and apply enough pressure to snap the ski off.
“Get a room,” someone shouts as they pass, the Doppler effect in full gear so that the R is loud and the ooooom is elongated.
I giggle. To be fair, Charlie, wrapped around me like this and stomping on the release does look like he’s humping me.
Finally the ski comes off and without my foot, it hits the snow and slides down a few feet. Charlie and I teeter for a moment before we both lose the fight and come crashing down onto the snow.
Somehow I end up on top of Charlie, our helmets whacking each other before my head bounces off to one side.
Gah.
Charlie’s helmet turns toward me and this is the closest I’ve been to his eyes in a long time. I’d forgotten how green they are right around his irises.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Fine.” Well, I’ve now fallen twice in five minutes, and neither time could be counted as sexy at all. I roll off Charlie.
He sits up and points at me. “Stay there.”
He gathers up our skis and poles and moves them to the side of the slope and into the woods where no one is going to run them over. Then he’s back in front of me, holding out his hands.
“Can you stand?”
I grip both his hands and rise on one leg. Once I’m stable, I test putting my weight on my right leg.
I wince and Charlie frowns.
There’s no way I can ski down like this.
“All right, let’s get you to the side so we don’t get run over and I’ll go for help.” Charlie offers me his hand again.
“Help?” I yelp. “What kind of help?” Together we shuffle (him) and hop (me) to the tree line.
“It’s not a big mountain but it would probably take us hours to get down like this. They have snowmobiles for people who get injured.”
I’m just about to sit down again when I hear the sharp, crisp noise of someone expertly stopping on snow behind us. “You folks okay?”
Together, Charlie and I turn to see an employee of the resort stopped a few feet away. He’s wearing a bright red “Sirens’ Valley Lodge” jacket with a big white cross on it.
Below his ski goggles is an amiable smile on a chiseled jaw covered in scruff. He lifts his ski goggles to the top of his helmet and his eyes are gorgeous blue.
Jesus, what is in the water here? Between him and my cute instructor, there’s plenty of potential small-town romance. If only I didn’t look like a doofus. And if only Charlie would go away .
“She fell and hurt her ankle,” Charlie says.
The smile disappears and the handsome rescuer slips into professional mode. “Why don’t I radio for the toboggan and we can get you down the slope, ma’am?”— MA’AM? I just got MA’AM’d by Hot Ski Rescue Guy?? —“It’ll remove you from the path of traffic, and I’m an EMT. Once we get you out of your boots, I can look at that foot.”
“Okay, sounds good.” My voice is weak, and I’m not sure if it’s because my foot is starting to throb or I just got ma’am’d at the age of twenty-eight.
Hot Ski Rescue Guy pulls out a walkie-talkie-radio thing and turns away to talk into it. Charlie leans his head close to mine. “Did he just call you ma’am?”
I snort-laugh, almost making us lose our balance again. “Forget making my butt look big, apparently my ski outfit makes me look old.”
Within a minute, there’s a snowmobile with a toboggan pulled up next to us, facing uphill. “Your chariot awaits,” Charlie mutters to me.
The two ski resort staff members help me settle into the toboggan and tuck my equipment next to me. Facing this way, I can see the top of the chairlift and watch people at the start of the run.
Wow, I did not make it far at all.
The toboggan starts up and next thing I know we’re running down the trail. I turn slightly, and can see Charlie and Hot Ski Rescue Guy skiing easily behind us, swoosh-swoosh-swooshing from left to right. Show-off. I roll my eyes, which I’m sure Charlie can’t see through my goggles, but he must be able to guess what I did because he sticks his tongue out at me.
I flip him off and he laughs.
Down at the base, we pull up right by the ski lift so that everyone waiting in line can see me get helped out of the toboggan and hobble into the lodge.
Neither Hot Ski Rescue Guy nor Charlie offers to carry me in.
Bummer.
Hot Ski Rescue Guy—whose actual name is Miguel but I like Hot Ski Rescue Guy, or HSRG for short, better—inspects my ankle, declares it a slight sprain, and recommends a RICE regimen—rest, ice, compress, and elevate.
Naomi arrives. Charlie called her when we got to the lodge, and she does the same evaluation and tells me I’ll have to be a lazy bum for a few days.
Then Mom and Dad swing by and I have to hear Charlie tell the entire story for the third time. It’s getting more elaborate with every retelling. I lived it, can we just not? I can literally feel myself melting into the couch from a mixture of embarrassment and exhaustion, and Charlie must read something on my face.
“Okay, I’m going to take her back to the house,” he says, breaking up my parents fretting over whether there’s enough ice on my ankle. “Y’all should get back on the ski slope and enjoy the rest of your day.”
“Are you sure?” Mom asks him, and then looks at me. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’ll be fine.”
Mom hears the irritation in my voice and pats my hand. “Okay. Text us if you need anything.”
Charlie helps me hobble to my rental car and takes the keys, driving us back to the house. He settles me on the couch, hands me my e-reader, and immediately steals my car and goes to the store.
“Here,” he says, dumping four bags from the local ShopRite on the coffee table in front of me. He digs a few saggy blue things out of one bag, and I recognize those flexible ice packs. He disappears into the kitchen, putting them in the freezer, and I poke through the rest of the bags. An ankle brace, bandages, painkillers, and Sour Punch Straws, my favorite movie-watching candy. There’s also a paperback book—when was the last time I bought a paperback?—and a few magazines.
Including a magazine that boasts “Best Cardio Tips for Women over 50” and “What to Eat During Menopause.”
“Is this an old lady joke?” I ask, pretending to huff about it.
“No ma’am,” Charlie says with a straight face. He dodges when I throw the magazine at him. When his laughter dies down, he asks, “Do you want to shower?”
I look down at myself. I am still in my ski outfit, which swishes every time that I move, and now that I think about it, the back of my neck and my underwear are still slightly damp from the snow getting down it.
“Good idea.” Pajamas sound great right now.
Charlie helps me up. We make it up three steps before deciding that it would just be easier to bring my stuff to me and I’ll shower downstairs. Charlie grabs my stuff and after I thank him, we stand there staring at each other in the small bathroom.