Chapter 24 Chocolate Lips
Chocolate Lips
Paisley
After training, I always feel so high that I decide to walk instead of taking the Highland Express.
The quiet is pleasant, broken only by the creak of the snow that follows my every step.
It’s snowing pretty heavily, and after a little while my jeans are damp.
At some point, the warm lights from downtown chase off the path’s darkness.
One of William’s carriages rattles past, the horse snorting happily and the glitter-eyed tourists gawking at Aspen’s houses in their Christmas finest. Walking past the diner, I see Kate taking an order.
She looks up from her pad, and waves to me through the window.
I smile and wave back before walking on.
In the meantime the snow has become a downright blizzard and it’s tough to see.
Only now and then a light from the streetlights shows me the way.
When it gets so bad that I can’t even put one foot in front of the other, I randomly reach for the doorknob of the store next to me and push myself inside.
“Oh, Paisley! Thank God.” Snow whirls through the open door and collects on the thick Persian carpet.
It takes all I’ve got to push it closed, and then I see William.
He comes out from behind his popcorn machine—only now do I realize I’ve ended up in the Old-Timer—raising his arms as if my appearance were some kind of blessing.
“Can you take over for a moment? I’ve got to bring the horses to the stable. The storm is expected to get stronger.”
“Of course.” I don’t make an effort to ask him how the popcorn machine works or how much tickets cost. No one’s going to be showing up in this kind of weather.
“Wonderful. You’re my savior.” He places his hands on my shoulders for a second, and squeezes. “As a thank you, I’ll reserve a seat for you in the first row at the next city council meeting.”
“Umm. Okay.”
“Grab yourself a cheese sandwich.”
“I don’t like cheese.”
“Oh, right. Well, then… Just wait. I’ll be quick.”
I smile. “No worries. At the moment, I can’t really get anywhere anyway.”
William gives me a thankful smile, then slips off. My fingers numb, I pull off my shoes and take a deep breath. I love the smell of the Old-Timer, burning logs and old furniture. It makes me feel at ease.
I blow on my hands and rub them together while walking across the soft carpet and stop in front of the shelf with the records.
I flip through the albums, one after the other, before deciding on David Bowie.
I put the record on and curl up in one of the wide leather chairs in front of the fireplace.
I pull up my legs to get my jeans to dry and enjoy the feeling of warmth driving the cold out of my limbs.
For a while I just stare into the fire and watch the flames eat through the wood. Suddenly the door opens with a ring and The Old-Timer is filled with the cutting sound of the storm.
“Shit, is it cold!”
I whirl around in my chair and lean my head over the backrest. “Knox? What are you doing here?”
Knox looks just as surprised as me. He stops midway through taking off his shoes and blinks. “Paisley?”
“William asked me to take over for a sec,” I explain.
“Ah.” He begins moving again and slips out of his shoes. “Well, then I’ve got to keep you company. Truth be told, I really just wanted to pick up a few sandwiches after training but now not even ten horses could pull me away.”
“Well now…” I take a deep breath. “We can only hope the storm stops soon.”
Knox laughs out loud before coming over to me and falling into the chair next to mine. The leather creaks as if it were letting out air. “It’s obvious that you’re not from here.”
I frown. “How so?”
“Well, a snowstorm in Aspen doesn’t just stop soon. We can be happy if we manage to get out of here before tomorrow morning.”
“Before tomorrow morning?” I squeak. “Impossible. I’ve got to take care of your tourists!” The idea of spending another night next to Knox Winterbottom chokes my breath. That won’t do. No way. It would just throw me deeper into the mess of feelings I’m already in.
“They’ll be just fine without you for a while.” Knox casts a glance over his shoulder to the left and right before getting up and then coming back with a whole tray full of cheese sandwiches.
“You’re disgusting.”
He takes a bite. “And you’re abnormal,” he counters, munching away. “Everyone likes cheese.”
I wrinkle my nose and refocus on the fireplace.
From the corner of my eye I can see Knox looking at me. “We haven’t talked since…that evening.”
“True.”
“So… I mean… Are you okay?”
“Of course.”
He lets out a pent-up breath. “Okay. Good.”
I finally turn back to face him. “And you?”
Knox shrugs. “I’ve never cared what the press has to write about me.”
That surprises me. “You don’t care what the world thinks about you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Why should it think about me at all?” He stuffs the last bit of sandwich into his mouth. “As long as I don’t forget who I am, everyone can think what they want.”
I pick at a loose thread sticking out of the chair. “Are you ever afraid of forgetting?”
Knox takes his time to respond. Eventually he says, “More often than you think.”
“Me, too,” I say quietly, without knowing why.
Knox looks at me for a moment, then places the tray to the side and slouches down farther into the chair. “Strange.”
“What’s strange?”
“I’m living with you in the same house, but have the feeling I don’t know you at all.”
“That makes two of us.”
Knox tilts his head and looks at me thoughtfully. “Well, all right. We’re going to play a little game. A truth for a truth, okay?”
I hesitate. I don’t really want to do this, but my absent will collides with my curiosity to learn more about Knox. “Okay. You start.”
He looks at the ceiling and begins bobbing his foot. “My dad is always disappointed with me, and I don’t know how to change that without disappointing myself.”
Oh. Wow. That’s honest.
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be. Your turn.”
“Right. Umm. I love this place.”
Knox laughs. I wish he’d do it again. “That doesn’t count.”
“Well, fine. I’m afraid of not being good enough.”
“For what?”
“For… I don’t know. The ice? Life? Everything?”
“Oh. I hear you.” He looks to the fire and loses himself before looking back at me. “I’m sure that you don’t need to be.”
“Yeah. Maybe. Your turn.”
He takes another sandwich. “I’m a star snowboarder, though I don’t want to be. You.”
“What?”
“No questions. Just answers. Your turn.”
Umm. Okay. At first I want to object and tell him that we need to talk about that, but then I let it go because I like the idea.
Just being able to say things that are weighing me down without having to go into more detail sounds so freeing.
Just saying them, not having to carry them around with me any longer.
Suddenly the whole situation strikes me as something out of a parallel world where we can both be open without having to go back to everything again later.
Just the here and now, sealed off from our lives outside.
The thought is exciting, so I stand up and consider ways of making it more comfortable for us.
Bowie’s song “Heroes” is fading out as I lift the needle off the record and look around the store.
Knox wrinkles his brow. His hair falls across the leather as he turns to watch me. “What’s your plan?”
“To turn on a movie. Well, when I find them, that is.”
“They’re over there.” He gets up and leads me to a shelf full of boxes. They are labeled with years. “What decade are you in the mood for?”
“Hmm. The eighties?”
His eyes scan the shelf before he pulls out a box and opens the top. The rolls of film are packed in Tupperware containers and ordered alphabetically.
“The Breakfast Club!”
“I knew it!” Knox laughs. “Seriously, seeing the title I thought, This is what she wants to see, I’m positive, and then you said it.”
“Maybe you know me a bit already.” I take the film out and go to the projector. “Can you tell me how this thing works?” I come back to the sofa from the record player and sit down.
He laughs again, takes the film out of my hand, and puts it on.
The credits begin to roll across the screen.
and Knox says, “I’ll be right back.” Knox disappears behind a door.
I have no idea where it leads. I take the opportunity to scratch the back of my thigh like a crazy woman, as, while drying out, my jeans have begun to chafe.
Then I curl back up on the sofa under a blanket.
Knox comes back and remains standing next to me for a bit. He holds a cup of hot chocolate under my nose. “Here.”
I sit up. “Oh, my God. Where’d you get this?”
“From the kitchen.” He sits down on the couch, too, but grabs his own blanket. “I didn’t poison it. I swear. Drink away.”
I close my eyes and breathe in the sweet aroma before taking a sip. “This is the best hot chocolate I’ve ever had.”
“Don’t change the subject. You’re up, Snow Queen.”
My stomach begins to tingle. I blame the hot chocolate. “Okay. No one knows that I’ve moved to Aspen. You.”
He sips his hot chocolate. “I was accepted at Colorado Mountain College to study psychology but am not going to go. You.”
I choke. The drink goes down my throat and I cough a few times. Knox is interested in psychology? Can someone please pinch me? That’s hot. Really fucking hot.
“Is there a joker in this game?” I adopt a mischievous grin. “I’d like to play it and ask a question.”
“Nope, sadly not. Your turn, Paisley.”
I look at the movie. “My mother is a crack whore, and the youth welfare office took me away from her when she attempted to sell me for two backpacks full of drugs. You.”
Knox jerks up. His hot chocolate sloshes over the side of the cup and lands on the blanket in a big brown spot. For a second he doesn’t know what to do with his cup, then puts it down on the carpet and looks at me. “Wait. What?”
“No questions. Just answers,” I repeat. In the meantime, I regret having told him this, but it was like I was intoxicated somehow. I really wanted to just throw this truth away from me, I thought I’d feel better. But I feel even worse.
Knox doesn’t move a centimeter, but deep lines form across his forehead, and he looks at me with an expression I don’t know how to interpret. “Paisley…”
“Your rules,” I say. “No answers.”
He pulls in his lower lip, then thoughtfully runs his tongue across his lips. “Then I’m a spoilsport, but… My God, Paisley. I’d be a serious asshole if I didn’t respond. We can’t simply sweep past this one.”
“Sure we can.” I’m holding onto my hot chocolate like a life preserver.
“We can.” My voice is trembling, and I can feel my eyelids prickling.
So I lower my head and pretend to inspect the reindeer on my cup more closely.
But then I feel a finger on my chin, and let Knox gently lift it back up.
I’m sure he sees the tears in my eyes that I’m trying to keep down. Of course he does.
“I don’t know anyone—and I mean anyone—who impresses me as much as you do, Paisley.”
His words awaken the strong desire in me to live, to put my hands to his face and pull him toward me.
After what I just told him, this should be the last thing coming into my head, but I can’t stop it.
And I’m sick and tired of going against my own feelings.
I’m so sick and tired of this constant fear of being hurt. I want to be happy. Simply happy.
Before I can think about how to get closer to him, however, Knox runs a hand through his hair and turns to look at the floor.
He looks like he’s thinking about something.
Or wrestling with himself. “Fuck it.” He takes the cup out of my hand and puts it down on the ground without looking.
Then he gives me a look as if his life depended on this very moment. “I’ve got to do this, Paisley.”
And then Knox kisses me.