Chapter 27 #2
Two words, so much meaning. As I’m saying them, I realize how dumb they are.
Her eyes are telling me that she’s going through 285 reasons why she shouldn’t trust me.
No doubt she’s making a list of all my scandals.
Man was that dumb, telling her to trust me when I don’t even trust myself. Seriously dumb.
But she nods. For some unfathomable reason she nods, puts on her helmet, and sticks her feet into the tandem board’s bindings. I snap her in, check everything over two and three times before stepping into my own.
“Listen, you’ve got to play along a bit, okay?
” When her eyes widen in panic, I continue.
“Don’t worry. I’ll do most of the work. You weigh as much as a fly, I won’t have to compensate much.
But make sure you stay like you are right now.
” I grab her shoulders lightly to check her balance.
“Yeah, and keep your balance a bit with your arms. No, wait, let me show you.” I lift her arms into the right position, check her stance.
“Perfect. You’ll see how you have to move, but it won’t be much.
I’ve got it. Don’t squirm too much, okay? ”
“Okay.” She swallows half the word so that it sounds like Nkay.
My soft laughter gets lost on the slope. “Ready?”
“No.”
“Good. That’s the best moment.”
I lower her goggles over her eyes before putting on my own, then give a push forward.
Paisley shrieks. Until she’s got to gasp for air, then she starts shrieking again.
But then she starts to laugh, and, really, it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.
I didn’t know that something like that was possible, but my heart reacts and makes me warm all over.
Paisley coughs, she’s laughing so hard. I don’t want her to ever stop.
The last time I felt this happy on my board was when I wasn’t yet a pro.
When I just did it for myself, here and there, when I felt like it.
Ever since, I’ve had all this pressure to be perfect, to not make any mistakes, every course has felt endless.
I’m a half-pipe snowboarder, so I rarely give any fans a ride, but when I do, even that causes me stress.
It never lasts longer than a few minutes, but they stretch out and feel like hours while I convince myself that I’ve got to be quicker, more precise, more elegant.
It’s not fun. It hasn’t been fun in a really long time; it’s just pure pressure, the pure fear of failing. Of being a disappointment.
Right now, though, I can’t disappoint anyone. Right now it’s just for us, Paisley and me, and we’re laughing. We’re laughing like we weren’t broken, like we were simply happy, and, right now, maybe we even are.
Everyone is cheering when we arrive at the foot of Buttermilk.
It’s the first time we’ve ever offered this tandem ride for guests at the Christmas party.
Dad had brought it up at the city council meeting because Jennet thought we should do something in the meanwhile for me publicity-wise.
William was all over it immediately. No wonder.
He agrees to anything that’s good for Aspen’s image.
Whether or not I was interested wasn’t of interest to anyone, and I was pissed, I mean really fucking pissed, but, at the moment, I’m loving it.
While I’m getting out of my bindings, Paisley is taking off her helmet. Her cheeks are red, and her eyes are glowing with excitement. “I didn’t die!” she calls out. “I made my way down a steep mountainside on a thin board and didn’t die!”
“We’ve got to make sure of that first,” William says, who suddenly appears next to us in this full-body down snowsuit and raises his hand into the air. I don’t know how he can move in that thing. It looks so uncomfortable. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Three,” Paisley says.
“Wrong! Four.”
“No.” Paisley frowns. “Three.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Three. You’re good.”
William begins freeing her from her armor, and Paisley peers over his shoulder toward Silver Lake.
Levi and Aaron are gliding with parallel moves across the ice and turning before Aaron puts his arms under Levi’s underarms, leans back, and lifts his partner into the air while making a spin.
The crowd breaks into applause. Some people are whistling.
They’re good but, I can’t watch them for too long. It hurts. That sound. Skates on ice. It hurts.
“I’m coming up,” Paisley says. She looks at me expectantly. “You going to watch?”
You going to watch?
She asks as if it was nothing. She asks as if it was something I could simply do. Watch.
William’s eyes dart toward me as he’s undoing her kneepads. His mouth twists in sympathy. He doesn’t quite know what’s wrong with me, but he knows that I gave up ice hockey. Everyone in Aspen knows that I avoid the ice. Everyone except Paisley.
“I, umm…” Actually, I just want to tell her I can’t.
What with these tandem rides and all, I’d have a good excuse.
But standing there with her slight smile and open expression, as if she’d be happy about it, as if she’d be really happy about me watching her just confuses me completely. “Yeah. Yeah, of course I’ll watch.”
Did I just say that? Did that come out of my mouth? Judging by the way she’s beaming, I did.
“Okay. Cool.”
Yeah. Cool.
Paisley slips under the barricade tape and immediately runs into Gwen who grabs her and brings her over to Silver Lake.
I watch her go with a sinking feeling in my stomach. I put my hand on my neck and briefly look into the sky before turning to William. “Can we hold off on the tandem rides for a sec?”
He’s still holding all of Paisley’s pads in his arms. Usually, William would start to bitch and moan and give me a song and dance about how all the times are set so that so-and-so-many people can get a ride but this time he doesn’t. This time he just nods.
“Thanks.”
I turn around and slip under the tape myself. Standing back up, I meet Ruth’s glance.
“My dear boy,” she says, her voice full of sympathy.
That’s how I feel. Like a boy. Like being twelve again, distraught and afraid. But I go on, step by step, on past the folding tables. My heart feels like it’s pounding out of my chest.
I stop next to one of the blinking pines. “White Christmas” stops playing over the speakers, and Paisley comes onto the ice. I hear steps behind me, very clearly, as everything is quiet, and Wyatt creeps into view.
He doesn’t look at me. He’s looking at Paisley. But he asks, “All good?”
It’s a you-don’t-have-to-do-this all good. A don’t-torture-yourself-man all good.
“All good.”
Wyatt can hear what I say next. Though I’m just talking to him in my head—Can you stay here next to me until it’s over?—he can hear it. He nods and stays put.
That’s how things are between us. We stay put.
Ed Sheeran starts up. “I See Fire.”
Paisley begins to move. Just a second ago she was stiff as a rod on our snowboard, now she’s dancing on the ice, gracefully, elegantly, as if she’d never done anything else.
She doesn’t just skate across the ice. No, she hypnotizes everyone who’s watching.
Everything about her, every step, every facial expression, the smooth movements of her arms, is art.
The way she throws her head back, strokes her cheeks with her hands.
She looks like she’s suffering, like she’s screaming.
She radiates so much feeling, so many emotions, that my whole body breaks out in goose bumps.
The bridge begins, and Paisley outdoes everything else.
She jumps, does a double, a triple, and lands flawlessly.
Then she moves into a dance, brushes the ice with her palms, turns, falls to the ground, and covers her eyes with her hands to match the lyrics.
She rears up, falls to all fours, digs her hand into her hair and pulls, really pulls, smacks the ice.
For one moment, I think she feels, she really feels everything she’s showing. It’s all so real, goddamn, is it real.
At the end of the song, I lose myself. I lose my heart, I lose everything I spent all these years erecting around myself. Every bit of protection. Every ounce of control. It doesn’t matter, nothing matters, because she’s there, and she is everything.
I lose myself. And fall in love.
I forget why I even wanted to stay away from her, why I had priorities.
But then I hear them. The screams. Suddenly, without my being able control them.
They’re loud. They’re in my head, but loud.
It’s like they were right next to me. And then Paisley just disappears.
Everyone disappears. I’m alone at Silver Lake, alone with my mom while she’s screaming, screaming, screaming, in truth, she had only screamed once, and real loud, but in my head it’s thousands of times, over and over.
The ice turns red. It turns red and I remember what I’ve been running from.