Chapter 37 Happy New Year
Happy New Year
Paisley
“Eggnog?”
“Oh, yeah. Thanks, Gwen.”
She plops down onto the bench next to me. The pom-poms of her cap are dangling to either side of her face. It’s New Year’s Eve. It’s been a few days since that photo of Knox and me was published, and every morning I wake up in a panic that it could be my last.
“Okay. It’s New Year’s, Pais. We’re all here together. What’s going on with you?”
I take a sip of my eggnog and swallow a clump of cream. “What do you mean?”
“For days you’ve hardly been reachable. At iSkate, you hardly give me a chance to talk to you because you’re training nonstop like you’re obsessed. No offense.”
“Of course.”
She pulls up her legs. Snow trickles off her boots onto the bench. Her eyes dart in my direction. “Sooo?”
I look over at Knox who is standing next to the fire while William attempts to explain that he shouldn’t hold his marshmallow directly in the flame. In his mad gesticulations, his marshmallow lands on his shoe. Knox laughs, the fire lights up his face. I have rarely felt so warm.
“Have you ever felt that you are so happy, happier than you’ve ever been, but you know that it can’t last?
And then your whole body quivers with fear, and every one of your nerves is tense—right about to snap—because you’re waiting for everything to come crashing down, for everything to be over, and you can accept that, but beforehand you’re so afraid you can hardly stand it? ”
Gwen stares at me. “Umm. No. Honestly, Paisley, what’s up?” She looks over at Knox. “Things between the two of you are working out, right?”
I shrug. “Yeah.”
Gwen sighs. She leans back and observes Aria, who is letting herself be served a mulled wine by Dan, the owner of the little ski hut, before spilling half of it on the snow when Wyatt walks past.
“He won’t cheat on you, Paisley. Knox isn’t one of those types. He wouldn’t have gotten together with you if he wasn’t serious.”
“I know.”
She frowns. Her thick brown eyebrows come together, and a dimple appears in her cheek.
“You’re not going to tell me what’s up, are you?
” When I don’t answer, she nudges my shoulder.
“Listen.” She pushes up the sleeve of her jacket and pushes her glove down a little.
The woven bracelet from Malila is bouncing on her wrist.
I smile and show her mine as well.
“Look, you and me, we’re a team, Paisley. You can tell me everything. Whatever it is, I’m there for you.”
God, my heart is bleeding. I want to so bad.
I want to tell her what I did, how dumb I was, and then I want to cry on her shoulder while she brushes the strands of my hair out of my face.
But I feel so awful, so ridiculous, that I simply can’t.
My days here are numbered, why should I ruin the little time I have left in Aspen?
“It’s all good,” I say, just like I did to Knox, and nudge her back. “Let’s go over to the others. I’m freezing my ass off on this bench. For real.”
We get up and stomp through the snow to the fire. The fireworks will be set off from one of the higher points of Aspen Mountain later on, and we have a great view from where we are. I put myself next to Knox. He stretches out his arm and pulls me into his puffy jacket in order to kiss my forehead.
“Everything good, Snow Queen?”
“Super. I just wanted to talk to Aria a second. We didn’t get a chance at the Christmas dinner.”
“Sure. Go for it. Look for her wherever Wyatt isn’t.”
Smiling, I bump him with my shoulder and go off to find Aria. She’s standing under a large fir tree, half-empty mug of mulled wine in her hands, looking like she’d rather hide.
I go stand next to her. “Hey.”
Her hair brushes her cheeks as she looks at me. “Oh, hey. Did you have a nice Christmas?” When I make a face, she laughs. “What? Not a friend of publicity?”
“Not at all,” I say, take a sip of my eggnog and look over at Kate, who’s grabbed her daughter and is dancing to Justin Bieber’s “Mistletoe.” Gwen tries to escape, but Kate is as persistent as a whole tube of adhesive cream.
“Up until the photo in USA Today, everything was lovely. More than lovely. Really. I really like being here.”
Aria smiles. It looks sad. “Yeah, I understand you.”
“I know what you said on Christmas Eve, but suppose I were to ask you whether you missed Aspen and suppose you were to tell the truth, just between the two of us, what would your answer be?”
“You like to read between the lines, huh?”
“Oh, I’m a natural talent.”
She smiles and looks back out in front of her. The flames of the fire are reflecting in her eyes. “I would tell you that I miss it terribly.” She looks over at Wyatt. I follow her glance. He’s talking to Knox and keeps letting his eyes dart about.
“And him? Wyatt?”
Aria takes a sip of her mulled wine and clutches her cup.
She’s wearing gloves with the Gryffindor emblematic animal.
I resolve to like her a little bit more.
“There is no expression for how much I miss him. But sometimes things happen; sometimes things really go to shit, Paisley, and there’s no going back.
Doesn’t matter how much I’d like to. It just doesn’t work. ”
The smell of roast apples drifts into my nose. Ruth, William, and Kate prepared them yesterday at the diner, and now all the red-gold apples are on the stones around the fire and bathing the cold winter air with a heavenly scent.
“How can you stand it?” I ask. My glance lingers on Knox. “Letting someone you love go?”
She pulls off a glove and scratches her cheek.
Her white painted nails leave behind red weals.
“At the beginning, not at all. It was bad. Worse than anything I’d ever felt.
But at some point…” She scrapes an X in the snow with her winter boots.
“At some point I simply let the pain in and thought: Let it hurt, Aria. Let it really hurt until no one and nothing can hurt you anymore.”
“I understand that.”
She looks at me, on her lips the hint of a smile. “Yeah, I thought so.”
“Why?”
“You have such a presence. Looking at you, the first thing you see is that you are way broken but also strong.” I want to say something, but Aria points to Knox. “Strange.”
“What’s strange?”
“I’ve never seen that expression on his face when he’s looking for someone.”
I look over at him. He is turning his head in all directions, clearly looking for me; when he sees me, his face brightens.
Aria’s smile is soft. “I’ve known Knox all my life and have never seen him look at someone as if only just now realizing that there really is such a thing as love.” The speakers are now playing “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”
“Come on, go over there before he comes over here, bringing Wyatt along with him. I can’t handle that today.”
I hesitate. I don’t like leaving her alone beneath this sad fir tree. “Come with me.”
She tilts her head. Above us the snow is dripping off the pinecones and falling onto her cap. “In a sec. I need a moment to finish this wine and allow my body to accept being in the same radius as Wyatt.”
“Okay.”
I go over to the others. Levi gives me a wide smile over Aaron’s shoulder, whom he’s holding tightly from behind.
They are sharing a baked apple on a paper plate right by the fire.
Gwen comes over to me before I reach Knox.
She jumps through the snow and stops herself by clawing her fingers into my upper arm. “I thought you’d taken off already.”
“Why would I do that?”
“No idea. You’ve got to try one of these apples.
They are so good.” She takes my empty glass of eggnog out of my hand, puts it down in the snow, and pulls me over to the fire.
With two gloved fingers, she rolls an apple off the stones that have been arranged around the fire in a circle onto a paper plate, crushes the soft stuff with an already dangerously charcoaled plastic fork, and looks delighted when she hands it all to me.
To be honest, it doesn’t really look that good, but it smells divine, so I try it and, no kidding, I melt. It is so good that I just can’t.
“What I wouldn’t give for you to look at me like you are that apple.
” Knox hands me a flute of champagne. I quickly shovel another bite of the baked apple but manage to burn my tongue.
All the same, it was worth it. I smile at Gwen.
She takes a glass of champagne herself from the trolley next to the fire.
“Maybe you should invest in a bottle of baked-apple cologne. Then I’d look at you like that. Not to mention constantly sniff you.”
Knox laughs. “You’re constantly sniffing me the way it is.”
“Not in the least.”
He kisses my temple. “Okay. Try to convince yourself.”
William’s arm appears in front of us, and before I can understand what he’s doing, he’s pushing us with his back. He does that to everyone. He circles the fire with outstretched arms and pushes everyone back.
Aaron cocks an eyebrow. “What’s this all about, Will?”
William looks fantastically concentrated. The fire is lighting up every wrinkle on his face while he makes his rounds. I’ve got to say he really does look like the horror-movie version of Rumpelstiltskin a bit. “Don’t get any closer than around three feet, or you’ll get burned.”
Ruth sighs. “Will, please.”
He shakes his head, his expression severe. “No exceptions. It’s important,”—wheeze—“—that no one,”—wheeze—“gets hurt.” WHEEZE.
Wyatt lifts his leg with an amused gleam in his eye and pushes it back and forth, closer and closer to the fire.
William sees it, hurries over, and then Wyatt stops.
But as soon as Will creeps off, Wyatt starts up again.
It drives the old man absolutely crazy, over and over he keeps running through the snow towards Wyatt, looking just like an Oompa Loompa, and I get such a laughing fit that I have to bury my face in Knox’s jacket.
When I raise my head back up, my glance wanders over Knox’s shoulder and into Aria’s face.
She’s still under the fir tree, looking like a ghost that is simply observing proceedings.
For a second, my chest contracts when I see that she’s looking at Wyatt—at how he’s laughing, how he’s raising his hand and patting William’s shoulders—and her face is so distorted that I swear I am confronting pain in its purest, most open form.
It hurts, it hurts so much, because I know that all too soon I’ll be going through the same thing.
I don’t have any more time to think about it, because at precisely that moment Gwen grabs my arm. I look at her, her lovely face lit up by the sparkler she’s holding in her hand, and then things go off:
“TEN.” William burns his bottom out of pure fright.
“NINE.” Jack is looking up to the sky, and I think I know why.
“EIGHT.” Levi is wiping Aaron’s face with a snowball.
“SEVEN.” Aaron laughs and pulls Levi’s hat off his head.
“SIX.” Kate hops through the snow over to Gwen, raises her arm, and waves a sparkler back and forth.
“FIVE.” Gwen laughs and lays her head on her mom’s shoulder, and I can feel a longing, just a little bit, but a little bit too much.
“FOUR.” Ruth drags Aria out from the shadow of her sadness-tree and over to the fire.
“THREE.” Wyatt looks at Aria as if he had never seen anything more beautiful in his life.
“TWO.” Aria’s jaw is clenched; I think she wants to cry.
“ONE.” I feel joy and think that everything I have is right now.
“HAPPY NEW YEAR!” Knox’s lips on mine, snow-drunk, the flash of fireworks behind my eyelids, laughing hearts all around me.
How beautiful life is.
How beautiful it would be if it could always be like this.
How beautiful.