Chapter 16
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
Now would be a really good time for the chairlift to start moving again. Austin is staring at me like he’s never met me before. Or like I’m speaking in a foreign language.
“Did you hear me?” I ask, voice strained. “I said—”
“I heard what you said.” He works his bottom lip between his teeth. It’s a nervous gesture. “I . . . I told you?”
The question is heartbreaking, just like his face. I shouldn’t have said anything. Would it have mattered if I’d gone along with his confession a second time? The ending would be the same, wouldn’t it?
Only not really. He may not remember, but I do, and I can’t pretend.
The chair shifts as he scoots farther away again, creating space between us.
I let him have it. There was a while this summer where I convinced myself his amnesia or trauma or whatever this is was all an act.
That one of these days he was going to text or call and let something slip or go “Surprise!” then reveal that he’d remembered everything, the same way I still do.
But he never did, and that sort of thing probably only happens in movies anyway.
“I was going to tell you,” Austin says finally. He sounds like he might cry.
“After the games. I know. You said that too.”
He blinks a few more times, then goes back to picking at his gloved fingertips.
“Is that why you’ve been . . . the way you’ve been?”
Ugh, that’s a complicated question. “Partly. Sort of. There’s a lot. Adi and I have talked about—”
“You’ve been seeing the psychologist?”
“Yeah? Haven’t you? You went through some major shit.” I want to wrap my arms around myself protectively. Haven’t we all been through some shit? That’s what Adi says. If they made me talk to her and he didn’t have to, I will be pissed.
On the slope below, a ski patrol is snow plowing his way down the mountain, stopping to shout something at the people in the chair a couple ahead of ours. They shout back and he slides down to us. His words are loud but unclear.
“What?” I ask, leaning over the bar and cupping a hand to my ear, even though that won’t help, since when he repeats himself, it’s clear he’s speaking in Italian.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “English. Canada.”
He pauses, hands planted impatiently on his hips. “There is no electricity,” he says. “We fix. You wait.”
As though we were doing anything else? But he doesn’t stick around for an answer, only continues on down the hill toward the next occupied chair.
“Well, that’s just great,” I say, slumping back in my seat. If the power’s out, we could be here a very long time. Like, hours. It’s getting cold up here.
I’m about to crack a joke about huddling for warmth. Since the genie’s out of the bottle—or the cat’s out of the bag—surely Austin won’t mind . . .
Shit.
I haven’t told him everything, and if he doesn’t remember saying he loves me, then what comes next might be an even bigger shock.
“How are you feeling?” I ask carefully.
He’s still studying me like I could grow tentacles or scales at any moment, but eventually he shrugs. “Fine, I guess. A little cold. If they don’t get the power back on—”
“No, I mean, do you have any lingering conditions I should know about? From the accident. High blood pressure? Brain bleed? Anything that means you shouldn’t receive stressful news unprepared?”
He rolls his eyes. “You’re being dramatic, Zed.”
“I’m being serious. Are you okay?”
He makes a fist and rolls it around on his wrist. “This hurts when it rains. Sometimes the muscles between my ribs ache if I laugh too hard or sneeze funny. My ears get this ringing sound when it’s really cold that the doctor says might be left over from the jaw fracture, but no one can say for sure. ”
My stomach rolls as the remembered sight of him lying in a crumpled heap of snow and blood replays itself in my memory. I have no idea how that broken person and the man in front of me are the same one.
“I was really scared,” I say. “You were so hurt and I didn’t know what to do.”
It’s not the confession I plan to make. I was going to tell him about the competition-worthy sex the night before.
About the sound he made as I pushed my dick into him for the first time.
About the embarrassing way I came all over myself as he played with my balls and licked my taint.
About how I haven’t been with anyone else since that night because no one would ever, ever be like he was, and as a horny twenty-three-year-old in his sexual prime, that level of restraint is extraordinary.
There were opportunities, and I walked away from every single one of them because nothing would ever compare to him.
He shakes his head. “I don’t remember.”
“I know!” My voice comes out louder than I mean to and I bury my head in my hands.
“You were going to die and there was nothing I could do but hold you and beg you to keep breathing. And you don’t even remember.
You know what?” I round on him. “That’s fine.
Because I do. Every single time I close my eyes, it’s all I can see. And you got to walk away.”
“Walk away?” His eyes go wide. “I could barely walk at all. I was moving like an old man. Everything hurt all the time. You were scared? I didn’t think I’d ever be okay again. That I would be in pain for the rest of my life. You think I can forget that?”
Our voices echo off the snow. His expression is furious. I don’t care.
“You don’t remember. You don’t remember!” I say over and over.
It’s not fair. It’s not fair that we’re this way.
I don’t know which is worse. That I remember all of it.
Every single goddamn second. Or that he remembers none of it.
The bad parts. The fear and the pain. But also the good too.
Because there was so much good before, and for him, it’s all gone, leaving me alone with all the memories.
He slides a little closer to me. Not so much that we can touch, but the gulf between us gets smaller. His closeness makes me flinch, but he doesn’t back away.
He says, “They told me you came to see me in the hospital. The night of the accident.”
I’m shaking as too many feelings war inside me.
Did he feel better knowing I was there? Does he think I’m pathetic for needing to see him?
Is it wrong that I’m mad that he wasn’t there for me?
He was rebuilding his body. Recovering. I know that.
But he was gone in every single way that mattered, and I needed my friend. How am I supposed to tell him that?
All those months talking in therapy and suddenly I don’t know what to say.
Austin comes even closer, so he can put one arm around mine. The pressure of his squeeze helps a bit.
“I don’t even remember that,” he says, thunking our helmets together again. “But I’m really glad you came. I needed you.”
It’s a nice thought. For him. I still don’t feel better. He doesn’t get to win. He doesn’t get the last word.
“We had sex,” I blurt. The truth falls out of me like vomit after a night of binge drinking. “Holy shit. We had sex. The night before the accident.”
Another thunk as he retreats again quickly.
“What?” His face has lost its sweet pink shine and he’s gone completely pale. His obvious shock makes me feel better. A little at least.
But I still can’t stop. “So much sex. We kissed outside a bar and you said you loved me. We went back to the hotel and things were a little weird, until they weren’t and then we fucked.
” I take a deep inhale. “Holy fuck, did we fuck. Like, for hours. All night. Doggy style. You on top. You sucked me off and I ate your ass and—”
“What?” He’s got one hand on the chair’s upright and the other on his chest and for a minute I think he might actually pass out.
I envision him slithering from the chair and tumbling through open space and I can’t even begin to think how I’d explain that to the ski patrol.
Or what I’d say to the media when the story gets out and the people ask how Austin Grimm survived a horrible accident that shattered bones throughout his body and came back from it in time to achieve his Olympic dream, only to mysteriously plummet off a stationary ski lift and die and— “You ate my ass?”
The mountain falls silent again. My ears ring. Austin continues to stare at me. I could blow a puff of breath in his direction and he really would float away in the wind.
My bottom lip quivers and for a second I think I’m going to cry.
Then I realize it’s not tears I’m holding back.
It’s laughter. The shocked look on his face.
The way his mouth hangs open after he finishes his question.
A breeze brushes over us and makes a hollow whistling sound in the space between his lips, and that’s what finally makes me lose it.
The laughter bursts from me in a flurry of spit and hysteria.
I laugh so hard a crow takes flight from a tall, skinny tree not far from us.
Austin continues to watch me as expressions of stunned awe wash over his face.
Every time I think I’m ready to pull myself together and answer his question, I look at him and start laughing all over again, until once more tears are pouring down my face.
My cheeks hurt, and my stomach too, which makes me think of his ribs hurting when he sneezes and somehow that also seems funny now, and the giggling continues.
By the time I’m done, he’s starting to look more than a little hurt.
He’s closed his mouth, but now he’s pushing out his bottom lip in a pout that makes me want to kiss him.
He’s mine. My best friend. Brother on the snow.
And I’ve told him now and he didn’t freak out or run away .
. . though right now, where would he go?
“I’m sorry,” I gasp, wiping my eyes. “I didn’t think it was going to come out like that.”
“Like what?” He’s still pouting. “You admitting you had your tongue in my ass ten months ago and never bothered to remind me that was a thing that happened?”
“Jesus.” I glance backward at the people in the chair beyond the empty one.
Austin’s voice is rising loud enough they might be able to hear us.
I don’t recognize them, though. All I can hope is they don’t speak English, or if they do, that they only understand the basics and will assume they’ve misheard.
“You’re the one who randomly told me you were in love with me ten months ago. Keep your voice down.”
“Keep my voice down?” He’s breathing hard again, but the colour is back in his cheeks at least. “My voice? Keep my voice down? After what you just said? You tell me that we f—”
I lunge for him, slapping a glove over his mouth to smother the words.
We don’t need the entire Olympic village hearing our business.
Austin struggles against my hold for a minute, but then seems to realize at the exact same moment I do that we’re suddenly very close.
It’s like us wrestling in the snow all over again.
His breaths puff out of his nose, gusting over my hand, and his eyes sparkle with something like rage. A warning.
Need.
Holy shit. The last time I saw that look on his face, he pushed me down onto the bed and sucked my dick so far back into his throat I could see the entire fabric of the universe for a minute.
Very slowly . . . so slowly, I pull my hand away from his mouth.
His lips are parted and he stays completely frozen in place.
He’s like a mannequin forgotten at the back of the warehouse, staring blankly into space.
Searching the damaged remnants of his memory for any hint of what I’m saying?
Trying to ward off the kind of erection that drains so much blood from the rest of your body that your fingers and toes start to tingle from lack of circulation?
It’s certainly what I’m doing right now.
“Well, what the fuck!” he shouts, and the same crow takes flight again, leaving the tree it sought refuge in after my first interruption.
“I’ve spent all this time trying to figure out what I did wrong that you’ve been treating me like a parasite the whole time I was in BC, and meanwhile you get to replay a highlight reel of us fucking and—”
“Would you shut up?” I ask. I know this is a lot. He’s trying to take it all in. But on the off chance anyone on this mountain speaks English—because at this point they can all hear him—I’d rather this story not get out.
The chair lurches into motion. Great. Austin keeps shaking his head.
Maybe in disbelief but also like he’s trying to dislodge something from his ear.
See? This is why I asked about his physical condition.
How do I know he’s not slowly bleeding from his ears inside his helmet as he tries to come to grips with the revelation that we—
“I’m sorry,” I say, mostly to get him to look at me, so I know he’s okay. “I should have told you sooner.”
“Yeah,” he says, mouth set in a grim line.
“You should have.” But the line gets a little crooked.
“Only not too soon. Those first couple weeks are all blurred together. Morphine is amazing, but for a while I thought my dad was my boyfriend and my mom was my high school geography teacher trying to break us up.”
I roll my eyes. “Mrs. Callaghan always was a bitch like that.”
He laughs. It’s an old sound. Familiar. The laugh I’ve known my whole life but haven’t heard since that night in the hotel room, tangled in sweaty, come-scented sheets.
We’re okay. We’re going to be okay.