Chapter 7 #2
We piled into the gondola. Clem took the uphill seat and I sat facing her.
While I was getting my poles organized, Evie stepped into the cabin.
“That was a close one. Those doors almost got me.” She went to sit, but there was a loud swishing noise and then a squeal, followed by a thud, and Evie ended up crumpled on the metal floor.
“Ouch!” She groaned. “I think GJ’s snowsuit might be a little too slippery for this sport.”
“I agree,” Clem said. “Try not to fall, you might slide right off the side of the mountain.”
One thing I’d learned about Clem was that she was tough, and not very sympathetic.
“Are you okay?” I stood and held out my hand to help Evie up from the floor.
“I think so.” Evie slipped her hand into mine, and I couldn’t tell whose was hotter or sweatier. She grunted as I pulled her to her feet and picked up her poles. “Thanks, Nick.”
“Oh, you’re all right. That’s not the only bruise that your butt is going to get today,” Clem said.
I turned to face Evie and widened my eyes. She returned the look with a hint of a smile and then rubbed the backside of her snowsuit. “Maybe skiing isn’t for me.”
“Baloney.” Clem leaned against the window. “You two will be slaying pow by the end of the week.”
This time it was Evie who gave the look. Clementine’s antics were definitely diffusing the tension between the two of us.
“Pow?” Evie sat, but the swooshing sound happened again. I was ready this time and grabbed her elbow before she slipped to the ground for ass bruise number two. “Thanks,” she whispered.
While Clementine explained the different slang words for powder, Evie put her mittens on the seat and sat on top of them. The scratchy wool provided enough friction to allow her to sit without sliding off.
As we reached the top, Clem’s phone rang inside her pocket. She pulled out an old flip phone, opened it, and stuck it between her head and the ear flap of her helmet. While she talked about some volunteer event in Windswan, I stood and readied myself to get off the lift—so did Evie.
“I didn’t know you were going to be here today.” She pulled on her mittens.
“Ditto,” I replied. “I thought that I was getting a private lesson with the mayor of Sugar Peaks.”
Evie laughed. “Yep. Everyone knows Clem.”
“What’s that suit made out of?” I rubbed her arm.
“Asbestos and Crisco?” Evie laughed. “I dunno.”
The doors opened and Clem continued to speak loudly as we picked up our skis. I pulled everyone’s skis from the exterior compartments and handed them to Clem and Evie. Clem mouthed Thank you, but was still engrossed in her conversation.
“How do you do this?” Evie looked at her skis like she’d never seen a pair before.
With our fearless leader in the midst of an extreme gossip session about the Legion ladies, the lesson fell to me.
“It’s easy.” I dropped each ski and Evie did the same.
“Make sure there’s no snow crusted up on your boots and then stick the toe in here.
” I pointed to the front part of the binding with my pole.
“Then push your heel down on this part. It will snap you right in.”
Evie followed my instructions and then the two of us were left standing there at the Mercy of Clem’s conversation about whether or not to use Dijon mustard on the ham sandwiches.
“I don’t give a damn, Muriel, the Dijon is too spicy for the old people. Do you want them keeling over at the penny table?” Clem shouted into the phone.
A young family rubbernecked as they walked by.
“Is she always like this?” I whispered.
“From what I’ve seen, this is nothing,” Evie whispered back.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you about breakfast.” She gave my chest a playful pat.
My cock responded instantly, and I hoped that the snow pants hid the hard-on.
I was a goner, if the woman touched me for longer than a second, I’d probably blow my load instantly.
“Right. Breakfast.” I blinked, willing imagery of unsexy things into my brain to deflate the bulge in my pants. Environmental disasters, philosophy, golf…I breathed a sigh of relief as it worked and remembered what we were talking about—breakfast. “What was it today? Some kind of monster?”
She bit her lip. It was the cutest thing I’d ever seen.
Tire fires, dirty socks…what Evie did was cute as hell. My mind was going to have to repeat its unsexy mantra all day long.
“No monster today. It was a croissant.”
“Sounds pretty…normal. Not monster-y at all.”
She put her hands through the loops on her poles. “No, not like that.” I pointed to the straps. “You could hurt yourself. If they get caught on a tree it could—”
“Rip your shoulder right out of the fucking joint,” Clem interrupted. “Listen, Evie. I’m really sorry to do this to you. I’m going to have to issue a snow check for the lesson. An emergency has come up with the Windswan Holiday Bazaar and I have to go.”
Evie’s eyes grew as big as the sun in the sky behind her. “But, Clem. We’re on top of a mountain.”
“Nicky will get you down.” I choked as she slapped me on the back. “He’s the best student I’ve ever had.”
“But—” There was a tremble in Evie’s voice.
“Bye!” Clem clicked into her skis, and in a flash of orange and a whip of white braids, she was gone.
Evie’s wide eyes shimmered. Oh no. No. No. No. Damn you, Clementine. There was no way I was letting her cry.
“Hey. Tell me more about this croissant.”
She sniffed and then sighed. “GJ’s sister makes this jam from haskap berries.”
“Haskap?”
“Yeah, they’re kind of like blueberries but longer and they’re not as tart.” The strength seemed to be coming back to her voice.
“That sounds amazing. A Jam stuffed croissant.” As long as I could keep her talking, I could stop her from thinking about getting down the damn mountain.
“There’s more to it than that—he also put in goat’s cheese. They’re incredible.” The smile spread across her face and her eyes glazed over. If the memory of the breakfast could put that look in her eye, I wanted some.
“What did you name it?”
She cleared her throat. “How am I supposed to wear these things?” She held up her arms and the poles dangled from her wrist.
It looked like I had graduated from beginner to instructor. I held up my own pole and demonstrated. “Put your hand up through like this and then press down on the top, like this.”
She tried to do it but ended up repeating her first method.
Her shoulders slumped. I could tell she was deflated, and as much as I liked Clem, I wanted to shake her.
I tried to make my voice sound as calm as possible.
“Let me help you.” I shimmied next to her and tried to ignore the magnetic feeling between us.
We weren’t touching, but it felt like we were.
Was it possible I could feel the warmth from her body when we weren’t even making contact?
I directed her hand with mine. “There. That’s all there is to it.”
Her hands were shaking.
“Look over there.” I pointed. Next to Widowmaker was a trail sign with a green circle.
I swore that I heard gospel music and a sunbeam shone like a spotlight directly onto the sign.
“We can either go down there. That one’s called Wolverine Way, or there,” I pointed to the green circle run, “Loosey Goosey.”
“Well, I’m definitely not loose, and a Wolverine is pretty brave, so maybe we should go that way.”
I laughed. “They also call Wolverine Way, Widowmaker.”
Evie’s shoulders shook as she laughed. “Oooookay. Goose it is.”
A group of ski school kids snowplowed by. They squealed and laughed as the line of them snaked down Loosey Goosey.
“That’s called the pizza.” I demonstrated with my skis. “This is called the French fry.” I jumped with my feet parallel. “For your first run, I think we should stick with the pizza.”
“Sounds delicious. I like pizza better than French fries.”
“Me too.” I smiled. “Clem showed me some exercises. I can show them to you too. I learned this morning and I can already French fry.”
I hated that I sounded like I’d stepped off the set of Sesame Street, but I had to work with the vocabulary I’d been given. “You can do it. I believe in you.”
“That makes one of us,” Evie said.
As scared as she was, she pushed off with her poles and pizza-pied down the run.
I caught up with her and showed her some of the turning drills.
It took about fifteen minutes and then Evie was howling with laughter as she zig-zagged her way from each side of the run to the other.
“Show me more, Nick.” Her chest puffed out as she turned her skis and did a stop in front of me.
“You got it, Evie.” I paused. “Is Evie short for something?”
“Evelyn.” She rolled her eyes. “I hate the name. I was born on New Year’s Eve, so Evie makes more sense to me.”
“What about you? I heard your girlfriend call you Nicky.” She elbowed me.
“My girlfriend?” It took me a second to realize she was talking about Clementine. “Oh, yes. Nicky is reserved for ladies sixty-plus. My full name is Nicholas, but no one ever calls me that.”
“What about nicknames?”
“Back East the guys called me Tinsel. Or Tinsey.”
She tilted her head as though she was saying each of the names and testing them out. “I like Nick.”
“Me too.” I smiled. “And I like Evie.”
The world seemed to go quiet for a second or two. The giggles of the ski school kids, the schushing of skis, the mechanical whine of the gondola cable, all disappeared. If this were a movie, it’s when I would’ve kissed her.
We found a chairlift that took us up to the top of an easy run called Puppy Pause. We spent the afternoon riding up and skiing down, and by the end of the day, we had conquered Puppy Pause.
Outdoor fireplaces burned at the base of the mountain. The Beach Boys blared from speakers outside one of the restaurants, and people in their ski gear sat at picnic tables drinking pitchers of beer. A banner advertising après-ski beers hung over the entrance to the patio.
I’d been furious that Clem had stranded us at the top of the gondola, but it turned out to be an amazing afternoon. “I don’t think I’ve laughed like that since I was a little kid.” I clicked out of the skis.
“Same.” Evie took off her skis. “It reminded me of the first time I cantered on a horse.”
I had spent the afternoon following Evie’s light brown mane whip in the wind from beneath her helmet. That image was replaced with her on a horse galloping across a field, hair flying in the wind, wearing tight Wranglers and cowboy boots.
I shook my head and gulped. I had to stop fantasizing about her. After the Christmas Classic she probably wouldn’t ever want to see me again. Still, I didn’t want the afternoon to end. If this was the only time we got to spend alone together, was it wrong to make it last as long as possible?
“Do you want to take these skis back to the rental shop and go get a drink?”
“Only if we can get nachos too.” Evie slung the skis over her shoulder in one easy motion.
“Hell yeah. I’m starving. I think that we worked up an appetite.” I copied her move and we headed to the rental shop like a couple of people who knew what the hell they were doing.
With our skis returned, the two of us got the last table in the beer garden.
A pretty waitress with black hair sticking out from underneath a wool hat handed us menus. I held up my hand. “I don’t think that we need those, we’ve decided on nachos.”
“And to drink?” She jotted our order on a notepad.
I gestured to Evie.
“I’ll take a beer, whatever you’ve got on tap,” she said.
“It’s the local brewery’s lager.” The waitress pointed to the après-ski sign with the end of her pen.
“Sounds good.” Evie smiled and rested her chin on her clasped hands.
The waitress looked to me. “The lager is called après-ski?”
Her brow knitted. “No, it’s the Chance Rapids lager.
I pointed to the sign. “What’s the après-ski special?” I was so confused.
The waitress laughed. “Would you two like to make that a pitcher?”
“Yes,” Evie interjected. “Thank you.”
The waitress walked away, leaving me more confused than ever. Evie rested her hand on mine. “Nick. I’m not an expert in skiing, but après-ski is a thing, like after skiing drinks. Après is French for ‘after.’”
She pronounced it like, a pray. My cheeks burned. It felt like the fire from the outdoor fireplace had jumped from the hearth right to my cheeks. “I guess I play right into the dumb hockey player stereotype.”
She gave me the sweetest smile. “I would’ve thought the same thing. The only reason I know is from working at the inn. And Nick, you’re anything but a dumb hockey player.”