Chapter 7 #3
“All right, thanks,” I tell him as I hang up.
Even though it’s inconvenient, I can just go back to the hotel.
I didn’t know that subletting Josh’s apartment was going to fall into my lap like this, so I have my suite there paid for the whole month.
I can start a fire in the fireplace. I plan out what I might order from room service as I throw basic necessities—chargers for my phone and laptop, and my shaving kit—in a bag along with some clothes.
I’m ready to leave in less than five minutes, already looking forward to the warmth of the hotel.
In the hallway, I start toward the elevator, then look back over my shoulder. Shit. Jackson was coming home to take a warm bath. I imagine her still sweaty and shivering in her condo.
Without even making a conscious decision to do so, I’ve already turned and am at her door.
I hold my breath as I raise my hand to knock, but the door swings open before I can even make contact.
Jackson jumps back in surprise, and a small gym bag clatters to the floor.
“You scared the crap out of me,” she gasps.
“You heading out?” I ask. She’s wearing fuzzy fleece pajama pants and a hooded Sherpa sweatshirt, and her jacket hangs open over those layers.
“Yeah, my heat and hot water aren’t working so I’m going back to the Center to shower. I’ll stop and tell Arnie about the heat on my way out.”
“I already called him. It’s not your condo, it’s the whole building, and it won’t be fixed until tomorrow.”
Jackson growls out her frustration, a primal sound from the back of her throat. “Guess I’ll be sleeping on the couch in front of my fireplace tonight, then.”
“I have a suite at the Marquis. I’m happy to give you the bedroom and take the couch.”
“Why would you do that?”
“As a thank you for the torturous workout today?”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “I don’t think the two of us sharing a hotel suite is a good idea.”
“I know you need a shower, or a bath—there’s a colossal bathtub by the way—and we can order room service.
I hear they make amazing pulled pork mac and cheese.
” It’s a low blow because she’s a mac and cheese connoisseur.
I can see her resolve crumbling when she pulls half her bottom lip between her teeth.
“And peppermint hot chocolate with extra marshmallows.”
I can see the hesitation in her eyes, the way she’s trying to talk herself out of this.
Then her stomach growls and she breaks into a small smile.
“Okay fine, bribe me with food why don’t you.
” She holds the door to her condo open for me and turns back inside.
“I just need to grab a few things,” she says, sweeping her bag off the floor and heading across the living room into what I assume is her bedroom.
Her living room is taken up by a deep forest green velvet couch facing a fireplace that has old wooden skis hung above it. On either side of the marble-topped coffee table are two leather club chairs. The space doesn’t feel like her at all—it’s too Park City, not enough Blackstone.
Blackstone Mountain, where we raced together in high school, is one of the last independent mountains in the Northeast. It’s all pine-paneled walls, fieldstone fireplaces, and faded wooden tabletops.
It’s the one place in the world that Jackson thinks of as home.
And it’s nothing like this condo she’s living in.
It makes me wonder if this condo isn’t really her, or if I just don’t know who she is anymore. Or if maybe she doesn’t know who she is anymore.
Between the sleek fireplace and the kitchen is a gallery wall of black-and-white photos in matching gold frames. I make my way over there, hoping to have a minute to snoop at the pictures before Jackson is ready to go.
There’s a photo of Jackson’s parents that must be recent because I hardly recognize her mom, whose once dark hair is completely gray now and the lines at the corners of her eyes are deeper than I’ve ever seen them.
There’s a photo of Jackson with an older woman who I don’t recognize at all, and I wonder who she could be.
Then my eyes land on a photo of Jackson that I’d recognize anywhere, even washed out in black and white like this.
She’s standing on the podium at her first and only Olympic Games, the ones she headed into during her second year racing on the World Cup circuit when she was hardly known in the international ski world.
And the gold medal she’s wearing and the US flag that she’s holding up with both arms pale in comparison to the size of her smile.
But those memories—when everything seemed possible—are not what’s taken my breath away.
Instead, it’s the small triangle of wrapping paper, white with silver foil snowflakes, that’s tucked in the lower right corner between the matting and the photo.
It’s the wrapping paper from the first gift I ever gave her, back when we were seventeen—a snow globe with two skiers coming down a mountain above an alpine village.
A larger piece of that wrapping paper hung on her memo board in her bedroom in high school and popped up here and there over the years we were together—mostly pressed into a notebook she always traveled with.
The fact that she now has a small piece of it tucked into a frame hanging in her home solidifies in my mind that us ending up together was always the only possibility.
“Get it together,” I mumble to myself. I’ve felt more emotions in the last week than I’ve felt in the last five years. It’s like being around her again has turned me into a sap.
“What’s that?” Jackson asks from behind me.
Holy crap, man. Get. Your. Shit. Together.
“We need to get going. I’m starving, aren’t you?” I ask as I turn toward her.
She’s taken off her fleece pants and is clad in the leggings she was wearing earlier, but she’s left her heavy Sherpa sweatshirt on. “Famished. I’m pretty sure I could eat my weight in mac and cheese right now, so prepare yourself.”
“For what?”
“The room service bill.” She gives me a little wink.
That’s the Jackson I know and love.