Chapter 16 #2
I head back into my parents’ house to change out of the slacks I’m wearing with my V-neck sweater in Danforth Green, because as an alum of course I wanted to show my school spirit.
As an added bonus, it makes my green eyes shine.
I throw on a pair of leggings with the sweater and since Mom’s still sleeping and I’m terrible at doing nothing, I decide to head over to the mountain.
Dad’s in some sort of emergency board meeting this morning, but he said it’d only take an hour or so.
Maybe we can grab brunch together at the restaurant in the lodge when his meeting is over.
Annie’s return call comes in over Bluetooth right as I’m pulling into the Blackstone Mountain parking lot.
“Hey, I’m so sorry about the interview,” she says when I answer the call.
“Annie, what happened?” I’m sure she can hear how worried I sound.
“Something came up, I’m so sorry to have to cancel on you like this.” She doesn’t sound that sorry.
“Was it something on your end? Or something about me in particular as a candidate for the position?” I ask as I pull into a parking spot.
She knows what I’m asking. Have they already decided they don’t want me for the position?
She sighs, a deep exhale that pauses our conversation. “It was kind of both, actually. People here want to see how you training Nate plays out before committing to an interview.”
But they’d already committed to the interview, so that means something has changed.
“What do you mean, how it plays out?” I ask. Nate finished fifteenth in his first World Cup race. If that’s not seeing how effective my work with an athlete can be, I don’t know what is.
“I’ll be honest with you, Jackson. There are some rumors circulating that you and Nate have more than a professional relationship, and it put up some warning flags. We can’t have our staff getting personally involved with the athletes they train.”
“I’m absolutely not involved with Nate,” I say, carefully monitoring my tone so I sound firm and professional, but not reactive.
“And even if I were, this is entirely different. He’s not some college kid ten years younger than me.
You knew I’d been involved with him before and you said that my ability to set aside personal differences to train him was a strength going into this position.
And that’s what I’ve done. Absolutely nothing has happened that has crossed professional boundaries. ”
“I believe you,” Annie tells me, “but I’m not the only one on the hiring committee. And some of the other members want to pause for a bit, see how this goes. You were the only one we were interviewing, so it’s not like we’ll hire someone else in the interim. You’re still in contention for this.”
“That’s a relief,” I say, even though going from being the only candidate for the job to having my interview cancelled doesn’t feel like a relief at all. It feels like yet another thing Nate’s taken from me.
“Just give it a little time. Will you be home again for Christmas? Maybe we can hold the interview then.”
“I think so, and I’d like that.”
“Great. We’ll talk again soon. In the meantime, just keep your head down and stay out of the press. Understandably, we don’t want to bring someone into this position who’s going to create some sort of media circus here.”
“Understood,” I say before we say our goodbyes and hang up.
I press my head back into the headrest of my mom’s SUV and take a few deep breaths, trying to convince myself that it’s not a big deal that they’ve postponed my interview. Postponed is not cancelled, but even that reassurance doesn’t feel all that encouraging.
Stay out of the press. I’m not sure what she even means, as I haven’t been in the press lately and there hasn’t been a “media circus” like she mentioned.
What are they worried about? And more importantly, what did they see that raised people’s alarm bells?
Was it me and Nate, standing with our foreheads pressed together at the top of the mountain in Levi?
The same shot that had my mom up in arms?
If Nate wasn’t on the team, none of this would have fucking happened.
Then again, would I trade finally knowing the truth of what happened? Would I trade the weight that’s been lifted knowing that he didn’t leave because he stopped loving me, even though it’s been replaced by this new weight of possibly not getting the job I need?
No. I needed to know the truth, no matter the consequences. Because what I now know means I don’t have to keep hating him, and I can finally see what Marco and Sierra were trying to tell me—that my all-consuming hatred was keeping me bound to him.
He said he came back for me. But maybe it’s time I finally let him go.
“I’m really sorry it got cancelled,” Marco’s sympathetic words carry through our call. “But this isn’t your fault, you haven’t done anything wrong.”
My heart swells at his supportive stance. This is a tricky lie we’re living and it only works because we always have each other’s back.
“I still can’t believe the plane conversation we had. Did you know the truth?” I ask him. I’d still been trying to make sense of everything Nate told me when Marco and I talked a couple nights ago. It didn’t even occur to me to ask him if he’d seen Nate at the hospital years before.
“Not until you told me.”
“So you didn’t see him there, even though he saw you?”
“Pretty sure I was focused on you, Bella.”
I glance at the door to the conference room across from the couch I’m sitting on in the admin office. The door pulls open just as my stomach rumbles so loud I swear it echoes across the room.
A few people file out the door, putting their coats on as they go, and I nod to the ones I know and then tell Marco, “The meeting’s over, I gotta go.”
“No way,” I hear a deep, familiar voice rumble as I slide my phone into my pocket.
I glance up. “Oh my God, Cole! What are you doing here?” I bound out of my seat so we’re face-to-face.
“I’m on the board now,” my former ski coach tells me. Cole’s only twelve years older than me, and last I heard he was out in Tahoe working for one of the big conglomerates. I didn’t even know he was back on the East Coast, much less at Blackstone. “Rory didn’t tell you?”
“Dad’s tight lipped about all board-related business. Like why you guys are meeting the day before Thanksgiving,” I prod, hoping he’ll give me a little intel.
But he doesn’t bite. “It’s good to see you, kid.” He wraps his arm around my shoulder in a quick side hug. “What are you doing here?”
“I had a change of plans this morning and so I popped by to see if Dad wanted to grab something to eat when this meeting was over.” A big part of me wants to tell Cole about Danforth.
I still saw him all the time when I was in college.
Since Blackstone is so close to Danforth, he came to my home races whenever he could.
We grew apart once I left college for the World Cup circuit, but he was such an instrumental part of launching me into my career.