25
Seeing as I can still barely ski, I have no idea why I thought skiing whilst carrying a canvas wrapped in a bedsheet was a good idea.
I spent all night working on it, staring out at the view from my balcony and digging into my memory to create the perfect piece to give to Rory. Maybe it’s stupid, but I know what I said yesterday hurt him and I need to make it up to him somehow. Everything he said was true.
Yes, suggesting I stay here with him and leave everything else behind was madness, but I can’t deny the idea sparked something in me that had long been left in the dark.
And after a night of going agonisingly back and forth on it, I want to prove to him that I’m willing to try.
To spend time together over the last week of the holiday and let myself be guided by whatever my heart is telling me.
‘You’re sure I can’t keep it for myself? I know exactly where I’d hang it in the flat.’ David fixes me with his best puppy dog eyes, but I shut him down.
‘No, but I promise I’ll paint you another one.’
He pouts but follows Adam and Lucas towards the chairlift while us girls split off towards the last day of class.
I dragged everyone here early so I could have a minute alone with Rory, but when I look around, I can’t find him.
What I do find though is the golden labrador smile of Kevin emerging from the instructors’ hut, and I rush over to him.
‘Hey, is Rory here yet?’
‘Good morning, how are you, Kevin? I’m great thank you, how are you, Bambi?’ Kevin says, enacting a one-sided conversation while I press him to go on.
‘Sorry, it’s kind of important.’
His eyes dart down to the bundle in my arms and his eyebrow lifts curiously. ‘Fine. He’s over at his place in the hotel, but maybe you should wait for him here?’
‘Thank you!’ I shout over my shoulder, already heading towards Darlington’s Den.
I push through the front doors and wave a one-handed hello to Doris behind the desk, who smiles and rushes to help with my painting.
‘Careful, ma chère, let me help. I was hoping I would see you again, you left in such a rush yesterday, I was worried.’
I try not to think too much about that, focusing instead on the conversation that’s about to take place and make everything right again.
The doors of the lift start to open and Rory steps out, head thrown back in laughter.
The lines that form on his cheeks are too perfect for my brush to ever capture.
‘Rory!’ I call out as I start to move towards him, only to stop dead in my tracks when someone I recognise follows him out of the lift.
Long auburn hair in two plaits that fall to her waist. The way she glides as she steps out through the doors and bats Rory on the shoulder with a perfectly manicured hand. A hand he then holds in his, and starts lifting to his face like he’s about to—
I look away then. I’m not sure he’s heard me call out to him, and for a moment I’m glad I can make a quick, unnoticed escape. But before I start to run, his head turns and his eyes find mine without effort, a question hanging in them as he takes in the image of me standing in his hotel lobby.
I don’t hang around to find out what happens next.
I leave Doris standing there alone as I spin around and run.
Run away from Rory and his ex-girlfriend who’s maybe not so ‘ex’.
The girl I’d thought nothing was happening with any more only for me to discover them leaving his apartment together a mere twenty-four hours after our night there.
‘Lottie!’
I hear my name called but it’s muffled through the ringing in my ears.
This is what I get for putting myself out there for once.
For doing something out of my comfort zone, because I believed him when he said he cared for me.
I was about to turn my whole life upside down. God, how could I be so stupid?
‘Lottie! Slow down!’
The sound is nearer now, but I don’t stop.
I’m not sure where I’m going, only that I want to be alone.
I run past the girls and Stephen, who are already waiting for class, run on through the trees that separate the ski resort from the wild slopes beyond.
I’m thinking with my feet, one of which is throbbing from the exertion when it’s still not fully better.
I’m following a direction only they know until I stumble upon a familiar hut.
Only now, there isn’t a table laden with breakfast food, nor a picnic blanket laid out on the snow.
I stand there, taking in the open space, not knowing how I remembered how to get here, only that for some reason this is where my body led me.
Maybe to torture me with the happy memories I have here.
Make this day go from bad to worse. I realise that I’ve dropped my painting, but I don’t care.
I should’ve let David have it. I turn to leave, the painting discarded on the snowy ground, and hope I’ll be able to find my way back to the slope and my friends who will take me home.
But when I turn, he’s there. His body emerges through the trees as he pushes their heavy branches aside like they’re made of nothing but air.
‘Lottie, let me explain.’
He’s blocking the way out, but I don’t let that stop me from rushing forwards as if I’ll be able to push past him.
I should know better, so it’s hardly surprising when I shove my shoulder into his chest and he doesn’t even flinch.
Instead, he gently takes hold of my shoulders to keep me in place.
‘Lottie, will you give me a second to talk to you, please?’
I laugh, tears that I’ve held back threatening to spill down my cheeks as I look up at him. ‘You know it’s a little ironic that you were so pissed off when you saw me leaving class with Adam yesterday when you ran back to your ex the next morning.’
He frowns, not looking pleased at my mention of Adam, and I don’t tell him that there’s nothing going on there.
I don’t want to admit that while I was ending things with him for good, Rory was planning a late-night reunion with his own ex.
He releases me and takes a step back, his biceps flexing as he crosses his arms over his chest. ‘You wouldn’t be thinking that if you’d stayed around for one more second and let me explain that nothing was happening. ’
I mirror his position, but I’m crossing my arms in an attempt to hold myself together more than anything else. ‘Oh yeah, so why did she look all happy and giggly when you stepped out of the lift together? And why were you holding her hand like you were about to kiss it?’
I wait for him to finally admit it then, a man caught out in the act, but instead he looks at me with confusion. ‘Holding her hand? I wasn’t—’ He pauses, a realisation hitting him. ‘You mean when I was looking at her ring after she told me she’d gotten engaged to her boyfriend?’
I try not to let the surprise show on my face.
I don’t want to believe it, but then I think back to that manicured hand of hers and I remember a sparkling ring on her finger that I overlooked in the moment.
I realise he’s telling the truth about that part at least, but that doesn’t explain why she was there in the first place. ‘But why was she in your apartment?’
‘Because she hadn’t realised her dog had been playing with her ski gloves and left them outside in the snow all night.
She couldn’t find any spares in the hut, so I brought her up to borrow a pair of mine.
I’ve always kept spare kit up there, and I thought one of my older pairs might fit her. That’s all it was.’
I stare down at my boots, feeling even more stupid at how wrong my assumptions were.
I’d been so mad at him for the assumption he’d made yesterday about me and Adam, and here I was doing the exact same thing.
And besides, who am I to judge what he might’ve been getting up to anyway after the way I left yesterday?
‘What’s that?’
I follow where he’s pointing, and that’s when I remember the painting that I left on the ground behind me.
Rory’s eyes are on it as he starts to move closer, but I leap quickly to get there before him.
I pick it up and clutch it close to my chest. Now that I know nothing happened with his ex, I start to pluck up the courage to do what I planned since getting back from the hospital last night.
‘Before I show you, can I ask you something?’
He looks from the painting up to my face, regarding me cautiously before nodding.
‘Did you mean what you said yesterday? When you said you cared about me?’
His face pinches, and the world around me slows as I wait for his answer. The branches that blow in the light wind barely moving. The snowflakes nearly ceasing to fall.
Something in Rory deflates, and his arms fall down to his sides, his palms turned towards me as he shrugs. ‘Of course I care about you.’
I wonder if that’s all he’ll say. That admission alone has my chest breaking open with relief, wanting to tell him that I care for him too. To say the words I should’ve said yesterday but was too scared to vocalise. But before I have the chance to tell him my own feelings, he continues sharing his.
‘I barely slept last night, because lying in that room alone was torture after learning what it was like to wake up beside you. I know you don’t feel the same way, and maybe I shouldn’t admit quite how much I’m falling for you in the short time we’ve spent together, but I am.
I’m falling harder for you than how you fell on your way to that first ski class. ’
I laugh, although it comes out more like a croak as tears start to well up and flow down my cheeks, his words opening the floodgates as his admission echoes everything I planned to say.
I remember that first day. How Kevin helped me to my feet, the old me who didn’t know who was waiting only a few metres away.
‘I saw you fall and I recognised you straight away. You’d never mentioned where you were going on your ski holiday, and I’d entertained the thought that you’d show up here.
Only I never thought you actually would, and when I saw you there, I thought it might be my mind playing tricks on me.
It wasn’t until you came over and I saw your name on the register that I realised it was real.
I know you don’t feel the same, and things yesterday didn’t end the way I would’ve liked.
But I want you to know I’m glad you showed up that day.
I’m glad for even the short time I got to know you. ’
I swallow back the lump that’s formed in my throat, needing to clear it so I can tell him the words I hope aren’t too late for him to hear.
I planned out exactly what I wanted to say, but relief, hope, fear and excitement for what this all means battle in my stomach and jumble my prepared speech.
In lieu of the right words, I begin to unravel the wrappings around my painting.
Rory’s eyes are fixated on my hands as they unfold the sheet I used to form a makeshift casing, then the clingfilm I loosely wrapped over the painting itself once it had dried. Once it’s free, I wait a minute before turning it around to face him.
‘I made this last night.’ My hands shake where they grip the edges of the canvas.
‘Someone very wise told me that the best way to fix something you’ve broken is with a grand gesture, and people say a picture is worth a thousand words.
I’m not great with words, but I’m not bad with a brush, so I hope this sums up everything I want to say. ’
I take a breath, knowing once I turn this around, I’m taking a step I won’t be able to take back. I count to three and slowly reveal the painting to him.
For a while, he just stares. His eyes roam over every inch of the canvas, and I feel more vulnerable than I ever have before. He takes a step closer, then another, until his hands are close enough to touch the surface of the painting. ‘May I?’
I let his hands replace my own as he lifts the painting closer still. I tried my very best to remember everything precisely as it had been that day, but instead of daylight, I imagined what it would look like as the sun sets.
How the fairy lights that were wound up the banister would twinkle.
How the firepit would look with roaring flames lit inside it.
How Rory would look climbing down those stairs carefully, two overfilled hot chocolates balanced in his hands.
And finally, how I would look, a blanket wrapped around my legs as I sat in a chair by the fire, watching him walking over to me.
That’s what I’ve painted. A world in which he asked me to stay, and I did.
‘You were right, about all of it,’ I say, not being able to bear the silence as his eyes take it in. ‘Yesterday, I was afraid of what saying yes to you would mean. And I still am, but I don’t want to let that control my decisions any more.’
His fingers brush the place where I’ve painted myself, tiny snowflakes falling around me.
‘Does this mean what I think it does? What about Adam? And your parents?’ There’s a quiver to his voice as he asks, like he doesn’t want to let himself believe it.
I reach out, my fingers touching the top edge of the painting and lowering it so his focus shifts back to me. ‘I’ve already called them. And there was never anything going on with Adam. That chapter of my life is over. I know it, and he knows it too. It was over as soon as I met you.’
His features soften, and I want to trace my fingers over each faint curve of his face.
‘Ask me again,’ I say.
He bends down, delicately placing the painting on top of the unfolded wrappings. When he straightens, his hands brush the hair back from my face, tucking the wayward strands behind my ears. ‘Lottie, will you stay with me?’
I lift my palm to his chest, taking in the warmth of him, and the steady, sure beating of his heart. I nod. ‘I’ll stay, Rory. For the next week, and from then on, I’d like to see how things go. If you’ll still have me?’
I wish I had my brushes with me to capture the look on his face in that moment, the pure magic of his smile before he wraps his arms around me, pulling me close to him and lifting me inches off the ground.
But instead, I commit everything to memory for another time, soaking in the smell of him, the sound as he laughs, and the sensation of his arms wrapped tightly around me. How I hope they’ll never let me go.
‘You’ll have a place here for as long as you’d like. The longer the better,’ he says, and my heart melts.
I’m sure he’ll have questions about what made me change my mind, or why I was so scared to say yes in the first place.
But there’ll be time for that. For now, we hold each other close.
And regardless of what happens next, whether things work out between us or not, I know this is a decision I won’t ever regret.
When Rory pulls away, it’s only enough to give him room to brush his lips against mine.
And when I kiss his back, the world has never felt more full of possibilities – all of them involving him.