Chapter 4 #3
She walks purposefully to the cloakroom, her fine arse sculpted by tight leggings, her checked shirt sliding off one shoulder.
‘I would never have described you as sweet.’
She scoffs, hatred literally oozing from her, and as we all follow, Matty throws me what is unmistakably a protective glare.
Even in a pair of grey salopettes, Dayna looks hot as sin.
Once she’s in her gear, she messes around on her phone then leaves it on the side: a sensible choice in case she falls off-piste.
She grabs her helmet and skis and heads outside with the others.
I finish tightening my boots, all the while looking at the lit-up screen of her phone.
I really don’t want to look, but I’m like a moth to a flame.
I know it will end badly, potentially disastrously, but I’m fixed on the phone, homing in on the heat.
Casting a glance over my shoulder to make sure the coast is clear, I pick up the device and open her email.
The subject heading I recognise is three down in the chain.
I hover over it, unable to open the email, unable to walk away.
‘Clark! Let’s go!’ Teddy shouts.
I look to the doorway then back at the phone screen, which has faded to black. She’s ranked first or third. I guess I’ll have to find out another way.
We head across the snow, sinking in the freshly laid ground.
‘Here, give me those,’ I say, taking Yvette’s skis from her as she struggles to drag them along, hoisting them onto my own shoulder.
‘You trying to make us look bad?’ Tim asks good-humouredly.
‘It’s just another tick in the box, Tim, not the only one.’
He laughs and Dayna tuts. God, if I wasn’t already miserable at the moment, she’d certainly get me there.
We part ways at the lift landing. Amy, Rachel, Teddy and Yvette step into their skis and head down a blue slope.
‘See you for après-ski, boys… and girrrrrl!’ Rachel part-shouts, part-squeals as she picks up speed and glides away from us, less gracefully than she probably intended.
The rest of us step into our boards and skis and sit onto two passing lifts.
Matty and Spencer take the first. Tim, Dayna and I ride a second.
We climb, slow and smooth, into the silence of the mountains, a place where reality is expunged by natural beauty.
Sun beams down on the peaks, and the occasional thin cloud kisses the rock.
I lean my head back and close my eyes. Bright circles pierce my lids even through my shades.
‘Stunning, isn’t it?’ The words sound odd in Tim’s gruff voice, but they’re right. I’ve missed being here, the peace it brings.
‘It’s so beautiful, it doesn’t seem real. It’s like a dream. Enchanting. Untouchable.’
I roll my head to the side to find the face behind those words, to see what’s really beautiful and untouchable.
She faces me and it’s clichéd but I feel as if she’s looking deep into my soul.
I wonder if she can see change, if she knows how much I regret running from her.
If I could turn back time, I’d do it all differently.
I wouldn’t have listened to my father and his ridiculous family pride, his militant rules.
I’d believe in love, in being in love and how it feels to be loved by someone else.
I open my mouth to tell her I’m sorry, but the lift chugs as the cable nears the end of the run.
‘Bar up!’ a steward shouts from the ground.
We raise the safety bar and jump down, Tim then me. Tim heads straight down the steepest part of the highest black run. I halt to make sure Dayna is out of the lift, and her lips curl mockingly as she flies right by me. ‘If you can’t take the heat, Layton!’
Damn that woman. I push off on my poles and don’t carve until I’m past her.
Tim continues straight down the slope, but I hang a right and hit my favourite off-piste run.
It’s difficult, but it’s worth every second for the view looking up the sides of the valley, the speed and the feel of wind burning my face as I fly, unrestrained by time, people and concrete jungle.
I check back on Dayna more than once. Each time, she’s grinning from ear to ear, hot on my heels, holding her own with ease.
She’s still going strong as we merge with the black run, so I don’t stop.
We hit the red run, then the blue, and I’m laughing with absolute delight when I dig my skis into the snow and pull a hard halt at the bottom.
I watch Dayna come the last fifty metres and for a split, sadistic second, I imagine this is how it could have been. Us. Here. Together.
She comes to a stop so close to me that we both rock back, and I reach out to stop her from falling. I wait for the brutal admonishment.
‘Thanks,’ she says through a sniff, rebalancing herself but completely throwing out my equilibrium.
‘Enjoy that?’ I ask.
‘Who wouldn’t? Tim, over here!’
Tim pushes towards us. ‘The snow is top-notch.’
‘Amazing. Same run or do you want to mix it up?’ Dayna asks him, still bringing her breathing back in check and adjusting her goggles. ‘You coming?’ she shouts to me.
A small, tiny, miniscule step for man-Clark. I’ll take it.