“You ever feel stuck in Miami?” I said, leaning forward from the back seat. “Where the highest elevation is Mount Trashmore?”
“I hated it at first,” he admitted. “I joined the Miami Ski Club as soon as I arrived in town. Went to Colorado every chance I could.”
He looked over at me. “Then I met you.”
“And?”
“I knew you were more important than mountains.”
My heart skipped a beat, and I was sure that Cody had filmed the look on my face. The words hung in the air between us as Ray navigated a sharp curve, the rental car's engine working harder as we climbed higher into the Maritime Alps.
The landscape transformed dramatically as we left Nice behind. The Mediterranean's azure expanse gave way to terraced hillsides dotted with olive groves and red-roofed villages that clung to the mountainsides like ancient barnacles. Palm trees disappeared, replaced by pine and oak forests that grew denser as we gained elevation.
More important than mountains.I turned the phrase over in my mind, watching the scenery change outside my window. When Ray took a job transfer to Miami, he’d assumed it would only be a year or two, and then he’d return to the mountains. But he’d given up that chance to go back to stay in Miami with me.
I'd never fully appreciated the magnitude of that sacrifice. How many times had I complained about his weekend races, his training schedules, never understanding they were his way of staying connected to the part of himself he'd left behind?
"Look," I said, pointing to the road below us where it switched back across the mountainside. Two cars were visible, following the same serpentine route we'd taken minutes earlier. "Company."
Ray glanced up through the windshield. "That must be Brandon and Alex, and Desiree and Cherisse. While you were up in the air I checked the flight schedule on someone’s phone, and the flight from Madrid to Nice should only be arriving now.”
The road curved through another hairpin turn, and I felt my ears pop from the altitude change. Snow began to appear in patches on the north-facing slopes, and the air flowing through the vents carried the crisp bite of mountain air I remembered from our early trips to Colorado together.
We passed through a small village—St. Martin-Vésubie, according to the road sign—its narrow streets lined with stone houses and a medieval church whose bell tower pointed toward the peaks like a prayer. The few locals we glimpsed were dressed in heavier clothing than the beachgoers we'd left behind in Nice.
"This reminds me of the Alps above Montreux," Ray said suddenly, his voice carrying a note of nostalgia I rarely heard. "When I was playing in the Swiss league."
I'd heard plenty of stories about Ray's professional basketball career in Europe, but something in his tone suggested this was heading somewhere new.
"There was this guy," Ray continued, downshifting for another steep section. "Jean-Luc. French, obviously. He was covering our team for some sports magazine, and we..." He paused, seeming to choose his words carefully. "We had a thing. Just one night, really."
I felt Cody shift slightly in the backseat, probably sensing a good story for the cameras, but I kept my eyes on Ray's profile.
"He took me up into the hills above the lake. Said he wanted to show me the real Switzerland, not just the tourist postcards." Ray's hands tightened slightly on the steering wheel. "It was beautiful, Jeffrey. This little chalet overlooking the valley, mountains all around us, stars brighter than anything I'd ever seen."
The road leveled out briefly as we passed through another village, giving us a moment's respite from the constant climbing.
"And?" I prompted gently.
"And it was empty," Ray said, his voice quiet. "Physically, it was incredible. The setting was perfect, he was attractive, the sex was good. But afterward, lying there looking at those mountains... I felt more alone than I'd ever felt in my life."
I watched his face, seeing something vulnerable there that reminded me of our conversation in the Venezuelan hotel room.
"I realized that what I was looking for wasn't adventure or excitement or even good sex. It was connection. Someone who would still be there in the morning, who wanted to know what I was thinking about when I got quiet, who could make me laugh when I was taking myself too seriously."
The road began to climb more steeply again, and Ray shifted into a lower gear.
“I had more sex then, and in Colorado after I stopped playing. But I didn’t find what I was looking for until I was in Miami, sitting in that brewpub, waiting to meet this computer programmer who quoted Jane Austen in his dating profile." He glanced at me briefly. "And I knew within ten minutes that it was you."
My throat felt tight. "Even though I was nothing like Jean-Luc? No mountain chalet, no perfect romantic setting?"
"Especially because you were nothing like that," Ray said. "You were real. You argued with me about books, you made terrible coffee, you fell asleep during action movies. You were a person, not a fantasy."
The village of Isola appeared ahead of us, a cluster of alpine buildings that looked like they'd been transported from Austria. Ray pulled into the parking lot for the ski resort, and I spotted the first challenge station set up near the base lodge.
"So when Russell made you feel young again..." I said, understanding dawning.
"He was another Jean-Luc," Ray finished. "All surface, no substance. I got caught up in the fantasy again and almost lost the real thing."
