“I’ll take that bet,” she said, more to honor the special memory than any notion that she’d beat him on this pathetic little hill.
They started down. It was seriously flat, but Nicole was terrified. She wobbled, caught her balance, wobbled again.
Jack skied alongside her slowly, offering gentle corrections. “Weight on your downhill foot. That’s it.”
Her downhill foot. The one that felt like it weighed fifty pounds? She nodded, trying to concentrate, but feeling so, so unsteady.
“Eyes ahead, Nic,” he said. “Where you look is where you’ll go.”
So…don’t look at a tree. “’Kay,” she managed to say.
“There you go, honey,” he cooed. “Trust your body. It knows what to do.”
It did, once upon a time. Today? She slid a little and whimpered.
“Pick your line and trust it, Nic.” he continued. “You want this. You know you want this. Steady, steady…”
Her ski veered left, she overcorrected, and panic seized. Leaning forward, her skis caught a little too much speed, and her old fear bloomed like frostbite in her chest.
“Dad!” she gasped.
He tried to ski over, but before he reached her, Nicole tumbled sideways into a fluffy pile of snow just off the run.
She lay still for a moment, humiliated, snowflakes melting on her cheeks.
Jack coasted over, worry on his face. “You okay?”
Nicole sat up, brushing snow off her jacket. “I’m fine. Just…” She couldn’t admit she was scared of this. There were scarier slopes on the Snowberry Lodge property, not that she’d ever attempted back-country skiing.
Jack crouched beside her. “You did great, Nic. Honestly. That was a solid first run.”
“I fell.”
“Everybody falls.”
But not everybody almost dies, she thought.
Jack sat down on the snowbank next to her. He raised his goggles onto his helmet and studied her with concern and care. “Come on, honey. That wasn’t bad. You fell onto your side, just like I taught you when you were young.”
She tugged at her face covering, getting an icy breeze on her skin.
“I remember,” she said softly, grabbing clumps of snow with her gloved hands. “You used to always say, ‘If you’re not falling, you’re not trying.’” She said in a playful, mocking voice. “I wanted to strangle you.”
He laughed heartily, patting her back. “It’s true, though. And you always got back up.”
“Until…I didn’t.” She looked down at the rental skis, sprinkling them with the fistfuls of snow in her hands.
“Nic…”
She let out a slow breath, staring at the slope. “I feel like I let you down. Back then. When I quit skiing.”
Jack blinked. “Nicole. We’ve talked about this a million times. You didn’t let me down. You had an accident.”
She closed her eyes. “Youhad an accident, Dad,” she reminded him. “I had a trauma.”
“You think hearing a bone crack and knowing what shattered was a chance to stand on the podium at the Olympics wasn’t traumatic?”
Nodding, she didn’t fight that, but eventually looked up at him.
