Her breath comes in bursts. She looks down the slope again, kneads her hands, exhales trembling. “I don’t know. I don’t think I can do this. What if I break something? Or throw a concussion intothe mix? I wouldn’t be able to skate anymore, I wouldn’t know who I was, and…”
“Hey.” Her hand is in mine; without noticing, I must’ve grabbed it. Her delicate fingers jerk for a second, as though she wanted to pull them away, but she doesn’t. I should take her hand more often, now that I know I can. “You’re riding with me. I can count the number of falls I’ve had on one hand. On top of it, this here’s the first slope. It’s not a long way down. Just a few minutes.Trust me.”
Two words, so much meaning. As I’m saying them, I realize how dumb they are. Her eyes are telling me that she’s going through 285 reasons why she shouldn’t trust me. No doubt she’s making a list of all my scandals. Man was thatdumb, telling her to trust me when I don’t even trust myself.Seriously dumb.
But she nods. For some unfathomable reason she nods, puts on her helmet, and sticks her feet into the tandem board’s bindings. I snap her in, check everything over two and three times before stepping into my own.
“Listen, you’ve got to play along a bit, okay?” When her eyes widen in panic, I continue. “Don’t worry. I’ll do most of the work. You weigh as much as a fly, I won’t have to compensate much. But make sure you stay like you are right now.” I grab her shoulders lightly to check her balance. “Yeah, and keep your balance a bit with your arms. No, wait, let me show you.” I lift her arms into the right position, check her stance. “Perfect. You’ll see how you have to move, but it won’t be much. I’ve got it. Don’t squirm too much, okay?”
“Okay.” She swallows half the word so that it sounds likeNkay.
My soft laughter gets lost on the slope. “Ready?”
“No.”
“Good. That’s the best moment.”
I lower her goggles over her eyes before putting on my own, then give a push forward.
Paisley shrieks. Until she’s got to gasp for air, then she starts shrieking again. But then she starts to laugh, and, really, it’s themost beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. I didn’t know that something like that was possible, but my heart reacts and makes me warm all over. Paisley coughs, she’s laughing so hard. I don’t want her to ever stop.
The last time I felt this happy on my board was when I wasn’t yet a pro. When I just did it for myself, here and there, when I felt like it. Ever since, I’ve had all this pressure to be perfect, to not make any mistakes, every course has felt endless. I’m a half-pipe snowboarder, so I rarely give any fans a ride, but when I do, even that causes me stress. It never lasts longer than a few minutes, but they stretch out and feel like hours while I convince myself that I’ve got to be quicker, more precise, more elegant. It’s not fun. It hasn’t been fun in a really long time; it’s just pure pressure, the pure fear of failing. Of being a disappointment.
Right now, though, I can’t disappoint anyone. Right now it’s just for us, Paisley and me, and we’re laughing. We’re laughing like we weren’t broken, like we were simply happy, and, right now, maybe we even are.
Everyone is cheering when we arrive at the foot of Buttermilk. It’s the first time we’ve ever offered this tandem ride for guests at the Christmas party. Dad had brought it up at the city council meeting because Jennet thought we should do something in the meanwhile for me publicity-wise. William was all over it immediately. No wonder. He agrees to anything that’s good for Aspen’s image. Whether or not I was interested wasn’t of interest to anyone, and I was pissed, I mean really fuckingpissed, but, at the moment, I’m loving it.
While I’m getting out of my bindings, Paisley is taking off her helmet. Her cheeks are red, and her eyes are glowing with excitement. “I didn’t die!” she calls out. “I made my way down a steep mountainside on a thin board and didn’t die!”
“We’ve got to make sure of that first,” William says, who suddenly appears next to us in this full-body down snowsuit and raiseshis hand into the air. I don’t know how he can move in that thing. It looks souncomfortable. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Three,” Paisley says.
“Wrong! Four.”
“No.” Paisley frowns. “Three.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Three. You’re good.”
William begins freeing her from her armor, and Paisley peers over his shoulder toward Silver Lake. Levi and Aaron are gliding with parallel moves across the ice and turning before Aaron puts his arms under Levi’s underarms, leans back, and lifts his partner into the air while making a spin. The crowd breaks into applause. Some people are whistling.
They’re good but, I can’t watch them for too long. It hurts. That sound. Skates on ice. It hurts.
“I’m coming up,” Paisley says. She looks at me expectantly. “You going to watch?”
You going to watch?
She asks as if it was nothing. She asks as if it was something I could simplydo. Watch.
William’s eyes dart toward me as he’s undoing her kneepads. His mouth twists in sympathy. He doesn’t quite know what’s wrong with me, but he knows that I gave up ice hockey. Everyone in Aspen knows that I avoid the ice. Everyone except Paisley.
“I, umm…” Actually, I just want to tell her I can’t. What with these tandem rides and all, I’d have a good excuse. But standing there with her slight smile and open expression, as if she’d be happy about it, as if she’d bereallyhappy about me watching her just confuses me completely. “Yeah. Yeah, of course I’ll watch.”
Did I just say that? Did that come out ofmymouth? Judging by the way she’s beaming, I did.
