“Why are you stripping?” Henri asks and my head whips in her direction. Thing is, I can’t exactly see her with the face full of wool I’m stuck in.
“Because you looked comfortable,” I say.
“And that’s the universal signal for taking off your shirt?”
“It is when you have a death grip on it.” At my words, she must realize that her fingers are still digging into the fabric, so she lets go and rolls away.
Thrusting my bare arm into its sleeve, I wriggle back into the sweater. When my head pops through the top hole, I find Henri sitting a solid foot away from me.
“Sleep all right?” I ask, then, because I can’t help myself, add, “Good dreams?”
She swallows and looks at her hands as she flushes the prettiest shade of pink. “Yeah. Dreams were . . . great. Umm . . . thanks for getting me and doing this.” She waves at the fireplace.
“We can leave after breakfast. I’m not going to force you to cuddle up to me to survive another night of this.”
We both throw on an extra layer before silently working together in the kitchen, the air fills with the crackling of the thick slabs of bacon on the cast iron and the burble of coffee. As I’m dumping frozen hashbrowns in the pan, Henri jerks upright from where she’s seated on a stool at the breakfast bar.
“Did you hear that?” she asks.
“What?”
“Listen.”
I do and there it is. A low rumble and hum that resonates through the entire cabin. Putting down the mug she’s been using to warm her hands, Henri gets up and darts to one of the floor vents, putting her hand over it.
“We have heat!” And she does an honest to God fist pump as an expression of pure glee brightens her face. With a whoop she rushes at me. I barely register what she’s doing to have enough time to put my spatula to the side before she pulls me into a hug. “I promise to never fantasize about any time period without modern amenities ever again.”
“Noted.” Do I hug her back? Or if I stand here like a scarecrow and hope she will forget she’s upset and keep holding on.
The oil in the pan pops and Henri looks up at me before stepping away, crossing her arms as if it’s an active effort to keep them from me. “Sorry.”
“All good. I bet the inventor of modern heating would appreciate your enthusiasm. So, what are you thinking?”
“You still have a ski competition to train for.”
“Yeah, I guess I do. You could come, or there’s some stuff to do around here? Pen and June leave their old skates here so you could skate on the pond out back, or there’s a solid stack of movies. My only request is that you don’t watchHome Alone 2without me.”
“I’d never.”
I help Henri find the old skates before heading out to the mountain. The cabin is at the base and without a lift, I have to climb uphill. The skins attached to the base of my skis allow me to propel myself up without sliding backward, and it’s far better than hiking up the way Dad used to make us for training.
At the top, I look down and visualize the turns I’ll have to make since there are no gates set up. But even a decade later the route is seared into my mind. With a fortifying breath, I push myself down the untouched snow.
It feels like flying, gliding on an endless cloud as powder kicks up around me. I shift my weight into the first turn, andshit.I know how it’s supposed to feel. I know what my body is supposed to do, well Iknewwhat it was supposed to feel like when I was sixteen and my body hadn’t finished growing.
“Fuck!” I yell loud enough that birds burst up into the sky as I pull to a jerky stop.
A familiar irritation crawls against my skin. This is why I quit in the first place, because I’d beat myself up for every small thing and I hated it. I hated competing and feeling like even though I was surrounded by people I had so much in common with, I couldn’t trust them. Hated that winning became more important than joy.
“All you need to do is get to the bottom in one piece.”Henri’s voice breaks through the fog of the past.
“Let this be fun,” I tell myself. I have all this fresh powder. A run all to myself.
No one is watching. No one is rooting for or against me.
Fun.
And for the next two hours, that’s what I let it be. This mountain is where I grew up. It’s a part of me and I make peace with it, reclaiming a joy that has been missing for years as I cut a path around imaginary poles. Slowly, my body listens as I speed down, faster than the wind, feeling in total command.
