My friend’s voice was choked with alarm, but also relief. Amy and I talked all the time, and we exchanged text-messages every day. My last-minute call to her had been quick and cryptic, before I’d turned my phone off two days ago.
“Whereareyou?”
“Away,” I said, breathing in the fresh mountain air. I’d wandered up the path from the cabin, holding my phone to the sky like the Olympic torch, trying to find a signal. It was at least a quarter-mile walk before I found one.
Once I did, my phone’s screen was carpet-bombed with alerts, messages, and missed calls. Not just dozens, but hundreds of them.
And almost all of them; from Cole.
“Away?” Amy repeated, exasperated at my lack of detail. “What’s away?”
“I’m up in the mountains,” I told her.
“What?!”
“Everything’s fine. In fact—”
“Hayden, I heard you got into a bar fight!” Amy cut me off. “I heard you were attacked by a whole crowd of people!”
My lip wrinkled in disgust. “Who told you that? Cole?”
“Well…”
“He’s been looking for me, hasn’t he?”
“Hayden, yes! He calls me several times a day! He showed up here three or four times, looking for you, and at first I don’t think he believed me when I told him you weren’t here.”
“Tell Cole to fuck off,” I sneered. “And that he’d better not bother you again.”
“So you still haven’t talked to him?”
“No,” I said proudly. “And I gotta tell ya, it’s been magical.”
Magical didn’t even begin to describe it. Setting aside the skiing, the sex, and the snowy mountain vistas, not even reading a single one of Cole’s rage-texts had been amazingly liberating.
“Look, I’m fine,” I told my friend. “Better than fine, actually. And I’ll be home soon, I promise. We’ll meet up, have coffee. I have a million and one things to tell you.”
“Yes, yes of course!” Amy cried. “But Hayden whereareyou?”
I took stock of the abject beauty that currently surrounded me. Snow had begun falling again, gently.
“Sugarloaf.”
There was a long pause at the other end of the phone. “You drove all the way toMaine?”
“Technically, no. I wasdrivenall the way to Maine.” I filled my lungs again with the crisp mountain air, then sighed happily. “I’ve been skiing and snowboarding. With some guys I met, on Halloween.”
“Snowboarding,” Amy repeated. “With… some guys.”
“Yes. And hey, remember when we were saying I needed to get laid?”
There was another pause — along with a gasp — on the other end of the phone.
“Well, you’re not going to believe this, but—”
The crunch of footfalls coming up the path diverted my attention. I turned and saw Carter, stomping his way up the steep mountain trail. When he saw me, his face broke into a cheerful smile.
“Sorry,” I told my friend. “Gotta run. I’ll call you when I get back.”
