Who turned on the wind?
My eyes pop open.
And I’m gone.
Whooooosh!
My knees lock with skis parallel and pointing straight ahead. I’m frozen in complete fear and can’t remember how to cut or even if I ever knew how. I’m blazing down, smoking past even the most expert skiers, who know how to slow their descent. The run dips and then rises into tiny ramps that shoot me out even faster, and I wail out a scream at the top of my lungs.
How I haven’t died yet is a miracle. Somehow, I’m still upright, and racing forward. Something crazy happens. I finally stop screaming to inhale a deep breath. I just survived one of the biggest drops on this run. A smile tugs on the corner of my mouth, and I inhale again. I slowly bend my knees and narrow my stance, shifting my weight to cut, and my legs start to shake.
Ka blam wham!
I’m suddenly back flippin’ and belling floppin’ like a flapjack in a truck stop diner, all the way down the hill. There’s a yelp and a yip, and a long groan. One pole goes west, the other east. My skis snap out of my boots. I can’t even begin to describe the assortment of leg splits I’m twisted into before I finally roll to a moaning stop. The cold seeps through my pants and inches deeper through my extremities. The wildest thing of all is that I’m not scared. I don’t even flinch as I sprawl out in my snow-angel pose. I’ve connected the pattern, and I know Noah will rescue me.
It’s what he does.
It’s like fate, but handier.
“Paisley.” The slicing of his snowboard tips me off that he’s near me. Another second later, he cuts to a stop next to me, carrying both skis I had lost. “Are you trying to die today?”
No, that wasn’t my plan at all. If I had it my way, we’d be riding that ski lift around all day, snuggling . . .
As I move to look at him, my shoulder pulsates rays of pain that shoot all the way down to my hip. I peel my body off the ground to sit up and carefully steady my boots in the snow to stand, asserting my best independent-woman tone. “I accidentally on purpose ran a, ah, test.”
“Test?” he sputters out, his lips pinching into an amused smirk. “Any test that looks like that is clearly a failure.”
“Not quite.” I wag my finger at him to buy time, but it hurts to even move my finger. I’m not sure how I’m going to talk myself out of this one. “It was a test to see if you were, ah, in fact, telling the truth about staying with me.”
“A lie-detector test, then?” His lips tug into a teasing smile as he passes my skis back over. “I clearly passed.”
“Yes.” I don’t try to nod because I can already tell doing so would strengthen this pull that I have in my shoulder.
“Are you going to be able to make it down the hill?”
I dig my teeth in my bottom lip and stare at the ski lodge at the bottom of the hill. Even though I’d flown down half of the hill, there’s still a nice jaunt to the bottom.
Not going to lie.
With the way my shoulder is throbbing, if I had the option to sit this out, I would. I don’t have a thing to prove to myself. My gut rolls into a tight ball confirming I actually hate skiing.
“Tell you what,” Noah says slowly, “you make it to the bottom, and I’ll buy you a hot chocolate.”
“Oh, yes.” I nod, not feeling even the slightest bit better. “The hot chocolate you forewarned about with the kissing.”
“Wow, that’s certainly forward of you to suggest kissing, but only if it will make you feel better.” He nods toward the ski lodge—that’s still a long way down the hill. It looks like a Lego house from up here. “You first.”
I wasn’t nervous before because I was delusional. Clearly my memories of skiing in my younger years do not match up to my reality. I don’t remember it being that hard. Now that I’ve discovered I have no natural balance, my nerves fire on. My legs are jittering when I step into my skis again, but I know I must do this.
It’s too far to climb up.
And I have to get down somehow.
I swallow, fixing my gaze on the little Lego ski lodge.
“Come on.” He waves me forward. “I’ll be right behind you.
“If you say so.” I breathe slowly, and shift my weight to one ski, allowing it to angle down. I take a minute to make sure the straps on the poles are around my wrist. I can’t find a comfortable position to hold my left pole in because everywhere I try, it makes my shoulder pulsate.
