“And you think I did?” he yells back at me, and now we’re definitely not talking about skiing.
“It was your idea!” He doesn’t say anything back. “I’m done. I don’t want to do this anymore.” I look down, realizing we’re only halfway down this damn mountain.
“Don’t want to dowhatanymore?” he asks.
I bite the inside of my cheeks.
“Just... help me get down the rest of the way so I can go to the spa.” I sigh. He helps me up and I get back into position as he holds on to me the remainder of the way down. This time we manage to stay upright the entire time.
“Be ready for dinner by five,” Asher says to me before walking back into the resort, leaving me standing out here alone.
“That was nice of him to take you out for lessons,” Dani says when the three of us are lying face down on three massage tables.
“Yeah, a real gentleman,” I sarcastically mumble with my face in the small hole of the table. I needed this after today and yesterday. If it wasn’t $200 an hour I’d book five more hours.
“We heard you talked to Vernon this morning,” Annica chimes in.
Vernon? Was that someone at the resort? “Who?”
“Asher and Wesley’s grandpa,” Dani clarifies.
“Oh, yeah, we had coffee together.”
“We heard: That’s all he talked about this morning,” Annica says.
“I think he likes me,” I say.
“Asher has something good going for him, then.”
I think about Asher’s comment on the lift this morning, about disappointing his grandpa. I should’ve asked, so instead I ask Annica. “What do you mean?”
She scoffs in that snarky way she does when she can’t believe we don’t know something that she knows. “Has he not said anything to you about his dad? They had to, like, cut him off because he lost half a million of the resort money gambling. Now their grandpa pays for Asher’s school and stuff and is apparently really hard on him. Worried he’ll be like his dad. I don’t blame him either—I’m sure he will be.”
“He’s not,” I snap back. I don’t even know why I feel the need to defend him when he’s been nothing but rude to me for four years now, but I do.
“Isn’t he? I mean, where do you think he’s going every night? Yeah, our bathroom window faces the driveway. I saw him leave the past two nights and not come back.”
My face grows red from under the table. “He’s doing business at the resort.” And I feel so stupid for having to give that as an answer when we all know what he’s really doing.
“Is that what he’s telling you? He’s lying to you, Sloane. He can’t be trusted.”
Deep down I know Annica is looking out for me, that she’s trying to warn me that the man she thinks I’m seeing is not beinghonest with me, and in any other situation I’d be grateful. But we aren’t a couple, I know exactly what he’s up to, and I can’t do anything but defend him.
“I trust him,” I say, and leave it at that.
The masseuse moves around the table and adjusts the towel to massage my neck. That’s when something star-shaped falls from her pocket.
“Oh, you dropped something,” I tell her. But when I get a better look I realize it’s dollar bills crafted into a star. Like the money origami Miles used to do when he left me tips at Cantine.
“Whoops, fell out of my pocket,” the girl says. “Sorry about that.”
“Did you make that?” I ask.
“A customer this morning left it as a tip. He said he couldn’t make a snowflake so a star would have to do. I thought it was cute either way.”
I sit up. “Who was the customer? What was his name?”
“Um, sorry, but I can’t give out that information. Can you lie back down so we can continue, please?”
