I’ve never loved anyone like I love you.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said, stabbing her poles into the ground and launching herself forward. She released a tiny yelp as she flew over the edge of the mountain, her skis sliding easily over the fresh snow.
“Lola!” she heard Brighton call behind her, but it was too late. She was already gone, plummeting to her untimely demise. The hill wasn’t steep, she realized this, but it felt like a ninety-degree angle as she started going faster and faster. She snowplowed her skis, a move she remembered seeing others do as they came downthe slope—granted, mostly kids—but all that did was send up a flurry of frost and snow into her face. People whizzed by—Sloane and Wes, laughing as they raced; Manish screaming and yelling “Shit, shit, shit!” the entire way down with Dorian on his tail, cracking up as he zigzagged like an expert; Elle flying down with ease because Mimi had taken them to Vail at least once a year throughout their childhood.
And Brighton.
Brighton sliding up next to her, of course.
“You okay?” Brighton shouted over the wind.
“I’m fine!” Charlotte shouted back. “I don’t need your help!”
“I never said you did!”
Charlotte swerved to the right and nearly lost her balance but managed to hold it together.
“Just go!” she yelled at Brighton.
“I am going!”
“I mean without me!”
“You call thiswithyou?” Brighton yelled, dodging a slow-moving kid in a permanent snowplow position. “Charlotte, nothing iswithyou.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You make it impossible. Friendship, moving on. Anything.”
“Imake it impossible?” Charlotte shot back. “You’rethe one who won’t give me a goddamn second to breathe!”
She hit a tiny bump—a rock or twig under the snow—and one of her poles flew from her hand, lost behind her forever.
Brighton didn’t seem to notice. “I’m not trying to smother you. I’m just trying to be real!”
“Real?” Charlotte said flatly. “Real? Like when you left me standing by myself on our wedding day? That kind of real?”
Brighton grunted in frustration.
Good, Charlotte thought.
“Real,” Brighton said, “like not lying your ass off about how you actually feel.”
Charlotte’s mouth dropped open, but she didn’t have time to register that Brighton clearly knew she was lying about what she remembered from last night. Her balance was all off—physically and now mentally, emotionally. The bottom of the hill loomed, the finish line, thank god, but with only one pole, she couldn’t find her center. She wobbled this way and that until her skis finally crossed and she went down. Some limb—foot, leg, arm, she wasn’t sure—caught on Brighton, and soon they were a cartoonish ball of chaos, tangled and tumbling until they finally came to rest at the bottom of the hill.
Charlotte was on her back, arms splayed, one leg crossed over her body and stuck under Brighton’s torso. The snow fell so heavily that she could barely keep her eyes open, could barely figure out if she was dead, injured, or simply a total idiot.
A shadow appeared above her, vaguely Wes-shaped.
“Are you two okay?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “Brighton?”
“Alive,” was all Brighton said from next to her.
“Here, let’s get you up and assess the damage,” Wes said. The rest of their group had hurried over as well, and Charlotte gritted her teeth against all the fussing as Wes pulled her up. Dorian helped untangle Brighton, and soon they were both on their feet. Snow fell even harder now, swirled by the wind.
“Anything hurt?” Sloane said.
