The chillof the air bites at my cheeks and burns my lungs as I try to keep up with Jett.
As it turns out, navigating down a slope with long sticks strapped to your feet is not the difficult part about skiing. Walking in the damn boots is.
Jett isn’t that far ahead of me, and he’s saying something, but I can’t hear him over theswish swishof my snow pants as I walk. He stops once we reach the top of the hill, and turns to face me, letting my skis fall one after the other into the snow.
At least he carried them for me.
A month ago, I never would have expected Jett to be chivalrous. I would have expected him to already be halfway down the hill by now. But Jett has been full of surprises lately.
He glances down the hill. “We’ll start here today.”
I follow his gaze and take in the snow-covered slope, the angle is more intimidating at this vantage point, and my stomach drops when I look all the way down to the bottom.
“Here?” I ask, trying not to let the quake in my voice obvious.
“Yup. The bunny hill,” Jett says, as if I should have known.
This day is going to be an absoluteriot. I’m about to make an idiot of myself in front of arguably the world’s hottest skier—on and off the slopes.
Jett might be optimistic now, but he’ll realize what he’s gotten himself into soon enough. Before long, he’ll be whizzing past me on the hill and knocking me over, spraying me with powder.
My only hope is that he might get bored of helping me, and that he’ll leave me to fumble around the hill in peace as he goes off to do some black runs.
It’s for the café,I remind myself.
This relationship needs to look genuine, authentic. And even if I’m not a world champion skier, it would only make sense that this would be an activity we’d do together. If we want our marriage to look real, we need to at least try to sell ourselves as a couple.
Jett holds his hand out to me, waiting for me to take it, and I use it to steady myself so I can click my boots into the skis.
Once I’m in, he hands me my poles. His dark brown eyes meet mine as he gives me a reassuring nod.
“Ready?”
No.
“I guess so,” I say instead.
Jett turns, and I take that as my cue to turn my skis down the hill and get moving. I give myself a nice, firm push off with my poles, which I quickly discover wasn’t needed. Gravity,and the slick surface of the snow is helping me move just fine, and I pick up speed down the gentle slope.
Jett yells after me.
“Poppy turn! Turn, Poppy!” He shouts, like I haveanyidea how to turn. “Make a pizza! Make a pizza!”
He’s still yelling, but the words are like gibberish to me.
He wants me to make a pizza? Like a circle in the snow?
Before I can attempt any sort of move that might slow me down, my skis take on a mind of their own, and I let out a shriek as my right leg goes one way, and my left leg goes the other.
If my body was capable of doing the splits, that’s what I would be doing right now. But it’s not, so instead I flop to the ground with a crash, poles and skis flailing while I land in a crumpled heap.
I’m hardly oriented in the flurry of snow blowing around, when Jett’s face appears in front of me. His dark eyebrows are furrowed, a look of genuine concern in his eyes. His plush, pink lips, the ones I haven’t been able to stop picturing, are parted.
He reaches for me, pulling his mitten off and cupping the side of my face, assessing for signs that I might be hurt. “Poppy, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I mutter. Frustration and embarrassment heat my cheeks.
It’s true, I’m not hurt. Not physically, anyway. At least not right now. I don’t even want to consider all the ways my body will make me pay for this tomorrow.
