I do, however, feel like a dummy. I brush myself off and try to stand, but my skis are all twisted, and I can’t figure outhow to right them. Every way I move them they get stuck in the snow.
Jett kneels next to me, and undoes the bindings holding in my ski boots, letting my feet go free. Once my skis are off, he sits down beside me.
“So, what was the plan there?” He asks, a hint of amusement in his voice.
“Don’t you just… go down the hill?” I ask, extending a flat hand in front of me in a straight line. “Isn’t that what you do?”
“Well… yeah. I guess. But I’mtryingto go as fast as possible most of the time.” He looks at me now, shaking his head with that playful grin on his face. The one that makes his eyes sparkle. “You should definitelynotdo what I do.”
“You didn’t tell me that,” I groan.
I fall back into the snow, resting my head on the ground as if I’m about to make a snow angel, and let out an exasperated sigh. I’m off to a great start.
“I was about to, but the second I turned around to get my own skis on, you were off like a shot. You never gave me the chance.”
“Okay so tell me now, what does ‘make a pizza’ mean?”
“That’s like, the first thing you need to learn. That, and having a healthy respect for the fall line,” he explains.
“What do you mean?”
“The fall line. It’s the straightest path down a hill. The better you get, the closer you can ski to the fall line, but when you start out, you want to give it a wide berth. Unless you’re a hellion, like me.” Jett picks up his ski pole and starts tracing lines in the snow. A straight one, and one that curves side toside around it. “Think of it as the line a ball would make in the snow if you rolled it down the hill. Everything in skiing revolves around it. Whether you’re aware of it or not.”
I glance down the hill. We’re about halfway down. I didn’t actually make it that far, even though it felt like I was falling for a century. I try to envision what Jett has just explained to me, and I picture what my path might look like if I followed his advice.
He stands and holds his hand out to help me up. His skin is warm, despite being out in the cold, and something in me wishes I could hold it all the way down the hill. Like being in contact with him might give me a bit of added courage that I so desperately need.
Picking up our skis, Jett lines them up so they’re facing across the hill, his in front of mine.
“This time, follow me, and do everything that I do,” he instructs me, not in a commanding way. There’s something patient in his voice, in his demeanour, that I wasn’t expecting. I click my skis back on, and then we’re moving slowly down the slope in tandem.
I keep my eyes glued to his skis. I follow everything that he does, including spreading them apart in a triangle shape, the pizza move that he was talking about, and I slow down.
When we get to the corner, he tells me to imagine pushing on my outside foot and turning my gaze to look where I want to go.
A shriek escapes my throat as I round the corner, the split second that my skis face down the hill and I accelerate.
“Atta girl,” Jett calls over his shoulder as he comes to a stop, and I follow suit behind him. “That moment? You felt the fall line. The key, is not to panic when you feel it, justbreathe and follow through on your turn. Always keep your eyes on where you want to go.”
“I’m so bad at this,” I say with a self-deprecating chuckle.
Jett does a quick turn on his skis so he’s just below me on the hill, but close to me now, facing me. The expression on his face is open, his eyes portray nothing but kindness.
“No, you’re not, Poppy. You’re just new at it.”
There’s a lot I’m new at right now.
Dating, skiing…kissing.
And the way Jett is looking at me makes me think he might be just the right teacher for me after all.
“You have to be bad at something first to get better. It doesn’t matter what setbacks or obstacles you face Poppy, you can do anything you set your mind to.” He glances down and then looks off toward the mountain range on the horizon. “Something Dan’s always told me.”
The words settle into me, and like his strong and confident hand, they make me braver.
“Okay, let’s keep going,” I say, before I lose the nerve.
We get back into our formation, Jett leading me, back and forth, criss-crossing down the hill.
