I lean down. She meets me halfway.
The kiss is small. Careful. No teeth, no desperation, no trying to win. Just the soft press of her mouth against mine, the faint smell of hay caught in her hair, and maybe the beginning of something neither of us knows how to name yet.
I pull back first, because if I do not, I will not.
“Sleep,” I say. “I need you at least pretending to be rested when you come to watch me terrify you in January.”
Her lips curve. “Bossy.”
“Focused,” I correct.
She rolls her eyes, but it is affectionate now.
“See you, Nico,” she says.
“See you, Élise.”
We step apart, each turning toward our own hotel, the tree and its crooked lights between us. My chest feels too tight and too light at the same time.
Whatever we just agreed to, it is not nothing anymore.
***
Bordeaux, France, December 27
ÉLISE
The snow here is wrong.
It is clean, soft, and photogenic, draped over the rows of dormant vines as if someone had arranged it for a postcard. The air smells of wood smoke and old stone and my grandfather’s good Bordeaux. Somewhere a church bell rings the hour; somewhere else, a dog barks once and goes quiet again.
I sit at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee going cold between my hands and my phone face up in front of me, waiting for the FIS app to refresh.
Bormio. Men’s downhill. Result list.
Reiner, Nico–4.
Fourth.
I exhale slowly. No screaming commentators, no camera cuts, no slow-motion replay of a near crash for me to half-watch through my fingers. Just a name, a flag, a number on a slate gray screen. I did not want to watch the races with my father; I wanted a quiet place to panic, knowing he throws himself down the most brutal hill of them all.
Fourth is still terrifyingly fast. The little loading wheel is still spinning on the live timing. I thumb it away and open our messages instead.
For a moment, I just stare at the empty text box, thumb hovering. The Élise I have always been, the polished one,the careful one, wants to craft something perfect and distant.Congratulations, Mr. Reiner, on a solid performance. Looking forward to your continued success.
The girl who fed a donkey in a barn in Val Gardena and said the wordfakeout loud wants something else.
My fingers move before I can overthink it.
Élise:Good race. Fourth is still terrifyingly fast. Try not to break anything important before January. ???
I look at the little skis and flames emoji and almost delete them. They are ridiculous. Juvenile. Not the sort of thing a Moreau should ever put in writing.
I hit send anyway.
The message whooshes away. The screen goes quiet. The kitchen goes on being a kitchen, old wooden cabinets, a copper pot on the stove, my grandfather humming to himself as he reorganizes the wine rack in the next room.
Because that is what Moreaus do when they retire, tend vineyards and sheep, move to the country to oversee their families like some French Godfathers.
