“Not race it,” Eva corrects. “Glide gently down it and then sit in a bar at the bottom. Very different strategy.”
She traces the connecting lifts with the tip of her pole. “Look, it’s easy. This lift, then that one, then we’re there. You can stay here with your fellow lunatics and do…” She gestures vaguely at the training lanes. “Whatever this is.”
“Serious skiing,” I say, but I’m smiling.
Anna looks between the map and me. “You don’t mind?” she asks. “Leaving you here?”
“Mind?” I laugh. “You two go play tourist. I’ll stay and actually get some good runs in. We meet back at the ski bus at, what, four?”
“Four,” Eva agrees immediately. “If we survive.”
“You will,” I say. “Just don’t follow locals into anything marked ‘experts only.’ And if you get lost, send me a selfie with a piste marker, I’ll guide you home.”
Eva groans. “Miss Race Skis is now our mountain call center.”
“You’re the one who booked a holiday with Miss Race Skis,” I say. “You knew what you were signing up for.”
She laughs and bumps her shoulder into mine. “We did. And we’re still very proud of ourselves. But we also want Schlager music and Aperol in Planai.”
Anna pats my arm through my jacket. “Honestly, we can’t keep up with you anyway,” she says. “You look happiest when you forget we exist and disappear down the hill.”
“That’s not true,” I protest automatically, but the little sting that comes with it doesn’t hurt. It feels… right. Seen.
She raises an eyebrow.
“Fine,” I concede. “Partly true.”
“See?” Eva says. “So everybody wins. You get to terrorize the black slopes, we get to cosplay as World Cup fans in Schladming. We’ll text you when we’re safely at a bar.”
“Deal,” I say. “Go, go. Before I change my mind and start drilling you.”
They clatter off toward the connecting lift, waving their poles, already arguing about which route to take. I watch them for a moment, two bright blobs in the crowd, and then they’re gone—swallowed up by the Thursday skiers and the lift queues.
Silence settles over me in a way it never does in a city. Not actual silence—the bullwheel still hums, kids still shout, snowboards still scrape—but everything feels clearer, like somebody turned down the background noise in my head.
This is my mountain now—my day.
I click into my bindings again, push off toward the lift I want, and let the familiar glide take over. No discussion, no compromise, no pretending I’m fine on blue slopes when my legs are itching for speed. Just me and whatever routes I feel like stringing together.
On the next chair up, I have the whole bench to myself. My skis hang straight down, tips bobbing gently above the snow-covered trees. Below, the Thursday crowd is thin—no weekend chaos yet, just a few scattered groups and, higher up, those straight, clean tracks where racers have already bitten into the slope and left their lines.
I mentally plot my next few runs: one more on the rolling red, then the steeper section under the training lanes, maybe a detour onto that black if it doesn’t look like a war zone. Long turns, clean pressure, no tourists to dodge. Heaven.
Of course, once my plan is set, my brain immediately betrays me by offering up an image of the sad, hot Austrian, Fabio Baier, on this same chair, boots knocking against mine, race suit under his jacket, that focused frown he gets in inspection photos.
I huff out a laugh at myself, breath fogging the cold air.
“Calm down,” I mutter. “He’s got better things to do than share a lift with you.”
Still, the thought unspools. What if he were here? What if I saw that golden helmet with the sponsor stickers in the hut later, or at the bottom of a lane—would I actually walk up and ask for more than a selfie like Eva says? Stand in front of him, phone in hand, while he does that polite smile I’ve seen a hundred times on other people’s feeds? Would I ask for more? How does one even do that?
They say famous athletes have girls lined up for their beds. But how do you even become that girl—do you actually just walk up and ask for sex?
My stomach swoops, half thrill, half dread.
An image flashes across my mind, quick and bright and ridiculous: me, pressed up against some anonymous wooden wall with a race suit under my hands instead of my usual anonymous fantasies with faceless hot guys. My cheeks burn under my buff, but I don’t look away from the slope.
“Sure,” I tell myself dryly. “You can’t even ask for extra ketchup. You’re definitely going to ask a world champ for his dick.”
