I huff out a breath. “You know we’re absolutely ending up on someone’s Instagram reel, right?”
He shrugs, unbothered. “They can film. The media might speculate, but they won’t know anything. You’re an unknown woman from Czechia who skis okay GS. They won’t track you down.”
He says it like it’s a shield: anonymity as protection. It should make me feel safer. In a way, it does.
But there’s a tiny sting I don’t expect, a little cold edge at the back of my throat. Unknown woman. Of course, that’s what I am here. That’s what I signed up to be.
His girl, but only in the spaces that don’t exist on paper.
I push the thought away, hard, like catching an edge and forcing the ski back under me. Not now. Not here on this perfect white slope with my legs buzzing and his voice still in my ears.
“I’ll take an anonymous GS girl,” I say lightly. “As long as I don’t fall on camera.”
He grins. “Then don’t fall.”
He nudges my ski with his. I nudge back. The girls stare; someone definitely films.
I turn back toward the start, heart thudding, trying to fix the feeling of being coached by him, of being seen by him, in my muscle memory. I know this is borrowed time. A little pocket universe on Reiteralm, made of gates and wax and stolen looks.
Later, on the train, I’ll replay that word—unknown—and finally let it land where it’s been aiming allalong.
For now, I plant my poles, hear him call my name, and push back into the course.
***
We’re standing by the car in the Reiteralm parking lot, skis already loaded, the kind of grey, flat light that means the day is over even if the sun hasn’t set yet.
He slams the trunk shut and, for a second, just leans his hands on it, head down. I clutch my gloves like they’re something important to say.
“So,” I start, eloquent as ever.
“So,” he echoes, looking up. There are faint goggle marks on his face. I want to kiss them away. Instead, I clear my throat.
“Look,” I say, “before the train station, before everything goes back to… normal… we should probably admit this is complicated.”
His jaw tics. “Because?”
I tick them off in my head like bullets. “Different countries. Your World Cup schedule. My job. The age gap. The fact that your life is basically airports and hotel rooms and mine is language school websites and overdue invoices.”
He doesn’t argue. Just waits.
“And because of all that,” I push on, “you should probably back away. I have things to figure out. I can’t… I can’t be the girl waiting by the phone for the guy who lives on planes.”
There. Said. It comes out steadier than I expected, but my heart is pounding in my ribs.
He blows out a breath and laughs once, without humor. “You know what I’m really afraid of?”
“Enlighten me.”
“That I blink and I’m fifty, and I’m sitting in some team meeting talking about line choice, and I realize I let things like this go because it was the ‘wrong time’.” He makes air quotes with his fingers, angry at the phrase. “Wrong time, wrong country, wrong schedule. I don’t want to wake up one day and realize I spent my whole life only turning around gates.”
His words land somewhere low in my chest, heavy and hot. For a second, I almost give in. Then another picture cuts in line: Peter, his suit jacket always half over a chair, my name never on any guest list, me standing at the back of the room while people who mattered shook his hand.
“You know what I’m afraid of?” I say quietly.
He nods once. “Tell me.”
“I spent years standing in line for Peter,” I say. “Literal lines—events, receptions, airports—and the invisible one too. Always behind his job, his calendar, his ambitions. I was ‘the girlfriend’. Not a person with her own life, just an accessory that looked decent in photos.”
