His eyes flash, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“I’m not doing that again,” I continue. “I’m not losing myself waiting for your races to end or refreshing live timing just to feel like I exist in your world. I love skiing, but I also love my work, my language school plan, and my stupid apartment in Prague. I can’t disappear into someone else’s life again, no matter how nice the view is.”
The wind tugs at a strand of my hair. He reaches out and tucks it under my hat, fingers careful, as if he’s thinking instead of reacting.
“Okay,” he says at last. “Then don’t.”
I blink. “That’s the big plan?”
He huffs out a breath. “You don’t stand in line for me. I stand in line for you sometimes. I come to Prague when I can. I help you find a club near you if you want to keep skiing gates. I don’t block the language school thing—you go, I cheer from afar. I send stupid videos. Helmet sponsor package.”
I snort. “Helmet sponsor?”
He shrugs, mouth tilting. “I send money for your race helmet, and I get my name on it. Best deal of my career.”
It’s so ridiculous I actually laugh, the tension in my chest cracking. “You can’t afford my helmet,” I say. “Top-tier Czech amateur brand.”
He smiles, but his eyes are serious. “I’m not asking you to give everything up.”
Silence again, but softer this time. Cars come and go around us; someone laughs near a bus. The world goes on.
“Why?” I ask finally, almost whispering. “Why me, apart from the sex?”
His answer is immediate. “Because when you ski, you look… free. I like that person. I want to see her more often.”
I look away, across the lot, at some random van with a local club logo on it. This is dangerously close to the word we’re both avoiding.
“I still don’t know how this would work,” I say.
“Me neither,” he admits. “But I’d rather try and fail than not try at all because the calendar looks scary.”
He steps closer, close enough that I can see the day’s stubble, the fatigue around his eyes, the little flecks of melted snow on his lashes.
I should tell him what I feel, don’t let him hope this could work. But he’s standing close, and here in the skiing paradise, I almost feel it could work. I want to. I need distance to figure it out.
The train time is getting closer. I can feel it like a clock in my ribs.
“So…” I say again.
“So,” he echoes.
We step into each other at the same time. The kiss isn’t frantic like the ones in his apartment, or reckless like the one in the ski depot. It’s slow, deep, a little desperate underneath. When we finally pull apart, his hand stays on the back of my neck for a second longer. Then he clears his throat.
“You’ll come to races if you can?” he asks.
“If I can,” I say. “And you’ll be brilliant even if I’m not there.”
“Deal.”
He opens the passenger door for me. I climb in, heart too full, already hearing the rattle of the train tracks in my future and the argument I’ll have with myself there.
For now, I shut the door, watch the mountain shrink in the side mirror, and hold his words like a hot stone in my pocket. But I know I have to think without his presence weighing on me.
***
The train hums like white noise under my feet, a long, metal exhale carrying me away from the mountains and back into my life.
I spread my planner out on the tiny table, pen in hand, and start doing what I always do when I’m anxious: I organize. World Cup calendar on one side of my mind, my lessons and language school plans on the other.
