The terrace, meanwhile, has gone from normal busy to buzzing.
A kid in a too-big helmet slides up, clutching a phone and a slip of paper. “Excuse me… a Photo?” he asks, voice wobbling. Fabio’s expression flips without effort: tired lines smoothing into an easy, practiced smile. He ruffles the kid’s helmet, bends down, they pose, click, done. “Gladly,” he says, and the kid skates away like he just won gold.
That’s all it takes. One brave soul, and suddenly there’s a loose curve of people forming near the steps—phones out, eyes bright, bodies held in that weird mix of shyness and entitlement that comes with being a fan. No official rope, no security, just the natural gravity of a man who spends his life on TV.
I watch from my little sun-warmed island of table, heart doing that treacherous double beat.
This is literally the scenario we invented in the hut. Snow, hut, tragic season, volunteer consolation prize. Eva would be vibrating. Anna would already be scripting my opening line.
What’s the plan?
I hear her voice as clearly as if she were sitting opposite me instead of gliding toward Planai. Then mine, from a few hours ago, half joke, half dare:I’m definitely going to ask a world champ for his dick.
My mouth goes dry around my coffee.
“Relax,” I tell myself under my breath. “Nobody’s asking for anything. It’s just a photo.”
Just a photo. The extremely tame, PG-13 version. One quick click and then I can go back to my skis and my quiet, main-character holiday, and in ten years I can pull the picture up on my phone and say “oh, that was the year he trained at Reiteralm and I pretended to be a real skier.”
He’s working his way through the first cluster—signing something for a man in a vintage team jacket, taking a selfie with two women in matching pink beanies, smiling in the same polite way in each one. It’s like watching a reel of my explore page, only live.
If I’m ever going to do this, it’s now.
Before I can think better of it, I put my cup down, stand up, and walk over to the back of the informal line. My boots thud against the terrace boards. No one looks twice; I’m just another fan with helmet hair and a phone.
I find my place behind a trio of boys in race suits debating in English whether he’ll make the overall globe this season. Their voices blend with the clink of crockery and the low hum of the lift. Ahead of me, the line shuffles forward a little as another selfie gets taken.
I pull my phone out of my pocket, open the camera, and hold it in my gloved hand. The screen reflects my own face back at me, flushed, wind-reddened, eyes a little too wide.
As I settle into the slow, awkward advance—step, wait, step—something familiar curls in my stomach. Not excitement. Not just.
My body remembers this posture.
Waiting. Straightening my shoulders. Pretending I’m not counting down the people in front of me until it’s my turn to be noticed.
I’ve stood like this before.
Not on a wooden terrace with skis stacked by the wall and the smell of coffee and sunscreen in the air, but in a club in Prague where the air was thick enough to drink, and the bass rattled my teeth.
In my head, the cold, thin mountain light folds into colored strobes. The smell of wax and fried onions is replaced by sweat, cheap perfume, and spilled vodka. The low murmur of German and English turns into a roar of voices shouting over a bad remix.
Peter was on the little stage at the back, headphones on, one hand in the air, bathed in blue and red lights like he’d paid for them himself. People moved around him the way snow moves around a rock in a river—spiraling in, colliding, peeling off again. Girls edged closer to the DJ booth, forming an unspoken queue along the side of it, pretending they were just dancing near the speakers.
I’d been one of them, clutching a sticky plastic cup, pretending I didn’t care whether he saw me.
Every few minutes, he’d lean forward, gesture someone up. A girl would squeal, climb the two steps, and he’d pull her into his orbit for one song—hand on her waist, his mouth near her ear, like she’d just won some prize. Then the next track would start, and he’d spin away, and she’d be back in the crowd, glowing and dazed.
When his eyes had finally landed on me, it had felt like sunlight breaking through smoke.
You, he’d mouthed, pointing, like there was any chance he meant someone else. I’d laughed, the sound lost in the music, and climbed the steps with my heart in my throat. He’d taken my hand, spun me clumsily, leaned in to say something I couldn’t hear, and I’d thought: he picked me.
I’d glowed on that for weeks.
That night with Peter turned into seven years of that same dynamic, just in different lighting.
Text messages that weren’t questions so much as commands:Don’t wear that dress, it’s too much, pinging onto my phone before a party.
Moments like when I’d come to meet him at a party, high on adrenaline, because a company had agreed to my new hourly rate, and he’d barely looked up from his beer.Relax, you’re not some high-powered executive, he’d said, smirking.You teach verbs to bored teenagers. Everyone at the table had laughed. I’d laughed too, cheeks burning, and told myself I was being oversensitive for the sting I’d felt.
