My glove vibrates. I fumble the phone out, cupping it behind my hip so I don’t drop it into the slalom track. Anna’s message flashes up over a blurry photo from the finish:
They say on TV, he’s already won the globe, hasn’t he? No need for nerves, is there?
I stare at the little bubble for a second, then type back with my thumb:
Ask me in five minutes.
I tuck the phone away just as the announcer’s voice lifts, pitch changing.
“Now, at the start, your first-run leader, wearing bib number three… Austria’s Fabio Baier!
The noise hits like a physical thing. Cowbells, horns, someone behind me screaming his name right into my helmet. The fence lurches. A guy on tourist Salomons loses the fight with gravity and slides past my hip, laughing helplessly as his girlfriend grabs for his jacket and misses.
I plant my poles wider, knees bent, eyes locked on the strip of course I can see.
Up top, a tiny red-white-red figure pushes out of the gate.
On TV, he always looks smooth, almost relaxed. Even in GS, you can tell when he’s on; it’s like watching water find its way. Today in the slalom, he’s something else. On the screen at the finish, they showed his first run in slow-mo—hips low, shoulders quiet, face set in that particular not-smile he gets when he’s fully inside a course.
From here, he looks like the result of anger and geometry having a baby.
He knifes through the first gates, upper body steady, legs snapping side to side so fast my eye can’t track each turn. Every hit on the plastic sends a shock through my boots. The hill falls away under him, the combination heaves into that gnarly middle section, and my lungs forget what they’re supposed to be doing.
Come on, I think, uselessly like he can hear me over a stadium and a TV helicopter.
He’s higher than the guys before, braver into the offset, not guarding the line at all. I can see the choice from here: stay safe and brake, or let the skis run and trust that his legs will hold. He chooses the second, and for a split second it looks like the whole thing might go sideways—tiny skid, spray, edge chattering.
He doesn’t pull back. He loads the outside ski harder, finishes the turn like he’s telling the hillno, and the next gate is suddenly under control again.
People around me go insane. I’m pretty sure I’m one of them. My cowbell is somewhere under somebody’s boot; my throat is already raw from shouting over the weekend, and I hear myself yell anyway.
By the time he drops below my level, there’s that strange, thick quiet in my chest that comes when something is decided before the clock knows it. I can’t see the finish, but I can read the body language: he’s not standing up, he’s not checking, he’s not skiing like a man trying to preserve a lead.
He’s skiing like the kind of idiot who wants to win a second run, too.
The announcer’s voice cracks with the time. The board flicks on the screen set up by the fence: green lights, big numbers, the gap enough to send a signal to everybody who doubted him.
He’s done it.
People are hugging strangers, flags whipping wild in the wind, someone’s beer spilling onto my ski. I barely manage to stay upright as the whole row surges. My phone buzzes again, multiple times. I don’t look. My eyes are fixed on the big screen streaming the action below.
The camera finds him, helmet off now, hair plastered to his forehead. Max is clapping him on the back, someone’s shoving a flag into his hand, and he’s grinning that stunned, almost disbelieving grin I’ve only seen a couple of times. They’re already building the provisional podium; this stupid stunt for sponsors meant to announce the winners before the fans disperse.
They shove a pair of lighter skis, some next season prototype, into his hand and push him toward the podium. There he breathes hard, kneeling on one knee, composing himself, barely managing to clap as they call the third and second guys’ names. When they call his name, he raises his hands, a pair of skis in one of them, leans his head back, shouts with joy, and the crowd eats it up.
The cameras zooms in for a moment on the big glass trophy waiting behind the fence for the ceremony, his name engraved in it already. They had time; mathematically, he won the overall yesterday with the giant slalom win. He could take a break to watch the slalom with a beer, and still nobody could take the trophy from him.
My heart does something painful and stupid in my chest.
What was I even thinking, letting this guy go?
I could have him for myself.
Then I blink. And correct my thought.
Iwillget him for myself.
The calm certainty of that thought startles me more than his win. It doesn’t feel like delusion or fanfiction. It feels like deciding on a line in inspection and knowing my skis will hold if I commit. I must say, I like my new me.
