Carry Your Heart (5 page)

“That’s doesn’t make any sense.”

“Spoken like a true skier.”

“What? Skiing is a sport, not an ethnicity.”

“It’s practically an ethnicity called white people.”

“You’re white.”

He smirks. “Thanks for the update.”

I spot my bag and move towards it. He follows me. He’s got an intense energy to him, like he could run fifteen miles and still not get tired. He’s worn me out already.

“I thought Xanax was supposed to mellow people out.”

“It does. I think I’m being pretty nice. I already gave you a nickname.” I reach for my ski bag and he steps right in front of me and slides it off the carousel, handing it back to me with a more pronounced smirk. “And I just got your bags for you.”

“Thanks for that,” I say grudgingly. He meets my eyes for a brief momen; his are startlingly green. I avert my own. I shouldn’t be looking at him like this.
You have a boyfriend. It’s not his fault he died. Stop ogling the eye candy.

“I don’t fucking believe it. It’s not here,” he grumbles, giving me something other than his eyes to focus on.

“The bags have been coming for five seconds.”

“Yeah, but…fuck,” he throws his head back and complains to the ceiling lights. “I
knew
they’d lose it. This always…”

“Isn’t that your bag?”

“No.”

I stared at it. “Looks exactly like your bag.”

“It’s not my bag,” he says dismissively.

I watch the bag make its way down the carousel and then I watch Hunter, who throws his head back again, presumably to confer with the lights once more, snags the bag and turns towards the curbside pick up.

“Oh, so is that your bag?” I demand.

“Yeah,” he shrugs. “I think this airline has new investors, actually.”

“Right…”

He chuckles when I snort. “I’m fucking with you. I don’t know anything about the investors.”

“Okay.”

“Sorry. I get a little paranoid about my board.”

“No kidding.”

He grins. “If someone lost your skis, you’d be pissed.”

“It’s never happened.”

“Because you ski. People treat skiers with more respect…”

“That’s not even a thing.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it’s not.”

“How many mountains in the United States don’t let snowboarders in?”

“I don’t know. Not that many.”

“Alta. Park City. Mad River. I could keep going. How many don’t let skiers in?”

I shrug. “I’m sure there are a few.”

“No, there aren’t a few. There aren’t any. None. Zero.

“Okay, well. I’m sorry about that,” I say.

“Zero,” he repeats. “So, what kind of skiing do you do? Cross-country?”

I glare at him.

He smiles. “Just kidding. You don’t look like that much of a psycho. Jumping?”

“Alpine.”

He nods. “You’re a racer?”

“Yep.”

“What’s your best event?”

I shrug. “Downhill.”

He nods. “Yeah, I can see that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, you definitely seem like a downhill girl.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re kind of, you know, serious-looking,” he says with a grin. “I don’t want to say you’re uptight…”

“I’m not uptight. I’m not the one who just almost had a heart attack because his snowboard wasn’t the first piece of luggage off of the plane.”

“Mmm…that’s not uptight. That’s just a phobia. You seem uptight and dangerous. A combination of the two.”

“Oh, really? Do you want to know what you seem like?”

“To you? A douchebag, I’m sure.” When he turns and smiles at me, I can feel myself flushing. I don’t want him to look at me like he can read my mind, which he
obviously
can because that was the exact word I had in mind for him.

The driver recognizes us before we recognize him, and before long we’re in a van, on the highway, and on our way out of the city and up to Snowbird.

“You’re competing at Snowbird this weekend, right?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“You skied it before?”

“Yep,” I say. “Lots. Just not last year. Are you here to compete?”

“Nah. Just wanted to try something new for a while. It’s a good place to train.”

“With Mike?”

He shakes his head. “Ames only coaches skiing. He’s out here permanently now. They have a pretty decent super-pipe I can train on, so I’m doing that.”

“So, why does Ames think you’re a lost cause?”

He grins. “Did he say that?”

“No, you did.”

“I never said that.”

“Before we took off.”

“Mm. Ames doesn’t think I’m a lost cause. I was just trying to make you feel better.”

“Thanks?”

“No problem.”

I bite my lip and glance out the window. I hesitate before I ask, pretty sure that I know the answer already.

“So, why does Mike think I’m a lost cause?”

He rubs his chin nervously and shrugs his strong, broad shoulders. “I don’t know if he does. I can be kind of a dick for no reason sometimes.”

“No, seriously. I would like to know. Why does he think that?”

“You really shouldn’t listen to anything I say. Nobody should listen to me.”

“I want to know.”

“I made it up,” he offers helplessly. “I was being a dick. I don’t know.”

“Because of the avalanche?” I offer. I’m the one who makes him look away from me this time.

He doesn’t dispute it. “Look, I get really agro before I fly…I was trying to make a joke and…”

I look at him and then back out the window.

“Sorry,” he mutters.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Look, if it’s any consolation, I think you’re brave for coming back,” he said. He meets my eyes for longer this time. “As someone whose run away from a lot of shit…” He lifts one shoulder helplessly. “Sorry.”

I tighten my jaw. I should have expected comments like that one. And, I should have known what he meant without demanding an explanation.

My dad told me to prepare for other people’s insensitivity. You can’t control what anyone is going to say to you; you can only control how you respond to it. And some people are going to see me and see an avalanche and my dead boyfriend and our dead best friend, Ryan.

And they’ll feel sorry for me forever, and I won’t be able to do anything about it. Or worse, they’ll try and make light of it—like Hunter Dawson—and if you let it get to you, then you give them power they shouldn’t have.

I inhale narrowly.
If Danny lived, I’d want him to be strong about it. If Danny lived, I’d tell him not to take shit from anyone.

Chapter Five

They gave me a nice suite in the training lodge. There’s a big, airy living room, a separate bedroom with a huge bed, and a wide balcony overlooking the mountain. When I walked out to look over Snowbird, my throat caught a little. I hadn’t been so close to a real mountain in a while. The lifts were still running—tiny skiers and red-jacketed instructors zipped down the blue and green groomers and around the tight corners of a tricky, looping catwalk.

The snowboarders look more like they’re floating, not really changing the angle of their bodies, just tilting this way and that—
a sport for people who don’t give a fuck
, Ryan used to say, half-jealously. Hunter seemed exactly like the kind of person who didn’t give a fuck.

I turn back to my room to grab my phone to let my dad I’m here and I’m fine. And I focus on that. I am here. I am fine. The walls aren’t caving in on me. It’s quiet, pretty and peaceful.

I came here with Danny—twice in his last year—neither of us ever considering the possibility of the other dying. There was an icy hailstorm the day before the races, and we lay in bed and ordered pizza. Danny sent Ryan down to Salt Lake City for donuts and fast food and DVDS and all we did was laugh that day.

I’d taken first in downhill and GS—Ryan had swept all of the events and Danny came second in all but downhill, which he crashed out of.

We’d stayed in a different room than this one. But, it had the same navy and white bedspread, and comfortable wicker furniture.

That third floor window overlooked the same mountains as my sixth floor window did now.

Danny left his toothbrush in my bathroom and slept with me the night before the races. He kissed my nose, counted my freckles—22—and told me he loved me.

I never thought to count all of the times he would say it. After the first time, it was just a chorus to a song that I thought would be playing for the rest of my life called
Danny Keller Love You.

Someone should have told me:
Danny Keller dies. Way too young. Way too suddenly. In so much pain. And the song stops. You’ll never hear it again.

Someone should have warned me that the danger you took when you fell in love was pain worse than anything you knew before you were in love. That when you let yourself need someone like that, it’s a bad addiction. And when you wake up without them, the withdrawal is its own kind of dying.

Your heart beats differently, your eyes see differently, the world flattens out before you, until you know nothing again will ever be as good to you as he was. Nothing again will ever be so wrenching as his death. Nothing will ever feel past the scar tissue of these wounds.

What have I gotten myself into?
I wonder. I shake my head. Competing is going to bring back so many memories of Danny and Ryan.

The knock on my door startles me out. “Come in,” I shout stupidly, before I walk over to it to open it.

“FUCK YEAH YOU’RE HERE!”

Five feet three inches and 105 pounds barrel into me, knocking me off of my feet.

“I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU ARE BACK OH MY GOD THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER.”

“Lottie?”

“Obviously. Expecting someone else? Oh my god! Welcome back!”

I hug her warmly, getting to my feet. “How have you been? Congrats on Nationals by the way, I meant to call…”

“Don’t be stupid. You’ve been through hell. I didn’t expect a phone call,” She flounces through my room and sit down on the bed, lying back into the sea of pillows. “So, are you really competing this weekend?”

“Yeah, that’s the plan.” I bite my lip. “Should be pretty embarrassing.” I scratch the back of my head.

She nods. “You’ll do great. You just have to make it into the final round. It’s a pretty small race…”

“It’s been a year and a half…”

She looks at me. “Never knew Pippa Baker would get inside her own head.”

“Yeah, well, like you said, I’ve been through hell.”

“You’re going to finish in the top three,” Lottie says simply. “End of story.”

“I wish I had your confidence.”

Lottie rolls her eyes. “So…what’s new with you?”

“Not much. I just finished up midterms.”

“No way—where about?”

“Boulder.”

“Nice. College. Wow.”

“Right? Who’d have guessed I would end up wanting to go to college?” I wonder aloud. I certainly never foresaw it.

“So, you ski around Eldora?” Eldora is a mountain thirty minutes from Boulder—nothing fancy, but serviceable. Boulder students use it for weekend trips, but obviously I haven’t used it all.

“No.”

She nods. “Vail?”

“I haven’t been on a mountain since the avalanche.”

“At all?”

I nod.

“Fuck, Pippa,” the disbelief in her voice makes a shiver run down my spine.

“I’m totally screwed.”

“No, I just mean—
fuck
,” she breathes in deeply. “Why not?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

She shakes her head. “You’re scared? I don’t—I mean, I’m sure things have changed, but I just. I never could imagine you without skiing.”

“I feel like—I don’t know,” I say. “I think I have all these reasons. Like, I shouldn’t be able to go back out there. Or like, I’m tempting fate.” I shake my head. “I know none of them are real reasons, but they feel real. Or compelling enough for me not to compete, or ski. Or….” I bite my lip.

Lottie watches me carefully. She’s always been an honest girl, the kind of person who would tell you if the pants made you look fat. It’s so easy to talk to her again. Seeing her, it’s impossible not to think of everything we went through and how easily we fell out of touch when I quit skiing.

You didn’t fall out of touch,
I remind myself,
you ignored her and everybody else you knew until they left you alone.

“Worst case scenario, you lose,” she says softly. “Finish last. That’s all that can happen.”

I nod. I know that, too—but it doesn’t change the way the ground feels beneath my feet. Its never been so unsteady.

Ryan used to always say that he always forgot about the world outside of elite skiing. I never considered how quickly both my worlds—elite skiing and the world outside—would move on without Ryan and Danny.

***

Lottie stays in my room for two hours. She tells me everything—about the new competition—the long-legged seventeen year old who kept turning heads and winning races, a speed demon from Utah who made a quick recovery from a college injury, the new faces on the D team—and about all the old competition—Brooke McKenna and Laurel Bates, the girls I’d raced against and with, who I had loved and hated.

She tells me about the downhill races she’s won, and how she finished first the US Alpine Championships last year and how Laurel never saw her coming, had been ready to open a bottle of champagne with her parents before the race was through.

After a long while, she smiles. “It’s really great you’re back.”

We walk over for dinner at the cafeteria in the ski center, a simple, no-frills place that serves a mix of junk and superfood.

Lottie was living here in Utah, training with Mike, who worked with a small group of elite skiers. The race this weekend would be held here, one of the few all season that she wouldn’t have to travel for. The lodge was pretty empty, except for the athletes here for training. It would fill up later in the week, when skiers from out of town started arriving for the races.

Lottie was one of the newest rising stars in Alpine skiing. The news I’d gotten back from USSA during my time off had been sparse—but Lottie’s outstanding performances and her win at US Nationals last year had both gotten back to me.