Gold

by E. J. Noyes

  It would have been easier if everywhere didn’t hold reminders of Cate. My bed. Trails we’d skied, places we’d stopped to sneak a quick kiss. Together we’d walked the footpaths, wound our way through the buildings in the village, stopped to smell the eucalypts and just-flowered wattle. She was everywhere and nowhere.

  The worst thing was the confusion of not having seen the rejection coming. This was nothing like with Nadia when I knew things were going south and I couldn’t stop it. Didn’t really want to stop it. Cate gave no warning, no indication that she wasn’t on the same path as me.

  The past few weeks played over and over in my head until a kernel of doubt planted itself. Maybe she was right. Maybe I wasn’t a reliable person. Maybe I didn’t treat myself well. Each time the idea tried to take root, I yanked the thought out again.

  But it kept sprouting.

  My day was jam-packed which meant a late lunch and late getting home. The latter suited me—the more time I spent at home, the more I thought about her. They’d been gone almost two weeks and I’d almost managed to put her into one of those mental boxes I used to keep all my unwanted thoughts out of my head.

  Almost.

  I clumped into the staff room to take a short break before a three-hour group lesson, beelining for the coffeemakers. Rachel passed me the pot. “You sorted for northern season?”

  “Not yet. Europe maybe, or Japan.” Still running away, Aspen.

  “Bummer. I’m thinking of going to the USA. Arapahoe Basin or Breckenridge.”

  I nodded. “Mmm.” Cate skied at Breck. Unconsciously, I reached for the sugar and had to set my mug down and move away from the coffeemaker. I didn’t take sugar. Cate did. She liked her coffee sweet and milky. She liked to drink it from an oversized mug. I tucked my hands under my armpits.

  “Why aren’t you going back to the States?” Rach asked. “What’s the deal with that hot mum?”

  I drew in a long breath. “There is no deal. She didn’t think I could handle the responsibility of her and a kid or something.” Not the whole truth, but Rach didn’t know all the sordid details of my past, and I really didn’t want to get into it, especially not in public.

  Rach choked on her coffee, spluttering and coughing. “Serious? God, how typical. Just want a quick meaningless screw and something to tell all their friends about once they go home.” Almost as an afterthought Rach mumbled, “What a bitch.”

  I made a half-hearted musing sound, unable to agree. I didn’t think she was a bitch and it never felt quick or meaningless. Cate never made me feel like a vacation fling. Somewhere along the line, she’d just decided she had no use for me the way I was. Not good enough for her. Not brave enough or mature enough or…

  I scrunched my eyes closed on the thoughts.

  “You okay?”

  I opened my eyes to Rach’s sweetly concerned face and shrugged. “I will be, I guess. I just thought it might be more, you know? It seemed like it could be eventually. We’re from the same area back home, and…” I couldn’t get any more out.

  “Oh, A. I’m sorry.” Rach placed a hand on my shoulder then stretched up on tiptoes to kiss my cheek. “It’s her loss, hon.”

  My friend’s assurance didn’t ease the feeling in my chest, nor did it stop the memories which came freely the moment I was home and alone. Memories of the color of Cate’s eyes as the sun set, and how she would find my gaze when I’d thought I could look at her without her noticing. Her laugh, low and infectious. The way she’d seek me out and put a hand on my leg or arm to keep us connected. The glide of her skin against mine, the way she felt under my tongue, her fingers seeking to find what made me cry out in pleasure. Those breathy moans. Hoarse whispers.

  There was nothing I could do to stop the sharp pain of longing. I could take care of the ache her memory elicited but my own touch was nothing more than serviceable. What I ached for was her. But she didn’t want me. And I needed to accept it and move on. Why couldn’t I just move on? I couldn’t think of anything to fill the void Cate and her daughter had left and I hated myself for even having that emptiness. What was the appropriate amount of time to grieve for a relationship you’d never even had?

  This mopey, introspective version of myself was climbing high on the list of Aspens I didn’t like. Nowhere near Drug Addict Aspen, but definitely above Neglecting Friends and Family Because I’m Training Aspen.

  At Hayley’s quiet insistence, I’d restarted my weekly therapy sessions with Doctor Spencer, which meant waking up at stupid o’clock. My therapist already knew the basics from a brief telephone conversation a few days earlier but she wanted to video call. Probably so I couldn’t hide anything from her.

  Doctor Spencer seemed different and not just physically—she’d cut her gray hair so short the curls sat tightly against her head—but she seemed quieter, less pushy somehow. How long had it been since I’d seen her? Four months? Five… That unease came to the surface again on the back of a truthful admission. I hadn’t been taking care of myself.

  “You look tired,” she observed.

  “Well, it is three in the morning here.”

  At that, she smiled. “Good point. How are you doing, Aspen? Sleeping, eating okay?”

  In five years, she’d never asked if I thought I was drinking too much because my go-to stress state was to forget to eat and sleep, not drown in a bottle. I think she trusted me enough to tell her if I’d been having thoughts of doing the other thing. “Yeah, mostly. I’ve been having some dreams.”

  “Tell me about them,” she said, voice low and soothing.

  I shifted uneasily in bed. “Not the usual ones about the fall, but dreams about Cate, her with my ex and they’re laughing at me. I’m not like a servant but I’m kind of stuck there watching them enjoying themselves together.”

  “I’m curious. Why don’t you tell me what it is about this woman in particular, Aspen?”

  “Well, I’m insanely attracted to her.” Still am, not was.

  “Let’s take the physical out of it. Forget how she looks, forget the sex. Why her?”

  Good point. What was it about Cate that I found so compelling? Impatiently, I pushed hair out of my eyes. “She made me feel good about myself. She had what I wanted.”

  “What was that?”

  “A way forward.”

  “To where?” Dr. Spencer prompted me.

  In my half-asleep state it took a while for me to organize my thoughts. Dr. Spencer waited patiently until I mumbled, “Me. She’s someone I thought would help me fix the stuff inside.”

  Dr. Spencer held up both hands. “I’m not sure fix is the right angle here. You’re not broken.”

  “No, but I’m not myself either. Not fully.” I sighed. What did I want from Cate? What was the thing she was offering me? Every answer came back to the same thing. “I wanted to feel needed by her and her daughter. I wanted her to make me feel the way I used to before the accident, before I was afraid.”

  “Do you think a person, or persons can do that for you, Aspen?”

  “I did, yes. If she’d just given me a chance.”

  “What else?”

  My breath came out on a long exhalation as the revelation came to me with perfect clarity. “I think for the first time in years I felt like someone understood me. Like she saw me.” She really did understand me. Better than I understood myself. That nugget Cate had planted burst suddenly into something so big I couldn’t pull it out, or move around it. I had to stand up and face it. “I…think she was right.”

  Doctor Spencer frowned. “About what?”

  “I’m a liar. I’ve been lying to myself this whole time. I’m not ready for commitment. I’m barely even keeping it together for myself so how can I care for someone else? But Cate can’t fix it, can she? Nobody can. I have to do it for myself.”

  My therapist raised a finger and offered me a pleased, “Bingo.”

  “Great.” I rubbed my palms over my face. “So this whole time I’ve been deluding myself about my ow
n thoughts and feelings.” The small breakthrough didn’t make me feel better. In fact, the realization that I was basically a fraud made me nauseated.

  “I believe it’s more that your reality and your expectation didn’t quite match up. Because you’ve held the expectation for so long, it kind of pushed your real reality aside and made a new reality. Something you could live with.”

  “Maybe. I really wish it hadn’t gone like this.” A burst of annoyance made my stomach tighten. Wishing and hoping were child’s tools.

  My therapist smiled, a little sadly. “Perhaps her execution could have been softer but let’s look at it as her intentions being true. When you care about someone, you want the best for them, yes?”

  “Mmm. I guess.”

  “You have this need to take care of everyone, Aspen, sometimes to your own detriment.” At my musing sound of agreement, she continued, “Let’s imagine then, that her caring for you was real, that she wanted you to be as happy and whole as you can be. I want you to hold onto that as we move forward. What else did she represent?”

  “Hope.” I let out a long breath and felt the tension starting to drain along with the air in my lungs. “Cate was hope that I am what I always thought I was.”

  Dr. Spencer’s eyebrows rose in silent question.

  “That I’m enough.” The smile I flashed felt wobbly, but it was a smile nonetheless. Suddenly, I could see the thread in the darkness that might help me find my way through this mess. “But I can’t be enough for anyone else, unless I’m enough for myself. Right?” The revelation made me feel like I could almost take a full breath for the first time in ages.

  “Yes, exactly. You know it’s not going to change overnight, we’re talking about rewiring years of thought processes.”

  “A lobotomy might be quicker,” I mumbled.

  That raised a small smile from her. “Let’s work on rebalancing things first. Then maybe we can discuss neurosurgery.”

  I tapped my fingers against the edge of the laptop screen, trying to put words to the uncomfortable thought. “Do you think it’s wrong to use Cate as a catalyst for my change? She made it clear she wants nothing to do with me, but she still started…all this.”

  “No, Aspen, I don’t think it’s wrong. I think you should use whatever you need to get to the place you want.”

  “I wish I could figure out if it was real, or if I was just in love with the idea of Cate and her daughter.”

  “Did it feel real?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “Then perhaps it is.”

  As we ended the session, Doctor Spencer suggested a good place to start might be to imagine what I wanted, where I wanted to be. So I set a faceless manifestation in the future—my emotional baggage sorted, wife, kid, house, dog, happy.

  Easy, right?

  * * *

  Late one evening, I sat on the couch, playing Xbox, with both feet propped on the coffee table and my customary heat packs in place. The day had been a solid eight and I’d taken one of my rare doses of ibuprofen. It barely touched the pain, but I had nothing else. Even thinking about what would work made something under my skin hum, both with anticipation and self-loathing.

  Running around a space station killing aliens should be fun. Instead, I was grumpy and uncomfortable, and didn’t know how to turn it about. Cate’s voice stepped in to remind me about what she thought of how I managed myself.

  I think you’re punishing yourself with the pain, Aspen.

  A surge of indignation swelled in my chest. Am not! Not anymore. Awkwardly, so as to not dislodge the heat packs, I fumbled for my phone. One quick Google and an online booking with a local general practitioner, and I was raising a childish middle finger to what Cate had implied about me.

  Doctor Patricia Hopewell was a young, friendly redhead who greeted me warmly, before directing me to sit in a chair beside her desk. My immediate assessment was that she would have been an easy touch for pain pill scripts. The younger ones always were. I gave myself a mental hand slap.

  She slipped on a pair of cat-eye glasses, leaning forward expectantly. She was cute, in that fresh-faced enthusiastic way. “What can I help you with, Aspen?”

  I shifted in the chair, trying to get comfortable without extending my legs too much. May as well get straight to the truth. “I have a chronic pain condition that I’m currently not managing with anything other than sporadic over-the-counter medication. I’m also a recovering prescription drug addict. Oxycodone.” After a breath I added, “I’ve been clean for over five years.”

  “Okay,” she said evenly. “What exactly are you hoping I can do for you, Aspen?”

  “Well, I need something that’s more than basic pain relief, but obviously I can’t have anything like oxy.”

  She smiled genuinely. “Good, because I’m not in the habit of prescribing that class of drugs to someone who’s just walked into my practice.”

  “All right then.” I raised an eyebrow, surprised and also a little pleased that my original assessment of her had proved untrue. “I just don’t think I can ignore it any longer and what I’m doing isn’t working.”

  Doctor Hopewell nodded, and turned to her computer monitor. “Let’s start at the beginning.”

  Almost forty minutes later, after a physical examination and thorough recording of my injuries and history, I walked out with a prescription for something to help nerve pain—no repeats, even though I’d be in Australia for another two months. She’d also written out a schedule for combining two different over-the-counter medications, agreeing that adding a narcotic probably wasn’t the greatest idea, given my…issues.

  Before she’d consider writing another script, Doctor Hopewell wanted to see me again to discuss my progress, and in the meantime was going to research non-opioid yet effective analgesic options for me. She seemed unnaturally excited about the prospect, and I supposed it was a break from the endless colds and flu she probably saw all week.

  Where was this woman seven years ago? I gave myself another mental hand slap. There was nobody to blame for my behavior but myself. Accept it and own it, then move on to New and Improved Aspen.

  The road to a new and improved Aspen didn’t all go smoothly. In the week after my therapy breakthrough and visit with the GP, I hit and killed a kangaroo at dusk and had a full sobbing breakdown on the side of Alpine Way. A few days later a snowboarder fell and broke his hand in front of me, and once I’d helped with first aid, I hid in a bathroom cubicle and treated myself to a Class A anxiety attack.

  But in my own way, I began to take halting steps forward. I could walk past places Cate and I had been without feeling like my heart might burst out of my chest. I skied the trail where we’d taken Gemma on her first black run, and only had a little skitter of longing slip down my spine before it was gone. And most importantly, when I was lying in bed, my thoughts were no longer a hi-definition full digital surround sound replay of Cate and me making love.

  I tried, and mostly succeeded at being kinder to myself—letting myself fail without days of chastisement. I worked at treating myself better physically and mentally, and acknowledging that my disappointment was valid. Maybe in a few months I could forget Cate and Gemma altogether. Maybe. Slowly all my broken pieces would be gathered together and placed back where they belonged.

  One step at a time, Archer.

  After a month on Doctor Hopewell’s pain management program I was not entirely pain free—and likely never would be—but was more consistent at around a three out of ten with the occasional six. I could live my life comfortably at a three, but Dr. Hopewell suggested I arrange a consult with my surgeon when I made my stopover in the States between seasons to make sure I’d explored every option.

  The days and weeks ticked over until it was September, and only a month away from season’s end. For the first time in years, I had no firm plan for my next job and surprisingly the thought didn’t bother me. Hayley had not-so-subtly hinted that it would be really nice for me to be in the U
SA for Thanksgiving. I’d not-so-subtly responded that she should stop bugging me, but I secretly agreed with her. Of course, I couldn’t let my sister know. Where was the fun in that?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Obnoxious ringing dragged me from dreamless sleep. I fumbled for the phone and swiped to answer without looking at the screen. “Hayley? Is everything all right?”

  A gruff male voice. “Aspen?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Christ, don’t even recognize me. You’re breaking my heart, Doll. It’s Brick.”

  Brick—Steven Mabrick—was my agent. Ex-agent. I groaned, a strangled, choked sound. “Brick. What do you want and…” A glance at the bedside clock told me it was almost two a.m. “…this damned early?”

  “Nice to talk to you too. Where are you?”

  “I’m in Australia,” I said dryly. “It’s two in the morning.”

  “Oh right, yeah of course.” Clearly he was still completely useless at remembering time zones, though of course I couldn’t have expected him to know where I was.

  Stifling a yawn, I decided to dispense with formality so we could cut to the chase and I could go back to sleep. “Why are you calling?”

  He cleared his throat, the way he always did when he had something to say that he thought was momentous. I smiled, picturing him in his office in downtown Denver—the one with pictures of me on the walls—while he drank his herbal tea and looked out over the city. “You know Stacey Evans?” Brick asked.

  Almost everyone who kept an eye on alpine ski racing would have heard of Stacey Evans. Prodigy, World Cup and Olympic hopeful, and often compared to a young me. I’d seen her around when I worked the northern season my first year coaching, but other than mentions on sites I frequented, I hadn’t really paid close attention to her competition results. “Yeah. I taught her once or twice when she was just starting racing. Got a lotta talent.” I rolled over and pulled the covers up over my head.