New Year's Kiss

by Lee Matthews

  “You only have to work like five hours a day, tops. And you’re sitting pretty,” he’d said. “I can spend the rest of my time skiing, playing video games, or just, like, napping. It’s gonna be amazing.”

  Honestly, I thought it was cool that he had a life plan, and that he and his cousin wanted to stick together. My dad would have said that aspiring to work five hours a day wasn’t very ambitious, but they were both working their butts off now at Evergreen Lodge, saving up enough money for their first apartment in Vermont. I admired all of it.

  And I really couldn’t imagine this smart, well-read person-with-a-plan could purposely run someone off a ski trail and into a tree. But did that mean I didn’t believe Christopher? No. I had to believe Christopher. He was my friend. He was my…maybe more-than-friend. And whatever happened up there, I believed that he believed he was telling the truth.

  Honestly, though, by the time we reached the top of the ski lift, I had no idea what to think.

  Although, a tiny suspicion had worked its way into my mind. Maybe Christopher wasn’t just upset that I was skiing with Damon. Maybe he was upset that I was skiing with any guy that wasn’t him. Could he possibly be…jealous? But it wasn’t as if I’d sought out Damon and made a plan to spend the day alone with him. He just happened to be along for the ride while I tried to eliminate another item from my to-do list. And, okay, he was hot and thought my singing had been amazing. (He must have been tone-deaf.) But that didn’t mean Christopher had to be so surly. Except for the whole maybe-Damon-had-tried-to-kill-him thing.

  Could he be jealous after knowing me for two days? The thought gave me butterflies in the pit of my stomach. It felt good to have someone jealous over me. I wished I’d spent a few more minutes talking to him this morning. I hated the way we’d left things.

  “Are you telling me you can ski a black diamond while filming on your phone?” I asked Damon now, as our chair edged closer and closer to the drop-off point.

  He laughed. “No way. Are you kidding? I’ve got a GoPro.”

  Out of his pocket he pulled a tiny little camera on a strap that he quickly secured to the crown of his head. I’d seen them now and then at skateboarding competitions, when skaters wanted to make first-person videos of their tricks.

  “All right, then. Film away.” The chair reached the top of the mountain, and we skied off, joining Lauren and Tarek, who were already waiting for us, their ski goggles pushed up on top of their helmets, the sun shining on their fresh faces. It was actually a perfect day for skiing. The wind was nonexistent and the sun was fairly strong, warming any exposed skin. It wasn’t even that cold, even here at the top of the slope, where I usually found it to be freezing.

  “All right, Tess. This is your deal. Do you want to do a few warm-up runs first, or do you want to just go for the black?” Tarek asked, adjusting his cowl-neck scarf.

  “You told him?” I said to Lauren, irrationally irritated.

  “What else was I going to talk about the whole ride up here?” She turned her palms up with her ski poles strapped to her wrists.

  I groaned and skied away from them a bit, trying to remove myself from the center of attention. Lauren followed. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “So Tarek knows you’ve never skied a black diamond. Isn’t it safer if he knows to keep an eye out for you?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said, fiddling with my ski gloves. “I just…I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t go through with this.”

  I was starting to feel nervous now that we were up here. It had been almost a year since I’d even been on skis.

  “Why are we going through with this, exactly?” Lauren asked again.

  I took a breath and looked at her, trying to decide whether or not to take the plunge and tell her the truth. A truth that I could feel bubbling up in my throat even as we stood there. I squeezed my eyes shut and just let it out. “I made a bucket list.”

  “Are you dying?” she demanded, grabbing my wrist.

  “What?” My eyes flew open. “No! Oh my God, no. If I were dying, do you really think this is how you’d find out?”

  “Okay, fine. But don’t freak me out like that.” She put her hands to her head and straightened her goggles strap. “I almost had a heart attack.”

  “I’m touched,” I said with a smile.

  She grumbled. “Don’t get all sappy on me now. Okay, so…what kind of bucket list?”

  “It’s ten things I have to do before the end of the year,” I explained in a rush, trying to not give her the opportunity to interrupt and mock me. “It’s so I can start the new year off right. I already completed four.”

  “What were they?” she asked. I glanced past her at the guys, who were busy taking pictures of one another doing silly ski poses.

  “Fly a paper airplane for more than twenty seconds, wear heels in public, sing in public, and talk to a stranger.” I ticked each item off on my fingers.

  Lauren tipped her head back. “Oh, everything makes so much more sense now. And skiing a black diamond is on the list?”

  “Yes.”

  “What else is on this list?” she asked, waggling her eyebrows.

  “Get your mind out of the gutter,” I said.

  “Is smooching Christopher on this list?” she teased.

  “No.” I blushed furiously. “Christopher helped me make the list, so I couldn’t exactly put that on there. I mean, I wouldn’t have anyway, but still.”

  An odd heaviness settled inside my chest. It felt weird crossing something off my list without Christopher here to see it. Although, I guess he hadn’t been around when I’d talked to Carina for the first time. Speaking of which…I glanced around and didn’t see a bright pink jacket and helmet anywhere. Except for on the rather adorable five-year-old skiing past us for the green trail.

  “Where’s Carina?”

  “Oh, she went inside to use the bathroom,” Lauren said with a wave of her hand. “Okay, so this is a big deal. When Tess has a list, that list gets done, so you are not chickening out now. Besides, you’ve been talking about doing this for years, and every time we come here you invent some excuse. It’s too cold. I’m too tired. I have the flu—”

  “I did have the flu! I was puking my guts out, remember?”

  “I’m just saying, now is your time, Tess. That’s why you put it on your list. Because you knew it was your time. Don’t blow it just because Christopher made you feel like crap.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. I hadn’t even told her what Christopher and I had talked about. How did she know, though, that he had so thoroughly gotten under my skin? Sometimes, I swear, Lauren had some sort of weird sisterly sixth sense that not only gave her an insane ability to annoy me, but also an insane ability to pump me up. I just wished she would use the latter more often. Should I tell her what he’d said about Damon? Maybe Tarek had been there with them. Maybe he had seen what had happened. But if he had, he hadn’t told Lauren about it, or she definitely would have told me.

  Carina skied over to us, stopping expertly and throwing up a wave of snow.

  “Are you guys ready?” she asked.

  Lauren raised her eyebrows at me. I clenched my jaw. My sister was right. Now was the time. And I wasn’t going to let anyone—not Christopher or Damon or anyone—screw it up for me.

  “Yes,” I said, and snapped my goggles on. “Let’s do it.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I stayed behind my sister, doing my best to follow her tracks as she skittered back and forth across the slope. Tarek and Damon were bringing up the rear for safety reasons. They didn’t say that out loud, but I caught the look they exchanged with my sister before we started, and it was clear they were prepared to save me if I fell, or perform triage if I fell bad. I couldn’t reconcile the guy who would literally get my back on the slopes with the guy Christopher had described to me,
but I also couldn’t think about that now. I had to concentrate on getting to the bottom in one piece.

  Carina stuck to my side. I could tell she was a better skier than me, but she didn’t try to get ahead of me or show off. It was like I had an entire entourage bent on getting me to the end of the trail safely.

  Which was good, because for the first ten minutes, I was sure I was going to die. It might have been thirty seconds, actually. But it felt like ten minutes. Other skiers kept zipping past me down the mountain, coming so close I could feel the breeze of their momentum hitting me in the face. One guy got so near me I could smell his sunscreen. Couldn’t they see I was in crisis mode over here?

  But the longer I stayed on my feet, the more I began to relax. I started to feel the warmth of the sun on my face, alternating with the bitterness of the updraft as I flew downhill. I even let my leg muscles relax the tiniest bit, which helped me lean into turns a little more. This wasn’t half bad, really. And in another ten minutes, it would be over. Whether I would be alive or dead when it was over was anyone’s guess.

  “How’re you doing?” Carina yelled when we saw the marker indicating we were halfway down.

  “Okay!” I called back, glancing over at her. Big mistake. My focus was broken. I lost my bearings and immediately felt my balance shift. My heart and stomach switched places as I started to veer off course.

  “Lean right!” Damon shouted from behind me.

  I did as directed, but I overcorrected, and my skis skidded out from under me.

  “The other right!” Damon cried.

  But it was too late. I was already on my back and sliding fast. One ski popped off, then the other. All I could think in my panic was Did he do that on purpose? What the hell did he mean by “the other right”? Tree branches and clouds zipped through my line of vision as I picked up speed. Oh my God, I was going to die. I was going to die I was going to die. Weirdly, it wasn’t my life that flashed before my eyes, but Christopher, sitting on that couch in the lobby, looking adorable, laughing.

  Christopher. Ugh. He was going to be so pissed at me if I didn’t finish my list. So pissed that I didn’t listen to him when he’d said that Damon was dangerous.

  That was it. No dying today. Desperate, I grappled for handfuls of snow or rocks or anything that could slow me down, but it was no good. I was going to go off the side of the mountain. I could feel it. Any second and I’d be in free fall.

  And then, I saw a zip of blue, and suddenly, I hit something. Oof. Hard, but not too hard. For a second I felt dizzy. Nothing moved other than a few wispy clouds high above. My breath was staggered and loud, but behind it I could hear birds chirping high in the trees and people whooping and calling on the slope. My face was raw, and ice particles dug into my cheeks, but I was alive.

  I stared at the sky and breathed, afraid to move a single muscle.

  “You’re okay.” It was Damon’s voice. “You’re okay.”

  I heard someone calling my name and realized it was my sister, so I sat up. She was climbing back up the mountain slowly, one difficult step at a time, her skis perpendicular to the slope.

  “Tess! Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine!” I glanced over and saw Damon sprawled next to me on his stomach, his skis and poles nowhere to be seen. “Did you just dive in front of me?”

  He pushed himself up on his hands. The whole front of his ski jacket and pants were caked with snow. “Sort of? I didn’t want you to hit that.”

  I looked left to see what he was pointing at. There was a huge wall of gray rock, covered in ice, about ten yards from where we were sitting. If I’d slid into that thing at the speed I’d been going, something would have gotten broken. An arm, a leg. Maybe my skull.

  “Wow,” I said, overwhelmed. “I…Thank you.”

  Damon grinned. “Anytime. I guess you could kind of say I’m your hero now.”

  I almost rolled my eyes, but stopped myself. Because it was basically true.

  Tarek and Carina skied over to us just as Lauren finally arrived at my side. Tarek toted my skis under one arm. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Lauren asked, lifting her goggles on top of her head. “That looked nasty.”

  “It was,” I said. “But I’m okay. I think.” I took a deep breath and slumped. “Remind me again why I did this?”

  “Because it’s awesome?” Tarek suggested.

  Damon had shoved himself to his feet and reached out his arms to me. I took his hands, my ski poles still attached to my wrists, and let him haul me up. I dusted off the front of my snow pants while my sister whacked ice and snow off the back of my jacket. I could feel rope burns on my wrists, and there was snow down my back. I wondered if I’d discover any other random bruises or scrapes later. But for now, I was fine.

  “Okay. But I never want to do it again,” I said.

  “Well, that’s unfortunate,” Carina said, biting her bottom lip.

  “Why?”

  “Because we still have to get to the bottom of the mountain,” Lauren answered.

  “Oh.” I looked down the slope, where skiers seemed to be dropping straight down over the next dip. “Crap.”

  * * *

  • • •

  A few minutes later, we were at the bottom. I saw the people up ahead of me slowing and sliding off toward the chair lift and whooped with joy. As the hill leveled out, I dug in and stopped myself, every muscle in my legs quivering, my entire body giddy with relief. I whipped off my helmet and goggles and tipped my face toward the sky.

  “You made it!” Damon cheered, skiing right into me for a hug.

  “I did!” I cheered back, just happy to be alive.

  And then he took off his goggles and kissed me. It was a closed-mouthed celebratory kiss, but it lingered a second longer than it technically needed to. My heart pounded at the sensation of his well-ChapSticked lips on mine, his arms lightly around my waist. When he pulled back and smiled, my first and only thought was I don’t know his last name. Does this count?

  “Nicely done!” my sister congratulated me as she stopped right next to us. I couldn’t tell if she was talking about the second half of my black diamond run, or the fact that Damon had just kissed me, but from the way she was looking at him, I had a feeling it was the latter.

  “Thanks,” I said, tucking my hair behind my ear and looking at the ground, sure I was blushing furiously. Hopefully I was already red from exertion and all the wind and ice burn, so no one would notice.

  “We’re having a staff party out at the barn later,” Damon told us. “You guys should come.”

  “Oh, we’ll be there,” Lauren said, putting her arm around me. “We have to celebrate Tess’s inaugural black diamond!”

  Okay. That kiss definitely didn’t count as making out. But if I went to this party later, maybe I’d get the chance to check that off my list. I looked up at Damon. He was smiling at me like he was thinking the same thing, and my heart fluttered with nerves. But it wasn’t the good, crushy kind of nerves. It was just nerves.

  I don’t want to make out with him, I realized.

  Because the only person in my heart and mind at that moment was Christopher.

  • • •

  TESS’S NEW YEAR’S BUCKET LIST

  Make a paper airplane that actually flies (20 seconds at least) ✓

  Sing in public ✓

  Strike up a conversation with a stranger ✓

  Wear high heels outside the house ✓

  Make out with a guy whose last name I don’t know (???)

  TP someone’s house

  Get Adam Michel’s autograph

  Get a short, stylish haircut

  Ski a black diamond slope ✓

  Eat sushi

  * * *

  • • •

>   I was still breathless with adrenaline as we walked back into the lodge a couple of hours later. Carina and I had skied a few easier slopes while my sister stuck with the boys on the death trap mountain trails (as I had come to call them in my head). Once I’d managed to live through the black diamond experience, though, all the other trails seemed like cake walks, and I’d had a fun afternoon exerting myself and looking forward to seeing Christopher. Would it be weird to just throw myself into his arms and kiss him? Was that even something I could do?

  I figured I’d know when I saw him. But first I had to ditch Damon and the rest of the group. I had a feeling that even laying eyes on Damon would keep Christopher from getting into any sort of kissing mood.

  “What’re you guys doing now?” Tarek asked as we walked into the lobby, the warm, cinnamon-scented air enveloping us. The sound system was still pumping in the Christmas carols, and right now it was a peppy rendition of “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”

  “I’m going to go see how my friend is doing,” I said, gesturing toward the fireplace area. “He broke his leg a couple days ago and has to sit in the lobby all day. He must be bored out of his mind.”

  I watched Damon for a reaction as I said all of this, but he didn’t flinch or even blink. If he had been involved in Christopher’s accident, he was a really good actor.

  “Okay, so, we’ll see you later? At the party?” he said.

  Was it just me, or was he giving me a significant look?