Carry Your Heart

by Audrey Bell

  He takes a long sip of his beer and sets it down on an angle, spinning it thoughtlessly in his hands. “Sometimes I think I should just call my lawyer and file for custody.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Not that I have any idea how to go about raising a kid, but, he seems so fucking sad all the time and I have all this fucking money and I want to help, and there’s nothing I can do.” He bites his lip. “It makes me crazy.”

  “Do you think your dad’s going to hurt him?”

  “I don’t know. No. No, not physically anyways.” He bites his lip and sighs. I’m seriously pissed off at Doug Cannon. Ten years ago, I had his poster tacked to my bedroom wall, and ten years ago, from the sound of it, he was terrorizing the hell out of my boyfriend.

  I need to get rid of that fucking poster.

  He breathes and exhales against the booth. “Deirdre has custody most of the time. And my dad’s, you know, pretty checked out. Unless, it’s skiing.” He glances at the window and back at me. “Anyways, enough of that.”

  “Hey. I’m glad you told me,” I say softly. He smiles gently at me like he doesn’t totally believe me, but he appreciates that I’m saying it.

  ***

  He has a few more beers and I drive back. The car rides smooth and fast, and we’re back to the lodge before long. We don’t say much—both of us are tired from the day.

  He kisses me fiercely in the elevator, before we reach his door. And he has his hand underneath my shirt once we’re inside. His hands are rough and cool on my skin. I can feel every callus against my ribs, he goes over them slowly, like he’s counting them, like he’s memorizing me.

  Hunter usually laughs, during sex, usually finds a place to bite or lick that makes me giggle, tells me how much he likes me and can’t help but smile. But tonight, as the afternoon light fades to dusk, he doesn’t turn on the lights and say that he wants to see me. He lets the room go dark. He kisses my neck and my face. Each kiss feels like a message.

  He slides one hand down my leg and looks right at me. He closes his eyes and his kiss is so soft, and his movement so slow, and they go on and on and on, his breath warm on my neck, his hands able on my melting muscles, my arching spine, and I hold onto the whisper that’s trying to escape in high and nearly incoherent gasps of air. I hold onto it, and say it without using any words. Say it only in my head while my fingers dig into his shoulders. I love you, I love you, I love you.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Training picks up ferociously before the week off for Christmas. Mike has a renewed sense of urgency after my total fuckup at Jackson and Lottie’s chewing on the fact that Penelope just broke a course record back east at Stowe, VT.

  But, the runs get steeper, tougher, and Mike has less and less tolerance for my mistakes.

  “Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy,” he shouts when I come down a run on my heels.

  He’s riding me so hard, I think I’m going to slap him.

  I collapse in bed with Hunter and he just laughs at me when I tell him I think my career is over. “You’ve been gone for a year. You’ve been back a month…”

  “I’m going to fucking murder Mike Ames,” I mutter.

  He laughs. “You’re getting psycho again.”

  “I am not.”

  “I could tell you were a psycho from the second I lay eyes on you. I was like. Do not get in her way. Do not.”

  “Oh, fuck you.”

  He rolls over me. “That could be arranged.”

  “Really?”

  “Mm…yeah. I might be able to work something out for you,” a grin cracks across his face and he drops his head to my collarbone, to my clavicle which he kisses gently.

  His tongue was warm and soft on me.

  “I’m too sore to have sex,” I mumble.

  “Okay, fine, we’re going to murder Mike Ames, in that case,” he says darkly, sitting up. He looks down at me, mischief in his eyes and on his lips. “He needs to die.”

  I love when he looks at me like this.

  “Fuck, for the first time in my life, I do not want to go to Europe,” he says, throwing his head back.

  “What are you doing out there?” I ask as he falls on his back. I roll over straddling him.

  “You don’t look that sore.”

  “Let me get warmed up.”

  He grins. “Backcountry.”

  The word sends a chill up my spine. I know what backcountry with a video crews means.

  Helicopters. Extremity. Recklessness.

  Dozens of talented young men trying to top one another. None of them will pay attention to the dangers you can find on untouched powder. No matter how many horror stories they hear.

  You never believe the worst thing can happen to you, until it does.

  He runs his hands under my shirt and pulls it over my head.

  “You’re going to be careful,” I say.

  He laughs. “I won’t get in too much trouble.”

  I bite my lip. He leaves in two days. And I’m going to be sick for most of it. I run my hands through his hair. It’s so soft. So real. I used to do this with Danny’s hair. I remember the way his warmth felt under my hands and I flinch suddenly. I sit back on my heels.

  “You okay?” he asks softly.

  “Hunter, I need you to promise me you’ll be safe.”

  He tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. “Nothing bad is going to happen to me, Pippa Baker.” He smiles and leans forward, kissing me softly. He crosses his heart and kisses my nose. “I promise.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  He hugs me close to him at the airport, kisses my hairline, and makes me promise to text him when I land. We had decided not to give each other gifts. We went shopping for Shane instead, trying to find the best video games for a 12-year old.

  I start missing him at the gate. I want to turn around and tell him to take me with him.

  Instead, I board my plane, and watch as Utah becomes a postage stamp beneath me and I’m on my way to Colorado, thinking about Hunter and distance and time.

  There will be people to see in Colorado, things to catch up on, friends to laugh with, my dad to wrap my arms around. But, just as I started learning how to stop missing the one person I’d never get back, I found a new person to miss. And God, do I miss him.

  I feel the last touch of his lips against my hair like a tattoo. I touch the place and send him my love. I still haven’t told him I’m in love.

  ***

  “Tell me everything,” Court says in her bedroom. Trevor sulks in a corner, not that I can blame him. He can’t fly home to California. His parents said he wasn’t welcome and Dean has been working twelve-hour days at the hospital, with little time or energy to spare for Trev.

  Courtney’s parents are the sweetest people in the world, but it can’t be nice to be a houseguest at Christmas because your parents told you not to come home because, as far as they’re concerned, you’re dead to them. He won’t talk about it. Even though Dean’s been checking in regularly, Courtney and I are both worried about him.

  “Well, I think I’m love with Hunter I say.” I bite my lip. It’s the first time I’ve said it aloud and Courtney’s eyes widen.

  “Oh my god! I want to be a pro skier and fall in love with a guy named Hunter. Tell me more.”

  “Is this the snowboarder?” Trevor asks. “I also want a snowboarder. All I have is a doctor who is too busy to see me.”

  There’s not much to say when things are going well, I realize. The secrets he’s told me are for only me to know, and the things that bother me—Laurel, the way Lottie’s treated me, the blogs—they all seem so small once I start talking about him. About how much older than me he seems sometimes, and about how much fun he can have.

  Even the way he hunches his shoulder when he’s having a beer. God, everything about him just gets me.

  Courtney and Donovan broke up—that is “if we were ever even together,” she says darkly.

  I wince. “That sucks.”

  “Totally,” she agrees. “B
ut at least I know now.”

  Trevor flops down on her bed.

  “How’s Dean?”

  He shrugs. “Fine. Busy. You know. Med school.”

  Courtney frowns at him. “You love Dean, Trevor.”

  “Yeah, I do,” he agrees. “But when you come out of the closet for someone, and he’s not around when your family says they don’t want you coming home fro Christmas, it feels pretty shitty.”

  Court bites her lip for a moment. “But he didn’t force you out.”

  I can tell they’ve had this argument before from the way Trevor huffs. “No, he did. He said he couldn’t be with someone who wasn’t open. And so I went public…”

  “And you’re a lot happier,” she says. “Most of the time. You were miserable in the closet now.”

  “Well, right now, it’s hard. Is that okay with you?” he asks shortly.

  “It’s fine with me. But coming out of the closet wasn’t bad for you,” Courtney says. “Your parents are wrong. You’re not wrong. They are.”

  “Whatever,” he mutters.

  I don’t know what to say. The tension bothers me. I feel like I’ve been gone for long enough that I’ve lost my right to have an opinion.

  You have to be selfish to be successful in this sport. Mike wasn’t lying.

  ***

  Driving back from Courtney’s, I pass Boulder. It seems like I never went to school here at all; it left such a fleeting impression on me. Sometimes I think I just dreamed up the place. I can see the sketchy outline of what it was like, but every detail evaporates until I remember nothing but a fog.

  Life is such a mess, Ryan used to say whenever Danny or I got too serious about things.

  And Ryan’s life was never such a mess. He never lost races. He always had the turns down. But he’d tell us that, when we were both clawing to breakthrough, or when we were at each other’s throats over some stupid argument. He’d laugh and say life is such a mess. Stop trying to put everything in order.

  I had the biggest crush on Ryan when I was fourteen. So did every girl I knew. But nobody ever pinned him down. He was always bouncing along, looking for the next good time. Like a tornado, he never stopping blowing through his own life, knocking back everyone who ever met him.

  My breath catches thinking of Danny and Ryan. I think of how they keep fading from mind. Every day I have less and less of them. There was a time when they were both my whole world. And now, I’m left with these pieces. And compared to what I once had, the pieces are so tiny, so infinitesimal.

  Dad smiles at me when I come home. He’s nervous, I can tell. Half-disbelieving when I say I want to keep doing this.

  “How were they?”

  “Good,” I say smoothly. “Trevor’s a little bummed that Dean has to work. He can’t go home because his parents are assholes. Court broke up with Donovan.” I shrug.

  He smiles. “And you have a new boyfriend?”

  I smile. I’d spoken to him for five minutes and he’d heard it in my voice. I hope he doesn’t Google Hunter or me. Pictures of his daughter filed under slut and cheating whore might upset him.

  “Yeah.”

  “Some snowboarder?” he teases.

  I smile. “Yeah.”

  He hadn’t much liked the sound of Danny when I first mentioned him at dinner when I was eighteen. But he came to love him, too, like the son he never had. Danny spent two Thanksgivings with my dad and me. He had jump-started my dad’s old Ford thunderbird three times one weekend and begged him to get a new alternator.

  That same weekend, one night after dinner, when we watched TV sleepily, he told my dad something that he never told me before. That he liked being with us. That being at home made him anxious.

  We had sat in this very kitchen for hours. And now he was gone. There’s nothing that can prepare you for the way you feel when someone is gone—really gone and never coming back.

  Cold. Limp. Dead.

  Where does all of that stuff go? His laugh, his eyes, his quiet stubbornness. Where does it all go? It can’t just disappear. That makes no sense.

  My dad waves a hand in front of my eyes.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “Where were you?”

  “I don’t know.” I smile, shaking my head. “Thinking about Danny.”

  “Ah,” his face softens. “He was a sweet boy.”

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  “Loved you a lot.”

  “Yeah.”

  I swallow.

  “Good heart, too.”

  I look at him, wondering if he’s actually trying to make me cry. “Yeah, Dad. I know. I…”

  “He’d never want you to suffer your whole life,” my dad says softly. “He’d never want that for you.”

  I nod. I glance out the big bay windows in our kitchen, look down the sloping hill to the valley and up the mountains. I needed Danny to breathe. And now I feel like I need Hunter that same way too.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I always spend holidays with my dad. It’s a rule. I always come back for holidays. My dad’s alone. Has been since my mother died. He told me he was happy alone, and I don’t remember him ever being any other way. A long time ago, I asked him why he didn’t get remarried. And he said, he had one love of his life and it was more than his heart could take.

  I always thought I was more like him. Especially this last year, I thought I could get used to not being tethered to anyone ever again.

  He seems more worried this year. Like something is bothering him. There are stacks of paper on his desk and he’s usually so organized.

  “Is everything okay?” I ask him one night after dinner, as he frowns over more paperwork.

  He sighs. “Everything’s okay.” He smiles thinly. “I-I have to refinance the house.”

  The way he says it makes me start. I swallow. “Okay.”

  “It’s nothing to worry about.”

  I nod. I know how expensive skiing is. When I had sponsorships, they covered most of the costs of competing, but not much else, and first semester’s tuition at Boulder, even in-state, isn’t cheap, not to mention the six months of physical therapy, the psychiatrist, the painkillers, and the fact that I don’t have a real job, and never really have.

  I don’t have sponsors now. He didn’t say a word about the lodging and the new equipment. I can imagine how he thought it out already. Like, he was so pleased, he would just stretch to make ends meet, footing an enormous bill in an already tough year.

  “I can get a job.”

  “No, no.” He smiles. “You focus on your skiing, Pippa. Your sponsors will come back to you.”

  “Dad, you shouldn’t go into debt…”

  “I’m not going into debt. Just refinancing a little,” he says shortly. “I told you not to worry. So, don’t worry.”

  But of course I do. I have to start winning races. I have to get back to the point in time where all I saw was what I wanted and the people who were in my way. And I made sure that nobody could beat me in a fair race. I didn’t leave anything up to chance.

  Hunter is somewhere over in France, in the Alps, searching for big snow. Something to jump off of. Different ways to fly. Whenever I call him, he’s unreachable. Whenever he calls me, I’m asleep.

  I watch the DVD of the last video he did with Red Bull, forty-five minutes in deep powder all over the world. Hunter seems less aware of the risks than any of the other swaggering boarders he was with. Maybe it’s just because he’s taking the biggest ones, always catapulting down the mountain first, always trying to jump through a tree.

  The camera hovers on his face on top of a steep, craggy mountain and he looks down with a little smile on his face, like he’s just seen something cute, mildly appealing—not like he’s about to drop into a death-defying descent at a forty degree angle.

  And I watch as he plows through the powder, as it comes up in plumes around his board, as he seems to float, unhurried, but so, so fast, down these inclines, loose in the shoulders, just looking f
or a good time.

  “If everybody could do it, it wouldn’t be so fun,” Hunter says to the camera, catching his breath at the base of the remote mountain. “Part of it is that nobody really comes up here. That you’re one of the first people to be doing it.”

  It makes me nervous. Not just that there could be another avalanche, although there very well could be. But that half of the thrill is the fact that your average person would probably be killed trying something like that. And the flipside of that thrill is that even an extraordinary athlete could die, just one bad decision or one shaky leg, or one edge that catches. It always seems so impossible for anything to go wrong. It’s only when it happens that we realize how the chance of that happening was always there. That we’d been playing with fire all along, and until our hands were burnt, we didn’t even know it was hot.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The Lake Placid Challenge is the first big race of January. It’s a long flight to New York from Utah, and listening to Lottie recount Penelope’s time makes it feel even longer.

  Mike tells us how in 1980, the US hockey team pulled off a major upset by beating the Soviets. “This is a place where anything can happen.”

  I smile. “So, I’m USA and Lottie’s the Soviets?”

  Lottie shoots me a glare. “We’re both the USA and Penelope’s the Soviets.”

  “That’s really not the analogy I was going for.”

  “I’ll be the Soviets,” I say, leaning my head against the window. “I’m into Russia.”

  Mike rolls his eyes. He knows he’s going to have to start talking to us separately soon. Lottie’s getting sick of me knowing so much about her skill set, and I’m not wild about having Lottie watch my every fall and every failure. And I still suspect she reports my moods to Laurel. More than once, I’ve caught her peering over my shoulder at my text messages.

  I know she looks down on me. I’m faster out of the start and my turns are sharper than before, but I still haven’t been consistent enough for her to worry. She thinks my comeback isn’t going to work. She doesn’t like it, but she still doesn’t think it will work.