Carry Your Heart

by Audrey Bell

  “What? That you would disappear for three days after you told me you loved me to see your ex-girlfriend? I never knew that, actually.”

  “She was never my girlfriend.”

  “Someone who blogs about what I whore I am? And you love me?”

  He inhales, pinching his nose. “I knew from the second I saw you that this would happen.”

  “That what would happen?”

  “That I wouldn’t be good enough.”

  “Oh, please,” I shout. “You’re plenty good enough. I told you that you were good enough. If you had hung around for five seconds so I could have talked to you, I would have told you that, Hunter…But you decided to go see her. You were good enough. The only one who keeps comparing you to Danny is you.”

  He inhales. “Please let me drive you home. And we can talk…”

  “I don’t. I can’t do that right now. I have to go.”

  “Pippa. Please.”

  “Hunter, I said no.” I walk to the car without looking back. At least I didn’t start crying. I wonder if a blowout fight in a parking lot is more or less embarrassing than crying hysterically in a parking lot.

  Probably more. It’s louder. Although at least I didn’t sit in a snow bank for this drama.

  Lottie has the music turned on low. I’ve been such a bitch to Lottie. Because she was friendly with Laurel. And then, Hunter went to go see her. He left me in limbo to visit her and he can’t even tell me why. I stopped trusting Lottie for less.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “Why are you sorry?”

  “I’m just such a bitch.”

  “You’re not a bitch,” she mumbles.

  “I’ve been a huge bitch to you.”

  “So have I,” she says softly.

  I swallow thickly. “Did you know?”

  “About Laurel and Hunter?” she sighs. “I knew—I know she’s still in love with him. I don’t think he’s ever been in love with her. Just likes the idea of it.”

  “Did you know he went up there to see her?”

  She shook her head. “No, I didn’t know that.”

  She drives slow back to the lodge. I’m trying to calm down, trying to process what just happened, trying not to read the texts that Hunter’s sending me. “Should I break up with him?” I ask in a hushed voice. “Or did I just do that?”

  She’s quiet. “I don’t know, Pippa.”

  “Do you think he—he said he didn’t sleep with her…”

  “I don’t know,” she bites her lip. “It’s probably not the same with you, but Laurel said he wasn’t very faithful.”

  It’s probably not the same. Probably. Probably. What a slippery word. Easily could be.

  “I mean, do you know what happened when he was in Europe?”

  I swallow. “I don’t—he said nothing. He came back early because he said…I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  We reach the parking lot of the lodge and we park. I breathe. “Lottie.”

  “What?”

  “Can we go back to the way we used to be?” I say. I can’t lose Hunter and be alone. Selfish. I’m always selfish. But she drove me here and she didn’t have to. She chose me when I had nothing to offer her. And she’s a good friend, even if she fucked up. God knows I’ve fucked up too.

  “I want to,” she says softly.

  “Let’s try really hard.”

  “Okay,” she says. She squeezes my hand. I feel physically exhausted from the fight with Hunter. And from not sleeping the night before. And from doing poorly in the race because I had been all over the place, wrapped up in him.

  I’ve wanted to be an Olympic skier for a lot longer than I wanted to be Hunter Dawson’s girlfriend. And Hunter Dawson doesn’t even know what he wants.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  When I wake up, I know I have to end things. I feel sick about the whole thing. Sick that he disappeared. Sick that he chose to be with Laurel when I was freaking out. And that he came back the way he did, drunk and demanding, like he could disappear, but if he needed me, he’d come get me.

  It’s a short phone call.

  “Pippa, can we please…”

  “I don’t want to hear what you have to say right now,” I say.

  “Okay.”

  “I think we need time apart.” I try and get the words out fast, but it still takes too long. “I don’t know if I trust you. Actually, I know that I don’t trust you right now and I can’t be worried about this when I’m trying to get sponsored.” I swallow. “I need to make this work. I’m sorry.”

  “So, you’re breaking up with me?” he sounds tired, bored, and hungover. He sounds like I’m telling him I can’t go to coffee.

  “I don’t really feel like I have a choice.”

  “We all have choices, Pippa,” he says.

  I swallow. “Then, I’m breaking up with you.”

  “I’m not going to beg,” he says dismissively. “But I’ll say this. I didn’t cheat on you.”

  “I’m not asking you…” but he was gone with a click. And just like that, you don’t have a boyfriend anymore. Just like that, he’s gone.

  ***

  Danny never did anything like this. Whenever I think of Hunter, I remember Danny. Danny never hurt me badly, never made me doubt his love. Danny scared me with his love, with how strongly he felt.

  From the first moment, he knew what he wanted. I never worried about other girls. I worried about him, more than anything—needing too much from me and expecting too much, too fast.

  But then I fell for him. And God, I fell hard. Danny became my whole world. We were twin souls—disciplined, focused on winning, oblivious to the noise of most people our age.

  And everything I worried about, he took away. And everything I did that made me feel like a freak, he did too. We were the same.

  Hunter isn’t anything like me anymore. Maybe that’s why I fell in love so much more quickly with him. Because he’s exciting and dangerous and he has a terrible attitude and he doesn’t give a fuck.

  I shouldn’t like that about him, but I do. I love that about him.

  “I’m not in love with Hunter,” I tell myself, crying in the bathroom, washing my face. “I am not in love with Hunter. I am in love with Danny.”

  But I confuse them in my head. And I miss them both. I miss Hunter so much already.

  Whenever I think of him, something swells my chest, Hunter’s smile, the way he could touch me and make me just feel so many things, but above all of them, he made me feel alive.

  “It’s over,” I tell Lottie at dinner.

  And I repeat that in my head. Because it’s true. For both of them. It’s over. It’s over. It’s over. Danny. Hunter. It’s over.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The only time I hear from Hunter after Mammoth is late at night in texts. He’s packed up his things and left Utah before we get back.

  Joe tells me he went back to Whistler to gear up for the X Games. Packed his shit up and went back to Canada. Leaving behind me and Shane. That’s what he does. He said that at the airport. As someone who runs away from a lot of shit…

  The late-night texts are impersonal enough that I know exactly what it’s like to be just another girl who has slept with Hunter Dawson. They all say things like come ovreeer and where u at babe and then occasionally, you never fucking loved me.

  I don’t write back. I’m not going anywhere to meet Hunter. It’s over. And I did love him. I do love him. He’s gone, but I can’t make the love go away. I miss him so much that not being able to tell him that hurts, like I made him up in my head and he disappeared. But I tell myself it’s over. I have to.

  It becomes a prayer. It’s over. That eventually, I won’t have to tell myself, because I’ll feel that way. Instead, I just feel broken.

  I try not to think about all the girls he has fucked since we broke up. Or if maybe he’s living with Laurel over in Alta. I wonder what he told Shane when he went back to Canada. I wonder what he told Micah. Jo
e.

  I’ve heard how dismissive he can be of people he thinks little of. I know that I’m one of those people now. Bitch. Slut. There’s a lot of things he might be saying about me.

  Mike told me he knew I was focused. He could see it in my eyes. He could also hear the gossip. Anyone could.

  My dad sounds worried when I tell him. “Well, what happened?”

  I don’t know what to say. Everything happened. Nothing happened.

  “I just need to focus on skiing.”

  It’s a good answer, the kind of answer adults respected.

  And Lottie says she thinks I did the right thing. She won’t say why, but I know Laurel told her things she won’t repeat. I know she’s right not to repeat them. I know hearing anything else would hurt.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Two things start to happen. I start to win. And I forget to feel.

  My whole soul feels like it’s undergone some kind of radical, invasive surgery, where the part of me that enjoyed life was removed.

  But, I’m winning. It becomes robotic, compulsive. Training, nutrition, sleep, competing. When I think of Hunter, I force myself to do something else to kill the desire to call him up and tell him. Fine, you can treat me like shit. Just come back to me.

  I don’t let that happen. Instead, I win. I ski. I live it. I breathe it. I become it.

  Joe meets me for breakfast before we both leave for the big Tahoe races. If anything, since Hunter, I’ve gotten better. I haven’t lost. I’ve been first.

  Tahoe means a lot to both of us. It’s where Danny grew up. And the next few days mean a lot to us, too. Danny was born on February 3rd.

  “I talked to Mrs. Keller,” he says simply.

  “And?”

  “She’d like us to come by,” he says it cautiously, not quite an invitation. “I’m not sure if you remember…”

  “His birthday is on Sunday.”

  “Right,” Joe says softly. “Parker’s going to come too.”

  Danny is buried close to his parents’ house. Well, his headstone is close to his parents’ house, in the St. Mary’s Cemetery. They scattered his ashes on the mountain.

  I try not to think about skiing on the mountain where his ashes were scattered, wondering if I was running over pieces of Danny, wondering what ashes were there. His hands, which were strong and warm? His brown eyes? The bits of his sandy hair?

  I shudder at the notion. Pieces of Danny. He shouldn’t be in pieces. He was twenty years old. Like me. He should be breathing. He should be here.

  “Can I come?” I ask Joe after a moment. “To see Mrs. Keller?” She told me to call her Dana. Danny was named for her. She’d wanted a girl. She didn’t get one, but they named him Daniel after her.

  Daniel Robinson Keller. Born February 3, 1991. Died November 13, 2012.

  Almost 21.

  I swallow thickly on my emotions, my thoughts. Thinking of the funeral programs I keep in my bottom drawer at home. Wondering if anyone’s visited Ryan’s parents on his birthday in April last year.

  I didn’t think of Ryan when I burst out of the snow that day. I…

  “Pippa?”

  “Sorry,” I say.

  He smiles. “It’s okay. Maybe we can ski backcountry.” He looks at me carefully. “I think Danny would like that.”

  Ryan would love it. Danny? I don’t know if Danny would. He wasn’t as much of an adrenaline junkie as Ryan and I had been. He told us the weather report that morning. Said we shouldn’t ski if it got too warm.

  It had been a cold day. Even if it hadn’t, I never thought we all might die. You never believe you’ll be the one to get the shitty odds. Until you are. Until you’re pinned under snow and…

  “Pippa,” Joe says, again, reaching for my arm.

  “Sorry, I’m just…remembering things.”

  “Like what?”

  “The avalanche,” I whisper. It’s all I have to say. I put my head into my arms and breathe slowly. I’m not going to have another public breakdown. I’m going to be okay this time. I refuse to give into the rush of emotion.

  I’m surprised to find that this finally works.

  When I lift my head, nobody has noticed the near-miss. Just Joe, looking at me in concern. “Pip, we don’t have to…”

  “No, let’s ski backcountry. We’ve been planning to,” I say. I swallow. It was a freak accident. Let it go.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  I think of Hunter on the plane to Tahoe. Maybe because there’s bad turbulence and I grip my armrests a little too hard. Maybe just because it’s hard not to think about the person you love. I think of Hunter and then I think of Laurel, or some anonymous girl in his room. Someone thinner and taller than me. In his bed. Where I once thought I belonged.

  I fucking hate the way my brain works.

  Why are you making awful shit up?

  He’s gone it’s over.

  When we land in Tahoe, I laugh with Lottie on our way to the baggage claim.

  I step down onto the escalator before she does.

  And there he is.

  Standing at baggage claim. Tall. Dark. Scowling. He’s gotten even more handsome since we broke up, I’m sure of it.

  He’s doesn’t love you, I remind myself as my breath catches.

  I can’t decide whether or not I want him to turn around. He seems fine. Grouchy. Gorgeous.

  Lottie nudges me.

  “Hunter’s…”

  “I saw,” I mutter.

  He fiddles with his phone aimlessly. I wonder who he’s texting. Not me. He’s sober, after all. It’s a normal hour of the day. I don’t come into play until his inhibitions have been shattered by alcohol and he’s desperate.

  He’s wearing that grey Henley I love so much. Slouchy jeans dark and low on his waist. He looks good. He always looks good. I didn’t even change out of my pajamas before the flight. I look like Chewbacca.

  I’m drooling again. Over Hunter in baggage claim. He’s probably fucked up on Xanax, grateful to be alive, having totally forgotten my existence.

  The flash of blond hair startles me. The voice—it’s high—and I recognize it miles away. And then I see exactly who it is. Laurel Bates.

  This is not fucking happening to me right now.

  “Shit,” Lottie mutters.

  “Don’t do anything,” I say back.

  “I’m not, but shit, Pippa, what are we going to do?”

  I turn to look at her and she meets my eye and we both burst out laughing.

  “Let’s just get our bags,” I say. I don’t look. I can’t. Jealousy is such an easy word to use as a weapon, when someone’s being petty or annoying. She’s just jealous. But when the emotion actually seizes you, it’s crippling. A mix of rejection and hurt and wonder. He chose that. He chose differently than you.

  Lottie exhales, like she’s as stressed out as I am, and we creep sketchily around the backside of the carousels. I giggle.

  “What?”

  “I feel like I’m in Ocean’s Eleven,” I admit, trying to latch onto anything that’s not the fact that Laurel and Hunter are standing together in baggage claim.

  She crouches lower, exaggerating her tiptoeing slouch to the bags, and we link arms and when Hunter turns to look at me, a stunned, embarrassed look on his stupid, smug face, I just laugh.

  “Seriously,” I whisper to Lottie. “Of all the fucking things in the world.”

  She smiles. “At least you know he was freaking out on the plane.”

  “I’d be freaking out on a plane with Laurel,” I say darkly.

  Hunter’s eyes hold mine and Lottie tightens her grip on my arm. Laurel tosses her head, looking over one shoulder to see me. I make sure to smile at them both.

  No matter how miserably disappointing Hunter Dawson turns out to be, she’s not going to get the satisfaction of seeing me with anything other than a big grin on my face. And why not laugh?

  There is nothing I can do about it. I broke up with him. He went back to her. And they came
to Tahoe on the same day as me. My luck was so bad it was funny.

  Hunter didn’t look happy at all to see me. And I stood there too long, letting him stare at me. Staring right back.

  The haunted look in his eyes made me want to go to him. After everything that had happened, the look—dark and hurt and full of questions—made me want to go over to him. Put my hands on his chest. Whisper in his ear. Tell me what it is. I’ll carry it for you.

  The siren signaling the arrival of new bags blares and Lottie tugs on my wrist, like an impatient babysitter with a distracted child. I turn to her and we move away from him.

  I can’t help myself. I turn my head back, one last look.

  I see he’s turned away from me, see Laurel’s hands on him, her face close to his, clinging to him. And he’s looking at her.

  And I guess, to anyone who saw them, they would think they were such a gorgeous, happy couple. I’ll give them gorgeous. Only a fool would try to dispute that.

  I think viciously that they aren’t happy. They just can’t be. And I feel a crushing wave of sadness for Hunter, because as badly as he’s hurt me, I can’t stand the look on his face when he’s hurt.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Lottie and I couldn’t sleep the morning of the final. We woke early, went to Starbucks together, and went back to her room to sit on the balcony and talk quietly.

  It’s a crisp, chilly day. Six inches of snow overnight.

  They’re detonating on the mountain. Triggering avalanches before someone else does. It’s a routine procedure, but I’ve rarely spent time noticing it. I do this morning. The day before Danny’s 22nd birthday.

  Dynamite explosions puncture the quiet calm of morning. Noise rolls over the hills and down into our rooms. It sounds like thunder, but thicker and longer.

  We drink coffee on our balcony, looking at the mountain, where plumes of white snow rise high, like smoke. “Does this freak you out?” she asks of the crackling noise in the air, the avalanches being set off all along to mountain before anyone goes up to ski.