Love on the Lifts

by Rachel Hawthorne

  Allie was putting together a salad. Leah was mixing up some brownies. It was the brownies that the guys would ooh and aah over. Not that I cared if my efforts were barely appreciated.

  I mean, Joe hadn’t bothered to thank me once for all I’d done for him that afternoon. And he was a lousy patient. Most guys are from what I understand. But he became the worst after he woke up from his nap, like he was trying to drive me away.

  Adjust the afghan, bring me some water, bring me some juice, hot chocolate, hot apple cider, turn up the TV, turn it down, change the DVD. Honestly, you’d think he was completely helpless.

  Okay, so he was pretty helpless. I’d actually spent some time in my bedroom moving around using only one leg, trying to raise my sympathy level when I got really frustrated with him. I couldn’t complain about his demanding attitude because he had told me not to hang around. So my unhappiness with him was totally my fault. I didn’t like that, either.

  “Geez, are you trying to murder that chicken?” Leah asked.

  I looked at the cutting board. The chopped chicken was pretty much annihilated.

  “I like it finely chopped,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, it’s finely chopped.”

  I scooped it into the casserole dish where spaghetti noodles, cheese, and peas were already waiting.

  “Want me to chase Cynthia and Brad away?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t care that they’re here.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Really? You’re totally over Brad?”

  “Totally.”

  “That’s great! Ian has a friend—”

  “No thanks.”

  “But he’s another Aussie ski instructor and—”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’ll be busy taking care of Joe.”

  Leah looked at me, her eyes blinking. “He’s not helpless, you know.”

  “Not completely, no. But he can’t get around very easily. And he’s definitely not going to be able to go to the slopes. I can’t just leave him here alone to fend for himself.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Why not?”

  “Because she likes him too much,” Allie said.

  I jerked my attention to her.

  She shrugged. “Don’t you?”

  I sorta felt like I was playing revolving door crush, leapfrogging from liking one of my brother’s friends to the other. I mean, that should have been a strike against Joe: hanging out with my brother.

  Of course, now one of my best friends was hanging all over my brother….

  “I don’t know what I feel,” I admitted. “I mean, I like him, sure. He’s nice. And okay, I feel responsible for his present condition. I fell first. He fell trying not to run over me.”

  “So you’re going to spend time with him out of obligation?”

  “I’m going to spend time with him because he needs me.”

  I wasn’t about to admit that maybe I needed him, too.

  Chapter 21

  As the days went by, Joe became the worst patient on the planet.

  He didn’t like being waited on, didn’t want people canceling their plans because of him. I offered him my bed because he couldn’t get down the stairs to sleep in the bed that Brad had vacated. I’d magnanimously offered to sleep in Brad’s bed and share the room with my brother. But I guess Joe figured out what a great sacrifice the offer was on my part, because he said that he was fine still sleeping on the couch or in the recliner.

  The first night I started out checking on him every hour on the hour—in case he needed pain medicine or something to drink or eat, or a DVD changed in the player.

  The answer was always the same: I don’t need anything, Kate.

  Eventually I gave up and stretched out on the couch so he could call for me if he needed anything. He slept in the recliner.

  He never did wake me up to get him anything. But a couple of times I woke up and found him staring at me. He always looked guilty for doing it, like maybe he shouldn’t be watching me sleep. The thing was: I lost track of how much I watched him sleep. I just liked looking at him.

  The third day we were both snappish. Lack of good sleep and guilt were responsible for my bad mood. I think Joe simply wasn’t used to being housebound.

  He was hobbling around the living room.

  “You need to use your crutches,” I chastised him.

  “I need to get out of here.”

  “Yeah, well, you can’t get out of here. You’re injured.”

  “I can’t ski, but I’m moving around better. I could go outside and build a snowman.”

  “How are you going to get to the backyard where the snow is? There are stairs, you know.”

  “I can hop down or scoot down on my butt.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  He studied me hard. “Okay. How ’bout the hot tub?”

  “What about it?”

  “I think the swirling hot water would be good for my knee, and there are no steps leading to it. Should be a breeze getting to it.”

  “There’s the freezing-our-butts-getting-in-and-out factor to consider.” Besides, did I really want to be in a small tub with him, especially since I had no bathing suit? I mean, who brings a bathing suit to a ski resort?

  “Snowman it is then,” he said.

  Stubborn, obstinate, crazy were words that flittered through my mind as I watched him struggle into his jacket, standing on one leg, before reaching down for his crutches.

  “You coming?” he asked.

  I stared at him. “You can’t be serious about going out there.”

  “Dead serious. With or without you. Although without you, I could trip and freeze to death before anyone found me.”

  That wasn’t likely to happen. He was just being difficult. On the other hand, I was going a little stir crazy as well.

  “Yeah, I’ll come.”

  I put on my own jacket, jerked my knitted cap down over my ears, and stuffed my hair up beneath it. I wanted to be there when he realized that getting down wasn’t hard…but getting back up the stairs?

  That was going to be a different story.

  It’s a little difficult to build an awesome snowman when your mobility is limited.

  Joe made it down the stairs by gripping the rail and hopping from one step to the next, holding both crutches in one hand. Once he got to the ground, he went only a couple of feet. The crutches were sinking into the foot of snow that covered the backyard. Eventually, Joe gave up and dropped to the ground.

  It took willpower on my part not to rush to his aid.

  “Okay, so crutches on snow don’t work so well,” he said, peering up at me as I stood on the steps looking down on him.

  I worked really hard not to gloat. “Tried to tell you.”

  “Well, I’m here now. I might as well enjoy it.”

  But he sure didn’t sound like he was on the verge of enjoying it.

  I moved nimbly down the stairs and knelt in the snow beside him. “What now, genius?”

  Okay, so I was gloating a little bit.

  He scooped up some snow, packed it into a ball, and held it up. “I make little snowmen.”

  What he actually did, after packing snow around his knee, was make a little snowman village. Kinda like what I created when I went to the beach and made sand castles.

  Only he made a little igloo house and had small snowmen standing around it. I’d actually gone into the house and brought out some little hard-shelled candies that he used for the eyes. He was partial to using the green pieces. So here were all these snowmen with eyes like mine.

  “You’re pretty good,” I said.

  “It’s not the first time that I’ve hurt myself while I was skiing. I’ve broken my leg twice, so I learned pretty quickly to look for other entertainment.” He tapped his snow covered knee. “This is a walk in the park.”

  “More like a hop in the park,” I corrected him.

  He grinned. “Yeah. More like that.”

&nbs
p; “Did the doctor say how long you’d have to use the crutches?” I asked.

  “He told me to use them until I got home, then have my doctor check out the knee.”

  He gathered up more snow, mashed it together. “You know, Kate, this wasn’t your fault.”

  Those words had become his mantra over the past few days. I was really growing tired of them.

  “I know that. I tried to talk you out of coming out here.”

  He peered over at me. “Not me sitting in the snow. My busted knee. It wasn’t your fault. You shouldn’t feel like you have to stay with me and pay penance.”

  “I don’t feel that way.”

  He lobbed the snowball at me.

  “Hey!”

  “Come on, Kate. Admit it. You’re only here because you feel guilty.” He shoveled more snow at me.

  “Cut it out!”

  He threw more snow at me. “Make me!”

  “Stop it! You’re gonna hurt yourself.”

  “What if I do?”

  “Then I’ll be stuck taking care of you longer.”

  The snow stopped flying. He’d destroyed his village and all his snowmen.

  Joe was breathing heavily. So was I. But there was something in his eyes, kinda like that first night when he mentioned that he’d seen me when I went to visit Sam.

  Disappointment, embarrassment. Something else.

  “I don’t want you here out of obligation, Kate.” He started scooting toward the steps.

  “Here, I’ll help you.”

  “I don’t want your help,” he ground out.

  I stood helplessly while he made his way to the steps, dragging his crutches behind him. He sat on the bottom step, put his hands behind him and pulled himself up to the next step.

  “Joe—”

  “Go have some fun, Kate.”

  “Joe—”

  “I mean it, Kate. Get the hell out of here!”

  The anger in his voice hurt. I’d been trying so hard to take good care of him, and he wasn’t appreciating it at all.

  “Okay, fine, I will.”

  “Good.”

  “Great!”

  Without looking back, I trudged toward the street. I didn’t know where I was going to go. I just knew where I didn’t want to be.

  Anywhere near Joe.

  “Hiding away?”

  I peered up from the mystery novel I was reading to find Aunt Sue looking down on me. It was the middle of the afternoon. Everyone was on the slopes, no customers in the shop. I’d made myself some hot mint chocolate, located a book with a lot of murder and mayhem, curled up on a loveseat near the fireplace, and was happily envisioning Joe as the corpse of this tale.

  “If I was hiding away, I wouldn’t do it in your store where you’d be sure to find me,” I said.

  She’d been in her office when I arrived, and I hadn’t bothered to poke my head inside to say hello. So maybe I was hiding from her a little, even though I was in plain sight.

  She sat down on the loveseat across from me. “You should find something to do that’s more fun than reading a book in my store.”

  “Strange words from a bookseller. Your profit is dependent upon people thinking that reading is fun.”

  “Kate, really, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing is wrong.”

  “Then why are you hiding out?”

  “I’m not hiding out. You found me, didn’t you? And you didn’t even have to look.”

  “I didn’t say you were hiding from me. You’re hiding from Joe.”

  Did she have to be so good at figuring me out all the time? It was really irritating.

  “He kicked me out, okay?”

  “How can a guy who only has one good leg to stand on kick you out?”

  I knew she was trying to be funny, but her words hurt, because I had to face the truth. I felt the tears burn the back of my eyes. “He doesn’t want me around.”

  “I find that hard to believe, Katie.”

  “Yeah, well, he threw snow at me and told me to leave.”

  She looked astounded. As well she should be.

  “Where did he get snow?” she asked.

  Okay, I’d obviously misread the reason for her astonishment. It wasn’t that he’d thrown snow at me, but that he’d had snow to throw.

  “He went outside to build a snowman.”

  “A snowman? Outside? How did he manage that? His knee must be getting better.”

  “Not really. He hopped down the steps.” I bobbed my head from side to side, deciding whether or not to spill it all. “He wanted to go in the hot tub, but I said no, so he decided to go build a snowman. He said he was tired of being cooped up.”

  “You should have picked Door Number One. The hot tub. Way more fun.”

  “Aunt Sue, be serious. I’ve really started to like him, and it’s so hard because I’m a terrible nurse.”

  “Doesn’t sound to me like he’s looking for a nurse. Besides, knowing men like I do, he’s probably a lousy patient.”

  “Understatement.”

  “He’s been locked in for three days. He’s probably ready to get out of there.”

  “Another understatement. But he can’t go skiing.”

  “There’s other things to do.”

  “Like what?”

  “Hot tub.”

  I glared at her. She smiled.

  “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”

  “Well, I saw Cynthia and Brad try it and she got the sniffles. That’s the last thing either Joe or I need. Something else to keep us condo-bound.”

  “So take some time away from him and go skiing tomorrow. He probably feels guilty for ruining your fun.”

  And I felt guilty for ruining his. Plus the truth was, I’d discovered that I didn’t want to be away from him. Just staying here at the store instead of going back to the condo was really hard. Punishing him with my absence was punishment for me as well.

  Aunt Sue stood and winked at me. “Honestly, Kate, give him what he asked for: a day without you around. Haven’t you ever heard that absence makes the heart grow fonder?”

  Yeah, I’d heard that, but it was another one of her sayings that just didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense.

  I watched her walk away. Maybe I was a little afraid that he’d decide he liked me being absent. Maybe that was the problem. I was afraid that my absence wouldn’t make his heart grow fonder. Instead he’d just forget about me if I wasn’t completely in his face.

  The door to the shop opened and Leah walked in. She wasn’t in her ski clothes. Just jeans, a sweater, and a jacket.

  “Hey! Joe told me that he thought I’d find you here.”

  It was a little scary how well Joe knew me. I hadn’t told him where I was going. Granted the options were limited, but still, I hated the thought of being so predictable. Predictable was boring, right?

  Leah dropped down on the love seat that Aunt Sue had just vacated.

  “You’re in early from the slopes,” I said.

  “Yeah. Ian needed to teach a class, so I thought I’d come into town and take care of a few things.”

  “Doesn’t he teach class every day?”

  “Yeah, but only for a few hours. Sometimes I hang around with the class, sometimes I ski, sometimes I just wait for him at the restaurant. Today I decided to do something.”

  “Want some hot chocolate?”

  “No, I’m cool. I needed to talk to you.”

  She sounded serious. I thought of Sam on the slopes—

  “What’s wrong? Did something happen to Sam? To Allie? Are they hurt?”

  She held up a hand. “Oh, no, it’s nothing bad. Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. But I swear it’s nothing bad.”

  I felt my heartbeat return to normal, and knew I’d overreacted. I mean, if it had been anything really serious, she would have begun with it, not told me about how she spent time with Ian.

  “What is it then?” I asked.

  She scrunched up her face. I could see thi
s was really hard for her.

  “You’re starting to scare me again, Leah.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry. It’s just that, well, I’m gonna pull a Brad on you.”

  “You’re going to start totally ignoring me?”

  She smiled, then grimaced. “I’m going to move out of the condo.”

  “Why would you do that? Where are you going to go?”

  “I’m going to go stay with Ian. I want to be with him as much as possible before winter break ends.”

  “Well, this is a surprise.”

  She bobbed her head. “I’ve totally fallen for him. Really bad. I don’t know how I’m going to go back to Texas, Kate.”

  “On an airplane.”

  She scowled at me. “I’m serious here. I don’t want to leave him.”

  Wow! That happened fast. I was stunned.

  “You’ve got another semester of high school before you graduate.”

  “I know. And my parents would kill me if I didn’t come home. And besides, I want to finish high school with my friends, go through graduation and all that with you and Allie. But after I graduate…I think I’m coming back here to live.”

  “You said a ski instructor was supposed to be temporary.”

  “Well, he was supposed to be, and I thought he would be, but the truth is, I’m crazy about him.”

  I didn’t know what to say, except the truth. “I’m happy for you, Leah.”

  “I’m happy for me, too.” She scooted up. “Listen, I know you have the bedroom with the king-size bed and sleeping on a bunk bed isn’t glamorous, but with me leaving and Joe unable to navigate stairs—”

  “I could move down to your room, and he wouldn’t have to sleep on the couch.”

  She nodded.

  He hadn’t gone for me bunking in with Sam, probably because he knew what a sacrifice it would be. But sharing a room with my best friend? No sweat. Allie and I had slept over at each other’s houses too many times to count.

  “Would I be sleeping in the top or bottom bunk?”

  She shrugged. “Whichever one you wanted.”

  “Which one does Allie sleep in?”

  She looked at the fire burning in the fireplace. “She doesn’t exactly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, the basement is kind of a world unto itself. A lot goes on that people don’t realize is going on.”