How I Came to Sparkle Again (30 page)

She woke five minutes before her alarm was set to go off and turned it off before it woke Eric. She didn’t want to deal with a sober and hungover Eric in her bed in the morning. She didn’t want to deal with all the things people said to each other after the alcohol wore off and they realized they’d gotten too close. She carefully unwound herself from his embrace and tiptoed out of her room.

chapter twenty-seven

SNOW REPORT FOR APRIL 1

Current temperature: 29F, high of 36F at 3
P.M.
, low of 24F at 4
A.M.

Mostly clear skies, winds out of the southwest at 10 mph.

99" mid-mountain, 113" at the summit. 0" new in the last 24 hours. 1" of new in the last 48.

At the end of the day, Jill swept some runs with Jason. At the bottom, he stopped to talk to some friends, so Jill was alone when Mike walked toward her on his way to somewhere else. She stepped out of her bindings and picked up her skis.

“Hey,” he said a little awkwardly.

“Hi,” she answered.

“I just wanted to congratulate you on your engagement,” he said with a forced smile.

“Oh yes,” she said, trying to keep it light. In fact, she did feel guilty for spending the night in Eric’s arms the night before. There was no reason to, she knew. Mike had been clear about what he hadn’t meant when he said he didn’t want her to go. She hadn’t done anything wrong, she told herself. “Thank you very much. When a man asks you if you want to rest your head on his fake boobs, it’s hard to say no.”

“I’m sure you’ll both be very happy.” There was an unmistakable edge. It heightened her sense that she had betrayed him somehow.

“Oh yes,” she said, “I’m sure of it. I’m sure my super religious parents will love him.”

“Grooms in drag generally are a big hit with super religious parents,” he said, his tone softening, much to her relief.

“Did you tell Cassie yet?”

“No, I figured I’d just let you invite her to the wedding.” The little edge was back. Did he really have feelings for her or was he simply a possessive person?

“Yeah … maybe we just won’t talk about this with her. What do you think?”

“I trust your judgment.”

“Hey, Mike? Is everything okay?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess something’s eating on me a bit.”

“Yeah?” Jill asked, hoping he would talk. Maybe it was something else. Maybe it had nothing to do with her.

But he avoided further conversation. “All right, well, I better let you get back to your job. See you the morning after tomorrow.”

“See you then,” she said and watched him as he walked away.

As she walked into the FAR, she passed Tom. “Hey, your fiancé is pretty embarrassed today,” he said.

“Oh,” she said sympathetically. “It’s not easy being my fiancé. There’s so much you have to do. First of all, you have to remember you proposed.…” She laughed.

Tom laughed, too. “He was hoping you’d grab a pizza and join him for a cat ride tonight.”

“He proposes and I have to buy? How is that fair?”

“Should I tell him you’ll be there?” Tom asked.

“Yeah. Sure,” she said.

When she got to the maintenance shed, Eric took the pizza from her, set it down on the track, and said, “Thanks for coming.” She nodded and smiled awkwardly as he held her hand and helped her up on the track of the snowcat.

“What kind did you get?” he asked as he closed his door.

“Well, since I didn’t know what your cholesterol was these days, I got veggie with half the cheese,” she answered.

“You’re already putting me on a diet and we’re not even married yet?”

She laughed and opted not to comment.

“So yeah,” he began. “I understand I proposed last night.” He bit his lip.

“No worries, Eric. You were super drunk. You would have married Tom.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said.

“Well, I
am
better looking,” she replied.

“You are much better looking,” he agreed. “I guess I just wanted you to know that, you know, while I wouldn’t have proposed sober, I also wouldn’t have fed you a bunch of shit just to get into your pants while I was drunk, either. I mean, you
are
the type of girl that a man wants to marry. You’re beautiful, sweet, and smart. And most importantly, you can rip on skis.”

Jill laughed.

“Don’t laugh. Tom and I have given the ax to many a woman who could not rip on skis.”

“Not before you slept with them, though,” Jill said.

“Hey, just because I sleep with a woman doesn’t mean I’m going to ski with her. I am much choosier about ski partners. So see, you should be honored,” he said.

“I am honored,” she said, humoring him.

“Good. You should be. If I was going to marry anyone, I’d want to marry you.”

“Right,” she said. “Yeah, Tom explained why you can’t get married—the whole alpha male thing.”

“Let me tell you something,” he said. “Tom is full of shit. I don’t buy that whole we-are-animals thing. It’s just been his excuse to sleep with a lot of women. Don’t let anyone try to convince you men aren’t in control of themselves. Men are in control. It’s all about values. My parents are the same age as my friends’ grandparents, so I was raised with a different set of values.”

Oh yes, it shows,
she wanted to say sarcastically, but didn’t.

“No, I just look at my life—part-time here, part-time there, making a little money but not a lot, and I don’t think it would be fair to ask a woman to follow me. And I don’t want to change my life. I like the little part here and the little part there.”

“Eric, you don’t have to explain, really. We’re good. I never took your proposal seriously. Really.”

“Well, I just wanted you to know that you are special to me,” he said.

“You’re special to me, too, sweet guy. Pizza?”

“Yes, please.”

She handed him a slice. He pulled up to a big tree with a huge red lace bra stretched around the trunk, got out, and wrapped the cable around the tree. Then he got back in and explained, “I used to have the hardest time finding that tree, so I put a bra on it.”

“Problem solved,” Jill said, wondering if that ingenuity also reflected the values of his elderly Catholic parents, and laughed to herself.

chapter twenty-eight

SNOW REPORT FOR APRIL 4

Current temperature: 33F, high of 35F at 3
P.M.
, low of 32F at 4
A.M.

Mostly clear with occasional showers. Winds out of the south at 15 mph.

98" mid-mountain, 110" at the summit. 1" new in the last 24 hours. 3" of new in the last 48.

Mike came home before Cassie woke up. He wasn’t sure if he would, so he had asked Jill to be the Easter Bunny this year. He wondered whether she had by chance chosen some of the same hiding places Kate used to and whether Cassie would notice the difference if she hadn’t.

Jill waved from the kitchen and greeted him with a smile. “Hi!” she whispered loudly.

He waved from the door, took off his coat, set down his things, and met her in the kitchen.

“Thanks for letting me be the Easter Bunny,” Jill said. “I had so much fun. It’s one of those things I never thought I’d ever get to do.”

He felt a pang in his heart just thinking about what that would be like—wanting to be the Easter Bunny and never getting to. “Hey, Jill?”

Jill sensed his trepidation. “Yeah?” she answered, concerned.

“I was a little bit of a jerk to you the other day,” he said.

“I wouldn’t say that,” she said.

“I’m sorry. I just … you just feel like part of our family, and when I heard about Eric proposing, I don’t know. You know, the Kennel guys are notorious—not necessarily in a bad way or anything, but you know, their lifestyle is different than mine, and when I heard about the proposal, even though it was ridiculous, I don’t know, it just got me wondering if you’d rather have that—something with no demands, and whether any woman would ever want to deal with all the baggage I come with.”

She didn’t want to make the same mistake she’d made before by reading too much into something, so she kept it as light as she could. “While it
is
hard to compete with a man in a wedding dress, I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

“Look, I don’t want things between us to ever be weird or anything. Cassie needs you and I don’t want to mess that up. I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

He slouched back in his chair, his head cocked to the side a little as he studied a spot on the table and then picked at it awkwardly. He looked so vulnerable to her.

She stood up and walked over to him. “No worries,” she said. “We’re good.”

Thinking she was leaving, he stood up, too.

She put her arms around him and rested her cheek on his chest.

He put his arms around her, too, and held her, resting his cheek on the top of her head. It felt to him like laying down a burden. So many things had been in his arms. Just this week, a woman handed him her dead two-year-old child, who had choked on a piece of meat and died before they got there. He had put his arms around a distraught elderly woman when her husband died. He had pulled a seven-year-old boy alive, thank God, out of a frozen pond. And he had helped a battered wife off the floor, examined her face, and then guided her into the aid car so a doctor could check her for internal injuries. He had held so many people in his arms, but no one since Kate’s service had held him in theirs. Not like this. Not for all the time that it took to soften. He felt his breath jerk and thought he might cry, so he pulled back and let go before he lost control.

She didn’t look up at him. She just nodded as if she understood, and then she left. What was becoming clearer and clearer to him was that avoiding a romance didn’t translate to avoiding disaster. This path was just as doomed.

*   *   *

Outside the Kennel, pieces of tennis balls the dogs had chewed up and buried over the winter were surfacing like buried treasure. The yard was littered with them. Scooter had set up a series of wooden pallets stolen from behind the grocery store from the sidewalk to his trailer like a bridge through the afternoon slush. In a few particularly sunny locations, the snow was gone, leaving large patches of mud and dead grass.

Jill took the sidewalk to Lisa’s front door instead of cutting through the muddy yard. She knocked and let herself in.

“Hey!” she said.

“Hey!” Lisa answered back.

Jill could hear the shower upstairs and pointed to the ceiling. “Tom?”

A big smile spread across Lisa’s face. “I don’t kiss and tell.”

An equally big smile spread across Jill’s as she nodded her approval. “It’s about time. Hey, mind if I check my e-mail for a sec?”

“Go for it.”

Dear Family and Friends,

Happy Easter, everyone! We’re so sorry to be missing Easter egg hunts with the kids! Holidays are an especially hard time to be away, but we’re so grateful today to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, for His showing us and making possible the principle of eternal life. What faith! It gives us such comfort to know that this very principle is what will allow us all to be an eternal family and gives us reason to strive to live the best lives we can so we can be together forever. I just can’t bear the thought of life ending at death and being separated from each other! We love you all so much and are so grateful for this hope.

Love,

Elder and Sister Anthony

Jill went to her settings and blocked her parents. It didn’t mean she would never talk to them again. It didn’t mean she would never go to another family gathering. It just meant she wasn’t going to make herself read any more of this.

“I just blocked my parents,” Jill said.

Lisa handed her a raspberry muffin, fresh from the oven. “Good.”

“Why couldn’t I have gotten parents who didn’t think I was going to hell?”

“Well, you got Uncle Howard, and everyone in Sparkle envies you for that,” Lisa said. “And you’ve got me.” Lisa gave her a sideways hug, and Jill rested her head on Lisa’s shoulder.

“True enough.”

*   *   *

“Uncle Howard?” Jill called through the door of his library.

“Come in!”

She opened the door and hugged him. “It’s been too long! I brought a picnic!”

“Oh, that’s nice of you! Let’s eat outside,” he said.

They sat at a picnic table outside the Summit Lodge, and Jill unpacked her goods. She had brought Jarlsberg cheese, smoked wild salmon, and a baguette from Mari’s bakery, the same thing he had brought her on her first day back in Sparkle.

“So how’s life?” he asked.

“Change is in the air. I can feel it. I can’t see it yet, but it’s coming. I’m feeling a little uneasy,” she replied.

“I know that feeling,” he said. “I’ve been having it lately myself. Restless.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’ve been thinking about going to Argentina for a couple months to climb with some old buddies of mine.”

“Yeah? When would you go?” she asked.

“Next week,” he answered with a big smile.

“I think you should do it.”

“I think I will,” he answered. “I’ll leave things tidied up here in case you want to stay here instead of the Kennel. You could try to get unsuspecting passersby to borrow books.”

Jill laughed. “That sounds perfect. I think I will,” she said.

“You know, that would warm my heart.”

“How many copies of
Siddhartha
do you have?”

“I used to have seven,” he said, “but they’re all over the mountain now. That’s part of the job. You have to look for copies at the Barkin’ Basement and other used-book stores. You can never have too many copies of
Siddhartha
.”