“Try to stretch your fingers,” he said as he
pulled back his hands quickly. Had he felt the electric dots as
well?
I stretched my fingers, slowly, giving them
time to readjust. Amazing. I could feel the blood pulsing in my
palms. The numbing pain was gone. “I can move them.”
“I'm glad,” he said, his tone tender.
I raised my eyes in surrender. “Thank you.” I
blushed. “You saved my hands.”
“Don’t forget the dog,” he added.
“The wolfdog.”
He grinned. “Yes, the wolfdog.”
We shared a smile, our eyes touched by a
beautiful, unique sparkle, and the air between us suddenly filled
with…
something
, something so intense it sent sharp prickles
to my chest. It felt strange, but so amazing at the same time.
He cleared his throat and stood up. “I guess
we have to go.” His voice suddenly changed. “It’s getting late and
your boyfriend is going to be worried.”
Boyfriend?
“Dean!” I shouted in horror. How could I have
forgotten about him! I jumped up. “Where is the sl—” I blurred,
everything unexpectedly spinning.
“Excuse me, what?”
Reeling sensations wrapped around me.
Everything turned and turned and turned. “My…head…” I mumbled and
was about to fell when Tristan shoved his hand behind my back on
time and pulled me against him with the other one around my
waist.
“Kalista?” he said anxiously.
“I feel dizzy,” I said. I opened my eyes and
found his face gloriously close to mine; close enough to share a
kiss.
“Hold on. I'm going to carry you to the
base,” he said in a rush, his breath close to my lips.
“No.” I shook my head.
Stay with me, don’t
move,
I wanted to say. “It’s a long way,” I said, looking into
those deep, deep eyes.
He looked down at my mouth, as if he’d
suddenly noticed how close it was to his. He pulled up his hand and
pressed, very softly, his fingertip on my split open lip. My heart
stopped. A small splotch of crimson topped his finger. He glanced
at it and worry flooded his eyes once more. “I'm going to take you
to the base.”
“Okay,” I sighed, still in a daze. “Let’s
go.” I moved away from him and started walking unevenly. Getting
one foot in front of the other suddenly seemed a difficult
task.
“What are you doing?”
I turned to look at him. “Walking.” I
informed him.
“No, you’re not going to walk, not in your
condition. We’re going on my snowboard.” He turned and dug the
black board from the snow.
“No.”
“Look, I already saved your hands from being
amputated, and I surely don’t want to spoil the glory for letting
you vanish somewhere in the trail.” He smiled. “So you have two
choices. One, I carry you while I'm snowboarding, or two, you slide
along with me.”
“Those aren’t choices,” I said, narrowing my
eyes.
He ignored me, sitting down on the snow with
the board across his feet and putting his boots into the
bindings.
“What do you think you are? Superman?”
“No,” he said, bending over the board to
adjust the straps on his boots. “But I'm a very good snowboarder.”
His confidence left no doubt about his snowboarding skills, but,
still, it was too risky. There wasn’t enough space for both of
us.
“It’s not if you’re good or not. The board is
too narrow.”
He pulled himself up and stared at me. “Trust
me.”
My head was spinning again, this time for an
entirely different reason. I hated being this weak around him.
“Okay…but cut the speed crap”.
He smiled. “You don’t need to worry about
that. This trail is not deep, and it goes straight to the base.
We’ll be there in less than a minute.” He said. “So, should I carry
you?”
“No!” I snapped. Being lifted in the air so
close to him made me shiver. “If I'm going to fall again, I rather
stay close to the ground. I’ll keep my feet on the board…even if
there’s not enough space.” I looked at the cramped space under
Tristan long legs.
“You need to give me more credit than that.”
He tilted his head to look at me. “And we have enough space. Come
on, I’ll prove it.”
I didn’t have a choice. I moved toward him,
staggering clumsily in front of the board. “What do I do,
exactly?”
“First take off your jacket.”
I snapped up my head to look at him.
“We have a narrow space and your jacket
is
kind of bulbous.”
Self-consciousness hit me. “Thank you for
saying I look like a balloon,” I said frustrated, jerking off the
bulbous
jacket.
“You don’t look like a balloon,” he half
smiled, dropping his intense eyes on me—eyes that seemed to scan my
body with a powerful X-ray vision. He shook his head. “Anyway, it
will be easier for me to hold you without it.”
Hold me.
“So what’s next?” I asked, my face
burning.
“Turn around and put your left foot on the
board’s front.” I did so, turning my back to him and holding the
jacket in my right hand. “Good, now put your other foot in the
middle.”
This was the difficult part, the one that
would lead me to touch his body. I dragged my foot hesitantly, as
if I was about to put it in boiling water, and Tristan pulled me
gently against him, settling his hand on my stomach.
Oh, that hand. I squeezed my eyes shut.
“I just need to twist the snowboard around,”
he said softly, his delicate breath blowing over my ear. “Give me
your right arm for balance.”
Tingling vibrations brushed my spine—and my
hands. That’s when I realized the electric dots had returned. I
could feel the warmth of his hand penetrating my sweatshirt. I
lifted my right arm, holding the jacket in the air.
“Perfect,” he said as his left foot veered
the board down the trail.
The cold wind blew softly on my face,
awakening my pores. Swirls of pale pink and orange light glowed in
the horizon, soothing my eyes and spirit. I felt like I was in
another world, in a scene so magnificent that could only be a
fantasy. The board glided easily through the buttery snow, making a
serene sound that calmed my apprehension.
His right arm clutched me tight against his
body as he steered the board, like a gentle belt preventing my
fall. His snowboarding skills were outrageously good.
I wanted to stay like this, sealed to him. He
made me feel so secure that it was...startling. I didn’t even feel
the speed. Nothing else mattered any more, just being close to him
in this dreamlike moment. It was like having my own little piece of
heaven on earth.
Then I realized how bad that thought was.
“We’re here,” Tristan suddenly announced,
skidding to a halt and taking his warm hand quickly away from
me.
“Um…thank you.” I said, stepping off of the
board.
He leaned back faster than the speed of
sound. “You’re welcome,” he said with that strained voice. Had I
made him feel uncomfortable?
I turned to look at him. He was undoing the
straps on his boots. “It wasn’t that bad.” I smiled nervously.
He put the snowboard under his arm and looked
at me. “I told you I wouldn’t let you fall,” he told me with a half
smile, a gold sheen of light stroking his beautiful face, casting
that mesmeric chestnut glow around his hair.
I bit my bottom lip and lowered my eyes. From
the corner of my eye, I saw his lips twisting into a full
smile.
“Tristan?” called someone behind me. I
followed the voice and saw a man from the ski patrol standing a few
feet away. “I thought you’d left already. I saw you getting into
your car, like, half an hour ago,” the man told him confused.
I drew back my head to look at him, confused
as well.
Tristan’s expression was stiff like a rock.
“I decided to stay for a while,” he said flatly, ignoring my
eyes.
“To do what? All the lifts stopped a long
time ago.” The man seemed puzzled.
Tristan lowered his eyes, no words coming
from his mouth.
“Oh, I see,” the man said, eyeing me, surely
deducing the wrong answer. “I’ll leave you two alone.” He headed
toward the Elk Lodge.
I knew it. The lift had stopped, and there'd
been no one else behind us. So how did he get where I was? He
certainly didn’t climb up the hill. It would’ve taken him too much
time. And how did he find me? That side of the hill was vast, with
slopes snaking down everywhere like a bowl of spaghetti.
Something wasn’t right. He was hiding
something. “So I'm a space cadet, huh?” I stared at him in
disbelief, gulping back anger.
“There you are!” Dean shouted suddenly,
speeding up towards us from the blue terminal. I smiled one of
those fake smiles, trying to show him that I was fine, and turned
my head to face Tristan again. He hadn’t moved, but he was gazing
at me, his face masking new pain in his eyes.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” Dean
stopped next to me, struggling for breath. “I even left the sled to
go and look for you.”
I looked back at Dean. “I lost my sled too,
sorry.” I brushed my hair behind my ear. It twirled around like
frosty Twizzlers.
“What happened?” Dean looked at my split open
lip concerned, stroking my blushing cheek.
Tristan snorted a harsh sound.
Dean removed his hand and spun his head,
following my glance. “Tristan,” he said, a dark tone in his
voice.
Tristan nodded, not taking his eyes away from
mine.
“Snowboarding, huh?” Dean asked, spotting
Tristan’s board under his arm.
“Yes,” he said, still looking at me.
Dean shook his head, puzzled. “Didn’t you
have a heart condition or something like that? I thought you could
only swim at RAC.”
This time, Tristan glared at Dean.
“I mean, you’re not supposed to do extreme
stuff like this.” Dean continued.
“Yes,” Tristan said, breaking his stiffness.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to do illicit
stuff
either.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dean
snapped.
“You know what I mean.”
“Hell, I don’t.”
“Then I gave you more credit than you really
need.”
Dean glared his disapproval. “Like you
haven’t done things you shouldn’t do.”
“Exactly,” Tristan said, squelching Dean’s
words as if they were a bug.
I wasn’t an expert on guy discussions or
anything, but it looked like Tristan had won. And the way he looked
so…unaffected, was incredibly attractive.
Still, I hated liars, especially guys that
lied, and he was unquestionably in my “disgust category” at the
moment. He proved my dad’s theory about men: they couldn’t be
trusted.
“We have to go,” I urged, tugging Dean’s
sleeve. I turned, avoiding Tristan’s eyes, and strode to the
parking lot. But in that flash of a second, his face had seemed
tormented by something.
“Yeah, let’s go.” Dean said, looking at him
longer than needed, and then joined me.
I snatched the towel to wrap it up around me.
My hands were still sore and my lower body was covered in a pinkish
shade. I guessed the bulbous jacket had lessened my fall after all.
I could notice the difference between the two parts of my body. I
looked like a strawberry-milk lollipop, with two distinct
layers.
I put on some cotton pajamas, sat at my desk
and turned on my laptop. It had been a while since I’d checked my
email. After deleting all the trashy messages, excruciating
forwards—telling how bad my luck was going to be in the next few
days if I refused to pass on the chain—the only thing left was two
single messages. Two startling messages.
What the—?
They were from Steve. One
week old.
I opened the first one.
Hey Kal,
Whazzup? It’s been a long time, I know.
Just wanted to check how you were. My mom
spoke with Peter the other day and, well, I thought about you. So,
do you like your new place? Must be different as hell. What about
school? Friends?
All the same for me, nothing new. Hope to
hear soon from you.
Take care.
Steve.
Looking at his name at the end, I couldn’t
stop the grin stretching across my face. I continued with the other
one.
Sorry, it’s me again.
I forgot to tell you that,
well, I miss you
.
Knowing him as I did, I was sure that last
message had been hard for him to write. “I miss you” wasn’t
something he would normally say. Not even to his mother. He wasn’t
the cheesy type of person who would give his girlfriend a poem or a
rose. That wouldn’t even cross his mind. And Valentine’s Day was a
foolish commercial holiday where they used people’s feelings to
generate profit.
Still, he had a huge heart and was the best
friend someone could ever have.
Perhaps our friendship had a chance after
all, and there was nothing more valuable than that. I’d truly
understood once and for all that we weren’t meant to be together in
that way. His rejection had hurt like hell, but losing him as a
friend…well, that’d been too much. But now there was another chance
for us to get back our friendship.
“Steve,” I typed…
Yeah, it’s been a long time, but I'm glad
you wrote.
School is fine. I’ve made up some really
nice friends. Owen and Dean are in the football team, and Valerie,
Owen’s girlfriend, is the nicest girl you can imagine.
Ruidoso is really small, but the landscape
is beautiful. You should come and see it.
Today I went to do some tubing with Dean. I
know what you’re thinking but I wanted to try something new, and
ended up liking it.
Surprising, I know.
Take care and I miss you, too.
Kalista.
I turned off the computer, feeling a lot
better, flipped the light off and slipped into bed, still wearing a
smile.