Kiss Her Once for Me (75)

Chapter Twenty-One


It begins to snow a little before noon, and it’s almost time to break for lunch when we finally make it to where the West Leg Road intersects with the Stormin’ Norman chairlift that will take us further up the mountain. Jack insists there are spectacular views and a beginners’ run we can take all the way back to the lodge. Except there’s no way for us to make it back to the lodge by lunchtime. Jack sends a text in the family group chat to let them know to start eating without us. Timberline, thankfully, has good service.

“That cannot possibly be safe,” I say when I see the bench we’re going to ride up the mountain on.

“I assure you it is.”

Even though the chairlift is large enough for three, we sit pressed together, shoulders and thighs touching through our enormous layers. The world seems impossibly large from up here, a craggy ridge covered in snow in front of us, endless stretches of white all around us. Snowcapped trees and expansiveness and this undeniable feeling of magic. Of something so beyond the ordinary, the kind of beautiful, magical world I used to want to create with my art, back when I was a lonely kid escaping my life through the drawings in a sketchbook.

I think about Meredith, reminding me I once believed in magic. I think about the woman tucked against my side. “Jack,” I say, and she turns to face me. We’re inches apart, close enough that I can count the pale snowflakes as they land against her dark freckles. We’re close enough that I can taste the breakfast sandwich on her breath, close enough that I’m thinking about our bathroom kiss, the memory so fresh I lick my lips, hoping to taste her there.

“What?” she asks, just as the chairlift comes to a grinding halt, and we both jerk forward. We’re not too far from the top now, but we’ve come to a complete standstill.

“Someone must have fallen when getting on,” Jack says absently. “It happens all the time.”

I turn to face her. We’re stuck. On a chairlift. There are a thousand unspoken things hovering between us, and now we have a quiet, uninterrupted moment to say them before Jack starts ignoring me completely.

“Jack,” I try again.

“It’s Andrew,” Jack interrupts.

“I know you’re feeling guilty about—”

“No.” She points to a man in bright yellow snow pants standing about thirty feet away, where the chairlift terminates at the top. It’s obviously Andrew—those are very distinct pants, and he looks impossibly attractive even from a great distance.

He’s supposed to be at lunch with the family, but of course he’s here instead. Even now, during our epic stuck-on-a-chairlift moment, the specter of Andrew is haunting us.

Andrew is the reason I’m with the Kim-Prescotts in the first place. Andrew is the reason Jack is going to be able to accomplish her dream. He’s the reason I will be able to salvage my wreck of a life using two hundred thousand dollars.

There is no snow magic. Just Andrew magic.

Jack and I both watch as, up ahead, a shorter figure in head-to-toe black (Dylan, clearly) glides up close to Andrew on a snowboard. They stand side by side for a moment, hesitating before starting their run down the trail parallel to the chairlift. Andrew leans in closer to Dylan. The snow is starting to pick up, distorting everything in a muted white film, so at first, it’s difficult to see what Andrew and Dylan are doing. It is, ironically, a bit like trying to see a shape in a Rorschach test, and Jack and I clearly realize at the exact same moment what’s happening, because she sucks in a sharp breath at the same time I snort.

Dylan and Andrew are kissing in the snow. Andrew is bent down, cupping Dylan’s face, and Dylan is arching up into him, curling around his body like a cat.

My first thought is: good for them.

But my second thought is: shit.

“Please tell me I just hallucinated my brother kissing my best friend?”

The extent of my contribution is an unhelpful “Mmmm.”

“Elle,” Jack gasps my name, then grabs onto my leg. “Are you—? Shit. That just happened. Are you okay?”

Jack stumbles and sputters, because as far as she knows, I just witnessed my fiancé kissing someone else. I turn back, but Andrew and Dylan are gone, blending into the blurs of people who are now sailing past us down below. “Elle,” Jack says again. “I’m kind of freaking out right now, but you don’t seem very surprised by this turn of events. Did you… did you know Dylan and Andrew were hooking up?”

I shake my head. “No, but I… I knew they used to, um… date.”

Jack’s fingers dig deeper into my leg through the layers of my snowsuit. “They what? My brother? And Dylan?”

“Um…”

“I know you said your relationship with Andrew is none of my business, but what the actual fuck?” Jack demands loudly on a stalled chairlift on top of a mountain.

Tell her the truth shouts a voice in my head. It’s Meredith’s voice. It’s my voice. Tell her. Just tell her everything.

But then the chairlift jerks forward, and we both fall sideways as we finish our short ride to the top. And I would tell her the truth at the top, but a sign has been posted at the terminus for Stormin’ Norman. The snow is coming in earlier and faster than expected, and visibility has diminished to the point that they’re shutting down most of the chairlifts early. A seasoned skier tells us the roads are expected to worsen quickly and warns us to get back to the parking lot.