First Love: A Superbundle Boxed Set of Seven New Adult Romances (78 page)

I had no idea those words were going to come out of my mouth, but I feel better that they did. It was probably the worst thing I’d ever said to her. The apology was just as unexpected to Tina as it was to me, and she stares silently at the trickle of water slowly making its way down the blade of the knife.

“It’s okay, Maria. Really,” she says after a long silence. “I’m okay now.”

“I mean it, Tina. Wait, no, I mean I didn’t mean it,” I stammer, completely losing track of what I was saying. “What I meant was... oh
goddamn it
! I can’t even apologize correctly!”

Tina laughs, tosses the silverware down on the table and hugs me tightly.

I just don’t understand people. I deserve scorn at best, and she’s forgiving me? I don’t deserve this at all; I don’t deserve
her
. She’s the best friend I could ever have hoped for.

I hug her back and try not to start crying again, even though this time they’d at least be happy tears.

“So this means you’re going skiing, right?” she asks, her voice muffled by my sweater, and I start to laugh. She just won’t let it go.

“Yes. I’m going skiing,” I answer. “I don’t want to, but I need to.”

“Fuck yes!” says Tina excitedly, and she squeezes me even more tightly. When she looks up at me, her eyes are alive and sparkling with excitement again. I just made her day.

“Seriously Maria, trust me on this: going skiing this weekend is the first step to changing everything.”

“That’s probably just a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?”

“Nope. Not at all,” she answers, returning to her dishrag and finally drying the silverware. “If you’re going to learn to trust people again, you might as well have a friend with you at the start, right?”

“Well...”

“Oh just say I’m right, will you?”

I laugh as I wash the last plate. “Okay, fine. You’re right.”

“Thanks. About damned time you admit it,” she says with a grin. “Anyway, just relax and let go this weekend, okay? I’ll be there with you the entire time.”

I smile at her but say nothing as I start to clean the counters. I don’t know if I believe that this weekend will change anything, but she’s right... I have to try.

It’s been a very long time since I went snowboarding, and for one brief second, I’m almost looking forward to it.

Saturday, February 23 – 8:10 AM

Maria

The door bursts open as I’m putting on my coat and the cold air immediately chills my toes. Tina’s hair is speckled with snow, and she looks like she’s ready to kill someone. I hope it isn’t me.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, putting my shoes. “And shut the door, will you? It’s freezing!”

“Maria... come outside and help me,” she says, panting and trying to catch her breath.

I grab my gloves, follow her outside, and laugh as I see the giant wall of snow piled up on top of her tiny VW bug. I can barely see the car!

“If I ever meet the guy in charge of plowing, I’m gonna fucking kill him,” she hisses.

Tina tosses me a snow shovel, and as I start clearing away the snow from behind the car—dropping it onto the car next to hers, of course—she clears off the headlights and windshield. Last night’s snowfall was light and powdery, but there’s so much of it that it’s still a pain to move. I’m out of breath within minutes, and I’ve only cleared maybe a quarter of the car.

“Hey, Craig?”

When I look up, Tina is on her cell phone. She paces impatiently back and forth on the sidewalk as she talks.

“Yeah, we’re gonna be a little late. Dumbfuck plow guy decided my car was a great place to put it all. Nah, we’ll be good. Maria’s helping me, and I’ll go enlist the other two girls if I need to.”

Meanwhile, I can finally see her license plate. At least it's progress.

“Just go ahead without us. We’ll meet you at the top of the Castor run, okay? See you in a bit.”

“Which one is Castor?” I ask as I finally reach the packed ice at the bottom of the pile.

“It’s a green, don’t worry. It’s a long run from the top of the mountain, but nice and easy,” she answers. “It’ll be a good start.”

She gets in and tries to pull the car out, but she can’t get enough traction to make it over the block of ice behind her wheels. I start shoving from the front, but it’s still not enough.

Suddenly, she leaps out of the car in a huff and runs into the apartment, leaving a trail of snow behind her. I hear a commotion inside and then Tina returns dragging Lacey and Dinah by the wrists. I giggle and then double over in a fit of laughter as I realize that neither one of them has shoes on.

“Get your butts up there by Maria and give us a hand, will you?” shouts Tina, and she leaps back into the car.

“How do you put up with her?” whines Dinah, but I’m out of breath from laughing and can’t answer.

Tina’s tires squeal as she slams the tiny car into reverse, and with the three of us pushing in unison, the car finally makes it over the ice.

“Thanks. You two go warm up now. I’ll bring back cocoa for you,” I say, waving to Lacey and Dinah as they sprint back into the apartment.

“You’d better!” yells Dinah, and she closes the door behind her.

Tina waves to me from the car and I leap into the passenger seat. It’s time for snowboarding.

––––––––

The top of the mountain comes closer as we wait excitedly to get off the chair lift. The lift is stupidly slow, but that’s fine with me. I haven’t gone snowboarding in years, and I like the idea of easing into it again.

I look over at Tina as she sits next to me on the lift, and I can’t help but laugh at her.

“What? What’re
you
looking at?” she asks with a knowing smile. She knows exactly what I’m looking at.

“Pink skis? Really, Tina? Pink skis with a pink hat? Are you five?”

“Don’t you go talking to me about style, Miss ‘Oh I’m Wearing a Safety Helmet’ Ayala.”

“Hey, brains are squishy.”

She laughs, and then we call off our fake argument as the chair lift reaches the landing.

I glide gracefully down the gentle slope of the landing, but just as I start to feel proud of myself, I catch the front of my board on a ridge of ice and fall flat on my face. Tina cries out in surprise and lands right on top of me, shoving my face straight into the snow.

“Oh god, sorry Maria!” she gasps, scrambling to her feet to get off of me, and I burst out laughing. My sides hurt from laughing, and I can’t seem to stop. She sits down next to me, wipes the snow off my cheek with her obnoxiously pink mittens, and starts to laugh too. God, what a great start. I haven’t felt this happy in months.

“Okay, where is that idiot anyway?” says Tina after she finally calms herself down.

She clips into her skis and starts toward the slope, and I hop up and skate along after her.

“Hey, there’s Craig,” she calls out, pointing ahead.

Somehow, she recognizes Craig through his thick furry hat, ski coat, and goggles, and she waves to him. He waves back, and the other guy standing next to him waves back as well. Craig’s friend is tall, and he’s wearing a black coat and gray, loose-fitting snow pants. Like Craig, his face is almost entirely obscured by goggles and a scarf. I wonder how he can even breathe like that. I wasn't expecting anyone other than Craig but I'm too excited about snowboarding to care. Not even surprise guys can ruin this for me.

My eyes light up as I realize his friend is standing on a dark blue snowboard. I’m not the only boarder after all!

Craig turns back to his friend, nods, and then they suddenly take off down the slope.

“Hey! You dirty cheaters!”

Tina shouts and shakes a fist in exaggerated anger as she races to the edge of the hill, and then she pushes off and chases after them. Her pink and yellow scarf flutters in the wind behind her as she shoots down the slope.

I watch as she takes off, but I don’t follow her. I’m not ready to go quite yet.

I skate up to the edge, look down, and take a deep breath. It is so early in the morning that the snow is still fresh and the course nearly empty. The world is silent around me but for the wind, and for the first time in a very long time, things are simple.

It’s just my board, the snow, and me. It’s time for me to fly.

I start slowly—cutting back and forth, weaving, relearning the moves that I’ve mostly forgotten—and I let myself go faster and faster as my confidence builds. I don’t know if it’s the fresh, cold air or the empty mountain around me, but I don’t care that I’m out in public now or that there will be people waiting for me at the bottom. I feel fantastic as I soar down the mountain. Nothing could possibly go wrong today.

The wind is so loud around me that I can’t even recognize it anymore. It’s a strange, white silence instead, blocking out everything but the mountain and the wonderful feeling of freedom. I decide to be a little more daring, and I cut to the left and weave between two trees. My laughter can’t keep up with me as I fly down the mountain, and I leave it behind for the next person down to hear.

I briefly contemplate trying to jump, maybe even do a flip, but I quickly slam the door on that idea. No way—I’m not
that
good. I let myself go even faster, though, and bask in the exhilarating thrill and the feeling of freedom as I surge down the slope.

Craig and Tina are both waiting for me when I finally reach the bottom, but Craig’s friend is nowhere to be seen.

“Hey, where’d your buddy go?” I ask, panting excitedly. I can feel a huge smile working its way across my face and I want to get back on the lift and go again.

“Oh... um, he’s not very good at this. He probably fell a lot.”

Five minutes later, Craig’s friend finally comes into sight. He slowly weaves back and forth as he goes down the slope, and by his fifth tumble, I have to agree with Craig. His friend is terrible.

“
At least he’s trying,
” I think. If I didn't already know how to snowboard, would I have come at all? Probably not. He's braver than I am.

He falls over twice just trying to make it down the final two-hundred feet of the slope. By the third fall, the grade is too flat to make it the rest of the way to us. He pounds the snow with his gloved fist, unclips from his board, and runs the rest of the way to us.

“Alright, there’ll be plenty of time to rest on the ride up. Let’s go again!” shouts Tina. She hoots loudly, pegs Craig in the face with a snowball and then laughs as she books it for the chair lift.

“Oh you
bitch
,” shouts Craig, and he takes off after her.

By the time I clip into my board and start skating after them, they’re already on a chair and heading up the mountain together. I catch one quick glimpse of Craig shoving snow down the back of her scarf before they disappear behind the trees.

As I wait for the next chair, I glance nervously back at Craig’s friend as he clumsily skates after me, and I take a deep breath.

I can do this. Nothing can happen on a ski lift. I’ll be just fine.

Suddenly, an idea strikes me. What if Tina planned this?

I chuckle and shake my head. She totally did. She planned this whole damned thing, didn’t she? She took off with Craig and left me behind with one of his friends—someone they both know is trustworthy—to force me to talk to a guy.

No way. Not doing it. I’ll just go up alone.

“
Come on. What could possibly happen on a ski lift?
”

The thought bursts across my mind just as I’m about to hop on a chair and leave him behind, and I hesitate for just too long. The chair passes me by before I can get into position.

“No, nothing could go wrong,” I whisper, trying my hardest to convince myself it’s true.

Tina’s right; I have to do this. I have to force myself to talk to people again. As hard as I try, I can’t think of anything that could possibly happen while I freeze my butt off fifty feet up in the air. I can do this. I can sit next to a guy for fifteen minutes and talk to him.

“Come on—let’s beat them to the bottom this time,” I shout back to him, and I dash for the next chair.

When I look back over my shoulder, he’s standing dead in his tracks as if he’s seen a ghost.

“Hurry up or I’m going without you!” I shout, waving to him, and he snaps out of his trance and hurries to catch up with me.

The lift slowly turns the corner, and I carefully line up my board so that I glide safely onto the chair. Craig’s friend tries to emulate me, but he only barely makes it on without getting crushed.

“
Now starts the hard part
,” I think as the chair takes off and pulls me high into the air. I’m sitting next to a guy I don’t even know, and I’m going to be here for almost fifteen minutes.

“
Relax... you can do this
,” I think to myself, but my heart pounds all the same.

“Jesus Christ, how do you make getting onto this deathtrap look so easy?” asks Craig’s friend, and I freeze like a deer meeting its first pair of headlights as I recognize his voice.

No way. She didn’t do this. Tina would
not
have done this to me!

Owen takes off his goggles and then his scarf, using the end of it to wipe away the fog forming on the inside of his lenses.

Tina put me on a ski lift with Owen.

I’m going to kill her. If I make it off this chair without having a heart attack, I’m absolutely, totally going to kill her for this.

I feel panic start to rise inside me. I would run away from him, but there’s nowhere I can go! I’m stuck on this chair, sitting right next to him, for fifteen minutes. My heart races in my chest, and I feel like I’m going to faint.

He looks over at me, and suddenly his eyes go almost as wide as mine.

“Maria?” he asks incredulously.

I nod silently.

He closes his eyes and sighs, and as he looks away, I suddenly realize that he hadn’t recognized me with my helmet on.

“I’m gonna fucking kill him for this,” he mutters under his breath.

Just like that, the ice is broken. Maybe it’s more like a single brick falling out of a wall between us. I don’t know—I’m terrible with metaphors. What I
do
know is that when I heard him, I warmed up a little. He doesn't want to be here either, and that’s a good enough start for me.