Carry Your Heart (25 page)

“I’m not asking you…” but he was gone with a click.
And just like that, you don’t have a boyfriend anymore. Just like that, he’s gone.

***

Danny never did anything like this. Whenever I think of Hunter, I remember Danny. Danny never hurt me badly, never made me doubt his love. Danny scared me with his love, with how strongly he felt.

From the first moment, he knew what he wanted. I never worried about other girls. I worried about him, more than anything—needing too much from me and expecting too much, too fast.

But then I fell for him. And
God
, I fell hard. Danny became my whole world. We were twin souls—disciplined, focused on winning, oblivious to the noise of most people our age.

And everything I worried about, he took away. And everything I did that made me feel like a freak, he did too. We were the same.

Hunter isn’t anything like me anymore. Maybe that’s why I fell in love so much more quickly with him. Because he’s exciting and dangerous and he has a terrible attitude and he doesn’t give a fuck.

I shouldn’t like that about him, but I do. I
love
that about him.

“I’m not in love with Hunter,” I tell myself, crying in the bathroom, washing my face. “I am not in love with Hunter. I am in love with Danny.”

But I confuse them in my head. And I miss them both. I miss Hunter so much already.

Whenever I think of him, something swells my chest, Hunter’s smile, the way he could touch me and make me just
feel
so many things, but above all of them, he made me feel alive.

“It’s over,” I tell Lottie at dinner.

And I repeat that in my head. Because it’s true. For both of them.
It’s over. It’s over. It’s over. Danny. Hunter. It’s over.

Chapter Thirty-Five

The only time I hear from Hunter after Mammoth is late at night in texts. He’s packed up his things and left Utah before we get back.

Joe tells me he went back to Whistler to gear up for the X Games. Packed his shit up and went back to Canada. Leaving behind me and Shane. That’s what he does. He said that at the airport.
As someone who runs away from a lot of shit…

The late-night texts are impersonal enough that I know exactly what it’s like to be just another girl who has slept with Hunter Dawson. They all say things like
come
ovreeer
and
where u at babe
and then occasionally,
you never fucking loved me.

I don’t write back. I’m not going anywhere to meet Hunter.
It’s over
. And I did love him. I do love him. He’s gone, but I can’t make the love go away. I miss him so much that not being able to tell him that hurts, like I made him up in my head and he disappeared. But I tell myself it’s over. I have to.

It becomes a prayer.
It’s over.
That eventually, I won’t have to tell myself, because I’ll feel that way. Instead, I just feel broken.

I try not to think about all the girls he has fucked since we broke up. Or if maybe he’s living with Laurel over in Alta. I wonder what he told Shane when he went back to Canada. I wonder what he told Micah. Joe.

I’ve heard how dismissive he can be of people he thinks little of. I know that I’m one of those people now.
Bitch. Slut.
There’s a lot of things he might be saying about me.

Mike told me he knew I was focused. He could see it in my eyes. He could also hear the gossip. Anyone could.

My dad sounds worried when I tell him. “Well, what happened?”

I don’t know what to say.
Everything happened. Nothing happened.

“I just need to focus on skiing.”

It’s a good answer, the kind of answer adults respected.

And Lottie says she thinks I did the right thing. She won’t say why, but I know Laurel told her things she won’t repeat. I know she’s right not to repeat them. I know hearing anything else would hurt.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Two things start to happen. I start to win. And I forget to feel.

My whole soul feels like it’s undergone some kind of radical, invasive surgery, where the part of me that enjoyed life was removed.

But, I’m winning. It becomes robotic, compulsive. Training, nutrition, sleep, competing. When I think of Hunter, I force myself to do something else to kill the desire to call him up and tell him.
Fine, you can treat me like shit. Just come back to me.

I don’t let that happen. Instead, I win. I ski. I live it. I breathe it. I become it.

Joe meets me for breakfast before we both leave for the big Tahoe races. If anything, since Hunter, I’ve gotten better. I haven’t lost. I’ve been first.

Tahoe means a lot to both of us. It’s where Danny grew up. And the next few days mean a lot to us, too. Danny was born on February 3rd.

“I talked to Mrs. Keller,” he says simply.

“And?”

“She’d like us to come by,” he says it cautiously, not quite an invitation. “I’m not sure if you remember…”

“His birthday is on Sunday.”

“Right,” Joe says softly. “Parker’s going to come too.”

Danny is buried close to his parents’ house. Well, his headstone is close to his parents’ house, in the St. Mary’s Cemetery. They scattered his ashes on the mountain.

I try not to think about skiing on the mountain where his ashes were scattered, wondering if I was running over pieces of Danny, wondering what ashes were there. His hands, which were strong and warm? His brown eyes? The bits of his sandy hair?

I shudder at the notion. Pieces of Danny. He shouldn’t be in pieces. He was twenty years old. Like me. He should be breathing. He should be here.

“Can I come?” I ask Joe after a moment. “To see Mrs. Keller?” She told me to call her Dana. Danny was named for her. She’d wanted a girl. She didn’t get one, but they named him Daniel after her.

Daniel Robinson Keller. Born February 3, 1991. Died November 13, 2012.

Almost 21.

I swallow thickly on my emotions, my thoughts. Thinking of the funeral programs I keep in my bottom drawer at home. Wondering if anyone’s visited Ryan’s parents on his birthday in April last year.

I didn’t think of Ryan when I burst out of the snow that day. I…

“Pippa?”

“Sorry,” I say.

He smiles. “It’s okay. Maybe we can ski backcountry.” He looks at me carefully. “I think Danny would like that.”

Ryan would love it. Danny? I don’t know if Danny would. He wasn’t as much of an adrenaline junkie as Ryan and I had been. He told us the weather report that morning. Said we shouldn’t ski if it got too warm.

It had been a cold day. Even if it hadn’t, I never thought we all might die. You never believe you’ll be the one to get the shitty odds. Until you are. Until you’re pinned under snow and…

“Pippa,” Joe says, again, reaching for my arm.

“Sorry, I’m just…remembering things.”

“Like what?”

“The avalanche,” I whisper. It’s all I have to say. I put my head into my arms and breathe slowly. I’m
not
going to have another public breakdown. I’m going to be okay this time. I refuse to give into the rush of emotion.

I’m surprised to find that this finally works.

When I lift my head, nobody has noticed the near-miss. Just Joe, looking at me in concern. “Pip, we don’t have to…”

“No, let’s ski backcountry. We’ve been planning to,” I say. I swallow. It was a
freak
accident. Let it go.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

I think of Hunter on the plane to Tahoe. Maybe because there’s bad turbulence and I grip my armrests a little too hard. Maybe just because it’s hard not to think about the person you love. I think of Hunter and then I think of Laurel, or some anonymous girl in his room. Someone thinner and taller than me. In his bed. Where I once thought I belonged.

I fucking hate the way my brain works.

Why are you making awful shit up?

He’s gone it’s over.

When we land in Tahoe, I laugh with Lottie on our way to the baggage claim.

I step down onto the escalator before she does.

And there he is.

Standing at baggage claim. Tall. Dark. Scowling. He’s gotten even more handsome since we broke up, I’m sure of it.

He’s doesn’t love you
, I remind myself as my breath catches.

I can’t decide whether or not I want him to turn around. He seems fine. Grouchy. Gorgeous.

Lottie nudges me.

“Hunter’s…”

“I saw,” I mutter.

He fiddles with his phone aimlessly. I wonder who he’s texting.
Not
me
. He’s sober, after all. It’s a normal hour of the day. I don’t come into play until his inhibitions have been shattered by alcohol and he’s desperate.

He’s wearing that grey Henley I love so much. Slouchy jeans dark and low on his waist. He looks good. He always looks good. I didn’t even change out of my pajamas before the flight. I look like Chewbacca.

I’m drooling again. Over Hunter in baggage claim. He’s probably fucked up on Xanax, grateful to be alive, having totally forgotten my existence.

The flash of blond hair startles me. The voice—it’s high—and I recognize it miles away. And then I see exactly who it is. Laurel Bates.

This is not fucking happening to me right now.

“Shit,” Lottie mutters.

“Don’t do anything,” I say back.

“I’m not, but shit, Pippa,
what are we going to do?”

I turn to look at her and she meets my eye and we both burst out laughing.

“Let’s just get our bags,” I say. I don’t look. I can’t. Jealousy is such an easy word to use as a weapon, when someone’s being petty or annoying. She’s
just
jealous. But when the emotion actually seizes you, it’s crippling. A mix of rejection and hurt and wonder. He
chose
that. He
chose
differently than you.

Lottie exhales, like she’s as stressed out as I am, and we creep sketchily around the backside of the carousels. I giggle.

“What?”

“I feel like I’m in
Ocean’s
Eleven
,” I admit, trying to latch onto anything that’s not the fact that Laurel and Hunter are standing together in baggage claim.

She crouches lower, exaggerating her tiptoeing slouch to the bags, and we link arms and when Hunter turns to look at me, a stunned, embarrassed look on his stupid, smug face, I just laugh.

“Seriously,” I whisper to Lottie. “Of all the fucking things in the world.”

She smiles. “At least you know he was freaking out on the plane.”

“I’d be freaking out on a plane with Laurel,” I say darkly.

Hunter’s eyes hold mine and Lottie tightens her grip on my arm. Laurel tosses her head, looking over one shoulder to see me. I make sure to smile at them both.

No matter how miserably disappointing Hunter Dawson turns out to be, she’s not going to get the satisfaction of seeing me with anything other than a big grin on my face. And
why
not laugh?

There is nothing I can do about it. I broke up with him. He went back to her. And they came to Tahoe on the same day as me. My luck was so bad it was funny.

Hunter didn’t look happy at all to see me. And I stood there too long, letting him stare at me. Staring right back.

The haunted look in his eyes made me want to go to him. After everything that had happened, the look—dark and hurt and full of questions—made me want to go over to him. Put my hands on his chest. Whisper in his ear.
Tell me what it is. I’ll carry it for you.

The siren signaling the arrival of new bags blares and Lottie tugs on my wrist, like an impatient babysitter with a distracted child. I turn to her and we move away from him.

I can’t help myself. I turn my head back, one last look.

I see he’s turned away from me, see Laurel’s hands on him, her face close to his, clinging to him. And he’s looking at her.

And I guess, to anyone who saw them, they would think they were such a gorgeous, happy couple. I’ll give them gorgeous. Only a fool would try to dispute that.

I think viciously that they aren’t happy. They just can’t be. And I feel a crushing wave of sadness for Hunter, because as badly as he’s hurt me, I can’t stand the look on his face when he’s hurt.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Lottie and I couldn’t sleep the morning of the final. We woke early, went to Starbucks together, and went back to her room to sit on the balcony and talk quietly.

It’s a crisp, chilly day. Six inches of snow overnight.

They’re detonating on the mountain. Triggering avalanches before someone else does. It’s a routine procedure, but I’ve rarely spent time noticing it. I do this morning. The day before Danny’s 22nd birthday.

Dynamite explosions puncture the quiet calm of morning. Noise rolls over the hills and down into our rooms. It sounds like thunder, but thicker and longer.

We drink coffee on our balcony, looking at the mountain, where plumes of white snow rise high, like smoke. “Does this freak you out?” she asks of the crackling noise in the air, the avalanches being set off all along to mountain before anyone goes up to ski.

I shake my head. “No.”

She rests her forearms on the railing, looking up at the mountain. If you saw her, you would never guess what a ferociously competitive skier she is. She looks dainty, like a china doll, like a ballet dancer.

“After the avalanche, it’s all I could think about,” she confesses.

The mountain looks like it’s smoldering now. I know the earth must be shuddering as the snow moves, thousands and thousands and pounds of it cascading down ridges, slamming into old trees, breaking branches, smashing into rocks, changing the whole terrain of the mountain

You have no idea how much it weighs. How quickly it gathers and grows—weight and speed—this vicious moving force.

Hold out a hot hand in a snowstorm and watch the flakes melt. You can’t feel their weight at all. They barely last a second in your hands. They drip away into nothing; you wipe the damp remains on your jacket.