Love Today (17 page)

“No!” she squealed. “Eat Taryn!”

He stopped attacking her and smiled at me. “
Good idea
,” he said, meeting me in the kitchen.

Maggie was expecting something a little more
violent
I guess
, so when all he did was kiss me, she said, “Ew.”

I shook my head with a smile as Zack sat down in front of the sandwich on the table.

“Everything go
well
?” I asked him.

“Went great,” he replied before taking a bite. He took a few seconds to chew and then asked, “You know who Ben Mackey is?”

I shook my head no.

“Another big time boarder. He actually lives around here and his family owns an outdoors store near Park City. But he ended up joining us, which was fun, but he also talked to me about carrying a contract with Secure. They carry some of my stuff indirectly, but he wants to change that.”

“Wow, that’s cool.”

He nodded. “Yea
h, it’s totally cool.
I love working with smaller companies.
”

Maggie had finished most of her sandwich and she wandered over to the couch to watch cartoons. Zack asked what we did that morning, and while I explained our day so far, Maggie was zonked out within
five
minutes.
He
finished his sandwich and downed the rest of his juice, and as he announced that he was going to take a quick shower, he noticed Maggie was sound asleep.

“Uh, I said ‘I
’m going to take a quick shower,
’ ”
he repeated
to me
.

He was headed for the other room with a smile, and I jokingly said, “Okay, have fun.”

He rolled his eyes playfully, but a minute later I did cover Maggie with a blanket and made my way to the bedroom.

Later that afternoon we did make it to the bunny slope. I wasn’t that great on a snowboard—I’d only done it a few times—but watching Zack with Maggie was pretty cute. I mainly took pictures, but not with my expensive equipment because I didn’t want to fall and break anything—a camera
or
myself.

I was actually kind of worried that Maggie wouldn’t like snowboarding, and I was afraid that Zack wo
uld be disappointed with that. B
ut he knew just how to take the intimidation out of it by falling first and showing her it was okay.
I could tell he was going to be a great teacher for her.

The two of them had a blast, even though Maggie really didn’t get to the point where she would go down the hill on her own. She wanted Zac
k to face her and hold her hand
every time, but he was thrilled that she would even do that.

“It’s your turn,” Maggie told me an hour later.

“My turn?”

“Yep. Zack gets to teach you now.”

“Sounds like a plan,” he smiled
, holding his hand out for mine.

“Go, Taryn!” she encouraged. “It’s fun!”

“Okay, but maybe you should hike up the hill with me, okay? Then you can make sure I do it right.”

“Okay,” she shrugged.

As we walked up the hill with our boards Zack whispered, “That’s sneaky.”

I smiled and said, “I just want to see.”

“I know; it was my next step.”

“Oh, then go ahead and—”

“No, we’ll just see,” he smiled.

We didn’t go as far up on purpose, and I told Maggie that I was afraid to go any higher.

“Maggie, just show Taryn how easy it is. You can even do it by yourself. Taryn, Maggie could do it all by herself and then you’ll see how easy it is. Show her Maggie. Just coast down the hill a little ways and show her how.”

I almost thought that she wouldn’t do it, just because she looked a little afraid at first. But Zack held her board while she stepped into it and she said, “Put your hands out like this and kinda sit.” She did just that as she started to slide a few feet and added, “And just balance.”

“Oh
my gosh
,” I said, covering my mouth with my hand. She was doing it all by herself. There wasn’t much of a hill to go down, but she did it all by herself.

When she came to a natural stop she said, “That was slow!”

We both laughed and Zack said, “Then get back up here and we’ll make Taryn go even higher!”

While Maggie trekked up the hill
,
I looked at him and shook my head. “How is it that she’s getting to be so outgoing?”

He came closer to me and kissed my cheek. “Because you’re giving her the opportunities.”

We did hike up the hill a little further, and we just followed as far up as Maggie went. She stopped about where she and Zack had been starting from and said, “Okay, Taryn. It’s your turn.”

“Okay, I’ll go by myself if you go by yourself.”

“You’re
gonna
go by yourself?” she asked, totally surprised.

“Yep, I’ll try. But only if you do it at the same time with me.”

“And Zack
,
too?”

“Yes, definitely Zack
,
too,” I nodded. “He’ll have to pick me up when I crash.”

She giggled at that, but we did all agree to go at once. Maggie did the “ready, set, go!” for us, and as we started our descent, Zack said, “I’m going to push you down just so I can fall on you.”

That made me laugh and I almost fell on my own. But Maggie was close to me and I quickly righted myself. But Zack did board right behind me and he wrapped his arms around me as we coasted down the hill and watched Maggie. This was comfortable to me because I trusted him entirely, so I just relaxed and let him kiss the side of my face and neck. When we came to the end of the slope he released me
, and
because
he knew it was going to happen, he turned toward Maggie to help her stop just before she
might have
crashed.

“You did it!” he told her. “Nice job!”

He held out his hand for a high five and she slapped a glove against it.

“Good job Maggie,” I told her.

“Can we go again?” she asked us.

“Sure,” Zack said. “But first… Let’s go over stopping, okay? Now that you’re good enough to snowboard on your own, you’ll need to learn to stop on your own, all right?”

She nodded her head, so the next
lesson
began.

All in all it was a pretty adventurous day. After snowboarding Maggie wanted to go swimming again
. We did that for about an hour
and then
we
went out to dinner at El
Chanate
.

Maggie was pretty exhausted after that, especially since her lunchtime nap was hardly a nap at all. She was out like a light after watching ten minutes of TV with us that night.
Zack did his best to get me to go to the spa that
evening, but I was too happy being
with him. I don’t think he felt like objecting anyways, and I could tell that he was glad I wanted to stay.

Saturday started out with another snowboarding session, but that time Zack wanted to take Maggie up one of the lifts. I almost objected
because I worried she might get hurt
, but he assured me that it would be perfectly fine. When Maggie sensed my hesitation, he even told her that I was a chicken. He did it deliberately, and she became pretty confident while she pepped me up with encouragement
—especially because she was also afraid to ride the chair lift, and her focus on me helped her to get through it
.

She did
fine on the mountain, though. Out of taking the lift four times, s
he only crashed
twice
where Zack needed to intervene to talk her out of quitting.
The other times weren’t a big deal—just sliding on her butt or falling on her hands—but the last time was when Zack was talking to me a little bit as we boarded just below her, and she pretty much wiped out and then went head over heels. She cried that time, especially because she had snow all down her back. I wanted to call it quits after that—because Maggie wouldn’t board anymore by herself, and I was sure she was getting tired. But Zack insisted that she finish the run without his help
, even
while she sat there crying that she didn’t want to do it.

“Well, then I guess we can’t get hot chocolate with marshmallows,” he told her.

I
frowned
at the threat
because
Maggie couldn’t see me. I was going to rebuke him for telling her such a thing; she’d already been promised hot chocolate with marshmallows.

“You said I get hot chocolate,” she even glared at him, folding her arms across her chest.

“No, I said once you finish this last run we
could
get hot chocolate. But you’re sitting here on your butt. The longer you sit here
crying
, the colder you’re going to get.”

“Zack,” I said quietly, upset that he was talking to her like that.

He ignored me completely and stood ba
ck up on his board. “Let’s go, q
ueen of the mountain. Let’s show all of those eight-year-olds on the baby slope how this is done.” She kind of smiled, and before she could object he pulled her up and said, “To the hot chocolate!” and pumped a fist into the air.

Maggie laughed, and without further delay, began following him down the slope.

I guess all I could do was follow them too, and once we were inside the lodge again, and Maggie was licking the melted marshmallows off the top of her mug, Zack quietly said to me, “I’m sorry, but if she didn’t finish the run on a positive note, I guarantee it would take a long time before she ever tried it again.”

“I know,” I nodded. “I understand now.”

“You’re not mad at me for verbally abusing your
niece
?”

I laughed and shook my head. “No, not when you’re better with her than I am.”

He looked at me with surprise because I really me
ant it. “Taryn, that’s not true,” he said quietly.
“
You have the harder job because you’re full time.
You do a great job with Maggie; why are you getting down on yourself?”

I didn’t respond right away because Maggie laughed and pointed to something across the room. It was a guy and a girl with matching jester hats.

“That’s pretty funny,” I agreed.

“And his is pink too,” she added
with another giggle
.

Maggie continued to watch people pass through the lodge and Zack turned his attention back to me. “What’s going on?” he
asked
quietly, putting his arm around me. “You’ve been pretty happy here, haven’t you?”

“Yes, of course I’ve been happy. But…”

“But what?”

“I don’t really want to talk about it right now. Maybe later.”

“Okay,” he replied, and that was that. He gave me a kiss, just as Maggie looked at us.

“That’s icky,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

“Why do you say that?” Zack asked her with a smile.

“Mommy said kissing is icky.”

We both paused for a few seconds,
probably because Maggie had mentioned her mom,
and then Zack said, “Well, she was right. Because if you kiss a person that you don’t
care about
, then
that’s
kind of icky. Kissing is for people that are really special to
you
.”

“So it’s okay to kiss someone?”

“Not just anyone. And you have to be older, like…twenty.”

I had to stifle a laugh.

“
Twenty
?” she asked, like it was older than she could imagine (which it probably was).

“Yes, twenty. And if any boys try to kiss you before then, you let me know and I’ll take care of ‘em.”

She giggled when he punched his fist into his hand
as a threat
.

“So Maggie,” he said. “You ready to see something really cool?”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes big and wide.

“Okay, but you’re gonna have to help Taryn take some pictures, all right? I want a picture taken just by you. Can you do that for me?”

She nodded her head decisively, and we were off to see something “really cool.”

Chapter Fifteen

Zack took us to watch some boarders working the halfpipe
.
Along the way he’d described it to her, but
Maggie was beyond stoked when she actually saw what a halfpipe
was
and what they were doing on it
.