Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
This place was where I wanted to be, and I found myself embracing everything even closer than before. I absorbed even more of my relationship with Clara and my friendship with customers who sure started to feel more like friends. I appreciated my teenage friends even more too.
In fact, the only thing I hadn’t embraced had been Rhodes.
It had been two weeks by that point since he’d left, and he hadn’t managed to come visit yet. Supposedly, he’d been on his way to visit for the day when he’d gotten called back to Colorado Springs—a four-hour drive away—with an emergency. I still saw Amos just about every day between getting dropped off by the school bus and picked up by his uncle. He told me all about his dad calling him every day and had even—not so subtly—mentioned how Rhodes asked about me too.
But Rhodes didn’t call me or text me, and I knew he had my number.
I thought that everything that had happened with us before had been some kind of turning point, I was sure it was, but… maybe he was extra busy. And I tried not to wallow in worrying about things I couldn’t control. And how someone felt about you was one of those.
I was just trying to keep on living my life and settling in even more in the meantime, and that was exactly why that morning, three weeks after the Hike from Hell, I found myself getting a dubious look from Amos as I clutched my helmet, trying to give him a reassuring smile.
“Are you sure?” he asked, putting on the wrist guards that I was sure Rhodes had insisted he wear when he’d given him permission to go to the ski resort with me. I had mentioned to him two days before that I wanted to go. I had never been snowboarding. I knew for sure I’d gone skiing with my mom back when I’d been younger, but that was it. It hadn’t snowed in town yet, but a couple of nights had dropped enough snow this high in the mountains to open some parts of the resort.
I focused back on the teenager in front of me in a matching green jacket and helmet he’d explained that his mom and other dad had bought him last season. “Yes, I’m sure. Go with your friends. I’m sure I can figure it out.”
He didn’t believe me, and he wasn’t even trying to pretend otherwise. “Do you remember what I told you? About using your toes and heels?”
I nodded.
“Keeping your knees bent?”
I nodded again, but his features stayed reluctant. “I promise. It’s fine. Go. See? Your friends are waving at you.”
“I can go down with you once to make sure. Getting off the lift is kind of tricky—”
This was exactly why I loved this kid. He could be so quiet, stubborn and surly—just like his dad—but he had a heart of gold too. “I just saw a little four or five-year-old do it. It can’t be that hard.”
Amos opened his mouth, but I beat him to it again.
“Look, if it’s going really bad, I’ll text you, deal? Go with your friends. I got this.”
“K.” He looked like he wanted to keep arguing but barely stopped himself from it. Amos turned around to grab his snowboard from the rack he’d propped it on and muttered in a way that made me feel like he genuinely thought he would never see me again, “Bye.”
Well, that didn’t sound foreboding.
I snapped my helmet on, tugged my gloves on over the wrist guards I’d put on while waiting for Amos to buy his season pass, and trudged over to the lift that would lead up to the top of the bunny hill after grabbing my own rented snowboard from the rack. I’d rented it from the shop at an extremely discounted rate. I’d spent the night before looking up videos for how to snowboard, and it didn’t look that hard. I had decent balance. I’d taken a couple of surfing lessons with Yuki before, and they had gone pretty well… at least until the surfboard had clipped me in the face and my nose had started bleeding the last time.
I’d put up a bat house and grabbed a fucking eagle. I’d hiked up a mountain under the shittiest conditions. I could do this.
* * *
I couldn’t do this.
And that was exactly what I told Octavio, the nine-year-old little boy who had helped me up four times now.
“It’s okay,” he tried to assure me as he pulled me up to standing position again. “You only fell on your face four times now.”
I had to hold back a snort as I brushed the snow off my jacket and pants. I liked kids so much. Especially friendly ones like this one who had come over to me on my second time down the hill and helped me after I’d eaten at least a cup of snow. I had already told his mom, who was never too far away with another little girl that she was teaching how to snowboard—and doing a better job than I was—that he was such a nice boy.