Page 11 of Stuck on the Slopes

Thank you so much for keeping me in the loop. I’ve CC’d my executive producer who can help ensure we don’t miss any information in case you ever ping me while I’m on air.

Looking forward to some name updates!

Sincerely,

LeAnn Weiss

Reporter | Action 6 News

As I slumped back in my chair, I sighed in relief. At leastthatrelationship hadn’t been completely wrecked. I wondered what other messes Juniper would leave in his wake and hoped they’d all be as easy to clean up—but with the cloud that hung over his head, I doubted they would be.

Chapter 4

Juniper

InthethreeweeksRachel had been here, I didn’t think we were any closer to coexisting peacefully. We worked together well enough, though she seemed to have opinions on things I hardly knew anything about. It wasn’t a problem, but it made one thing abundantly clear.

The fact of the matter was, I had no idea what the hell I was doing.

And here I thought the renovations would be the hard part. How mistaken I was. Hiring contractors to tell me what was wrong and to repair buildings was easy enough, no matter how much my wallet disagreed. It was well-fed and would manage.

But this was the part I hadn’t given nearly enough thought to. Branding, decorating, and last-minute preparations felt like learning a new language I struggled to speak. Marketing was a challenge for me, too, and would come soon enough. When I was snowboarding, my agent suggested I slap up some photos on Instagram at least twice a week. Now I barely used the damn thing.

At least Rachel didn’t seem to mind taking charge; with how much work she was putting in, she proved herself to be a natural leader and also the best hiring decision I ever could have made. Even though she worked on the corporate backend of a hotel chain, she’d spent enough time at the actual resorts for photoshoots that she could get her arms around everything. It came so naturally to her I felt a rare twang of jealousy.

“I ran a campaign once to help HR get some new candidates,” she told me last week. “My team and I sat down and interviewed all the people who worked at the resort and followed them for a day in their life. I learned a lot from them.”

We had plans to hire housekeeping closer to the lodge opening, but for now, it was just us. Rachel had shown me some tricks she learned from housekeeping at her last job. It took everything to swallow my feelings of inadequacy. Before Rachel, I could choke it down with my medication in the mornings. But now, it was like I was staring my ineptness in the face. I knew I wasn’t actually inept and that my chronic pain had nothing to do with my worth.

I knew that. Really, I did.

But after snowboarding my entire life and everyone asking when I would come back, it was hard to not internalize some less-than-positive thoughts. The logical part of my brain that sometimes worked knew it was stupid. The therapist I’d spoken to about it tried talking me out of it, but it changed nothing, so I’d stopped going.

I was grieving a life I’d lost, and even though I didn’t miss it, I did miss the ease with which things came. I missed not being in pain every single time I woke up and every night before bed.

But there was a lot I lost that was for the best, too. Something, something, blessings in disguise. As I reflected on the last few weeks, I tried to remember that.

Despite the pins and needles shooting through my leg as I stood, I got out of bed and shuffled to the kitchen. I went through the motions of filling the tincture bottle, deciding to take extra this morning so I could get out of my head and the spiral of self-loathing. It wasn’t enough to get me high, but it would send me into a giggle fit if I found something funny enough. That feeling usually passed after a few minutes, so I wouldn’t have to worry about Rachel noticing.

As I threw my hair up and got dressed, my phone buzzed against my desk. Allison’s name flashed across the screen alongside a photo of us at our last tournament before my accident, their dyed-blue hair hidden by their snow gear. Allison Jones and I shared an agent, Rick Rodriguez, and attended snowboarding events together for years as a result. They were the closest thing to a sibling I had.

“Hey, AJ.”

“Juniper! It has been too long! How are you? How’s the lodge?”

As happy as I was to hear from them, I wasn’t up for their usual pep talks. Adjusting to handling a second human life was difficult enough as is, so all I said was, “It’s good.”

“It’s good? That’s all you have to say? Seriously?”

“I hired someone to help. She’s got a strong personality, but we’re getting used to each other, I think.”

“You did? Seriously?” To say they sounded surprised would be an understatement. “I owe Rick twenty bucks now.”

“For what?”

“I bet him you’d try to do this whole thing alone. He bet you’d eventually cave and get some help wanted listings up.”

“Smart asses, the lot of you.”

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