Page 55 of Better Than Gelato
And that’s when the other four members of our group walk into the lobby and see us in the library.
Diego trips into Valentina. Carmen bursts out laughing. And Paolo says, “I was under an entirely different impression of your activities when the two of you sneak away together.”
They’re all dressed and ready for the day.
“We were just coming down for some breakfast,” Valentina says. I can tell she’s trying hard not to laugh.
“Yes, well, so were we. We just thought we should get some morning exercise to really work up an appetite. But we’re ready now. Let’s eat.”
“Aren’t you wearing pajamas?” Diego asks me.
I am, in fact, wearing pajamas. They’re purple flannel. With stripes. But instead of doing the smart thing and admitting it, I dig in.
“To the untrained eye, I can see how these mightlooklike pajamas. But they’re very much day clothes. They just match a lot. It’s called color blocking. Very trendy right now.”
I shoot a glance at Carmen, who manages to keep a straight face and say, “Color blocking. Yes. Trendy.”
And so we all go to the dining room, and I eat a delicious Swiss breakfast in my pajamas in a room full of fully clothed guests.
After breakfast, we choose sleds from a pile behind the lodge. We hike to a nearby hill, and Jake is the first one to go down, whooping and hollering the whole way. Carmen and I follow him. The hill starts off steep and then turns into a gentle slope at the end. A perfect sledding hill. I rush down, barely passing Jake at the end, and we both end up in a snowbank. I haven’t been sledding since a family reunion in Idaho a decade ago. I forgot how exhilarating it is.
The other three come sledding down right after us and two of them land in the same snowbank we did. Diego somehow lands in a bush ten feet away.
“How do you steer these things?” he asks, tromping through the snow towards us.
“You can’t,” Jake says cheerfully. “You just point them and go.”
We hike to the top of the hill for another go. Diego ends up in the bushes again, and Jake offers to switch sleds. Which begins the game, ‘Will Diego End Up in the Bushes No Matter Which Sled He’s On?’ The short answer is yes. We swap our various sleds, some hard plastic saucers, some wooden with rails. It doesn’t seem to matter. Diego ends up in the bushes every time, but he’s unhurt and seems to be having just as much fun as the rest of us.
The sun is near blinding, reflected off the white snow, and the sky is a bright blue. I don’t know how many times we go down that hill, but we’re wet and exhausted by the time lunch rolls around. And too tired to do much else for the rest of the day.
We watch a movie on the giant screen in the game room. Valentina sits next to Paolo, and the romantic vibes from those two are bouncing off the walls. I think again about Carmen being the odd girl out. I make a note to talk to her about it.
That night, Paolo convinces the proprietors of our lodge to start a fire in the outdoor fire pit for our little group. I zip upstairs to change my socks, which have gotten wet yet again.
I’m slipping on some dry ones when Carmen comes in. She doesn’t see me at first because she’s looking at her phone. Her face is twisted in anger and worry and when she finally notices me she startles.
“Sorry,” I say. “Just getting some dry socks.”
“No problem.”
She doesn’t say anything else, and neither do I. I slip into some boots and head to the door.
“Are you coming down?” I ask.
“I’m going to call it a night.”
“It’s only 9:30.”
“Yeah, I just don’t feel like hanging out with everyone right now.”
She’s tired of hanging out with a bunch of couples. I knew it.
“Hey, it seems like this weekend has been hard for you,” I say.
She narrows her eyes but doesn’t say anything, so I continue.
“With the group splitting into couples it can be easy to think, ‘Why aren’t I dating anyone?’ I just want to remind you that you’re smart and beautiful and funny. You’re going to find someone wonderful.”
