Page 88 of The Season
The drive home is eerily silent, the sound of the engine and tires muffled by the thickening snowfall, the hum of the car heater mingling with the thundering of my heart.
I feel so helpless. Useless. Completely out of place in this world.
I’d been so arrogant, thinking I could fly in from Hawai’i, draw on my privileged ski holiday experience and become a snowboard instructor. Because, of course, why couldn’t I? The world has always been an open door to me, with my private school education and my parents paying my way through university. Sure, I worked hard for my grades and I had part-time jobs to pay for extras that I wanted. But I neverreallystruggled. And I never expected to.
Well, I’m fucking struggling now.
I squeeze my eyes shut, biting the inside of my cheek so hard I taste metal.
I thought it was this incredible achievement, getting my snowboard instructor’s certificate. It turns out, it’s more or less a joke among the real instructors that I work with. A baby certificate, enabling me to teach newbies at a resort that probably doesn’t want to pay for real instructors. Instructors who have trained for years, who have Olympic-level abilities, who live and bleed the snow.
Instructors who actually know how to drive in the snow. Which, clearly, I don’t.
And then, to top it all off, my first paycheck is still a week away. I’m living off food bank donations and Seth’s cooking skills, because it turns out I don’t actually know how to cook from whole ingredients. It turns out cooking from high-end meal kits once a week does not prepare a person for turning a box of potatoes, vegetables, and beans into an edible meal.
I swipe at my eyes with the back of my hand, willing myself to pull it together before we get to the condo. To put an end to my little pity party.
Matty—a man who has actually lived in the world, who has served in the military and probably seen things that I can’t even begin to imagine—he’s having a silent panic attack in the seat in front of me. Because of my shitty driving. And I’m over here crying because the world hasn’t turned out quite as I wanted. Because I’m not as incredible as I thought I was.
Selfish, the little voice inside me whispers, and it sounds a lot like my parents, like the argument we had before I left Hawai’i.Spoiled.
That was the last time they spoke to me. Since then, the group chat between the three of us has become a silent thread, a graveyard for my unanswered texts. If I scroll up, it’s a shrine to their inane, but strangely comfortable, messages about Thanksgiving dinner plans and what to get my grandparents for Christmas.
Christmas, which is less than two weeks away now.
I straighten my spine, nostrils flaring and chin lifting, as if the memory of their last words to me are an argument I can respond to.
The car pulls to a stop, and Eddie kills the engine, tossing me the keys. “Come on, Matty,” he says, voice full of false cheerfulness. “Let’s get inside, eh.”
I climb out after him, but Matty doesn’t move, not until Eddie opens the passenger door and pulls him out. Matty obediently follows, his eyes unseeing and expression slack, and I shut the door behind him.
Eddie scoops up fresh snow in his bare hands, forming it into a snowball. “I need you to hold this for me.” He presses the snowball into Matty’s hands, and Matty takes it wordlessly, jolting slightly at the sudden cold against his skin. “Tell me what it feels like.”
For a long moment, Matty doesn’t answer, and I stare at the pair of them, wringing my hands, wishing I knew what to do.
“It… it feels cold.” Matty’s voice is a low rasp, like gravel over sandpaper. He blinks, a flicker of something flashing in his pale blue eyes.
Eddie lets out a breath, shoulders slumping with relief as he covers Matty’s hands with his own. “Now, what do you feel?”
“Your… your hands on mine,” Matty rumbles, his brow dipping as if he’s confused by Eddie’s question, or maybe, by his touch.
“Good.” Eddies smiles, and it’s a genuine smile, soft but real, without the usual cutting edges. “And what do you hear?”
I shift in place, moving from one foot to the other, wanting to be closer, wanting to help, but not knowing how. Matty’s gaze flicks to me, his eyes dropping to where fresh snow crunches under my tennis shoes. “Lily. I hear Lily’s feet in the snow.” There’s the flash of a pained smile, and his eyes linger on my shoes.
Shoes that have been much easier to walk in ever since Eddie took a knife to them.
“Now, take a deep breath.” Eddie’s voice rolls like melted chocolate between us, his breath making warm puffs that hover in the air. “Then let it out. Focus on how it feels.”
Matty draws in a shuddering breath, his hands trembling around the snowball as he lets it out.
“And again.”
The next breath is smoother, coming out in a soft gust that clouds the air between them. Eddie lets go of Matty’s hands, but Matty doesn’t drop the snowball.
“You going to be good to get up the stairs?” Eddie asks, tilting his chin toward the snow-covered steps that snake up to our condo.
“Yah, man.” Matty ducks his chin, color flooding his cheeks. “Thanks.”
