CHAPTER 5

If someone were to describe Drew, they definitely wouldn’t call her an introvert. She was often the life of the party – or, at least, was at the party – but since arriving at the lodge, she’d gone downstairs exactly once to get a mug of hot chocolate and listen to some music on her phone, which was usually her custom when she got here. She supposed that this time, it was a little different. Still, she’d also wanted to catch a glimpse of Selma again. She didn’t understand why. She’d seen Selma around over the years, both before and after the Olympics debacle, so it wasn’t the first time she’d laid eyes on the woman who was the reason she hadn’t made it out of her first race. Drew had been injured, though, so she hadn’t been on the recent tour, and when she had been, she’d noticed Selma racing better. She’d gotten on a few podiums and had even won a couple, from what Drew had remembered.

Drew had done the same, but in the past, she’d always been on the podium. Well, not always, exactly, but once she’d gone pro, she’d gotten up there more often than not. In fact, before her inconsistent boarding slump had started, she’d been about to break some US records for wins and had planned on boarding for as long as she could at this level to not only break them but make it that much harder for someone else to break them in the future. Drew wanted to be a snowboard legend. That had always been part of her goal.

What Drew loved about boarding, besides being on the board itself, was the community of people she’d been given just by riding around with a waxed-up board strapped to her feet. It was similar in skiing, too. Drew loved that community. They could talk about their sports, yes, but she also got to know the people. Not all of them, of course, and often not many of her competitors because keeping that distance from the people she was going to race against helped her in competitions, but the other people surrounding them and the people she’d met at ski resorts and lodges over the years were her kind of people. They could talk about diamond runs, how tightly the snow was packed, runs to avoid for any reason, and which brands were the best in the business these days when it came to their equipment. They all spoke the same language and understood each other in a way Drew didn’t get anywhere else.

She knew that was why she’d first started dating Andy and probably one of the main reasons they’d worked for as long as they had. Yes, Drew had loved Andy, but being with her had also been easy. Andy knew boarding. She knew skiing and winter sports in general. She also knew about the travel, life on the road, how intense competitions and races could be for someone like Drew, the pressure she’d be under, and that sometimes, Drew would need space in order to focus. Andy understood that because she had to do the same things. It also helped that they both generally traveled to the same places and could share a room and have some time together even when they weren’t at home. Because of that, though, Drew should have noticed that they were wrong for each other sooner than she did. She didn’t, though. She liked how easy things were with them before the Olympics, which had ruined a lot of Drew’s life, including her relationship.

Trying to date again after Andy had been a nightmare, but not because Andy was the one who got away. It was because no woman she’d come across had understood the same things that Andy had, and that had made Drew less interested. After all, if it had been that easy with Andy and they couldn’t make it work, Drew wasn’t sure how she’d make it work with anyone who wasn’t part of this community she’d spent more than her entire adult life building for herself.

“Fuck it,” she said to herself.

She was tired of lying around in this room. She’d come here to ski and board. She’d even brought her own skis when, normally, she only brought her board with her. She wanted her normal resort experience. That had been the whole point of coming here. She couldn’t help that Selma Driscoll was Grandma Ruth’s granddaughter and worked here now. Selma hadn’t kicked her out, and Drew was paying for her stay, so she was going to enjoy herself. She hadn’t gone on the mountain that day, and that had been a mistake, but she wasn’t about to miss her chance to hang out downstairs as everyone returned from their runs.

She dressed in her typical chilling-at-the-resort flannel shirt with reds and blues and a white Henley under it. It would be cold down there, with the doors being opened and closed constantly as people came in. She put on her jeans and her boots, grabbed her phone, wallet, and room key, and headed down the stairs in a decent-paced walk, trying to test her knee a bit instead of taking the elevator. It hadn’t hurt at all, which was good, but she still wanted to be careful. Contrary to what her coach thought, Drew wasn’t reckless. She was just impatient.

Opening the door to the main lobby off the stairs, she smiled instantly because the room was packed, just how she liked it. There was a group of people with their skis in bags lined up at the front desk, getting checked in. One of them was enjoying a cookie, and Drew knew she shouldn’t have another one because they had far too many calories, but they were just so good. She decided she’d go over after the line died down to get another one and eat half of it tonight and half tomorrow to make it not as bad for her. The fireplace had comfortable sofas and chairs around it, with a table in the middle filled up with coffee and hot chocolate mugs. The sofas were all occupied with people who were still in their gear, their faces red from the wind and the sun. Drew wished she was one of them today, out enjoying that wind and sun, and the snow, too, but she’d been trying to avoid Selma, who gave her a cookie peace offering last night.

Selma’s face, though, had told Drew that the woman hadn’t wanted her here at all, and Drew had thought that strange since Selma had been the one to crash into her. Still, when Selma had gone to take care of something at the front desk, Drew had taken advantage of the opportunity to flee, and she hadn’t left her room since, like a coward instead of a guest at this place who should be able to walk around and enjoy herself.

“Drew?”

“Holy shit! Becks?” Drew walked around the fireplace to the tables and noticed an old friend standing with a drink from the bar in her hand around a group of people.

“Yeah, hey. What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you here in years.”

“It’s my first time back in a while. I’ve been busy. Just needed a break and thought I’d come here. You still come here every year?

“A few times a year, yeah. We only live two hours away, so it’s easier for us.”

“Us?” Drew asked.

“My wife.”

“Your wife?”

“We haven’t seen each other in a long time, huh?” Her friend laughed. “And you need a drink.”

“You’re married?”

“We met on the mountain a few years ago and got married last year. Jo?”

Drew followed Becks’s gaze and saw a woman turn around and smile when she heard Becks calling her name. She walked over and looked to Becks to introduce them.

“Babe, this is my old friend, Drew Oakes. We used to hang out here whenever we were both in town, but she hasn’t been back in a while, so you two haven’t met.”

“Nice to meet you,” Jo said.

“You too. I didn’t even know Becks was married.”

“A little over a year now,” Jo stated. “I didn’t want to wait too long. She had other women interested, so I wanted to put a ring on it.”

“She’s joking,” Becks said and put her hand on Jo’s forearm. “I’m going to get Drew a drink, and we’re going to catch up. Want to join us?”

“I was talking to Vic and Tiff about the plans for tomorrow. Can I come over when we’re good?”

“Sure.” Becks nodded and kissed her wife on the cheek.

“So, how is it?” Drew asked when Jo had returned to their friends.

“What?”

“Being married.”

“Oh, it’s great. I guess it’s not much different than living together, except there’s a piece of paper now. I get to call her my wife, though, and she’s amazing. She’s a real estate broker and found our house for us. She’s smart, successful, and so funny. She also loves to ski, like me. She’s so good to me, Drew. You should find someone like her for yourself.”

“Does she have any friends?”

Becks laughed as they walked over to the bar.

“She has a lot of friends. Want me to see if she’ll set you up with one?”

Drew thought about that as they joined the short line and then said, “I assume they live here?”

“Most of them.”

“It would have to be long-distance, so not sure I want that on top of my traveling. I’d probably never see them.”

“True. But you won’t be competing forever, right? I heard you got hurt. How are you?”

“Good. I’m healed. Just here for a little break before I get back out there.”

“That’s great to hear,” Becks replied as they moved up in the line. “Hey, are you going to hold court tonight?”

“Oh, come on.” Drew laughed.

“What? You always used to regale us with your stories.”

“That’s after a few drinks.”

“We’re in the bar line,” Becks reminded. “I’ll buy your first one. What do you want?”

“Uh… I guess just a beer.”

“No way. Get something good. I want all the stories and tour gossip.”

Drew laughed again and thought back to the days when she used to come in after a long day on the mountain, have a few cocktails, and tell anyone in the room stories about her races or the gossip on the tour. She let Becks buy her a gin and tonic, her preferred drink, and she walked with her back toward the tables where Jo was standing with the friends whose names Drew had forgotten. By the time Drew had finished her first drink, Becks had another ready for her, and halfway through that one, Drew had started to feel the alcohol.

“In training, he kept scratching himself, so we were all like, ‘Dude, stop,’ and wondering what the hell was going on,” Drew continued her story about one of the Team USA boarders. “It turns out, one of the other guys had put itching powder in his suit, and only in that area.”

The group of about ten people, who had congregated around her on the sofas now, all burst out laughing.

“He had no idea, and he’d been asking the guys if any of them were having issues with their suits. He thought he’d developed some kind of allergy to the material.”

They laughed some more.

“The funniest part was that they didn’t just do it to that suit. He put on a different one the next day, and he figured it out, but he was already on the snow, so he had to go all the way back to his room to shower and change.” Drew took a sip of her drink, shook her head, and added, “The women don’t haze the newbies like that.”

“What do you do?” Jo asked.

“We’re women. We just gossip about each other and say, ‘You can’t sit here at the lunch table.’” She chuckled. “No, I’m kidding. We don’t do that. We don’t do much of anything, really. Most of the time, we’re really welcoming. There was this one time, though, when a new woman on the team was in her first USA competition with us, and we were in the same semi-heat. She was so young; maybe sixteen or seventeen. This was about five years ago, I think. Anyway, I won the heat by a large margin. I’m talking, like, three whole seconds. She came in second and made it through, but when we got to the finish line and I was taking off my goggles, she started coming at me, mad because she said I blocked her from passing me, which I didn’t. I was just better and kicked her ass.” Drew laughed. “The others decided that she needed to be put in her place, and they–”

She looked past Jo and Becks, who were sitting on the sofa, and saw Selma standing there. The woman must have joined in at some point, and Drew hadn’t noticed her.

“They what?” Becks asked.

“Uh… They messed up her room. They wrote the number three on her mirror in her own lipstick since I’d kicked her ass by three seconds. The other four in the heat were even farther behind. I rocked that course that season. She stopped racing a year later.”

“Shit. Drew,” Becks said.

“I didn’t mess up her room. They did. I didn’t have anything to do with it. And if she’s going to come up to the team captain and accuse me of something in front of someone, she better have the evidence to back her ass up, which she didn’t. I didn’t block her at all. I watched that video. I was too far ahead of her the whole race to block her from doing anything other than losing.”

A few people laughed, but Selma Driscoll wasn’t one of them. Selma crossed her arms over her chest, and it reminded Drew of how her coach did the same pose when he wasn’t all that happy with her.

“Anyway,” Drew began. “That wasn’t even my best time that year. She wouldn’t have been able to keep up, like pretty much everyone else in the world. If they can even get close enough to me, they’re still not usually good enough to get past me.” She finished her gin and tonic.

“Damn, Drew!” Becks laughed.

“When are you racing again?” one of the other people there asked.

“I’ll keep you posted,” she replied with a wink. “Playing that close to the vest right now. I don’t want people to know when to expect me.”

That was a lie, and a weird one, but the alcohol had kicked in fully, and Selma was still staring at her with that almost motherly look of disapproval, which was also weird.

“Anyway…” Drew leaned back against the sofa.

Selma looked at her for another moment before she turned and walked off.