The Ex Games(40)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“You are really testing me, Chloe,” I muttered as I took one tentative step into even lighter snow cover. Now I could actually see the icy rocks underneath. “I am trying pretty hard to remember how nice you were to me that night with Nick in seventh graaaaade!” My boot slipped out from under me and I skidded straight into the claw-like branches in front of me. I managed to turn my head in time to avoid getting an eye poked out, and I waited until my body stopped and settled against the springy branches.

“Oh God!” Chloe squealed. “Are you okay?”

“Yep.” I thought so. My face stung, and the thought crossed my mind that I was scarred for life. But I was sure the pain came from skidding across the snow on my cheek, not from a branch cutting me. I had a hard time extricating myself from the tree, though, and my head was getting cold. Finally, slowly, I rose up to kneel in the snow and asked Chloe, “Am I all in one piece?”

Her eyes flew wide open. I knew it was really bad when she almost screamed, but she slapped her hand over her mouth in time. She said, too calmly, “Hayden, put pressure on your ear.”

“Put pressure on my ear,” I puzzled out. “Why?” I touched my ear. It was wet, but so was the rest of me by now. Then I looked at my mitten. It glistened with blood.

“Call Josh,” I whispered before I passed out.

“Hayden, that’s going to take one stitch.” Thank God for Josh. He sounded far off, even though I could feel his hands on my face. I couldn’t quite make my way back to consciousness. Not while stitches were the topic of conversation.

“She’s too heavy for me to carry,” Josh said.

I tried to insult him back, but I didn’t make a sound.

“Should I call the ski patrol?” Liz asked.

“No, they’ll make a huge deal, and our parents will wig out and come home. They’re over in Boulder for their first night out of town alone in a year. This is no biggie. She did the same thing when she gashed her arm at the skateboard park last summer. We just need to get her down the mountain. Call Nick.”

“No!” I tried to exclaim but didn’t. Wait—if Chloe was still lodged against the tree, dying of hypothermia, did it really matter who got called? Any hero would do.

“Hayden,” said Nick.

My cheeks tingled with cold, and when I opened my eyes, all I saw was a blue glow. I must have face-planted. “Get Chloe,” I told the snow. “She’s stuck.”

“Gavin and Davis have her.” Nick’s hands were on my shoulder and my waist. He rolled me onto my back. Now my wet face froze all over again in the cold wind. I opened my eyes.

Even though he was kneeling beside me in the snow, he towered above me like a movie superhero. Beyond his strong shoulders and the snowy trees, the sky glowed orange, and a few low clouds sugared him with snow. As I watched, he unzipped and pulled off his parka, then unbuttoned and tossed off his flannel shirt. He pulled his T-shirt over his head and shook his hair out of his eyes. Leaning over me with his chest bare, he pressed his wadded-up T-shirt to my ear. It was his Poseur T-shirt that he wore to school at least twice a week, and he was willingly staunching my blood with it. He must be in love.

More likely, I was having a wet dream. They’d told us during sex-ed week in PE that this might happen to girls as well as to boys. It had never happened to me. And now, just when I’d given up hope because I was seventeen and the puberty thing was pretty much done, here was Nick Krieger tenderly touching my face with the sun setting behind him and snowflakes sliding off his bare shoulders.

“Hayden,” he said again, gently. “Are you sure you didn’t hit your head?”

“I don’t think so.” It came out as a whisper. I cleared my throat. “I think it’s just my ear.” Now that his T-shirt was warming my skin, I could tell the insistent sting came from my earlobe rather than from the cold.

He moved the T-shirt aside and leaned closer, examining my ear. Oooh, it would be so much more romantic if he looked into my eyes rather than fixating on my ear. Shouldn’t I be able to make this happen? What was the world coming to, that I couldn’t even control what Nick did in my own wet dream?

He poked my ear.

“Ow, ow, ow!” I squealed, and then felt faint again, out of breath. This was no wet dream. It was reality after all.

He let out a disgusted sigh. “Hayden, Josh is right. The doctor might not even put a stitch in that. What’s the matter with you? Do you faint at the sight of blood?”

Oh, no. There was no way I would let him get the upper hand, even if I was lying on my back in the snow and he was kneeling over me. I laughed. “Of course I don’t faint at the sight of blood. I jump onto the dance floor and do the Soulja Boy. Get the hell off me, Dr. McDreamy.”

He sat back in surprise. I rolled over to all fours and stood up slowly, letting his T-shirt slide off my ear, since my injury was so minor. The woods seemed to tilt sharply to the left.

“Hayden,” said Nick. “Take it easy.”

“What for? This would never have happened to a boy, right? A boy could break his leg and keep on boarding. So could I.” Or maybe not, but at least I could hike out of the trees on my own power after I scratched my ear. It wasn’t until I looked down to check my footing that I realized I was still bleeding. Plop, plop, plop, neat red circles that burrowed warm holes into the snow.

“Well?” Chloe called from far off. “Is she okay?”

“No, but is she ever?” Nick lifted me. One of his arms cradled my head against the wad of his T-shirt. He hooked his other strong arm under my knees. His chest felt intensely warm against me. I opened my eyes and saw his chest was still bare. He’d put his flannel shirt and parka back on without fastening them.

He seemed good for a few steps. Then he hit a soft patch of snow. His foot sank, and he staggered. Josh trudged forward to help, struggling with three snowboards—his, Nick’s, and mine, I supposed. If Nick fell while carrying me, even if it was due to loose powder, he would blame it on my unwieldiness or my girth. Together with Josh’s joke, I would never, ever live it down.

“Let go,” I said. “I can walk.” At least, that’s what I meant to say, but it came out slurred.

“Shut up.” Nick took a few more steps. Now we were on Main Street, where the snow pack was solid. His strides were more sure.

“We can’t leave the snow all bloody,” I told the underside of his chin, shadowed with stubble. “It will scare the tourists.”