The Ex Games(48)
Author: Jennifer Echols

My turn. I could do this. I inhaled through my nose and felt my lungs fill with air. My blood spread the life-giving oxygen throughout my body.

I exhaled through my mouth and felt gravity pull the energy from my heart down through my legs, through my boots and snowboard, through the snow, to the rocks below. I was one with the mountain.

I touched my remaining lucky earring.

Then I pressed all my weight forward for speed and raced toward the jump, the white edge, the blue sky beyond, the town below, the mountains in the distance. I went off.

Dancing at the Poseur concert had been fun at first, but then Josh and his posse pulled Nick and me into the mosh pit. We needed a break. While Nick snagged us a lawn chair on the ski lodge deck above the concert, I bought us a couple of hot chocolates—and passed Gavin and Chloe at the teller machine. She rubbed her gloves together gleefully, then held them out while Gavin counted the cash into her hands.

“Hayden!” she exclaimed as I walked up, but her eyes didn’t leave the money. Clearly, she didn’t trust Gavin. “I went ahead and bought us tickets to be safe in case the concert was sold out, and now Gavin is paying—me—back—ha!” She tapped his cheek playfully with the stack of bills. He closed one eye against the attack.

“Not that you thought I would lose or anything,” I said suspiciously.

She innocently fluttered her eyelashes at me. “Of course not!”

“We shouldn’t have doubted you,” Gavin said. “I have never seen anybody short of a pro ride the pipe like that.”

I glared at him. Because the words were coming from his mouth, I expected them to be sarcastic. But his face was friendly and open. For once, he seemed genuine.

“And a 1080 off the jump?” he went on. “That was savage.”

Chloe widened her eyes at him. “Why are you being nice? Has your body been taken over by aliens?”

“You’ll find out tonight, baby.”

I stopped the tickle fest I felt coming on between them by handing them each a hot chocolate. “Hold this. My phone’s beeping.” I took it out of my pocket and peered at the text message.

Nick: Do u want 2 b n people?

“People,” I murmured as if he could hear me. “As in the magazine?” I peered up onto the deck and saw him standing next to our lounge chair, talking with a group of adults with cameras. “Oh my God, paparazzi? No way!”

“Way,” Gavin said. “I saw them talking to Daisy Delaney earlier. They must have followed Poseur here, then realized there were more celebrities they could milk.”

“Nick isn’t that kind of celebrity,” I said.

“I’ll bet they want him for a special theme issue,” Chloe suggested. “How the richest bachelors in America spent Valentine’s Day.”

I glanced dubiously toward the mosh pit. Then I looked toward Nick again and strained to hear what he was saying over the Poseur tune.

“Are you here alone?” one of the men asked him. “Are you seeing anyone?”

“Yes, I’m seeing someone,” Nick said, standing beside them but hardly acknowledging them. He was watching for my answer on his phone.

“For how long?” a woman asked.

About an hour, I thought. Or did we officially start seeing each other on the ski lift this morning? Ten hours. I smiled, remembering the sunny afternoon we’d spent boarding with Daisy Delaney and her boyfriend. Or … what did “seeing each other” mean, anyway? If nearly making out in the sauna counted, we’d been seeing each other for five days.

“Four years,” I heard him say.

“Aww!” I squealed. Then I turned to Chloe. “Do I want to be in People?”

“No,” she said firmly. “Nick is hot.”

Gavin frowned and poked her in the side. “Hey.”

She ducked away from his finger. “Facts are facts. Nick is hot, and when girls read People and see he’s dating you, they will call you a skank ho. You and I have mooned over Prince William. We know the deal.”

“True.” When Nick glanced slyly down at me, I shook my head no.

For a few more minutes, I talked with Chloe and Gavin, and we all watched Liz and Davis swaying romantically to a rare slow song from Poseur. What a happy Valentine’s Day. Then, when the paparazzi had cleared out, I climbed the steps to the deck and handed a cup of hot chocolate to Nick. He sat down in the lawn chair and unzipped his parka. I settled back against his warm shirt.

“I bought you a Valentine’s Day present,” he said in my ear, sending shivers through me despite all my layers. He rocked to one side in the chair and pulled something from his back pocket.

I took it in my gloved hands and peered at it in the dusky light from the stage and the stars. It was a sew-on patch with a black diamond in the center, the symbol for a dangerous ski slope. “Nick, that’s so cool! I love it!”

“That’s not all.” He rocked to his other side and pulled out another patch. This one had a four-leaf clover. “To replace the luck you’re missing.”

“Nick.” I stared at the patches in my mittens, trying not to tear up. “This is sweet of you.”

“I really like you in those ‘BOY TOY’ jeans,” he said, “but this needs to go on top of ‘BOY.’” He took the black diamond from me and shook it. “And the clover goes on top of ‘TOY.’”

“Deal.” I slipped the patches into my coat pocket. Then I sipped my hot chocolate and sighed, enjoying his warmth behind me. “We’ve been dating for four years, huh? I don’t think Fiona will like that answer.”

“You’ve always had my heart.” He kissed my earlobe—the one without a bandage. The one that was still lucky. “You know, you’re going to be in People anyway when you make the Olympic snowboarding team. ESPN will ask you, ‘Hayden O’Malley, you came from nowhere at age seventeen. Where have you been?’ And you’ll answer, ‘Oh, I had a few acrophobic issues to work through.’”

Laughing, I poked him for his embarrassingly accurate imitation of my southern drawl.

He continued in my voice, “‘Then one night my boyfriend was being an ass and I challenged him to a comp. I had to do a front 1080 off a jump just to show him up, and the rest is history.’”

“I hope so.”

“I know so.” He kissed my cheek.

I reached back to run my fingers through his long hair. “Right now I want to lie low, have a normal life, and hang out with my boyfriend. I’ll meet you in People in a few years.”