here. Not to mention the heights. I hate heights.”
“You’re not going to fall off, Maggie.” There are only four more couples up ahead of us and I contemplate actually giving in to the vomit that’s been hanging at the back of my throat because I think it might give me an out, but I’d rather not make a complete fool of myself, if that’s at all possible. “Here, you need to put this on.” Ran drops my board onto the packed snow.
“What?” I look down at it and then up at him.
“Yeah, you have to put it on before we get on the lift. We actually should have had them on already.” Ran clicks his right foot into the bindings on his board.
“No way! I will have a hard enough time balancing up there without that thing trying to pull me down with it.”
Ran bends down and grabs my right foot, lifting it from its firm, planted position in the snow and he slips the board right under it. “You don’t have a choice. Now be a good girl and follow the rules.” He throws me an obnoxiously sexy grin, which infuriates me because he’s being so condescending. I really want to kick him in that perfect mouth of his with my other boot, but there’s no way I can do it. Especially after the incredibly brief, but overwhelmingly intense, contact I had with those lips last night.
“Almost our turn,” Ran says, standing up beside me. He takes my elbow. “Now just skate forward.”
“Skate? I thought we were snowboarding.”
“We are. It’s just a way to describe how to move forward. Kinda like you’re skateboarding. Just push off the snow with your left foot and use that momentum to glide the board forward.”
I shake my head. “I can’t do this, Ran.”
“You don’t have much of a choice now, Maggie. We’re next.”
The lift just scooped up the couple in front of us, and there’s already a visible lag as I hang back, terrified of the two-person chair that looms our direction.
“Come on.” Ran uses his weight to pull both of us forward. “It’s our turn.”
I follow his lead not because I want to, but because there’s absolutely no other place to go. Unless I want to run screaming into the snow covered hills, which actually might not be a bad option. We skate forward to the “Load Here” sign.
“One…two…” Ran looks over his shoulder as our designated chair swings toward us and I close my eyes so hard I think they might freeze shut. “Three.” I suck in a searing breath and the chair buckles my knees and I tumble back onto its wobbly surface.
“You okay?” I think Ran lowers the safety bar across our lap but I haven’t opened my eyes to confirm because I’m pretty certain that would mean I’d also have to look down. And that would likely be the beginning of me falling to my sad, snowy death. So I keep them shut and pretend I’m sitting on my couch at home. My moving, swinging, artic-air chilled couch. This is not working.
“You okay?” he says again, and I feel his arm stretch out over the back of the chair. He curls his hand onto my shoulder.
“I hate you.”
He gives my shoulder a squeeze. “No, pretty sure you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. And I hate this even more than that stupid motorcycle of yours.”
“Does that mean I can get you to ride it again when we’re all done here?” Ran’s voice perks up.
“Not a chance. And after today, I’ll be dead, so I won’t be riding anything of yours ever again.”
“Oh Maggie, you really shouldn’t talk dirty like that. Save it for the texts.” Ran laughs so hard the lift bounces up and down, and I grip onto his leg for something to ground me. It’s freezing up here, so much colder than at the base of the mountain, and we’ve been climbing for so long that I’m beginning to think he’s tricked me into going down the black diamonds as opposed to the bunny slopes.
“Shut it, Ran! That’s not what I meant!”
“Sure it wasn’t.” I can hear him smile and then feel his body straighten back up. “I need you to forgive me, Maggie.”
“What?” I turn to him, even though I’m still keeping up my not-opening-my-eyes act.
“Just say you forgive me.”
“For what?” I angle toward him even more.
“Just say it.” His voice is firm, but I still detect a hint of teasing in it.