Page 39 of Counting Down To You

“Do you want to learn?” Leo asks. “I can teach you.”

I bite my lip. “Not really.” He opens his mouth to say something, but I manage to cut him off. “Look, I know most people come out here to ski. But I just fancied a change—that’s all. I wanted to be somewhere different, preferably somewhere beautiful—which, you know, tick. Have a break from my job and go back in the new year. I don’t need to learn to ski to still get a lot out of this.” I decide not to mention that I was forced into taking a sabbatical rather than it being my choice—it sounds a bit too pathetic.

He considers me for a moment, then nods. “Okay. You’re right. Just because I love it, doesn’t mean everyone else has to. But if you like the mountains, how about I take you to one of the best viewing spots? We can drive most of the way, then it’s a short walk. I hear it’s better in summer, but I reckon it’ll be pretty cool with the new snow.”

I hesitate, then concede with a nod, trying very hard not to give in to the flutter inside me at the I take you part. He just wants to get to know me a bit better, that’s all. Which, all things considered, seems sensible. It is weird that we don’t know anything about each other.

“Great. Want to go get changed?”

“Oh.” I look down at myself, then up at him. “You want to go right now?”

“Sure,” he says easily. “If we want to get back in time for your shift, we need to get moving. And I’ve heard your manager can be a bit of a dick when staff are late for their shifts.”

I snort at that. “Okay. Give me ten minutes.”

“Perfect. I’ll meet you out front.”

I take my coffee to my room, leaving Leo to let himself out. Before I set to work trying to make myself as attractive as possible in ten minutes, I open the next calendar square.

Learn a new skill.

I stare at it. Part of me wants to laugh. Oh, for fuck’s sake, Robyn.

It was a sort of running joke between us. It’s a resolution so many people make at New Year’s—take up a new hobby, try something new, learn a new skill. I can’t remember which one of us started it, but we have always put a version of it in there for one another. I can still hear Robyn’s voice, delighted. We are going to have SO many skills, Al.

There is the sound of my front door opening, and I make a snap decision.

“Leo?” I call from my room.

There’s a pause. Maybe he’s already left. Maybe I won’t have to go through with it. Then, “Yeah?”

I poke my head round my bedroom door. “About your offer to teach me how to ski…”

—

I emerge from the ski hire shop fully kitted out, with Leo getting me such a discount it feels a little like robbery. Although I’m thankful for that, because there is no way I’d have been able to afford it otherwise. When people say skiing is expensive, they are not kidding.

I made the mistake of looking in the mirror as we left the shop—which smelled like an odd combination of pinewood and old socks—and am therefore fully aware that I look like a giant marshmallow. I don’t know how Leo can look so effortlessly sexy next to me, while I look like this. And it’s made a lot worse by the fact that he has mastered the art of walking in ski boots whereas I am stomping my way through the snow in such an unglamorous way that I’m pretty sure a child laughed at me a second ago. I didn’t bring my sunglasses so have been given goggles that I can absolutely not pull off—although their one saving grace is that they hide my eyes, which is a good thing given I’m pretty sure they still look hungover.

Still, here we are. Leo leads me to the bottom of a baby ski slope—as in, there are actual toddlers on it. And surely if the toddlers can do it, it can’t be that hard. Leo helps me to clip on my skis, although it makes me feel like a complete idiot that I can’t do it myself.

“Here,” he says, “hold my shoulder and push your foot down, harder than you think.” I rest my hand on his shoulder and try not to wonder if the muscle I can feel beneath his ski jacket is as hard as I’m imagining.

He helps me onto a mini–ski lift—which he informs me is a “button lift,” due to the fact that the seat looks rather like an overgrown button—and although my skis don’t seem to want to stay pointing the right way, I do manage to make it to the top of the small slope, and somehow get off at the other end without falling over. Point to me.

“Okay, so the first thing to learn is how to snow plow,” he says. My mind immediately conjures up an image of an actual plow, which is presumably not what he’s getting at.

We go very slowly, him instructing me to angle my toes together in order to stop, then move my skis pointing the same direction to go. I feel very much like Bambi on ice, and am very aware of the fact that there are literally no other adults on this slope apart from the instructors, but after about twenty minutes I do feel like I’m getting the hang of it, and I make it all the way down the slope without incident. At the bottom of the slope, I turn to Leo and grin, getting a smile in response.

“Nice job,” he says. “I reckon we can have a go at a green run?”

I cock my head. “Because the snow there is green—or because there’s no snow so it’s basically grass skiing?”

He laughs—just a short, sharp burst, but I can’t help the flare of pride at having been the cause of it. “I can’t work out if you’re kidding or not.”

I grin. “Given the absence of multicolored snow in our immediate vicinity, I’m guessing ‘green’ is code for ‘easy.’ ”

His lips twitch again. “Yep. Maybe you should be a codebreaker.”