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As he led the four-year-old twins, Brendan and Brian, down the bunny slope, Jonny kept thinking about Peter McGuire. Was it fate, or karma, that they ran into each other again?
It wasn’t that strange. He knew that Peter was an avid skier, as he was. And it was more surprising that they hadn’t run into each other before then. They had already established that they liked the same sports, the same beers and restaurants and movies. In a small town like Middlebury, they were bound to meet up at some point.
Did he want to see Peter again? His immediate reaction was hell, yes. The handsome EMT was sexy and they clicked on so many levels.
And yet, there was something inside him that resisted. He kept thinking about Peter as he finished the lesson, then clocked out at the Snow Bowl. It was his last official day, but there was a party scheduled for Saturday night for the staff, so he’d be back then.
By the time he got home, he was still confused. So he did what he often did when he ran into a conundrum. He called Katie.
She sounded breathless. “I’m on the bus,” she said. “I just ran to catch it.”
“You want to call me later?”
“No, I’m good. Work is a bear, though.”
They talked for a couple of minutes about the company where Katie worked. She had hoped to land in a hipster operation with kombucha in the coffee room, but instead the job she had found was in the bowels of a big corporation, where she created product layouts for the company website. It was dreary, mechanical work, but it was an art job, and it paid well.
“How are you doing?” she asked, when she finished her complaint. “Wait, it’s the end of March. Is the Snow Bowl closing?”
“Yeah, today was my last shift.”
“You must be bummed.”
“I’ll be fine. I already have a lot of properties to look after, and I’m happy to get out and go hiking again.”
“There’s something in your voice, though.”
He sat back on the sofa. His roommate, Lana, was a slob, and she left shoes and books and other gear all over the place. He picked an iPhone charger out from under his butt. “I saw Peter today.”
It took Katie a moment. “Peter? The EMT?”
“Yeah.” Jonny explained about finding him on the mountain, and helping him down.
“How romantic! First he rescued you, and now you rescued him.”
“Not exactly. He was walking fine when we got to the bottom.”
“And?”
“He apologized for ghosting me back in December. And he asked me out again.”
“Ooh! You really liked him. Are you going?”
“I don’t know. What if we start up, and then he ghosts me again? I don’t want to set myself up for that kind of pain.”
“Jonny. If you walk into anything like it’s going to fail, then it will. Look at me. I’m slaving away at this crappy job because I hope that either it will get better, or it will lead to something I love. You have to take a chance.”
After he hung up with Katie, Jonny dug around, looking for Peter’s card. He grew increasingly worried when he couldn’t find it. He had deleted Peter’s contact information from his phone after the ghosting. Had he thrown away the card? How stupid was that.
He could always call the rescue center. But he’d done that once, back on Christmas eve, and see how that had worked out?
He kept digging, more frantically, and finally found Peter’s card in the middle of some papers from the emergency room. His fingers tingled as he held it, remembering the connection he and Peter had shared.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he dialed the number on the card. “Hey, Jonny,” Peter said. “I’m glad you called.”
“How did you know it was me?”
“Duh. It’s a cell phone. Your name comes up on the display.”
So Peter had saved his contact information, when Jonny had deleted his. That had to be a good sign, right? “I was thinking about dinner. Maybe tomorrow night?”
“I’m on duty tomorrow night. At the rescue center, I promise. How about Saturday?”
Jonny hesitated. “There’s a party at the Snow Bowl to celebrate the end of the season. People are bringing dates, if they want. You want to go with me?”
“Sure, that’d be great.”
They arranged a time and place to meet, and Jonny hung up. Was he making a mistake, inviting Peter to meet his friends and co-workers when they hadn’t even started to date again?
He remembered when his dad was teaching him to swim, at Lake Dunmore outside Middlebury. “Just jump in, feet first,” his father said. “I’ll catch you.”
He was jumping again, but this time his dad wouldn’t be there to catch him.
Jonny was busy all day Friday and Saturday. In the off season, he was hired to maintain a bunch of ski chalets and cottages, and he had several new properties on his list. He visited each one, checking out all the details. How many bedrooms, bathrooms? Had the water been shut off? Were the toilet seats down, the lights on timers?
He had a spreadsheet for each property with the details that needed to be checked. He trimmed the bushes and trees, checked for leaks, and for damage from wind and rain. He gave each property a quick clean once a week, running the vacuum and dusting, so that dirt didn’t have a chance to accumulate. Some of the property owners made a summer visit, and he didn’t want them to find any problems.
Saturday evening he took a shower, dressed in a pair of pressed jeans and a polo shirt, with a V-necked sweater over it, and drove over to the Snow Bowl. He and Peter had decided to meet there, in case Peter got bored and wanted to leave before Jonny did. “I doubt that,” Peter had said, but Jonny was adamant. If they had separate cars, they’d be less likely to end up in bed again so quickly.
He drove over to the Snow Bowl. The building had been constructed in chalet style, with a peaked roof and big windows, and they glowed as he walked up from the parking lot, and house music boomed from the speakers.
Bob Skeer stood by the door handing out glasses of spiked punch, and Jonny greeted him warmly. Bob had been great when Jonny was incapacitated, letting him work full shifts in the office, and Bob still occasionally wistfully asked if Jonny would want to work full time there instead of giving lessons.
Jonny had turned him down each time. Once his leg healed and he got the strength back in it, he was on the slopes nearly every day. Having had the chance to ski taken away from him by his injury, he was determined to ski as much as he possibly could.
He was talking to one of the other instructors when he saw Peter come in. His heart flip-flopped like a brook trout on a line. Before he could walk over there, the girl who ran the gift shop had sidelined Peter.
Of course. He was a handsome guy, and Jonny wasn’t the only one to recognize that. But Peter caught his eye, escaped from the girl, and came over to him.
Jonny wasn’t sure how to greet Peter. Handshake? Kiss? Hug?
Peter solved the problem by bro-hugging him, one arm over his shoulder, the other around his lower back. They kept their faces to the sides, so there was no chance of cheeks touching. Peter thumped him on the back for good measure. “It’s really great to see you,” Peter said.
“You, too. I saw you with Katelyn. You’ve already got a fan.”
“She used to be barista at the coffee shop on Court Street,” Peter said. “I’ve known her since I moved to town.”
Jonny was surprised again at how many connections they had. Peter knew a couple of the other ski instructors by sight, and one of the clerks had worked at the rescue center for a while. They spent the evening almost magnetically joined, even if they were having conversations with other people. Jonny was viscerally aware of Peter, and felt a deep longing to be in the handsome EMT’s arms once more.
They were both good, though. When they left the party, they hugged again, and Peter said, “You want to go for a hike some time?”
“Sure. When are you free?”
“Tomorrow afternoon?”
Jonny hesitated. Were they diving in too fast again?
“Just a hike,” Peter said, as if he was reading Jonny’s mind. “We’re going to take this slow, right?”
“Right.” They made plans to meet at a trailhead outside Middlebury the next afternoon, and then Jonny walked back to his car. With each step, he wanted to stop, turn, call back to Peter like Lot’s wife leaving Sodom.
But he wasn’t going to turn into a pillar of salt, or a pillar of need. He would take things slowly.
