There is one guy. Christopher. But he’s mad at me.
Wait. You already met a guy who is already mad at you? That’s fast.
I laughed sadly.
He’s pissed because I left him alone all day to go skiing. I think.
I didn’t want to be the one to tell him about the lawsuit if he didn’t already know. That would just set him off and he’d call Loretta and then she’d get mad at me. Unless she had already told him. And if she had, then I didn’t want to get in the middle of it. But I doubted it. Loretta seemed to keep the business of Evergreen Lodge far out of my father’s orbit, for some reason. I never fully understood why. My dad texted back.
Why didn’t he go with you?
He has a broken leg.
Oh. Bummer. Did you go with Lauren?
Yes and some other people. Two other guys and Carina from the pics.
Cute guys???
DAD!
Well I’m just saying maybe he’s jealous.
My skin burned. It definitely seemed like Christopher might be jealous of Damon, but somehow my dad saying it made it seem even more absurd than it already did. Back home, no boys liked me. Well, except that blip with Frankie. Not counting that, I had to go all the way back to eighth grade when Ryan Della Torre had kissed me backstage at the fall musical and told me he liked my hair. It just wasn’t possible that, after being here for three days, I had two boys crushing on me.
I don’t know. I guess they’re cute.
That’s it then. This Christopher guy likes you back, Tater. Just deal with it.
I snorted a laugh. Sometimes talking to my dad was more like talking to a girlfriend. But I really had to get him to stop calling me Tater. That had been my nickname ever since I was three and I’d apparently spent six months refusing to eat anything other than tater tots.
Okay, maybe. But then what do I do?
There was a long pause, and for a second I thought I might have lost my dad’s attention, but then the three scrolling dots appeared.
Text him. See if he wants to hang out. It will make him feel better if he gets to spend some time with you.
It was a simple answer. Because my dad didn’t know about the added layer of the lawsuit. I tried to see it from my father’s point of view—to set aside the fact that Christopher’s parents were attacking my grandmother. The last thing Christopher had said to me was that he didn’t want anything from me. And now I was supposed to text him and invite him…to do what, exactly? Go to the staff party with me? The one Damon had invited me to? I didn’t think that would go over well.
OK. I’ll try.
I texted this mostly to make my dad think he’d given me good advice. Really, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.
OK good luck! And tell your sister to text me. Or call me. Either one.
I will.
I put the phone down and stared at the ceiling. All the anger had seeped out of me, leaving me feeling tired and lonely. The water finally turned off inside the bathroom, and I glanced at the time. Wow. Lauren had been serious when she’d said she was going to take a long shower. Suddenly, I could feel the dried sweat sticking my hair to the back of my neck, and I shivered. Hopefully she didn’t use all the hot water.
A couple minutes later, my sister came out of the bathroom all bundled up in an Evergreen Lodge robe and a towel around her head, releasing a cloud of steam.
“Hey,” she said. “How’s it going?”
I had so much to tell her. So much had happened between when she’d left me in the lobby and now. But I didn’t have the energy for it at the moment. All I could think about was getting in the shower and cleaning the last thirty minutes off of me.
“Fine.” I shoved myself up. “Dad wants you to call him. I’m going to take a shower.”
I heard her grumbling as I closed the door behind me. Standing in the center of her residual steam, I quickly texted Christopher, before I could double-think it.
That conversation did not go well. Truce?
I stared at my phone, holding my breath. Ten seconds. Twenty. Nothing. Maybe he wasn’t looking at his phone. I tried another tactic.
Sorry I yelled. I was just shocked.
Still nothing. I added:
Can we talk? Are you still in the lobby?
This time I waited a full two minutes, just willing the scrolling dots to appear. But there was still no response. I slapped the phone down on the counter, stripped out of my clothes, and got in the shower. Maybe by the time I was all cleaned up and warm, he would have texted back. But when I emerged from the shower a few minutes later and grabbed my phone, my heart all but died.
Not a single message in reply.
I bit my bottom lip. Should I try another text? What would I even say? No. I couldn’t do it. If he wanted to reply to me, he would. I mean, he was the one whose family was trying to take down my family. Shouldn’t he be the one apologizing? Shouldn’t he have reached out first? Suddenly, I felt angry all over again and turned off my phone completely. Maybe we both needed the night to cool off.
Tomorrow was a totally new day.
• • •
DECEMBER 30
I woke up so early the next morning, the light coming through the crack between the curtains was still pinkish gray. Lauren had come back so late, I’d barely registered it. That staff party must have been one for the ages. I wondered if Damon had been disappointed when I didn’t show up. If Lauren and Carina had bonded and were now BFFs. Probably. Lauren had a way of becoming BFFs with everyone she met. But at the moment, I didn’t really care. I needed to find Christopher. I needed to make everything that had gone wrong between us, right. I just really hoped he felt the same way.
I took a quick shower, pulled my hair up in a wet bun, and dressed in my favorite buffalo plaid shirt, cozy white sweater, and comfy gray leggings. It was not only a cute outfit, but functional if I was going to spend the morning cozied up by the fire, figuring out the next move on my list with Christopher, like I hoped. Maybe, if we made up, I could even talk to his parents. Get them to see that there were real people behind this company they were suing. The very idea terrified me, but I’d do it if I could. Evergreen Lodge meant a lot to my family. It meant a lot to me.