“Should be okay,” I tell her, coming up alongside with the sled. “I’ve never actually been sledding up here, but I know a couple other rangers have. Nice slope, no debris.”
The spot’s open to the sky, maybe twenty feet wide and two hundred long. In the summer it’s a pleasant little meadow with a steep slope, but in the winter it’s a decent place to sled if you don’t want to run into a tree. Or so I’ve heard.
“You should go first,” she’s saying, pushing her hat down a little further onto her head, the ties on either side swaying in the breeze.
“So I can find out if there’s stumps under the snow?”
“Because you carried the sled and found the spot,” she says. “You should have first crack at it.”
“It was your idea.”
“That I badgered you into carrying out.”
She’s right, but that doesn’t mean I’m giving in.
“Andi,” I say, folding my arms and dredging up all the hard-won dealing-with-toddlers patience I’ve acquired in my life, “stop arguing and sled down that hill while there’s still light to do it by.”
“It’s two in the afternoon,” she says, but she takes the sled from me and plops it into the snow, aims for the hill, and begins the process of lowering herself as the sled slides around, as sleds are wont to do. “I haven’t been sledding since I was a kid,” she admits, laughing, breath puffing toward the sky. “How do you—”
“Here,” I say, and crouch to hold it still. When she gets in it puts her face six inches from mine, and it’s not as close as that night in the dark, but it feels warm despite the cold. “You want a push?” I ask when she’s in, nylon rope gripped in both hands.
“You were joking about the stumps, right?”
“I don’t think there’s any,” I tell her, down on one knee, my hand on the back of the sled behind her. Without meaning to I slide my gloved thumb along the fabric of her coat, the whisper of it so loud in the snowy quiet. “Ready?”
“Bombs away,” she says, and I push her over.
Andi shouts all the way down, a high-pitched wooooo! that breaks through the stillness like someone opening a heavy curtain and letting the light in. When she finally comes to a stop at the bottom she’s doubled over in the sled, her forehead on her knees, and I’m about to shout down when the sound of her laughter trickles up to me.
I’m smiling. I can’t help it.
“That was great!” she shouts, standing. “See?”
“See what?”
“Sledding was a good idea!” she shouts, starting back up the hill, sled dragging behind her.
“I never said it wasn’t,” I call down, and she somehow rolls her eyes with her whole body, still tromping back up.
“Yes,” she says, when she gets to the top. “You did.” She’s out of breath, eyes bright, skin flushed as she holds out the sled rope.
“Doesn’t sound like me,” I say, and take it.
“What?” she says, swallowing like she’s trying to control her breathing. “You said it was ridiculous.”
“I wasn’t wrong.”
“You’re smiling,” she says, like I could be doing anything else when she’s this close and this happy.
“I’m allowed to smile.”
“Here,” she says, and points at the flattened snow from her sled run. “Sit. It’s your turn.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ANDI
At the bottom of the sled hill, Gideon comes to a stop, then carefully leans out of the sled and plants a stick next to the nose of the sled, adding to several other stick-markers in the snow, a good twenty feet short of where the trees start again.
Then he turns back to look at me, half-rolling out of the sled, and when he’s on his knees he raises both arms into the air.
“I got it!” he shouts up at me.
“That’s not further than my last one!” I shout back.
“It’s at least two more inches,” he says, pointing at some sticks in the snow.
“I don’t believe you!”
“Come down here and check!” he says, getting to his feet and brushing the snow from his pants. I hope his ankle is okay, but he hasn’t said anything and it’s not like I can do much about it out here.
“Come up here and bring me the sled!” I shout back, and he starts trudging up the hill. We’ve managed to make an okay path up one side of the slope, and after at least an hour of sledding we’ve both taken off our outer layers, which are currently on one of the granite boulders near the top of the slope.
“You can check all you want,” Gideon says when he gets to the top, half out of breath. “I beat your record, fair and square.”
“It’s not fair, you’re heavier,” I point out. “You’ve got more… momentum.”
It’s momentum, right? High school physics was a long time ago, and I’m vaguely recalling some experiment where we proved that a ping-pong ball and a bowling ball fell at the same speed. Velocity. Whatever. It may or may not apply to this situation.
“Life’s not fair,” he intones, and he sounds serious but there’s a hitch at one corner of his mouth, his pretty green eyes barely crinkling. I haven’t seen Gideon smile this much at a stretch since we’ve been together up here, and it makes me feel like the first time you plug in the Christmas lights. It feels like having him back.
“Thanks,” I deadpan. “Any other enlightening words of wisdom about sledding?”
“You were complaining about fairness.”
“I wasn’t complaining,” I say, and now I’m grinning at him because this is winding him up, I know it, and it’s kind of fun. I like getting under Gideon’s skin more than I should, and I feel bad about it, but he doesn’t seem to mind that much and I kind of can’t help it. “Just making an observation.”
That gets a flat, unimpressed look, but I’m close enough to see the way his lips just barely move as he tries not to smile. They’re pink with cold but they look warm, and I think about that for a moment longer than I should.
“We should go soon,” he says, rubbing a hand through his hair and looking at the wide blue sky. “I’d like to be back well before sundown.”
“We have time for one more?”
“Sure,” he says, and gives me a your turn gesture toward the sled.
“Both of us,” I say on a whim.
“We won’t both fit.”
“Sure we will,” I say, though I’m actually not confident, either.
“It’ll break.”
“If it hasn’t broken yet, I don’t think it will,” I say, again with more confidence than I technically feel. “C’mon. We’ll beat our distance record. Get in.”
Gideon makes a big show of sighing and shaking his head and acting like he’s giving in to me as a big favor, but I’m onto him. He likes fun as much as the next person and just thinks he shouldn’t for some reason that I’m not going to examine right now.