“Skiing… in a building…with real snow, this is so not a good idea.” I sighed. “I am the clumsiest person in the world. Do you really want to spend the night in A & E?”
“I’m an expert, honestly I’ll be the best teacher you could ever have, I won’t let you fall I promise.” He smiled, but he had obviously under estimated my clumsiness.
“Dude, I have been skiing before, it wasn’t a pretty sight.”
“When did you last go?”
“When I was fifteen with high school.”
He threw his head back on a roar of laughter.
“You’ll have way better balance now, don’t sweat it. You’ll be great.”
Who was he kidding? I had to spell this out for him.
“The first day on the slopes I skied into a tree, no make that a forest full of trees.”
He tried to hold in his smirk, “Those damn trees can spring up out of nowhere, could happen to the best of us. There’s no trees in here I can promise you.”
“Yeah? Well day two I skied straight down the slope, over the flat and right into a crowded carpark…covered with gravel…and I hit a car. It took three people to pull me out from under it. I was mortified.”
He was properly laughing now. I was still straight faced to show how deadly serious I was about this possible disaster in the making.
“Maybe the car park was too close to the slope. Their mistake I’m sure. Nothing like that is gonna happen tonight.”
“Hmmm, so day three I forgot to use the snow plough move to slow me down and I skied into the queue of people waiting for the ski lifts. I took out little kids Joe, I was a menace. Plus they had all this plastic netting stuff they were using as a make shift fence running along behind the queue of people at the lift and my skis got all tangled up in it. I was Mr Bean on Skis. I shouldn’t be allowed to put skis on again…ever.”
He was doubled over with laughter now, “This could be fun then.” He could hardly speak he was laughing so hard.
“Seriously, they told me to sit out by day four, I felt humiliated.” I protested.
“I’m sure it’ll be different tonight.” He tried to sound sincere but the sneaky grin playing across his face told me he was going to enjoy my Bambi on ice performance.
“I can’t ski for toffee, but on the last night I danced like a pro at the leaving disco. I even had our young ski instructor begging me for one more dance at the end.” I was hoping to retain some degree of self-respect here, but Joe face suddenly turned predatory.
“I bet he did,” he clipped a little irritated, “probably wanted to give you one to one ski lessons too, amongst other things.”
I shook my head, this man was way too jealous, he was getting pissed about a teenage encounter that had happened nearly ten years ago,
“Whatever, let’s go do this. I hope you’re prepared to be shamed out of the building when everyone sees how truly awful I am.”
“No one will s
ee, I’ve hired the whole place out so it’ll only be us in there.”
Of course he had, why did I think we would be skiing with the rest of the public? Joe didn’t do people or crowds.
We got out of the car and he popped the trunk open to reveal two sets of skis and poles, one black with blue and green patterns on and the other pink with purple swirls.
“I figured you wouldn’t own skis and I don’t like using the loaned out stuff so I brought you some of the gear today is that okay?”
“You have way too much money,” I mused, “I’d happily borrow some skis for an evening.”
He wrinkled his nose in disgust as he picked both sets up to carry them inside. I hoped he’d kept a receipt for them though, because I doubted I’d use them more than once.
“Oh my God it’s sooooo cold!” I shivered rubbing my hands together and making clouds with my breath.
“Of course it is, this is real snow you know and they need to keep the temperature right to stop it melting.” He raised one eye brow at me.