Well, yes.
Easy question. Easy answer.
Did she think she should see him again naked?
Harder question. Harder answer.
Ohh...harder.
Stop it, Joey.
Make decisions with the top half of the body, not the bottom half, she told herself.
But the bottom half was so much more fun...
Joey tried to talk some good sense into herself as she walked through the day lodge. Skiing season wouldn’t gear up again for another month or so and the place was eerily quiet. And yet it still bore the distinct and lingering scent of hundreds of teenage snowboarders. The ghosts of winters’ past, both bitchin’ and gnarly. Chris and Dillon were two of those ghosts. Both of them had embraced snowboarding hard their last two years of high school. She’d stuck to regular old-fashioned skis, which actually made sense to her. Plus the snowboarder guys were way too competitive, too intense for her. She’d rather have fun with her friends, ski a little, drink hot chocolate in the lodge instead of risking her neck by trying to prove herself to a bunch of guys she didn’t even like, the ones who called the female skiers “Snow Bunnies.” Well, they were Ski Dicks to her and her friends. Chris and Dillon weren’t Ski Dicks. They were the good guys, although they were pretty ridiculous back then. After a good run, they’d rushed into the lodge, red-faced, sweating, laughing, exhausted, and Dillon would launch into high oratory about his day while Chris stood at his side shaking his head and making the occasional interjection into Dillon’s passionate recital—
That was a one-eighty, not a three-sixty. Leave the math to me, Dillon.
No, that was a Saint Bernard, not a bear. Get your fucking eyes checked.
At no point did you remotely resemble Shaun White in flight, you dipshit.
This was apparently how male best friends talked to each other. Joey found it quite adorable, except for the unbearable body odor the both of them emitted. She could smell them before she could see them. Thankfully since high school they’d figured out how to work both showers and deodorant. Probably didn’t hurt that she’d given them both an Old Spice gift bag for Christmas that year with a note that said, “Use it, please! For my sake and the sake of all humanity! PS—Merry Christmas. PPS—Not kidding, you stink.”
Joey laughed to herself as she walked from the ski lodge and toward the hotel. So many good memories. All of her best ones seemed to involve Dillon and Chris. And her parents, too. They’d semiadopted Chris during Dillon’s senior year. Dillon was a prime target for bullying and worse, and Chris was a prime target for suspension or expulsion what with his tendency to throw punches when confronted by Dillon’s tormentors. Her parents wanted to keep an eye on “the boys” as they were always called. Chris slept at their house, ate their food and came with them on all family trips. He’d fit in so well she hadn’t realized how much a part of her everyday life Chris was until he’d graduated high school. Dillon went to college in New York. And Chris just...disappeared.
Now she knew where he’d gone. Without Dillon and her family around, he’d drifted. He’d failed a little and then succeeded a little and then succeeded a lot. And all on his own.
And here he was, at age twenty-eight, working at Timber Ridge, which was a National Historic Landmark. How cool was that? She’d had to hire a handyman just to hang the pictures in her Honolulu apartment because she’d been so afraid of damaging the plaster or missing the stud.
Speaking of studs.
At the front desk, Joey asked where she could find Chris. Luckily he’d left word that someone might come looking for him. She skipped the slow and ancient elevator that she guessed still worked at the same speed it had when the place opened eighty years ago and instead took the three flights of steps up to the hotel room. Someone had left the door cracked open but yellow caution tape strung across the frame stopped her in her tracks. A sign on the door apologized for the noise. Noise? What noise?
Joey pushed the door open a few inches, stuck her head inside over the caution tape and saw Chris standing in front of a stone fireplace with a sledgehammer in his hands. He wore safety goggles, knee and elbow pads and a dust mask. He lifted the sledgehammer, turned and swung it hard. The impact was ear-shattering as well as rock-shattering. She jumped, gasped. The fireplace crumbled in a gray waterfall of fractured rock and powder.
“Wow,” Joey said, and Chris looked over his shoulder. He pushed the dust mask on top of his head and smiled.
“There’s a word for when you do something violent to make yourself feel better,” Chris said. “Starts with a C? Something Greek or Latin?”
“Catharsis?”
“That’s the word.”
“You needed catharsis?”
“Kind of, yeah.”
Yeah, she kind of knew why he needed catharsis. Oops.
“So...do you feel better now?” she asked. He walked over to her and removed the caution tape to let her inside the room. He shut the door behind them.
“Much.”
“Can I try it?”
“Are you bonded, licensed and insured?”