American Royals
Sam started to deliver some flippant, incisive comment, to mock Teddy for his starry-eyed idealism—but the truth came out instead. “I don’t know what I want to do. I don’t even know what I would be good at.”
“Maybe if you went to college, you would figure it out.”
Suddenly they were lifting the safety bar and sliding out onto the windswept peak. Sam snapped out of her board and lifted it onto her shoulder, not waiting for Teddy, who had pulled a nylon strap from his jacket pocket, to loop his skis behind him like a backpack.
She wordlessly started along the ridge, following the icy footprints etched into the snow by previous skiers and snowboarders. To her left, every several yards, wooden stakes were anchored in the snow with red DANGER tape looped between them—not that the tape would do anything to help, if someone slipped. Past the tape, the mountain fell off in a sheer vertical drop.
At last they reached the top of the Revelation Bowl: a wide expanse of snow that funneled off the side of the mountain. Sam reached to unzip her jacket, feeling warm from exertion. The sun had finally dispersed the clouds. She tilted her face upward, letting its rays kiss her brow.
“You ready to lose?” Jeff asked, still breathing heavily. He flashed her his usual cheeky grin.
“Bring it on.” Ignoring Teddy’s quiet presence behind her, Sam strapped back into her snowboard. Then she edged over the lip of the slope and dropped in.
The air whipped at her, tore mercilessly at her clothes. Knee-deep powder flung itself to each side of her board in a spray of white. Sam felt like she’d been stagnant every minute that she wasn’t on her snowboard—that only now when she was falling off the side of a mountain was she alive again.
Jeff had shot ahead, and she felt Teddy nipping at her heels, the whoosh of his skis a softer sound than the boards’ loud carving. Sam curled her ankles and threw her weight forward with more blind force than usual, as if spurred on by what Teddy had said. What right did he think he had, to pass judgment on her?
Her board slipped out from beneath her.
Once, at five years old, Sam had tried to escape her private instructor and barreled straight down the mountain. She ran out of snow, skidding across twenty meters of mud before she crashed into a bush. When Ski Patrol finally dug her out, she’d lost two teeth and was grinning ear to ear.
Sam felt that way now. She was careening ever faster down the slope, trying desperately to slam her back foot onto her edge—
She flew forward, hitting the snow with a thud and tumbling head over heels downhill. The world was reduced to a spinning whirl of white.
She curled her body in on itself, waiting until everything finally fell still.
“Sam!”
To her surprise, the voice wasn’t Jeff’s, but Teddy’s.
He grabbed her elbow to pull her upright. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine.” Sam fumbled for her board in the drifts and fastened herself back in, one foot at a time. She felt suddenly embarrassed—not for falling, but for the reason it happened. Because she’d been thinking about Teddy.
“Congratulations,” she forced herself to say, looking down the mountain at Jeff. “It would appear that I owe you a dare.”
Wrapped in a fluffy white towel, Sam padded toward the indoor hot tub, which was built into the side of the house, bordered by floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the mountains. There was an outdoor hot tub too, of course, but Sam’s every muscle felt sore, and she didn’t want to keep running out into the cold to reset the jets.
She turned the corner, only to realize that she wasn’t alone.
“Oh—sorry. Never mind,” she said hesitantly.
Teddy stood, shaking his head. “Please, don’t let me scare you off. There’s plenty of room.”
It was true; this hot tub had been designed to accommodate fifteen people. But wasn’t it a little weird for her to be out here alone, with the guy her sister was dating?
Then again, Sam realized, she hadn’t heard Teddy mention Beatrice’s name all weekend.
She reluctantly dropped her towel and lowered herself into the water. She was wearing a bright fuchsia one-piece, which technically might not qualify as a one-piece at all given how many cutouts had been strategically sliced into it. It was the kind of thing she couldn’t wear in the summer, because the tan lines it left were too weird.
“Besides, you probably need the hot tub more than I do, after that wipeout,” Teddy went on, and ventured a smile. “Has Jeff decided on your dare yet?”
“Not yet. He’ll have to come up with something really great, because this opportunity won’t come along again. I don’t usually lose to him,” she boasted.
Teddy chuckled. “As long as you guys don’t freeze my long underwear.”
“I can’t make any promises.”
Sam drifted so that her back was over one of the jets. She forced herself to look out the window, because otherwise she would be staring at Teddy—at his muscled arms, the fine line of stubble along his jawline. Steam curled around his hair, making it a little darker than usual, the color of fine-spun gold.
“Samantha.” Teddy cleared his throat. “I’m sorry for what I said earlier. I was out of line.”
“No, you were right.”
Sam was as shocked by her answer as Teddy seemed to be. She glanced down at the surface of the water, biting her lip. “Unlike Beatrice, Jeff and I have no defined role or purpose, no job we’re being trained for. We just … exist.”