Noah and Blair jumped as the latter's name fell from my lips. They actually jumped, like they truly had forgotten that I was standing right there between them.

Or maybe it was the fact that I was malfunctioning.

"Is she okay?" Blair asked Noah, his bewildered blue gaze fixed on mine.

"Yeah. She just spontaneously combusts sometimes." My friend placed an arm on my shoulder, his sober touch jolting me back to life. "You good, Madi?"

I tried to clear my throat. Tried to regain some semblance of composure.

"Fine," I said, my voice cracking with nerves. "Just, um, did you say Blair? As in ..." As in James' Blair?

As in Blair-with-the-Purple-Heart-Emoji Blair?

As in brunette, D cup, mega-bitch Blair?

As in Blair Blair?

"Blair!" James called. He broke through a group chatting to our right, his smile creasing his eyes before he wrapped up his relative in an affectionate bear hug. "God, it's good to see you. How's my baby cousin?"

"Baby? I'm only one year younger than you." Blair scoffed, rolling his bright, twinkling eyes to the chandelier and back.

But he encased James in a hug just as tight.

Just like that, something released in my stomach. It was like knots had been bundled there—bundled for days—and, suddenly, they'd all been pulled free.

Okay. So Blair was a brunette.

But she was also a he.

And he was definitely not a D cup.

"How have you been?" James asked, admiring his cousin's collection of delicate jewels. "How's business?"

"Great. Lilac Love just hit five hundred followers on Instagram."

Lilac Love ... A purple-heart emoji ...

Idiot. I was an idiot.

Blair motioned to me and Noah in turn. "I was buttering up another client before Jones rudely interrupted—"

"If I remember correctly," Noah drawled, "you didn't mind the interruption."

James' eyes darted between the two of them knowingly.  "Well, I hate to ... interrupt," he said, chewing on a grin, "but I was wondering if I could have a word?"

"Of course, babe," Blair replied, taking a sip of his fruity cocktail.

And completely failing to peel his gaze from Noah's.

I'm pretty sure the sparks flying between them could have powered the whole resort.

"Uh ..." James licked his lips. "Privately?"

Slowly, Blair turned to regard his cousin. He assessed him with a long, puzzled look. So quickly that I could have missed it, James nodded his head in mine and Noah's direction.

Or mine or Noah's direction.

I couldn't be sure which one of us he was referring to.

But the gesture alone seemed to do the trick for Blair. His blank stare was quickly replaced by one dripping with understanding.

"Oh!" he gasped. Rather hurriedly, he took a few steps towards me until we were practically face-to-face. He leaned in, grazing his purple lips against my cheek. "Nice to meet you, babe. I'll see you around. Be sure to try the eclairs—they're divine!"

"Nice to meet you, too," I managed to get out before James dragged his cousin away. Just as quickly as they'd joined me, the two of them disappeared into the crowd, lost to the expensive sea of black suits and gowns.

Slightly curious and slightly frazzled, I turned to consult Noah with a look.

But he wasn't paying attention to me at all.

His eyes were still cast in our vanishing companions' direction, his movements slow and considered as he raised his flute to his lips. And it seemed that only I'd noticed his phone buzzing in his hands—a notification from Tinder or Hinge or Grindr, no doubt.

I cleared my throat, nodding to the ringing device.

He didn't even consult it before locking the screen.

Despite taking dance classes from the age of three through thirteen, I've never been the most coordinated person on the planet.

Which was how I knew that skiing was a terribly bad idea.

Don't get me wrong—I'd tried it twice before. I'd been skiing with Lola's family way back at the start of high school, and there was the class trip in eighth grade to thank for my basic understanding of polar aerodynamics, too.

But that was so long ago.

I was practically a different person then. I was young. I was hopeful. I was so sickeningly starry-eyed, so readily willing to give anything a fair shot. I had so much faith in the universe that it was almost chilling to look back on.

The new me was learning to love life again, sure, but I was still cautious. I was careful. And I imagined that re-learning to ski would end similarly to the first time that Eli tried to teach me to surf: with me splayed out like a starfish at the foot of the shore, my mouth full of salt and my hair full of sand.

Needless to say, I was more than happy to sit skiing out. To do what I did best­­—to stand on the sidelines and watch everyone else have fun.

But that wasn't on Noah's list. Or James' list; the jury was still out on whose list we were following. And, after the Blair debacle, I was done making assumptions.

I was also done with saying no to things, according to my friends and their families. Mr. Van Der Yates actually laughed when I told him that I couldn't remember how to ski.

"You'll get the hang of it," he'd told me with all the confidence of someone who owned a ski resort.

I wasn't sure what exactly Dex had told his parents about me. Aside from the fact that I could do laundry, that is. But whatever it was, it caused them to have more faith in me than I'd ever had in myself. It caused them to be just as stubborn as Eli was all those years ago.

So, before I knew it, I had a pair of poles in my hands and my own personal instructor.

Somehow, I'd also accumulated two more.

"Make sure you lean forward," Clara, Noah's ten-year-old sister, explained, demonstrating the motion herself as we waited in line for our turn on the trail.

"But not too far forward," her twin, Cleo, said before gripping my poles and pulling them back into position. "No, don't hold them like that. Back and down," she explained.

Just as she had five minutes prior.

"You've really only done this twice?" Clara asked, sweeping a dark ringlet from over her wide eyes.

I nodded. "Really."

The twins exchanged a look.

One that told me I was in trouble.

I felt butterflies circling in my stomach like a swarm of bees. I couldn't even hack skiing while I was standing still. How on earth was I going to dash down an entire mountainside on my own?

Not that the mountain was that big—I was pretty sure that James had covered the words 'Junior Slope' on the way up. And not that I'd been totally alone. My instructor was patient and lovely during our trial run that morning. She'd helped me buckle my boots and navigate the chairlift on the way up, and she'd caught my fall on more than one embarrassing occasion.

But, now, as we were queuing atop our second peak of the day, Astrid was doing far less instructing and far more chatting up a snowstorm with the other skiers.

Chatting up Dex, in particular.

I smiled to myself, watching their exchange from afar. Astrid had a full, bright smile that she wasn't afraid to whip out every time my friend told one of his adorably terrible jokes. She fussed over her dirty blonde locks even though they were slicked perfectly in place, and she even reached out to place her hand on my friend's arm at one point.

Causing Noah and I to squeal between ourselves before swatting each other into silence.

I knew better than to revert to my wingwomaning ways. Actually, that was an understatement; I was pretty darn sure that my friends had banned me from wingwomaning them for life.

Still, I wasn't about to break up Dex's budding conversation with my instructor for something as comparatively unimportant as my safety on the slopes.

"Are you ready?"

I turned towards the hills as James' voice brushed against my ear. He peered back at me sweetly, his blond hair spilling out from underneath his cream woolen beanie and dancing on the light breeze. The wintery landscape made for the perfect backdrop against his tanned skin and crystal blue eyes, the dusting of snow landing on his cheeks transforming him into some kind of Arctic prince.

Not that he needed much help on the bewitching front.

I realized that the two of us had reached the front of the line, with nothing between us and the trail but a couple of bright flags. My stomach was still swirling, but I noticed that it wasn't just nerves gathering there. Rather, I was excited. I could practically feel adrenaline building inside of me.

"Ready," I confirmed, painting my smile with assurance. "Are you?"

He chuckled, amusement pouring from his eyes and into the cool afternoon air. His white knitted sweater was almost iridescent in the golden sunlight. "Are you kidding? I've skied this exact track every year since I was eight."

"And I'm still going to beat you to the bottom."

He cocked his head, pursing his lips in thought. "Is it a race?"

"It's a race."

His expression turned cryptic before he coated his features with as much assurance as I'd placed over mine. "You're so on," he quipped, turning on his skis and breaking free from the line.

I glided out after him, making little effort to actually overtake him. Mostly because I didn't actually know where we were going. But I think he knew that. Because although he totally could have, he made little effort to ski too far ahead.

Despite my fears at the top of the slope, I found that my body fell into a natural rhythm on the sleet. Like my nerves dissolved as soon as I stepped into the calm of the frosted evergreens, and like my muscle memory sprang into action. As I drifted through the scenic track, trailing my friend's careful, skilled movements with some wobbly ones of my own, it was like a part of me somehow knew that I'd be okay.

Because I trusted physics. I trusted James. And, most shocking of all, I trusted myself.

I never wanted that feeling to end. That feeling of self-sufficiency, of liberty and autonomy. Of being in the moment, of being one with the cool air and pretty flora dotting the wintery plains. Of experiencing it all with the one person who amplified it and made it feel like magic. I wanted to plant that endless sea of white into my mind forever, to capture it there in perfect replication. I wanted to be able to return to the trail whenever I wanted, whenever I needed to feel that same slice of trust. Of freedom.

James reached the end of the track before I did, of course, though he was only a couple of paces ahead. I knew that I had to stop. I knew that I had to break my speed soon. But as the end of the line got closer and closer, my sense of calm evaporated like mist.

Because I couldn't for the life of me remember how to stop.

What did Clara say? Lean forward?

I did. I leaned forward.

But with the look of alarm that fell over my friend's face, I knew instantly that I'd made a mistake.

"Madi, sprea—"

James' voice descended into a hopeless exhale as I crashed into his open arms. I fell—quite literally—down into the slush, the momentum of our collision causing him to tumble with me. Both of us collapsed into the cold sheet of snow below our skis, one on top of the other.

Me on top of him.

Where we stayed.

Because, suddenly, I couldn't move.

I wasn't stuck. Not literally. And I wasn't hurt. I'm sure I could have stood up right away if I wanted to.

But I didn't want to.

Our bodies burned a hole into the glacial snow below James' back. Cool flurries fell from above and landed in our windswept hair. Everything around us should have rendered us cold, but I wasn't numb. Rather, everything was scorching. Everything was heightened. Everything was him.

I could feel the rapid pulsing of his heart beneath my fingertips. I could feel it beating in perfect harmony with mine. I could feel his shallow breath, warm on my frigid skin. And while my mind was working overtime to make sense of it all, some deeper part of me simply knew what it meant.

I didn't care that it was illogical, that I was leaning into a fantasy as unrealistic as the dream I had the day before. Because I knew. I just knew that, at that moment, he felt what I felt.

He didn't want this to end. For any of it to end. Not the race on the trail, not our day in the snow. Most definitely not that moment of possibility that had consumed us both.

But, most of all, he wanted one thing.

He wanted to kiss me as much as I needed him to.

Hi all,

I'm really annoying and changed my @ ! My socials will remain the same for now (danielleteebooks), but you can find me on wattpad @danielletalbury ❤️

Don't forget to check out our playlist on Spotify! I made a B side that isn't Christmas related so you can still vibe without feeling out of season