When We Were Young

Moving on

Skylar and I enjoyed the rest of the summer knowing that the fall would be busy once I started classes. After deciding to quit my job completely, I finished unceremoniously without saying the obligatory 'let's keep in touch, let's have drinks' to my co-workers. I had lunch with my boss, who I probably would see again, but I never talked to Nate again after my birthday.

We spent time at the lake house, and visited her brother, Zeb, and his family in Cape Cod over Labor Day. His wife, Maria, gave me the third degree on the first night but after I told her that I never had empanadas as good as she made them, she loved me. Zeb and I stayed up late one night, sitting by the fire pit and drinking more beers than we probably should have. He told me that he hadn't seen his sister that happy in a long time, and I knew that my angst about meeting him was unnecessary. He never once mentioned my age.

Skylar's nieces seemed to like me, too. By the time we left, they were calling me Uncle AJ.

I hadn't anticipated how absolutely exhausted I would be between an internship at the Met, which was basically a full-time job, and taking three classes each semester. Skylar and I fell into a rhythm, and were both so busy that a year passed. Somehow. We spent Christmas with my parents, even though my mother was simply unbearable and she and Skylar barely spoke. My father and I went riding, and the three of us stayed up late by the fire, drinking and laughing.

Skylar and I went to Eleuthera for my spring break. We did nothing but lie around on the beach during the day, and have a lot of sex at night. We spent our anniversary and birthdays with just each other. No drama, no big parties, no surprises.

By Thanksgiving of my second year in school, I needed another break. Her brother invited us to go to Vermont with his family to go skiing. Skylar seemed to like the idea over anything else.

There was only one problem.

I'll say it before and I'll say it again, I am not very athletic. Skylar, on the other hand, was athletic. Yes, I rode horses, and even played football. Skiing is not the same thing. I was sure I was going to come back in a full leg cast, and that was not going to make my busy schedule easy to manage. My goal was to position myself at the bar near the fire in the lodge.

Skylar was nice enough to join me on the slopes. She was also nice enough not to call them the kiddie slopes to avoid bruising my ego. She stayed next to me as I made my way down the hill at a painfully slow rate.

But she just smiled, and gave me pointers. I was getting frustrated, not with her, but with the fact that I always felt like I was going to fall over.

"Just relax. Bend your knees a little," she said. She pushed her goggles onto her head and the sun brightened her face.

"I don't think Englishman are supposed to ski. I think there's some law." I inched my way forward and she laughed. She was now in front of me, skiing backwards. "Show off."

"You'll get the hang of it. You have all the time in the world. Well, only a couple more hours today," she chided, and looked up at the sky.

Someone yelled behind us and I don't know what they yelled. Now I know they yelled 'watch out' because some kid was coming down the hill much too fast, and completely diagonal. It happened very fast. The kid plowed into Skylar, and her legs went into the air. She screamed and went tumbling down the hill, somersaulting with the kid, who finally skidded to a stop on his back. Skylar came to a sudden stop when she slammed into a bumper at the bottom of the hill.

I unlatched my skies, about the only thing I was good at doing, and then skidded down the hill to get to her. People were already hovering around her, one of them being a paramedic. She was slamming her fist to the ground and yelling in pain.