What Happened After

Chapter 19

"I didn't want to be the one to have to tell you this, but this is not your bed." 

Chapter 19.

          The rest of the weekend went off, surprisingly, without a hitch. We hung out in the lounge some more, I with my hot chocolate, and Ruesso with his tea, which he seemed to prefer highly over hot chocolate.

          Sitting with him now with our respective hot mugs in our hands, I asked him, “How come you let me buy you a hot chocolate with that gift card? When you don’t even like hot chocolate?”

          “I don’t have anything against hot chocolate. You just didn’t give me a choice. You said I had to try the Nutella hot chocolate, so I did, and it was good, but now I just want to drink my tea. Let me drink my tea, woman.” He went back to gingerly sipping the liquid and I couldn’t help but smile.

          “As you wish, sir,” I responded. “Drink away.” He chuckled into his mug and turned to stare out the window at the other skiers.

          “They look so happy,” he said, forlornly.

          I glanced in the direction he was looking, then turned my gaze back to his face. He looked so sad, and I couldn’t figure out why that was. “Who does?” I asked, softly.

          “Those kids out there. On the bunny hill.” He nodded in their direction and, upon closer inspection by me, I noticed that yes, most of the skiers on the bunny hill were young children. Some skiing in groups, others with their parents, others with instructors. He was right; they did look very happy—every one of them. This, to me, was something to be happy about, not sad; who doesn’t love a happy child? It was confusing to me, why Ruesso looked so broken up by this.

          “Oh. Yeah, they do look happy,” I said. “They’re out there having a great time learning to ski instead of pretending they don't know how to make their friends look like idiots or partaking in the hot chocolate/tea debate. Which, by the way, I’m bowing out of gracefully as of right now. I’ve been trying to convince you since this morning, and I just can’t win.”

          Ruesso smiled, a little, then responded. “They’re happy because they don’t have anything to worry about. Their biggest problem is the thought of having to face the real slopes at the end of the day. There are so many shitty things in this world—so many bigger things to look out for—and they don’t have to worry about any of them. Not today.”

          “Ruesso, are you okay? We can go back up to the cabin if you want…”

          He cut me off with his eyes, turning his head to face me now. “Nah,” he said. “I’ll be fine. I’m just being sad and annoying and you can stop me at any time. And about the great beverage debate, you will never be right about this. Tea owns hot chocolate every day of the week, and you need to grow up and accept that as fact.” With that, he stood up, offering his hand to me to help me up as well. When I stood up to join him, he released my hand and looked at me. “You want to do a couple more runs? After that, I’m beat.”

          Without mentioning the fact that we’d barely done anything at all that day, I nodded. I knew he was probably emotionally drained, and just wanted to sleep it off in our room. He was only skiing with me now to humor me, and I was okay with that. “Yeah, sounds good.”

~~~~~~~~~~

          On Saturday night, we fell asleep at around eleven, after playing a marathon of UNO in which the loser of two games out of three had to down a mug of the other player’s beverage of choice in less than thirty seconds. I lost, and Ruesso had giddily jumped up to prepare my tea, and I drank it, pretending to cringe at the taste.