I step toward her.“You know what? You are still as bratty, selfish?—”
“Guys!” Maya steps between us and gives us each a look of warning. “Seriously? We haven’t even been here five minutes, and you’re already bickering. Do I have to remind you that you both promised to be on your best behavior? For me?”
My sister is very lucky that I respect her enough to back down, because if she was anyone else, I’d have left Darcy in the middle of the mountains to freeze.
“Sorry,” I murmur.
“Yeah, sorry,” Darcy echoes, but the way she’s glaring at me out of the corner of her eye doesn’t exactly sell the sentiment.
Someone behind me clears their throat, and for a moment, I think the rude old lady is back to taunt me some more, but then it suddenly occurs to me that my class has just witnessed my little catfight.
Turning back to my students, I scratch the back of my neck, feeling my skin heat up from embarrassment, and offer them a sheepish smile. “Let’s call it a day, guys. We’ll pick back up in the same place tomorrow.”
There are several grumbles of annoyance, and a certain woman with a knack for complaining shouts out a few choice words that I personally think are a bit excessive for the situation. But hey, what do I know? Apparently, I’m immature and anutterasshole.
I take a deep breath to compose myself and look at my sister, pointedly avoiding making any sort of eye contact with Darcy. “Still want a private lesson? We have a few hours before the sun goes down.”
Maya’s eyes light up, which brings me a kind of pride I can’t get from anyone else. “Definitely! We’re probably gonna suck, though. Neither of us have ever been skiing.”
I chuckle and throw my arm around her shoulders, ruffling her hair with my other hand. “Luckily for you, I specialize in teaching dummies how to ski.”
“Clearly,” Darcy mumbles under her breath, which I decide to ignore—at least for the time being. If she wants to pick a fight, that’s fine. I’ll fight right back. But not in front of my sister. Maya deserves a fun week without Darcy and me letting our disdain for one another get in the way. I’d hoped to be cordial with her—get her to like me, even—but if this is how she wants to play it, then so be it. A war is a war.
I take the girls to a nice private area that the employees typically use. It’s low-key, and there normally aren’t any guests around. I set us up on a simple path, no trees, no rocks. Just a lot of soft, fluffy snow. I anticipate quite a few accidents. My sister has good balance on roller-skates, but this isn’t roller skating.
“So, what you’re gonna do is—” I start to explain, but I stop when I hear Darcy’s nearly incomprehensible mutter.
“Here we go…”
I turn around so fast that I feel a sharp pain in my neck. My eyes narrow into slits without meaning to. “Do you have a problem?” I ask her, my tone severe.
Nobody can get under my skin like Darcy Gray. We were really close as kids, not that anybody who could see us now would believe it. I’ve never fully understood what made her start being a total bitch to me out of the blue. I swear, one minute we were kissing during Spin the Bottle, and all these weird confusing feelings for her started forming, and the next, she hated my guts.
Darcy’s eyes dart to Maya before snapping to mine, and she smiles easily. “Nope. No problem. Please, continue.”
I want to say more, but I bite my tongue and continue with my explanation.
I don’t even make it through three sentences before I hear her again, this time sighing dramatically.
“Do youmind, Darcy?” I scold.
And there it is again—that sickeningly sweet smile drenched in venom. “No. No, I don’t mind at all.”
I’m about two seconds away from going absolutely insane.
I turn my attention to Maya. “Maya, could you please control your friend? I can’t really do my job when she’s over there muttering under her breath and distracting me.”
Darcy rolls her eyes. “You weren’t teaching us. You were talking about asuper cooltrick you just learned. How is that supposed to help us?”
Maya heaves a deep sigh. “Darcy, come on. We talked about this. You said?—”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Darcy holds up her hands in surrender, but I can see the smile still twisting her mouth. “I’ll be nice.”
I manage to deliver my brief speech about the basics, and as we begin our descent down the mountain, Maya skis alongside me while Darcy keeps a slightly more distant pace. Frankly, I can’t help but feel this distance is for the best. If she were to creep any closer, I might struggle to resist the temptation to nudge her toward a nearby tree.
“This is so fun!” Maya exclaims happily, her voice nearly getting lost in the wind. She looks around for Darcy, and her eyes light up when she spots her. “Isn’t this fun, D?!”
If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that Darcy was smiling. A genuine smile, like she used to. But that would be insane, because I don’t thinkthisDarcy is capable of smiling.
