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Georg’s voice is low enough that she can’t hear him from where she’s sitting on the bench, pulling on her ski gloves. “And she’s really helpful, Val. If any media types show up, she’ll work with them to arrange a time where they can ask me questions or take photos somewhere here at the base lodge. Otherwise, they’ll all buy ski passes and try to snap pictures on the slopes, which is dangerous foreveryone. Or worse, they’ll try to follow us in the evenings to see if something is up with you and me so they can write about it.” He raises his head and his eyes meet mine for a brief moment. “I don’t know if my parents would have let me come without her.”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.” Dad explained it all last night, once we’d checked in and Georg was in his room next door to ours and The Fraulein was in her room across the hall. “But it still sucks. I was hoping it’d just be you, me, and Dad. Mostly just you and me.”
    “It will be,” he assures me. “We’ll split off from them when we get to the summit. As long as we check in on the cell phone every so often, we should have plenty of time to ourselves.”
    The smile he gives me as we follow Dad and The Fraulein to the lift line makes me want to crumple right there in the snow. Especially when he adds, “Hey, cool ski pants. Those new?”
    Gotta love a guy who notices.
    Dad and The Fraulein are ready to go, so we head to the lift line. As we snap on ourskis, Georg asks me how Christie, Jules, and Natalie are doing, just because that’s the kind of guy he is. And he’s never even met them.
    He’s just so amazingly perfect.
    And I’m so not . Just thinking about Christie ties my stomach up in knots again.
    How could I possibly have cheated on Georg?
    Okay, it’s not like I was cheating cheating on him in Virginia. He did tell me he wanted us to cool it (his exact words) right before I went home on break, so what did he expect? And my friends set me up with David, totally without my knowledge, so it wasn’t as if I initiated the date at all. And they did it in a way that would have made it rude for me to back out.
    We only went out one time after the initial setup date, and that was it. Over and out. I figured out pretty fast that, for one, I was still crushing pretty bad on Georg even if he did want to cool it (and even if it turned out I misinterpreted what he meant), and for two, once I actually went out with David, he just didn’t do it for me. Even when he kissed me, it wasn’t anything asgood as Georg’s kisses. No zing. No flair. No ooh-baby-do-I-want-you-now.
    I think David and I would still be really good friends if I lived in Virginia. However, even if he kissed better than Georg, we’re just too different on the inside to be an actual couple. I firmly believe this, despite the fact that I had a massive crush on him for so long, it could probably be recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records , assuming they covered such things. David simply looks at the world in a different way than I do.
    Specifically, in a way that wouldn’t include my mom.
    I can’t blame David for his views, especially since he idolizes his father, who’s this hotshot Republican lobbyist I’m constantly seeing on CNN talking about the importance of strong Christian families in holding together the fabric of society. (Really, he said that to Paula Zahn last year. In prime time.)
    Frankly, I don’t expect anyone to be all happy-happy-happy that my mom’s a lesbian or anything like that. I’m still having trouble dealing with the fact that my parents aren’t together anymore, let alone thewhole Mom-is-living-with-another-woman thing.
    But the entire David incident drove home to me that I really need to be with someone who can understand my family and its quirks and still be okay with it all. Someone who can be okay with me , exactly the way I am. Even on the days when I’m not okay with who I am.
    And that someone is Georg. My heart has been with