Juliette's Point Of View
"Good morning, darling," I hear when I enter the breakfast room. I turn around and see Greta standing there.
"Good morning Greta," I reply with a big smile before hugging the old lady in front of me. She smiles as well and pats my back.
"You should call me grandma," she says while snickering. I chuckle as well and shrug. "I guess I'm not used to it anymore,"
"Good morning," Avery walks in as well. "Good morning," Greta says, and I nod since I already said good morning to her when we woke up.
We all walk to the kitchen to prepare breakfast for the guests. "Did you have fun with those silly Australian boys?" Greta asks us, and we both nod.
"They're really fine men, perfect fit for the two of you... Polite and also very handsome," she winks at us both. Avery chuckles and I turn bright red.
"That's enough for today Greta," I say and she shakes her head sternly. "Grandma, Juliette... I'm your grandma," Avery bursts into fits of laughter as she sees me pull a grimace.
"You're a lucky bastard, my grandma wants me to call her grandmother," she says and I stick my tongue out at her.
"Okay, when we're done joking around... How did you sleep?" Greta continues asking.
"Really well," Avery responds while putting some water in the boiler, for the tea.
"And you, Juliette?" Greta asks me, and I shrug. "Not that well actually," I honestly respond while avoiding eye contact with both of the persons in this kitchen.
"Ah, why is that?" I turn towards my grandmother and feel the tears brimming in my eyes again. "Everything here reminds me of grandpa, and I just miss him so much," I say as I start shivering over my whole body.
"Awe, come here darling," Greta says when she sees me crying. She engulfs me into a hug with her strong arms and rubs my back. "I miss him too, every day,"
Her calm voice soothes me a bit, but doesn't stop the tears from rolling down my cheeks. "But there's nothing we can do about it. God took him, and made him leave us. But I'm sure he's happy up there,"
Avery is quietly watching the scene and not much later I pull back from the old lady. "Thanks grandma, I love you," I say and she smiles. "I love you too Julie," she says.
We return to our chores for breakfast, and not much later I hear the first voices coming into the room.
We start serving the coffee and tea, and make sure that every guest has a good time. We make jokes with the children and smile politely at the adults. As I'm about to grab my third can of coffee I hear a familiar voice behind me.
I look up and see Calum and Michael entering the breakfast room. When they see me their eyes light up.
"Hey Juliette!" Calum excitedly greets me as he walks over.
"Good morning, where are your other halves?" I ask them with a smirk.
"Still sleeping, as usual," Michael says with a frown, after which Calum nudges him. "Usually you're the one we have to wake up, lazy ass," he tells the blue-haired boy.
"So, where's your other half?" Michael asks, completely ignoring Calum. I look around me for a moment and then point at Avery in the other corner of the room. "There she is," the boys both nod and sit down at a table for four.
"So we were wondering about something," Calum starts when they're seated. "Tell me," I say while sitting down in one of the empty chairs at the table.
"You've been here a lot, so you must know the whole skiing area, right?" Calum asks, and I nod. "Well, you probably also know some cool off-piste spots, right?" He asks again, and I nod once more. "Yes, I do,"
"Can you maybe take us there sometime? We'd really want to go off-piste once, and you seem like the perfect person to show us the good and safe spots," I hesitantly nod.
"Are you sure y'all can ski well enough to do something like that?" I carefully ask them, not wanting to offend them.
"Well, I can," Calum starts. "I'm sure Michael can do it too. Ashton possibly can too, but I don't know about Luke..." He says.
Then something pops into my head, a genius plan if you ask me.
"I have an idea," I say, and the boys both look up. "Avery only started skiing this week as well, maybe she could stay with Luke and take the easier ways with him while we do the off-piste part?" I say with a cheeky grin.
Both their eyes light up, and they heavily start nodding. "That's genius," Calum says with a satisfied grin.
"Luke's-so-into-her" Michael mouths at me while pointing at Avery, who doesn't notice. "I-think-she's-too" I mouth back at him. I actually don't know if it's Luke, but he seems like a type for her. It just makes sense.
After that, Avery apparently noticed the boys' presence. She walks towards us to greet them.
"Hi, how did you sleep?" She asks the boys with a smile.
"On a pillow, in a bed... Why are you asking?" Michael jokes with a wink, causing us to laugh. Calum shakes his head disapprovingly and opens his mouth to say something, but gets interrupted.
"Good morning!" That was Ashton, he and Luke enter the room. "Hey girls, how are you?" Luke asks, and we both reply with a: "fine, how are you?"
"I'm fine as well," he says with a grin.
"We just asked Juliette to take us off-piste," Calum tells them. I see Luke turning pale already, and I have to control my laughter.
"What? Why? You know I'm not good enough," he says, and he looks at me with frightened eyes.
"Yeah, same for me," Avery says while she looks at me with a frown.
"That's why the two of you will go down the normal piste together," Calum says, and Luke glares at him before looking at his feet. Avery gives me a questioning look now, and her terrified eyes tell me that my assumption was right... It's Luke.
"Oh, okay," she says, but Luke still doesn't seem too happy. I realize we have to go back to work, so I turn to Calum.
"At which time do we meet up?" I ask him. He shrugs before thinking. "Is noon good to you?" I share a look with Avery before replying. "Yeah, noon works for us," we say goodbye and get back to our chores.
"Well, that wasn't very nice of you," Avery says when we're back in our room. I look up in surprise, not really knowing what she's talking about.
"Don't act like you don't know, you know what I'm talking about," I scrunch my forehead together while thinking, and then I realize.
"Do you mean setting you up with Lukeyboy?" I ask her with a cheeky smirk. "Exactly! You know I... Wait, how did you know?" She asks me while sitting down powerlessly.
"I assumed it was Luke, he seemed like your type," I explain, and she nods. "Well, now you know... Thanks," she sarcastically says before pulling out her skiing clothes and putting them on. I do the same, still amused about what just happened in the breakfast room.
So Luke likes her back... That's really great for her. I'm jealous of her, when I like a boy, they never like me back. But it makes sense that he likes her back... I mean: look at her. She's really pretty and has a great personality as well. I don't even know how to talk to a male person.
When we're both ready we head out to the Hochmoos, where we decided to meet up with the boys, so they could ski on their own for a bit before going with us. Luckily they're already there, so we don't have to wait.
"Are we late?" Avery asks them, and Calum shakes his head. "No, we were early," he says. We stroll to the lift together and get in. Luckily six people is the max, so we can go in with all of us.
"So, we have a couple of cool places to go off-piste, and all of those are not too far from the normal ones, so we shouldn't be in trouble.
First, we go all the way up, because the first one is right at the top. I hope you're all prepared for some deep snow," I say when we're at the end of the Hochmoos. We have two more lifts to go before we're at the top.
Luke looks down with a scared look in his eyes, and I feel like I should calm him down a bit. "Don't worry Luke, Avery pretty much knows her way around here already. Besides, we're not going to push you into going off-piste, it's your own decision," I tell him. He smiles gratefully and slightly glances at Avery. She doesn't seem nervous at all, but I know she's nervous about her being alone with Luke.
"Ah, he's going to be fine with Avery!" Michael exclaims, and a awkward silence follows, even though we're all sure about that.
Avery's Point Of View
"Okay, we'll see you down there!" Is the last thing Juliette says before they take off, leaving me with the one and only Luke Hemmings. How am I going to act normal now he's the only one with me?
With others around, sure, I can act normal and just talk to the other ones without butterflies going wild in my stomach.
But now that I'm alone with the blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy, there's no avoiding him at all.
"So, where are we going?" Luke asks me while looking around, a little scared.
"Uh, I don't know. We could go that way?" I ask him, which apparently didn't really comfort him.
"What do you mean: you don't know? I was told you know the way!" He says, slightly freaking out.
"I know it a little, I haven't been here a lot as well," I reply while shrugging. Why the freak-out? This area isn't that big after all, and there's only one way to go... Down.
"Okay... Are you sure we have to go that way? Isn't it the other one? On the left?" Hemmings asks while pointing at the smaller path on the left.
I hesitantly look at the bigger path on the right, but don't know if it's the right way. "I don't know, Luke. I'm definitely not sure about anything right now," I hope he doesn't notice that I'm not only talking about the way down.
"Then I guess it's the left path... Shall we go there? I believe we took that path as well last time," he says. I look into his blue eyes, but I only see hesitance. "Okay," I say, choosing to trust him.
He goes first and I follow close behind him. This path isn't familiar to me at all, but I don't dare to tell Luke off. I just follow him until everything seems a little too steep and icy.
"Okay, I don't think this is the right way..." I say, and he turns around with a frown. "I think I recognize this..." Luke says.
"Are you sure? It seems a little off-piste to me," I hesitantly reply. Now he's got that scared look in his eyes again, damn. "I don't know Avery, I don't know the right way down," he says desperately. I immediately stop skiing as he does the same.
"Can't we go back?" I ask, but when I look behind me, I see we're way too far off. "I guess not," I answer my own question before plopping down in the cold and wet snow. My pants are water-resistant, so I won't feel it anyway.
"Shit," Luke mutters. "Seems like we're going off-piste after all," I look around me, scared as well now. "But how are we ever going to find the way back?" Luke shrugs. "I don't know, I wish we went with the others," I heavily shake my head.
"If Juliette says off-piste and cool, it really is extreme. I think you wouldn't have wanted that? But hey, at least it's the two of us, and not just one of us alone. We can figure this out," I say, trying to cheer the scared boy up a bit.
"You sure?" He asks, looking up with big blue puppy eyes. My heart skips a beat, but I manage to keep calm, and firmly nod. "Yeah, I'm sure," Luke sits down next to me now as we both think of a way to get out of this steep and icy stuff.
"We could just go down really slowly? By going slowly we could just help each other if one of us falls, and we'll get down eventually?" Luke proposes after a short while.
"Uhm, I guess it could work. It's better than nothing anyway," I say before getting up again.
The goofy boy can't get up, so I have to give him a hand. He gratefully but sheepishly smiles at me before adjusting his ski glasses and taking lead again.
We slowly and carefully slide down, and we manage to make it down a whole bit.
"See? We're doing good!" I upliftingly say. "Yeah," Luke says, also in a better mood now.
This is the moment where it goes down-hill, literally. Somehow my ski gets stuck behind a small rock, and I get out of control.
The other one is pointing down the hill now, causing me to slide down at a high pace. I can't get the control back anymore and see the trees beneath me coming closer and closer.
"Avery!" Luke screams behind me, but his voice soon fades under my own loud screams. When I'm about to close my eyes I see something passing me from the corner of my eye. I eventually close my eyes in a reflex and prepare for the impact, the impact that never comes.
I feel two large arms wrap around my waist before I can hit anything, and the creature and I both fall, but not as hard as expected.
I still manage to hurt my side a bit by bumping into them, but I still fall on top of them so don't get hurt badly.
"Fuck," I mutter under my breath when I've finally stopped falling.
"Are you okay, Avery?" A worried voice asks me, Luke's voice. I open my eyes and look straight into his blue ones.
"I guess so, just hurt my side a little," I say while gasping for air. We both try to get up, but his ski gets stuck behind my shoe and we both fall over again.
"Damn, you saved me. Thanks," I say while gratefully looking at my hero. He sheepishly smiles at me. "I just had to do something, I couldn't see you get hurt," he sweetly says. Before I even realize what I'm doing, I'm tightly hugging him. "Thank you, Luke,"
"You're welcome, Ave," he says while gladly accepting the hug. We get up again, properly this time. I've lost my skis somewhere in our fall, but they're within my reach.
My sticks I surprisingly was still holding. I'm quite glad about that, otherwise I would have to walk all the way up again.
"So, shall we do it more careful this time?" Luke jokingly asks, and I chuckle. "Sounds like a plan. How did you get down here so fast anyway?"
He shrugs his shoulders. "I don't know, some kind of adrenaline and confidence boost got to me, I guess," he says.
After fifteen minutes or so, we finally somehow made it back to the normal piste, and slide down in a relaxed way until we reach the foot of the hill. The others are already waiting for us there.
"Wow, what took you so long? Did you go another time or so?" Calum asks us both. Luke and I both exchange a look before nodding.
"Yeah,"
We decided to keep this whole happening to ourselves, for the better. We wouldn't want our stupid friends to assume anything that didn't happen there.