On the last vacation Nick and I took, my skis got stolen at the top of the mountain and the gondola had to carry me down with a family of sightseers who'd just ridden up for a look at the view.

I'd told Nick to go on and ski, I'd be okay. Our marriage was ending, but not at the point where you're certain, so you look around at other people and see all their damn happiness, and you try to figure out what why they're together. We'd spent the morning riding the chairlift in silence.

Two days before we'd left for Colorado, I'd seen Nick with his old girlfriend, Rochelle, in the parking lot at Sav-A-Center. They were sitting in her car. She was behind the wheel and his head was leaning on her shoulder, so she must've had her arm around him, to cradle him like that.

We had four more days at Steamboat Springs.

I sat on the cold bench in the metal capsule and bumped my boots together to stay warm. The family with me in the gondola shared a giant hot chocolate the father had bought for the ride down. I looked out the window for someone else to fuck because jumping ahead was what I did when my heart got broken. My father taught me to always hold a piece of myself back - like a dignity chit - so that I'd have a running start with the next person.

I watched one guy slalom his way down like he had nothing to think about but the sound of his edges. That's what I wanted, because all I thought about when I skied was not falling. He made a racing stop that threw up a wall of sparkling snow, and looked back at our gondola in the sky. As we passed over him I leaned out the window and gave him a big-arm wave. He smiled and took off, planting his pole at the beginning of every elegant turn. All for me? I hoped I'd see him again. He had on a black jacket with thin yellow stripes down the arms.

I recognized Nick's electric blue hat from a distance, and I watched him zig-zag down the hill, stabbing the snow to start his turn, just the way we'd been taught in our lesson. He looked good, like he was somebody else's.

Five years ago, I'd asked Nick to marry me to keep him away from Rochelle. They'd snuck around together the summer of my junior year in college, while I was studying calligraphy in Venice. They'd gotten pregnant and had an abortion. My first night home he came to my dorm and told me. He cried. I wanted to hurdle over the crime and solve the case. He looked so relieved when I proposed, and I hung on that. It felt grand to be so forgiving.

The gondola cricked under the towers that kept the cable in the air. The incline had gotten steeper, and the whole village was displayed in front of us like a brochure. The family bunched together and asked me to take their photo.

I liked tall buildings, ferris wheels, the good look you got from that far up, but about half way down I panicked, because I couldn't survive a fall that high.

Did he take Rochelle from the back like he did me? Did she like it? I hated doggy-style, felt more mounted than involved. His dick was curved and my uterus was tipped. We didn't fit. I wanted him to face me but didn't want to complain. Some nights I prayed it would be our last time. Nick thought I was frigid, and he wanted to go to a sex therapist but I told him we'd be okay, what we really needed was a mechanic.

Wind pushed against our gondola and I was finding it hard to breathe. The kids shifted their weight from side to side to make the car rock more and I looked at their mother and winced.

"Be still," she told them.

I cold-sweated through my layers and hung onto the bottom of the seat. The mother began to sing "Edelweiss", the father and kids harmonizing like Von Trapps, which made me feel better.

The skier I'd waved to was at the bottom of the hill, unbuckling his boots. I walked up to him. "Did I keep you waiting?" I said. He looked up and smiled, said, "Yeah." He had a raccoon tan from his goggles.

We went to his room and kissed for a minute, and then he pushed my head down to his dick, held my face there until he was done. He fit in my mouth better than Nick. I never asked his name although this wasn't all that I wanted. I told him that and he said, "So, next time, say something."

At the lodge that night Nick and I drank Irish coffees and watched the band play. He was so quiet. We hadn't argued much in the marriage. I guess we were conserving our energy for the next relationship.

The skier walked over to our table and brushed the back of my head with his arm. He tapped Nick on the shoulder and asked to borrow his lighter, and Nick said, "Sure, keep it."

"Give it back," I said, and grabbed it out of the skier's hand.

"Why didn't you write me in Venice?" I'd never asked Nick. The question made me sound twelve. The skier inched away from our table like we were toxic.

The band had taken a break and the bar was all chatter. Nick stared at his drink. He didn't say, which kept me frozen. I'd sent him letters from Italy, written on light blue airmail paper, scripted in sepia ink. I was a love sick virgin with pretty handwriting. He'd written back toward the end of the trip, but by then I'd taken my father's advice and hooked up with a guy from New York. We took a train trip to Trieste and had sex in a narrow bed. His jeans smelled sour. I went back to Venice alone, walked the twisty streets, crossed those incessant bridges, envied the couples. And then I went home to see if Nick still loved me.

The band members were back, warming up, teasing us with bits and pieces of the next set. I lit the candle at our table with Nick's lighter and looked at his face, his nice brown eyes. My marriage proposal had been careless, vengeful, a pissing contest and not as plain as love.

In the Sav-A-Center parking lot, in her dark green Corolla, Nick's head fit so sweetly on Rochelle's shoulder, resting there in the warm crook of her arm.

I wished I had just loved him as mine.