During their afternoon break in the office, Andrea and Kyle were talking about Echo over their coffee cups. “She seems like a nice enough girl,” Kyle said. “But why would a woman want to have hooters like that? I mean, it’s clear enough to me that they’re not natural, or if they are, she’s really a freak of nature.”

“I sure wouldn’t want them that big,” Andrea agreed. “She sure likes them and is comfortable with them. In fact, she likes showing them off, so they’re not something she’s ashamed of, or else she would consider breast reduction surgery. You’re right though, those have been pumped up, so she wants them that way.”

“There’s no accounting for taste, I guess,” he shook his head. “I mean, I know some guys like them big, and I guess some girls think that big ones draw guys. It sounds like she’s already done exactly that, so maybe she has what she wants.”

“You’re probably right on that,” she agreed. “But she has to put up with an awful lot to have them that big. I mean, they have to be very limiting in some ways, and Denise having to make a lot of her clothes just shows it.”

Echo kept coming to Kyle’s thoughts that evening. He could easily imagine making out with her, or being in bed with her, because he thought that a pair of hooters like that could be an awful lot of fun to play with, at least for a while. But he also thought that on top of the volleyballs that appeared to be stuffed in there that they about had to feel just as hard. Somehow he thought that the fun factor would run dry pretty quickly, and he wondered what her boyfriend thought about it.

Take Chelsea’s breasts by comparison – they were not large; in fact, he thought they were just about right for her body. When she felt like it, she could present them prominently enough to draw the eye, but if such a display wasn’t appropriate, she could downplay them. That wasn’t something Echo could do – from what little he knew of her, a prominent display was what she wanted all the time.

Well, everyone was different, and what one person liked another one might not. To each his own. But still, it seemed like Echo’s boyfriend must be a lucky guy indeed … at least he had a girlfriend he apparently liked.

Aside from a mild curiosity, Kyle had more or less put Echo out of his mind by the next morning. As they were getting set to start work, Andrea came into his office and asked, “I talked about it with Bruce last night, and then with Denise. The weather looks good for a ski trip this weekend. I know you said you’ve never been on skis, so we don’t need to go to one of the big resorts. You could spend some time on the bunny hill without it being too expensive.”

“You know, I was thinking about it last night,” he replied, not saying that he’d spent more time thinking about Echo. “It sounds like a good idea, and like Denise was saying yesterday, the winter is moving on. If we’re going to do it, we should do it soon. Otherwise, it’ll be months before we can do it again.”

“Actually, the resorts up real high sometimes manage to keep going pretty late in the spring. It takes a while for the snow to melt up there. If you decide you like it, there’s the possibility of other trips before summer gets here.”

“You’ve talked me into it already, Andrea. But since you guys know what you’re doing and I don’t, I’ll let you work out the details.”

“I can do that. Would you like to ask Gwen along? She’s a pretty good skier, and she’d enjoy it.”

“Why not?” he replied. By now he’d come to the conclusion that while he didn’t really like Gwen in one sense of the word, he didn’t dislike her, and she was comfortable to be with, and maybe with her doing something she enjoyed she’d open up a bit. There was still something about her that he couldn’t quite figure out. She was no Chelsea, that was for sure, but somehow he thought there had to be more there than he’d seen so far.

Getting ready to go on the ski trip was a bigger proposition than he had expected. Kyle was a northern guy and thought he knew how to dress for cold weather, but Andrea told him that most of his suppositions were wrong and he needed to dress appropriately. There was no need to spend huge amounts of money just to try it out, she told him, but the clothing could be useful another winter, and if he really got into it he could spend the big dollars later. Knowing absolutely nothing about it, the two of them hit a big box store one evening later in the week, and he walked out of the place several hundred dollars poorer and hoping that the money he’d spent would be a good investment.

Over the course of the week the trip mushroomed. Curt and Denise wound up bringing a pair of their friends, Greg and Jill Mason. The two had a mountain cabin not far from a small ski resort way up in the mountains, so there was no great need to pay a huge rate for rooms at the resort; it seemed like it would be a cozy weekend with a chance to make some new friends.

With eight people going, two vehicles were necessary when they left after work on Friday. Curt and Denise rode up to the cabin with Greg and Jill, while Kyle and Gwen rode in the back of Andrea and Bruce’s van once again. They were not exactly snuggled together, and there wasn’t a lot of room on the seat, either, but it didn’t seem difficult for Gwen to keep her distance.

It was not a short trip; it was a good two and a half hours up into the mountains, an area Kyle had never visited in the short time he’d been in Colorado. Even though there was a lot of snow all over the place, the scenery was spectacular; he shot a lot of photos with his small pocket camera and was hoping to process them soon. The roads were often steep and twisty, and he looked forward to getting out on them with the Triumph once the weather warmed up. It would be a lot different than driving around on country roads in Michigan.

It was after dark before they arrived at Greg and Jill’s cabin. It was a small place, but warm and well appointed. It was much too early to turn in for the evening, so Greg built a fire in the fireplace, and they gathered around it and talked about several things. From what he had picked up, Greg and Jill were there most weekends in the winter, although bringing different groups with them – it seemed that they had a large circle of friends.

Kyle hadn’t had the opportunity to meet Greg and Jill before the start of the trip, but he got the idea that they weren’t exactly hurting in the money department. It seemed that they had a small ranch a ways outside of Fort Collins – he wasn’t sure where or how far – and they had a small herd of horses that they trained and showed. Kyle was enough of a city boy that he didn’t know much about horses, and the couple offered to have him out sometime later in the year so he could have an introduction to them.

He wasn’t surprised that Gwen didn’t add much to the discussion, although she seemed to sit back and take in every word that was spoken. He’d become accustomed to it, but he did notice that she now tended to sit a little closer to him on the couch in the living room. But he had no idea if that actually meant anything; it was a small couch and there was not much room on it.

There were only four bedrooms in the cabin, and those weren’t large. It would have been nice to contemplate spending the night with Gwen, since he still harbored the suspicion that she might be more than mildly interested if she were approached correctly. But he didn’t know what the right approach might be, or how to interpret her response, so not wanting to mess up the weekend, he told Gwen she should use one of them, while he spent the night on the couch. She accepted without comment, but he could almost sense Andrea’s amusement at the missed opportunity.

Kyle slept well enough under the circumstances, even though the couch was on the short side for him, but the downside was that the hustle and bustle of breakfast woke him up before he wanted to be up. Though it was daylight outside, when he looked out the window he could see that the place was down in a valley and well into the shadow of the mountains. From what he could see it was going to be a nice clear blue-sky day, and maybe not too cold.

After a big breakfast, mostly thrown together by Jill and Denise, they were off to the ski resort. Kyle had been told it wasn’t one of the bigger ones, but it was elaborate enough to serve the purpose. Greg and Andrea stayed with him long enough to arrange for ski rental and for beginner’s lessons, then the rest of them took off for the ski hills.

Most of the morning was taken up by Kyle working with an instructor on the basics of skiing, and it proved that he had a little latent talent for it, although it clearly was going to be a long time before he got very good at it. By noon, the instructor told him that he would be all right on the bunny slope, but to take it easy. He needed to plan on more lessons and practice if he wanted to improve, and Kyle said he’d enjoyed it so far, but wanted to think about it.

The group got back together for lunch after that. It wasn’t a bad lunch, but it was pretty expensive, since the lodge obviously knew what to do with a captive audience. After lunch, they all scattered for the lifts and the slopes again; Kyle headed for the bunny slope again, but was surprised when Gwen came with him.

It was clear from the beginning that she was a lot better skier than he was. While he really didn’t know much about skiing, he could tell tentative from confident, rough from smooth, so she obviously knew what she was doing. That surprised him a little; even though Andrea had told him otherwise, Gwen just did not seem like the kind of person who would be good on skis.

After two or three runs, they happened to meet up while waiting for the lift again. “Gwen,” he said, “wouldn’t you have more fun on a more challenging slope?”

She shrugged wordlessly for a moment, then managed to say, “I thought I’d stay with you.”

“Suit yourself,” he told her. “It is more fun to have someone around I know, rather than be by myself.”

“Yes,” she replied, without saying any more.

They spent a lot of time skiing more or less together on the bunny slope that afternoon, and he learned a fair amount from her example although she didn’t often say much of anything. With a couple of breaks for coffee or cocoa in the warming shelter, they stayed at it much of the afternoon. Kyle did fall a few times as he worked on getting his feet to do what his mind told them he wanted them to do, but none of his spills were serious. He was able to get back up and going without too much loss of dignity, and Gwen was always helpful.

As he was skiing, he was also thinking about her. She was normally so shy and reticent that it was hard to believe it, but clearly she had some skills at skiing, and in the recent weeks he’d slowly started to understand that she was no dummy. But still, the inability to have a real conversation with her was irritating, to say the least. At the same time, he found himself liking her a little, although he couldn’t see any possibility of having a life together. Maybe they were fated to just be friends, though he could sure think of worse people to have as friends.

The sun was well below the peaks before they wrapped it up for the day and headed back to the cabin. Greg dragged a propane grill out of a storage shed and fired it up, and Jill broke out a large package of steaks. The evening was cooling off rapidly, but Kyle decided to spend a little time outside with his host while a couple of the women worked on the rest of the dinner. “So,” Greg asked, “how did you like your first day of skiing?”

“Not bad,” Kyle admitted. “It’s not as easy as it looks, but I was picking it up a little more toward the end.”

“It’s easy to get hooked on, that’s for sure. I didn’t see a lot of you out there today, but from what I saw you were doing all right for a rank beginner. I noticed Gwen spent the whole afternoon with you. What’s going on there, anyway?”

“She’s a friend,” Kyle told him. “Andrea has been trying to set the two of us up, and while it’s nice to be with her now and then, I don’t think it’s going to work in the long run.”

“You never know,” Greg smiled. “I’ve known her for a while, and she’s pretty quiet with me, too. But you know, that might not be all bad if you don’t want your ear talked off.”

“Yeah, but I’d like to be able to have some conversation. When we were back in Michigan, my old girlfriend and I could talk intelligently about a lot of things, and we shared a lot of interests. We still do on the phone. Today is the first time I’ve seen Gwen doing anything that someone didn’t ask her to do, and I’m not so sure that Andrea didn’t talk her into coming on this trip. She sure doesn’t seem to be much of a self-starter.”

“I’ve never seen that in her, either,” Greg replied thoughtfully. “Like I said, I’ve known her for years, and she’s always been a little, well, not stand-offish, but quiet and innocuous, for lack of better words.” He thought for a moment and went on, “I guess I’ve always felt that if she ever got hooked on a guy she’d turn into a real clinging vine, which might not be all that bad.”

“It might if you value independence in a woman. My old girlfriend was an original thinker, a self-starter, and I guess I miss that.”

“You miss her, don’t you?”

“Yeah, lots. She got a different job and had to move out of state, and well, it wasn’t going to work out. It’s been hard to come to that conclusion, and I don’t like it one bit, but I’ll have to live with it.”

“Hang in there,” Greg replied. “It’ll get better after a while.”

After dinner – which was excellent – Greg built another fire in the fireplace, and they sat around talking. “So, Kyle,” Jill asked, “are you going to add skiing to your list of hobbies?”

“Well, maybe,” he replied. “I can see it’s going to take a lot more work to get as good at it as the rest of you are, but maybe I’ll pursue it a little more. I’m still getting my feet under me out here, but I think once I do, spring ought to be here and I’ll be able to get back to my main interests.”

“And what are they?”

“Well, I have an antique sports car, and I’m looking at driving it around on some of these mountain roads. That ought to be a ball. Beyond that, I want to get back to doing some serious photography. That’s my main interest, and I like to think I’m pretty good at it, at least in my own little niche.” He explained again about how he liked to work with landscape photos, making impressionistic representations of them using computer software. “The winter landscape around here is a little stark, but I ought to get some good photos of the area once I learn how to handle it, and I already have some experience with summer landscapes.”

“I’ve seen some of his shots,” Andrea said. “You wouldn’t believe what he can bring out of a regular photo.”

“I don’t quite follow what you’re saying,” Jill protested.

“Well, I can show you if you don’t mind my getting my tablet.”

Fortunately there was good cell reception down in the valley, probably something to do with the ski resort being close by, so it was only a couple minutes before he brought up the web page from Rianna’s gallery. There were several of his photos there, and he brought one of them up to show around. It happened to be the sunflower shot he’d taken the first day he’d met Chelsea, so it carried some memories for him.

“I see what you mean,” Jill said when she looked at the tablet. “That looks like it must be a lot of work.”

“It isn’t easy, and there was a lot of learning involved over the years, but I think the results are worth it. Sometimes I’m flying blind until I realize I’ve found what I’m looking for and it pops right into view.”

“That’s different, all right,” she replied. “I can see why you have a passion for it.”

“Kyle,” Andrea asked, “is there a copy of that one you have in your living room? The girl in the sunset?”

“I don’t think so,” he frowned. “I know Rianna had a copy of it at one time, but she said she sold it. Let me take a look.”

As he thumbed through the web page looking for the photo, Andrea described the photo. “It’s almost unearthly,” she explained. “It looks like the girl is taking a swim on a distant planet or something.”

“No, she doesn’t have it, and I don’t have a copy of it on this tablet,” he replied finally. “I’ll load up a copy so you could see it some other time.”

“Kyle, the other day we were talking about your photography at lunch,” Denise said. “You said you’d shot over thirty-three hundred photos of your old girlfriend last summer.”

“Actually something over five thousand. I don’t know for sure. That’s not my real passion in photography though, but a whole different genre, quite a bit more conventional.”

“Do you have any of them on your tablet?”

“No,” he said, thinking very quickly. He’d never talked about Chelsea very much, even to Andrea, and never about Chastity White. It seemed like a different life to him now, one far away and right at the moment the connection didn’t seem to matter much anymore. “But I do know where some of them are online.”

“I’d like to see what you’re talking about.”

Without much thought Kyle thumbed the tablet a little until he came to the website, and then maximized the photo. His photos were now about every other one of what Chelsea was using on the site, and as luck had it that week’s photo was one of his. She happened to be wearing one of her more radical outfits, a “slingshot” suit with fairly narrow turquoise strips running directly from her crotch over her shoulders, covering her breasts along the way. Narrower strips ran around her above and below her breasts, at her waist and on her hips. She was standing by a “Road Closed” sign, with a flooded road in the background. “This is one I took of her,” he said to Denise as he handed her the tablet.

“Holy shit!” Denise exclaimed. “This is your girlfriend?”

“Unfortunately, was my girlfriend,” he shrugged. “Whether I like it or not.”

“She’s pretty,” Denise said. “But wow, what a swimsuit. She actually wears things like that?”

“For photos,” Kyle smiled. “That’s part of the point of the website.” He explained how the photo seemed off center so it could be a wall paper and still visible off to the side. “I don’t have any idea of how many copies of that she’s sold since last Sunday, but she says she’s making good money at it.”

Denise passed the tablet to Jill, who commented, “Wow, you’d never catch me in anything like that. That looks like it’s ready to show everything.”

“Oh, bull,” Greg said, looking over her shoulder. “Jill, you’ve got bikinis that cover less than that does, and you even wear them in public.”

“To tell the truth,” Kyle smirked, “she said that one is one of her more stable ones on her body to wear. She has others that appear a lot more precarious. It just looks hot. She says that the most logical swimsuit for a woman is a tank suit, and anytime you get past that, it’s supposed to be a tease. That one is a little more of a tease than most, and that’s what she’s trying to do on the website. Well, one of the things.”

“Well, yeah,” Jill frowned. “I sort of see what she’d mean by that, and yes, it does look like it’s fastened onto her pretty solidly when you stop and think about it. Do you have any idea where she got it?”

“No idea,” he said. “She collects swimsuits. She pretty much has to so she can wear something different for each shot. I know she makes a lot of them herself. Sometimes they’re just for photography, and she wouldn’t dare wear one in the water. Sometimes the back sides have a lot of safety pins and duct tape.”

“Denise,” Jill grinned. “Do you think you could make something like that?”

“Oh, I’m sure I could,” Denise smiled back. “It mostly takes drawing up the basic design. I think it would look a little better in black on you, though.”

“Well, it could be sort of fun under the right circumstances,” Jill replied, flashing a smile at her husband. “Maybe we ought to talk about it sometime.”

Jill passed the tablet on to Andrea, who took one look at the photo and shook her head; Bruce smiled when he saw it, and said, “Honey?”

“Think again, Bruce. I’m a little too old for that.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Bruce, we’re going to have to talk about this another time.” She passed the tablet to Gwen, who didn’t say anything, but Kyle thought she looked a little green around the gills in the instant she looked at the photo before she passed the tablet back to him.

“Are there more photos like that of her on that website?” Curtis asked.

“Oh, yeah, lots more,” Kyle explained. “I mean, not with that swimsuit obviously, but she puts up a new photo set each week and she’s been doing it for several years. She’s done most of the photography herself. I only did it for a while last summer.”

“Kyle,” Andrea shook her head. “I think I understand a little why you’re sorry she’s in South Carolina.”

“It’s not so much the swimsuits,” he protested. “It’s the attitude of the girl wearing them. She’s smart, she’s funny, she’s outgoing, and she was a lot of fun to be around.”

“I see,” Andrea replied thoughtfully. “And I see how she could be a very tough act to follow.”

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