Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Maren
I’d been looking forward to this trip for two weeks.
Griffin had called on a Tuesday—the usual check-in that ran long because it always ran long.
Somewhere between his recap of a road game in Duluth and my update on a volleyball shoulder injury I got to observe that was finally tracking right during rehab, he said, “Come up this weekend. Jensen’s got good ice, and we’re doing the pond Saturday. You’ve never seen it in winter.”
I said yes before he finished the sentence.
That was the thing about Griffin. He didn’t make a production of missing me.
He just created a reason to be in the same place, the way he’d been doing since I was twelve and he was sixteen.
I’d spent half my childhood at hockey rinks I had no obligation to attend other than not being old enough to stay home alone.
I’d never minded once. I loved hockey. I loved watching my brother play.
And lately, with him three states away, I’d been missing the version of him that only existed in rooms full of people he trusted.
I packed Friday morning with real enthusiasm, which explained why the duffel looked ambitious for two nights.
Three sweaters, two pairs of jeans, the camel coat.
I’d looked up the weather four separate times.
Thirty-one degrees, wind chill in the twenties.
I understood those numbers as numbers. I was choosing to feel prepared.
My phone buzzed from the bed.
Griffin: Did you pack real boots
Maren: I packed boots yes
Griffin: Maren
Maren: They have a rubber sole they’re completely functional
Griffin: It’s going to be cold. Like. Cold cold.
Maren: I KNOW. I looked it up multiple times.
Griffin: Pack the heavy fleece not the thin one
Maren: Already ahead of you, borrowing Dad’s
Griffin: Smart. Ryan’s already got you, confirmed this morning
Maren: You mentioned
Griffin: He’s good people. serious. dry sense of humor.
Griffin: You’ll like him
Maren: I’m sure I will. I met him before you know.
Griffin: Yeah that was a long time ago.
Griffin: Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow. We’re gonna have so much fun.
I set the phone down.
Ryan Lindqvist. I’d been building a picture of him for years from Griffin’s descriptions—serious, read more film than anyone Griffin had ever played with, made the people around him better without announcing it.
Griffin didn’t editorialize much about his teammates.
The fact that Ryan’s name came up at all, let alone consistently across four full seasons, meant something.
I’d also, at some point in October, looked up the Minnesota State hockey roster online. For purely informational purposes.
Ryan Lindqvist was six-foot-one with sandy-blond hair and a jaw that made you stop scrolling. I had closed that tab immediately and not thought about it again.
That was a complete lie. I had thought about it again.
Multiple times, if we were being honest with ourselves, which I was trying not to be.
The scar through his left eyebrow. The way he held himself on the ice even in a grainy practice video—like he already knew where everything was going before it got there.
I’d zoomed in on the headshot twice, which was embarrassing, and then told myself it was research.
It was not research.
I’d been to a game in Minneapolis sophomore year and he’d been on the ice and I’d been sixteen and none of that had been relevant. I was eighteen now. He was picking me up from the airport in a few hours. I was going to get in his truck and be a completely normal person and that was the whole plan.
I zipped the duffel.
My mother appeared in the doorway around ten with her coffee and an expression—the one she wore when she was deciding whether to say the thing she was thinking. I’d been reading that expression since I was small. I’d never once headed it off successfully.
“Big weekend,” she said.
“Griffin’s very excited about the pond.”
She sat on the edge of my bed and looked at the duffel, the camel coat on its hanger, the general situation. “The coat.”
“It’s a good coat.”
“It’s a beautiful coat. For October in Scottsdale.” She went to the closet without further debate and came back with my father’s dark-green fleece, thick and worn soft at the cuffs.
“Take this.”
“That’s Dad’s.”
“He has plenty. He’ll never notice.” She folded it into the duffel. “Under the coat when you’re standing still. You’ll thank me.”
“Griffin says his roommate is picking me up from the airport.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah. He got stuck at some goalie thing and didn’t want me taking a rideshare.” I didn’t know why I was avoiding saying his name like I didn’t know it. I absolutely knew it.
“Ryan.” She said it with the warmth she always had for Griffin’s hockey friends. “Be yourself.”
“I’m always myself.”
“You’re always yourself, which is mostly wonderful and occasionally a great deal for people who aren’t prepared for the pace of it.” She zipped the duffel and set it by the door. “Give him the first twenty minutes.”
“I can’t do that.” I paused. “Well. I can try.”
“I know. I’m saying it for the record.”
“I don’t even know if it’s going to be mostly just Griffin and me or what.”
“Oh, I am quite sure Griffin couldn’t go a whole weekend without his friends.” She smiled. “And I think he wants you to have the real experience of it. His world.”
“You mean a team full of babysitters.”
“I mean people he trusts.” She kissed the top of my head and said all the things she always said—call from the gate, have fun, Griffin misses you more than he says. I let her say them. One day I’d probably be too far away for her to say them at all.
I grabbed the duffel and headed for the door.
The flight was three hours. I spent the first hour on a biomechanics reading and the second with my forehead against the cold oval of the window, watching the landscape change.
The desert gave way to something greener, then flatter, then somewhere over the Midwest it went white.
Snow in the fields below. Bare trees. Roads cutting through it all like pencil lines on paper.
I pressed my nose against the window like I was twelve years old and did not remotely care.
I’d seen snow before—ski trips, one January in Colorado with my parents—but not like this.
Not the whole world under it, as far as I could see in every direction, like the ground had just given up and decided to be sky.
I pulled up the contact Griffin had sent me. Ryan Lindqvist. No photo, no emoji. Just the name and ten digits, clean and direct, which tracked with everything Griffin had ever said about him.
I thought about the roster photo. The jaw. The scar I’d definitely not zoomed in on. The way he’d looked on the ice in a clip I’d watched maybe three times for purely educational reasons.
I put my phone away.
Okay. Here was the situation. I was flying to Minnesota to see my brother.
My brother’s best friend was picking me up from the airport because my brother had a goalie session.
This was a completely ordinary arrangement between two adults.
I was going to get in his truck, be a normal person for forty minutes, see my brother, spend a weekend at a frozen pond, and fly home.
That was it. That was the whole thing.
Ryan Lindqvist was going to be tall and have that jaw, and I was going to say hey like a human being and get in the truck.
Easy.
The descent announcement came. Minnesota rose up beneath me—flat and white and enormous, larger than any place I was used to.
Just land and sky and snow over everything like a held breath.
The scale of it was different from the air than it looked on a map.
I pressed my palm to the cold window glass.
Just say hey. Get in the truck. Don’t do anything stupid.
The plan was solid. The plan had no flaws.
The wheels touched down. I texted my mother, unbuckled my seat belt, and was the third person off the plane.