16. Kieran #2
Greer drives her own Subaru from the brownstone — leaves ten minutes ahead of me, parks in a different garage.
We have done it this way at every team event since she joined the staff.
She is, by the time I come through the door, already on the far side of the room with a sparkling water in her hand and one of the wives in front of her.
I see Indie when I come in.
She is at a table with Mikko and his wife and two of the assistant coaches' kids, and she is the social center of the table the way her mother used to be the social center of every table she sat at.
When she sees me, she gets up. She crosses the room. She hugs me.
"Daddy."
"Indie."
"You okay?"
"I'm okay."
"Mom's birthday is coming up."
"I know."
She holds me a little tighter for a beat. She lets me go.
I get through the next hour the way I get through all team family events, talking to every one of the wives, every one of the kids, every one of my assistant coaches. The franchise's communications director takes the picture she came to take.
When I find Greer, she is with the team's senior medical staff and one of the assistant coaches' wives. She is in a soft pink sweater, black pants, and a draped silk shirt that hides what the wrap dress used to hide.
She looks up when I come over.
"Coach."
"Greer."
"You've met Lena's in-laws?"
"Mr. Diaz. Mrs. Diaz."
We do the small clean professional version of small talk we have, in six weeks, gotten very good at. Neither of us looks at the other longer than is appropriate.
Then Indie comes over with two of the assistant coaches' kids in tow, both of them with a question for me about how their dad's line has been playing, and she stops at the edge of our small circle with one hand on Greer's arm.
"You came," Indie says.
"I told you I would."
"You did."
"Daddy, you have to answer Caleb's question, he has been planning it since Thanksgiving."
I answer both kids' questions. I do not, while I answer them, let any part of my face do what it wants to do, which is looking at the woman I was inside of eight hours ago and at my daughter, whose hand is on her arm, in the same circle on the same Christmas Eve in the same city.
Greer leaves at seven-thirty.
She hugs Indie on her way out, shakes my hand briefly the way staff shakes the head coach's hand, and drives back to Mount Vernon.
I leave at eight.
Indie walks me out.
At the door of the restaurant, in the cold of late December on Newbury Street, she hugs me again.
"Drive safe, Daddy."
"I will."
***
The brownstone is warm. Greer is in the library on the couch in her sweatpants and my tee with the journal open on her lap and a half-empty mug of decaf at her elbow.
She looks up when I come in.
"How was the rest of the night?”
"Quieter than the first half."
"Indie?"
"She's fine. She asked if I was okay. I told her I was."
"Did she say anything about me?"
"She said she was glad you came."
"That's all?"
"That's all."
She holds out her hand. I cross to the couch. I sit next to her. She puts her head on my shoulder and her hand on the curve of her stomach, and we sit on the couch in the back library of my house and do not, for a long time, say anything else.
* * *
On the twenty-fifth, we have a slow morning in bed.
We have toast and tea and eggs again because that is what she wanted.
We open the small handful of presents that have, in the last week, accumulated under the small tree in the front parlor I put up because Indie always puts one up here for me, and Greer gives me a paperback novel she has, in the last two months, been wanting me to read, and a pair of wool socks.
I give her a cardigan in a deep green I have been imagining her in since the morning at the Bellamy. I give her a small first-edition copy of the medical-text essay collection she has, on three different Tuesdays in her office, told me was the book that made her want to do this work.
She kisses me at the breakfast table.
She says, "Thank you."
"For the cardigan."
"For all of it."
The rest of the morning passes slow and quiet — the second pot of tea, the paperback she gave me at breakfast, Greer in the library on the couch with the journal open and the green cardigan on over the soft cotton tee she slept in.
I sit at the other end of the couch with the book. We do not, for a long stretch, talk.
After lunch, she gets up and goes upstairs.
She does not, when she goes, say anything.
***
The bedroom door is open when I come up.
The duvet is back. The curtains are open. The light through the window is the slow gray light of late-December Boston in the early afternoon. Greer is on her side in the middle of the bed in nothing but my T-shirt, her hair off her face, her hand on the curve under the hem.
She does not turn when she hears me come in.
She says, into the pillow: "Come to bed."
I take the sweater off, then the T-shirt, then the rest of it, and I get into the bed behind her.
She does not roll onto her back. She lifts the hem of the shirt up over her hip, reaches behind her without looking, finds my hand, and brings it around her to the front.
My palm goes flat against her.
I slide up close behind her, my chest against her back, my mouth at the soft place under her ear, my other arm under her head as a pillow.
She is wet against my hand before I have done anything to make her so.
She has been waiting for me to come up the stairs.
I take my time. My mouth moves slowly down the side of her neck and back up, and I take her earlobe between my teeth and let it go.
The hand works its way down, slow, until I am between her legs from behind, and she is warm and open against my fingers, and she pushes back against me, once, without saying anything.
I keep going for a long time.
She comes against my fingers with her face half-turned into the pillow and her hand tight around my wrist.
She does not let me move.
She says, into the pillow: "Don't stop."
"I won't."
She reaches back with the hand that has been around my wrist, finds me hard against the back of her thigh, and guides me in herself.
I do not move at first.
I stay where I am, behind her, with my hand back on the curve and my mouth at her shoulder and my breath against the soft place under her ear. She is warm and slow around me. I have never, in the time she has been mine, been this close to her.
When I do move, I move slowly.
She moves with me — small, careful, with her hand on top of mine on the curve and her hips going back to meet me. I keep my mouth at her ear. I keep my palm flat against her stomach. The baby is under my palm. The woman I love is around me. The afternoon light has not changed.
She comes again, quieter this time, with my fingers in hers on the curve.
I come a minute after her, with my forehead against the back of her shoulder and her name in my mouth.
I do not, after, pull out.
I stay where I am, with her in front of me, with my palm on our baby, with her hand on top of mine. We do not, for a long stretch, move.
She says, eventually, into the pillow: "Kieran."
"Yes."
"Best Christmas ever."
"Greer."
"Yes."
"Best Christmas of my life."
She finds my hand on the curve and presses it harder against her.
We stay there until the light at the window has gone.
***
I drive her home to her apartment in the South End at three the next afternoon, with both of us back to the version of the world that has a road trip in it and a back-to-back coming and a daughter and best friend who does not yet know our secret.
She kisses me on the jaw in the front seat before she gets out.
She says: "It was a wonderful three days."
"It was."
"Thank you, Kieran."
"Thank you. "
"I love you."
"I love you."
She gets out. She closes the door. She walks up the steps of her building and lets herself in and goes upstairs.
I sit in the SUV at the curb for a long minute before I drive away.
The next morning, I am on a plane to Detroit.
The day after that, I am on the bench in another arena with a different ice surface under the boards and the same job under my feet.
The job is the same.
I am not.