Chapter Twenty-Three
Maren
The problem with endings is that they keep breathing.
You expect them to stop.
Final buzzer.Final photo.Final headline.Final export folder.
Done.
Except the next morning, the arena still existed.
The capstone wall still stood.
The ice still needed resurfacing.
The championship banner had not been raised yet.
And Carter Vance’s hand still felt like it had left a print in mine.
This was inconvenient.
Also difficult to organize alphabetically.
By nine Sunday morning, I was back in the media office with coffee, two hard drives, and the kind of exhaustion that made the fluorescent lights feel personal.
The arena was quiet.
Not empty.
Never empty.
A championship building had echoes.
Somewhere down the hall, maintenance rolled equipment over concrete.
Somewhere near the concourse, Patty was probably telling someone that confetti was not a storage plan.
Somewhere inside my laptop, six hundred and twelve championship photos waited to be sorted into galleries with useful names.
I opened the main folder.
CHAMPIONSHIP_FINAL
Then immediately renamed it.
LAKEVIEW_CHAMPIONSHIP_FINAL
Then frowned.
Too generic.
I renamed it again.
LAKEVIEW_STATE_WOLVES_CHAMPIONSHIP_PACKAGE
Better.
Exhausting.
I started with the trophy shots.
Rhett lifting it.
Mason yelling beside him.
Jace actually smiling.
Nolan crying with no dignity at all.
Green looking like someone had placed history into his hands and forgotten to explain the return policy.
Then Carter.
Carter with the trophy.
Carter with the team.
Carter looking up toward the place his mother should have been sitting.
Carter looking toward the platform.
Toward me.
My hand stilled on the trackpad.
It was a good photo.
Not clean.
Not technically perfect.
The angle was slightly off because I had been crying, which was apparently frowned upon by camera stability.
But his face.
His face held everything.
Joy.
Ache.
Wanting.
Release.
Known.
I flagged it five stars.
Professionally.
Maybe personally.
Both.
The office door opened.
Patty entered with a plastic bag and a championship hat tilted crookedly over her hair.
She looked worse than I felt, which was comforting.
“I brought bagels,” she said.
“I believe in you again.”
“You stopped?”
“Briefly.”
“Fair.”
She dropped the bag on my desk and looked at my screen.
“Oh, that one.”
“Yes.”
“Send that to his mother.”
“I will.”
“Send it to Carter too.”
“I will.”
Patty studied me.
I kept my eyes on the screen.
“No.”
“I did not say anything.”
“Your face did.”
“My face is wise.”
“Your face is nosy.”
“Also true.”
She took a bagel and leaned against the file cabinet.
“So.”
“No.”
“You do not know what I was going to say.”
“You were going to ask about Carter.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Is that no as in no comment or no as in no Carter?”
I looked at her.
She smiled.
“Right. No comment.”
I returned to the photos.
Patty let the silence last exactly nine seconds.
A personal record.
“He looked happy.”
I exhaled.
“Yes.”
“So did you.”
My hand paused again.
There were photos of me too.
Not many.
I preferred being behind the camera.
But one of the student assistants had captured Carter and me by the capstone wall after the game.
Not the kiss.
Thank God.
Just the moment before.
Me stepping toward him.
His face open.
My face softer than I knew what to do with.
A still frame of a choice.
I had not flagged it.
I had not deleted it either.
Patty saw it.
Of course.
“That one is not for the public gallery,” she said.
“No.”
“But keep it.”
I looked at the photo.
“I was planning to.”
“Good.”
That cursed word had become a blessing and a threat.
Patty left after stealing two more bagels and warning me that the school president wanted a gallery by noon.
“Tell him joy takes time,” I said.
“I told him media takes time.”
“Less poetic.”
“More employable.”
Fair.
I worked for three hours.
Championship gallery.
Senior feature repost.
Tournament recap.
A clean clip of Carter’s goal.
A cleaner clip of his final block.
Green’s recovery play.
Mason’s shot.
Nolan’s blue-line save.
Rhett with the trophy.
Coach Adler looking proud enough to sue someone.
The content told the story well.
But not the whole story.
The whole story was too big.
It lived in hallways.
On benches.
In old archive footage.
In lists folded into folders.
In a mother’s video message.
In the way Carter had taken off his jersey alone after the room emptied.
At noon, my phone buzzed.
Carter.
CARTER: Is it normal to wake up and immediately check if the trophy was a hallucination?
I smiled.
ME: Depends. Did Nolan steal it?
CARTER: He tried. Rhett used captain voice.
ME: Effective?
CARTER: Terrifying.
A second message.
CARTER: You at the arena?
I hesitated.
Not because I did not want him to know.
Because I wanted him to come.
Dangerous.
Still true.
ME: Yes. Editing.
Three dots.
CARTER: Food?
I looked at the bagel.
Half eaten.
Technically.
ME: Bagel.
CARTER: Good. Hydration?
I laughed.
Out loud.
Alone in the office.
ME: Did your mother train you overnight?
CARTER: Years of surveillance. Also concern.
Concern.
Not bossing.
Not pressure.
Concern.
That was becoming one of his better words.
ME: Water exists near me.
CARTER: Drink it.
ME: Bossy.
CARTER: Concerned.
I stared at the phone.
Then drank water.
Ridiculous.
I did not tell him.
Obviously.
At one, Coach Adler came by.
No silent shoes this time.
Or maybe I was getting better at hearing him.
He stopped in the doorway.
“Ellis.”
“Coach.”
“Gallery?”
“Uploaded.”
“Recap?”
“Queued.”
“Feature repost?”
“Scheduled for six.”
“Good.”
From Coach Adler, that should have been enough.
He stayed.
I looked up.
“Yes?”
He stepped inside and leaned one shoulder against the doorframe.
This was unusual.
Possibly illegal.
“You did good work this season.”
My throat tightened.
“Thank you.”
“I mean the media work.”
“I assumed.”
“And the other work.”
My hands stilled over the keyboard.
He nodded toward the concourse.
“The archive wall.”
Oh.
“That was not originally part of the job.”
“No.”
“It belongs here.”
I looked down.
“Thank you.”
“Do you want it to?”
I looked up.
“What?”
“Belong here.”
There it was.
Not a question about the wall.
A question about me.
Coach Adler’s specialty.
Hockey-adjacent emotional ambush.
“I do not know.”
He nodded.
“I received a recommendation request from Athletic Communications.”
My heart kicked.
“For me?”
“Yes.”
“They are actually offering the job?”
“Likely.”
Likely.
The word opened something in my chest and immediately filled it with panic.
“What did you say?”
“That they would be fortunate to have you.”
I blinked.
Hard.
“Coach.”
“It is true.”
I looked away because praise still arrived like weather I did not fully trust.
He did not soften it.
Good.
“You do not have to stay because a player is here,” he said.
My gaze snapped back.
He continued, calm as a blade, “You also do not have to leave because a player is here.”
That was unfair.
Useful.
Cruel.
All three.
I swallowed.
“He is not just a player.”
“I know.”
From Coach, the word was clean.
No correction needed.
“He is done playing here,” he said. “You are not done deciding what this place is to you.”
My throat tightened.
“That sounds like advice.”
“It is an observation.”
“Convenient.”
“Yes.”
He straightened.
“The rink did not only hold the fall.”
Then he left.
Just like that.
No warning.
No cleanup.
Coach Adler should come with a caution label.
I sat very still.
The rink did not only hold the fall.
No.
It held the getting up.
The finish.
The work.
The wall.
Carter.
Me.
Not just hurt.
Not just healing.
A life, maybe.
If I chose it.
At two, I walked the empty concourse.
The capstone wall looked different without crowds.
Quieter.
More like a record than a performance.
I stopped in front of my archive panel.
The fall photo did not scare me today.
It did not feel good exactly.
But it felt true.
And the getting-up photo felt even truer.
I touched the edge of the panel lightly.
Then moved to Carter’s section.
His photo with his mother.
The quote.
The championship add-on Patty had pinned beneath it this morning:
Championship Game: Carter Vance — game-winning goal
It sounded official.
Too small for the whole truth.
I took out my phone and snapped a picture.
Sent it to Carter.
ME: Your panel got an update.
His reply came after one minute.
CARTER: I am concerned by how much I like having a wall.
ME: Natural villain arc.
CARTER: Do I get a cape?
ME: No.
CARTER: Cruel.
ME: Accurate.
I could feel the smile in his reply before it came.
CARTER: You okay there today?
I looked around.
Empty arena.
Old ghosts.
New proof.
The job I might take.
The ending still breathing.
ME: I think so.
I paused.
Then added:
ME: Good yes.
His answer:
CARTER: Good.
No joke.
No extra.
Just good.
I put the phone away and went back to work.
At four, the ice programs director arrived to pick up a drive.
She was a woman in her fifties with kind eyes and a Lakeview scarf wrapped twice around her neck.
“Maren Ellis,” she said, shaking my hand. “I remember you.”
My body braced automatically.
She seemed to notice and slowed down.
“From the media clinic,” she added. “You had the neatest shot lists I had ever seen.”
I stared.
Not the fall.
Not the video.
Shot lists.
“Thank you,” I said.
She smiled.
“The newsletter response has been beautiful. But I want you to know we are keeping your restrictions attached to the file. No cropped fall. No isolated impact. Full finish or nothing.”
My throat tightened.
“Thank you.”
“Your wording was perfect.”
I looked down.
“It felt important.”
“It was.” She glanced toward the rink. “Girls need to see getting up as part of the skill. Not the failure of it.”
There went my eyes again.
Championship weekend had ruined my tear ducts.
I nodded because speaking was temporarily complicated.