16. CHAPTER SIXTEEN #2
By the time the last group is dressed, I have stopped feeling like I am waiting to be exposed as someone who does not know what she is doing. I am too busy doing it.
“Group one to the gate!” My voice echoes down the hallway.
Gary comes past carrying three sticks. “You’ve got one still tying.”
“Which one?”
“Number fourteen.”
“I’ll get him.”
“I’ve got him.”
“Okay.”
I turn toward the gate. The kids begin filtering out. One by one. Then ten at a time. Then suddenly there are forty-eight children on the ice wearing jerseys I ordered, skating during an event I made up for a class.
I stand at the open gate and stop moving.
Only for maybe ten seconds and take it all in.
The sponsor logo stretches across every chest. Parents are lining the glass with their phones up.
Gary’s son is at center ice explaining the first drill.
Two volunteers are moving cones. A little girl skates past with her jersey tucked almost to her armpits. It looks ridiculous, but I love it.
Nobody in the building knows about the wrong insurance certificate except me, Lisa, and Ives.
Nobody knows Deb misunderstood the schedule.
Nobody knows that Cole agreed to come early only after texting me three paragraphs about why six in the morning is immoral.
Nobody knows that I spent Thursday night on the phone dividing children into categories based on whether a youth-large jersey would swallow them whole.
Nobody knows Duane had to come in before sunrise to cut the ice.
They just see kids skating.
Ives is standing halfway up the bleachers with her coffee and clipboard. She looks down at me. Our eyes meet. She gives me one nod. That one nod does more for me than if she came down and hugged me.
I turn back to the ice. It worked.
I make myself move. Parents still have questions. The stations need timing. Two volunteers are supposed to rotate in fifteen minutes. Photos are later. There are snacks that need to be moved.
I check the clock. I turn toward the far end of the rink and stop. Rowan is standing at the boards. For a second, I think my exhausted brain made him up. He has a Camden hoodie on, coffee in one hand, and Trent Mackey beside him. They look enormous standing next to a group of ten-year-olds.
I stare.
Rowan sees me. He smiles.
Something in my chest loosens so quickly that I hate him a little for it. I hurry toward them before somebody else calls my name.
When I reach them, I say, “You came.”
“Yeah.”
I look at him. “You said you’d see.”
“I saw.”
He uses his stupid flat voice. I have wanted him here all morning without letting myself admit that I wanted him here. Because he has a game tonight, the team needs the win, and this is my thing, and I don’t need him standing beside me for it to matter. Still. He came.
Mackey raises his coffee. “Morning.”
I look at him. “Morning, Mackey. Thanks for coming.”
“I drove,” Mackey says.
I turn back to Rowan. Rowan drinks his coffee.
I narrow my eyes. “So he brought you?”
“He offered coffee,” Mackey says.
“He drove,” Rowan says at the same time.
Then somebody shouts my name. I look over my shoulder. A volunteer is waving from the bench.
Rowan follows my eyes. “Can we help?”
I look back at him. “You two?”
“Yeah.”
That is a dangerous offer. I could find twenty things.
Instead, I point toward the far bench. “Go sit over there. I’m sure someone will find something for you to do.”
Mackey looks relieved.
“If the kids don’t,” I add, “the parents will.”
Rowan’s mouth shifts.
I lean slightly closer. “They’ve been talking about the game all morning.”
“Yeah?”
I nod. “And the tournament.”
He looks toward the ice. “Come on, Mackey.”
They walk away.
I make myself turn in the opposite direction.
I do not watch Rowan walk. I am at work.
For the next half hour, I barely think about him.
Two of my volunteers leave at ten exactly like they said they would, which means we suddenly have forty-eight pairs of skates that need loosening, retightening, checking, and in some cases completely relacing.
When I come around the boards again, Rowan and Mackey are on the bench. Both on their knees. Gary’s ancient hooks are in their hands.
I stop.
A line of children stands in front of them.
Mackey is wrestling with one skate while explaining something to a kid about stick flex.
Rowan has one foot braced against the bench and is pulling a lace tight with the hook while a little boy watches him with absolute concentration.
I don’t know why the sight of Rowan Laurens lacing a ten-year-old’s skate nearly takes me out at the knees.
Maybe because he looks completely normal doing it.
Not like he is performing kindness. Not like he showed up to impress me.
He is simply useful. He sees something that needs doing and does it.
That is Rowan in almost every part of his life.
A very small boy steps in front of him while Rowan is finishing another skate. The kid says something I cannot hear. Rowan looks up, then he crouches all the way down so they are eye level.
The boy talks. Rowan listens. Seriously. Whatever the question is, Rowan answers it like it matters. I have to physically keep walking.
“Gianna!”
I turn.
Lisa is holding the schedule. “Photo time at eleven-fifteen?”
“Yes.”
“We might need to push ten.”
“No.”
She looks at me.
I look at the ice. Two stations are running behind. The second group has more children.
I recalculate. “Actually, yes. Ten.”
Lisa smiles.
The photograph becomes the most difficult fourteen minutes of the entire event.
I gave it eight minutes, which is adorable on my part.
Apparently getting forty-eight children into three rows on ice is incredibly impossible.
Two fall over. One starts crying. Three keep turning around to wave at their parents.
A row at one end refuses to stay straight because one boy is deliberately sliding sideways every time the photographer turns away.
Someone’s grandmother gets onto the ice in shoes. I do not know why. I do not know how. By the time I notice her, Gary is already helping her back toward the gate.
“Everybody look here!”
The photographer raises one hand.
Twenty-six kids look.
“Here!”
Thirty-five.
“One more!”
Someone falls.
I put both hands over my face.
Rowan laughs somewhere behind me.
I turn around and see him and Mackey standing by the boards.
“I thought this was going to take eight minutes,” I say, rolling my eyes at myself.