Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Ryan
Griffin’s text came in at two-fifteen.
Griffin: Coach kept us for extra work, can’t get out. You still good to get my sister?
Ryan: Already heading out
Griffin: Her number’s already in your phone
Griffin: Tell her 7 for dinner. Sal’s. Guys are meeting us
Ryan: Got it
I pulled on the Carhartt and went down to the lot. The Silverado had four inches of overnight accumulation. I cleared the windshield, let the engine run, pulled out of the lot and headed south.
I drove south on 35W with the heat on and the radio low.
Airport pickup. I did this kind of thing for teammates all the time, got people from flights, dropped people off, drove people to and from whatever. It was a normal thing teammates did. Griffin would do the same for me without a second thought.
This was exactly that.
The Christmas photo surfaced briefly in my mind, and I shoved it away.
This was fine.
She came through the sliding doors at 4:12.
I knew her immediately, which I hadn’t expected. Two years was a long time, and I’d met her once at a game where I hadn’t exactly been paying attention. But I knew her.
Dark hair loose around her shoulders, an oversized green fleece over what looked like a sweater, dark jeans, boots with some fur around the top of them that had no business being in Minnesota in February.
She moved through the exit without hesitation, carry-on in one hand, tote over her shoulder, no wasted motion in any of it as she looked around, presumably for me.
She moved like someone who had never once second-guessed a direction in her life.
She was —
The wind off the open roadway hit her like a wall.
Her chin tucked hard, both shoulders came up to her ears, her eyes went wide—her whole body receiving information it had absolutely no prior framework for.
She stood there for a full second, blinking into it, and it was so completely unguarded and honest that my lips pressed together and I got out of the truck before I did something stupid like smile at Griffin Callahan’s little sister from the pickup lane.
By the time I came around to the passenger side of the truck, she’d squared her shoulders back up, though the cold had put color high in her cheeks that wasn’t going anywhere. She saw me coming and she gave me an easy and warm smile, like she’d had it ready the whole time.
My chest went tight in a way I had no intention of examining.
The photo had not covered what the woman in front of me looked like in real life.
The Christmas group shot she’d been in the background of, that I’d scrolled past and absolutely not thought about it twice.
Or more. Both of those things were lies, and I was aware of that in high definition standing in a pickup lane in the cold.
Griffin’s little sister was objectively, inconveniently, completely beautiful, and I was going to file that information in the category of things that were true and irrelevant. I took a breath, picked up her bag, and went to meet her.
“Hey,” she said. “I’m Maren.”
She was cute.
“Hey. I know who you are.” I laughed and reached past her for the carry-on handle.
“I wasn’t sure you’d remember me or not,” she said, a little shy.
You’re unforgettable. Instead I asked, “Good flight?” and did my damned best not to stare.
“Not bad. Uneventful.” She let me take it. “Is it always like this?”
“Like what?”
She moved her hand to indicate the wind, the sky, all of it.
“Until May,” I said on a chuckle. Griffin had called it exactly. She was already getting the education he’d promised.
She made a sound that wasn’t a word.
I got her bag into the back, held the passenger door for her and when she was in, came around to my side. I cranked the heat up for her first. She held both hands in front of the vents. I made myself look at the road.
She smelled like something warm and clean that I clocked once and then absolutely did not think about for the next thirty-nine minutes.
“Thank you for coming,” she said.
“Of course.”
A pause while she continued warming her hands. Do I have anything I can give her to be warmer?
Her talking interrupted my thoughts. “He talks about you a lot.”
“Good things, I hope.” I said it like I meant it and had absolutely no follow-up questions.
“Mostly.” She smirked at me and let out a small laugh.
I pulled into traffic.
I reached behind the seat and found the hat by feel.
Dark-green knit, small moose on the cuff.
My sister had sent it from Stockholm in a package with a note that said because you are large, slightly intimidating, and not as graceful as you think you are.
The moose is you. Wear the hat. I held it out.
She looked at it. “Is that a moose?”
“My sister sent it. She lives in Stockholm.”
“Your sister in Stockholm sent you a moose hat.”
“She thinks it’s funny.” I rolled my eyes but insisted she take the hat.
“It’s a little funny.” Maren’s lips parted into a wide grin.
“Don’t tell her that.”
She smiled. She took it, pulled it on without checking a mirror, and tugged it down over her ears. “Thank you.”
“Mm.”
The heat did its work and she gradually unclenched. By the time we hit the highway she’d settled back and was watching the landscape, flat and pale, birch stands at the field edges, the last snow in the low places. She watched it like it mattered.
She asked about a town we passed. Then a follow-up.
The conversation built on itself easily, naturally, and kept catching me off guard because Griffin had said she’d ask twenty questions but he hadn’t mentioned that she’d listen to the answers, or that she’d take what you said and immediately go somewhere interesting with it, or that she was funny in the dry way I liked. Not trying to be, just landing it.
She was going to be a problem. Griffin’s little sister, who had opinions about the neutral zone trap and laughed like that and smelled like that and asked twenty questions and actually listened to the answers. Of course she was.
Not a problem. She was Griffin’s sister. She wasn’t going to be anything.
I drove.
I pulled into the lot at 5:02. She looked at the building, three floors of beige, exterior stairs, railings that needed paint, and gave it a look.
“Very practical,” she said.
“The elevator’s been broken since November.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“We’ve made our peace with it.”
She shook her head, but her whole face was doing something she wasn’t quite stopping.
I got her bag, and we went up the exterior stairs.
The boots negotiated the ice with more caution than confidence—she went flat-footed, arms slightly out, very focused—and I was determined not to find her antics endearing and yet I absolutely did.
I unlocked the door and held it open so she could walk in ahead of me. The green fleece, dark jeans, hair still loose from the flight. She moved like someone comfortable in her own body, easy in it, like she walked into strangers’ apartments every day and was perfectly fine about it.
I told my eyes to behave themselves. Stay up.
They took two full seconds to comply, which was two seconds longer than they should have. The view from behind her was doing things to me.
She read the apartment the way she’d read the landscape from the truck.
Seeming to be fully in it, not just scanning.
Her eyes moved across Griffin’s half first—gear bag on the floor, shoes with no system, the coaching manual cracked from actual use—then mine.
Books shelved by subject. Film notebooks with their edges touching. The throw on the couch folded.
She didn’t say anything for a moment.
“Griffin’s is the half that looks like a storm moved through it,” I said.
“I figured.” She set her tote on a kitchen chair. “Which room is his?”
I pointed. She took her bag down the hall. I heard the door open, the pause, then she came back.
“He has a truly extraordinary number of shampoos.”
“Seven. The small one is behind the conditioner.”
She looked at me. “You’ve counted them.”
“It came up. Long story.”
A small smile. “Could I use your bathroom? I want to fix my hair and freshen up before dinner, and Griffin’s is a little…”
She didn’t need to finish. “Second door.” I got a towel from the linen closet, left it on the bathroom counter, went back to the kitchen, put the kettle on, and stood at the window looking at the parking lot going gray. “Would you like some tea? Probably help keep you warm,” I asked.
“I’d love some. I’ll grab it when I’m all done. I have time, right?”
“You have plenty of time. We’re on your schedule. Whatever you need.” And boy, did I mean it. Anything she wanted, I’d give her.
I made tea I didn’t want. The kettle boiled.
I poured it. The radiator knocked. Through the wall I could hear the hair dryer, a low steady hum, and I stood at the window and thought about my call with Audrey and the defensive pair on Tuesday’s opponent and the dozen or so games left in the season and absolutely nothing else at all.
Not the fact that she was fifteen feet away in my bathroom.
Not the way she’d pulled my sister’s moose hat on without checking a mirror, like it hadn’t occurred to her to be self-conscious about it. That was just. No. I stopped myself.
She came out fifteen minutes later with her hair down, dark and loose past her shoulders, and she’d done something to her eyes that made them land harder than they already did. I clocked this for exactly one second—one—and looked at the counter with very great concentration.
“Your bathroom is very organized,” she said.
“Yeah, a bit more than Griffin’s.”
“Griffin’s is a crime scene,” she agreed.
She found the mug of tea I’d made her and came to stand on the other side of the counter, both hands wrapped around it. She looked out the window at the parking lot, and I clocked her movements. She was taking up more space in my head than I’d given her permission to.
She was Griffin’s sister. I wasn’t going to do anything about it.
“Tell me about tomorrow,” she said.
So I told her. Jensen’s pond, forty minutes out, good ice all season because the cold had kept the ice damn near perfect. Pickup game, fire on the bank, coolers when the game wound down. Most of the team showed on the good weekends.
“You love it,” she said when I finished. Not a question.
“Yeah. I do.”
“Griffin does too. I can hear it when he talks about it.”
“We’ve been here four years. It gets into you.”
“Is it hard?” she asked quietly.
“More than one thing is true at the same time when it comes to the end of college and college hockey—I’m ready for what comes next and yeah, I’m going to miss this. But I’ve learned to hold both.”
She watched me over her cup, and something about the directness of it made it hard to think clearly, which was new and inconvenient. “Griffin says you’re going to go early in the draft.”
“Griffin is biased.”
“He says it like it’s a fact, not a prediction.” Her tone was teasing but held something serious at the same time. She tilted her head slightly. “He’s usually right about people.”
“He’s right about hockey,” I said. “People are different.”
She considered my words. “I don’t think he thinks they are.”
“And what do you think?” I asked, because I was curious about everything she had an opinion on.
She pressed her lips together and tapped her chin dramatically like she was thinking hard on the topic. “Well, I know a lot about playing hockey, or the sport, I mean. But I can honestly say I don’t really know shit about the draft.”
I let out a laugh, genuine and from my core.
“But I do know about Griffin, and something tells me you don’t give yourself the credit you deserve.”
I sat with what she’d said, turned it over, and didn’t respond. She read the silence and didn’t push it. That made her more interesting, which was not helpful.
The door opened at 6:20, and Griffin came through it the way he always did, which was loudly and all at once—lit up, loud, gear bag first, already talking.
He crossed the kitchen in four steps and picked Maren up off the floor in the hug he’d clearly been saving since the last time he saw her, which had to be Christmas.
She held very still and let it happen, which was clearly a practiced skill.
“You’re here.” He set her down and looked her over. His eyes went straight to the boots. “Maren.”
“They’re functional.”
“Those are not Minnesota boots.”
“They have a rubber sole.”
“You don’t own anything warmer, do you?”
She rolled her eyes at her brother. “Obviously not. And sorry, but I’m a poor, starving college student. I’m not buying Minnesota Winter boots I’ll never wear again.” She said it with such sass I had to stifle a laugh. She’s fun.
“Eh, that’s valid.”
“Dinner,” Maren said flatly. “I haven’t eaten since whatever the airline called a snack, and I’ve been cold for three hours.”
“Sal’s, seven.” Griffin was already down the hall. “Let me change.”
Maren turned back to the kitchen. The quiet between us settled into something almost easy.
“Does he always come in like that?” she said.
“Four years. Every time.”
She looked at the gear bag. “And you move it.”
“Every time.”
“And he puts it back.”
“Within twelve hours.”
She shook her head, but she was smiling—the easy one she’d had ready at the airport—and I rinsed my mug and left the kitchen before I could do something stupid like stand there thinking about the fact that she looked like she already belonged in it.
Which I wasn’t thinking.
Clearly.