Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Maren
I woke before my alarm, which was set for six. The room was dark in the gray pre-dawn way, and the gap in Griffin’s curtains let in a thin line of parking lot light. I lay still for a moment and let my body catch up with my mind, which was already running.
Something was ending. My body knew it before I did.
I got up.
I packed in the half-dark. My clothes, the sweaters, my father’s fleece folded on top. Efficient. Quiet. Not making it a thing.
The sweatshirt was on the chair by the door.
I stood in front of it for longer than I should have. Navy cotton, MINNESOTA HOCKEY in yellow lettering, worn soft at the collar. I picked it up.
It smelled like him. Woodsmoke on top and underneath that just Ryan, warm and clean and exactly the thing I’d been trying not to think about since Friday night. I stood there in the dark holding it and felt like an idiot and put it in my duffel anyway.
A memento. That was what I was telling myself. It wasn’t entirely a lie.
I went to make coffee.
I sat at the table with my mug and let the weekend settle without trying to edit any of it.
The airport and the cold and the truck and the moose hat, and the thing where I’d said thank you and he’d replied with a hum like it was nothing and somehow that had been more disarming than any actual response would have been.
The apartment and the tea cooling on the counter while we talked, and both things are true at the same time, which was such an honest way to say something that I’d thought about it at least six times since.
Dinner at Sal’s. Petey and the trap. Jensen refilling my water glass four times without a word—quiet, attentive, nothing made of it.
The bar and Griffin’s goalie eyes asking how I was doing, and the way Griffin had nearly choked at the bonfire when I established my credentials as a grown adult.
The pond. The way the cold had come up off the ice when I stepped out of the truck, and I’d just understood, immediately, why Griffin had been trying to describe this place for four years.
The fire. His sweatshirt warm around me, hitting me mid-thigh, his scent all through it.
Nothing appropriate, said quietly at the waterline, and the way I’d said it back, and the weight of that exchange—two people telling the truth to each other in the dark.
The tailgate. The blanket around both of us.
The stars out and the air completely still.
His hand on my knee, just there, not a question.
The four seconds we’d both held perfectly still at the edge of something.
His fingers against my cheek, slow, the back of his hand, just one moment of it, and then gone.
I’d been sensible. I’d looked at the pond and walked away when I said I was going to. The line of what was appropriate had held. I was proud of that. I was also going to be second-guessing it for considerably longer than would make sense to anyone else.
I was also going to be thinking about those four seconds for significantly longer than I should, and about his hand on my knee on the drive home, and the weight of his arm when he’d walked me to the tailgate, and the way he’d stood in the hallway after I went to Griffin’s room, and I’d heard him from the other side of the door, still there, and I’d pressed my back against the door for a moment before I’d moved.
I’m allowed to carry something for a while before I tuck it away.
That was what I was telling myself.
I was going home to a life I loved. The internship—the IT band case the clinic had been tracking all month was finally showing progress and I wanted to be there to observe. Biomechanics Thursday. My apartment in Tempe with the courtyard and the good morning light.
This weekend had been exactly what it was. I was glad.
Griffin appeared at six forty, hair everywhere, shirt on backward. I said nothing about the shirt. He saw the coffee and sat across from me and held out his mug. I filled it. We sat in the quiet we’d been building our whole lives.
“Good weekend?” he asked.
“Really good weekend.”
“Petey texted me about the hand warmers at midnight.”
“He texted me twice. Once about the hand warmers and once about the neutral zone trap.”
Griffin laughed; the real one. “He’s going to be thinking about that trap thing for weeks.”
“He made it easy. He was clearly wrong.”
“That’s Petey.” He wrapped both hands around his mug. “Come back in April. We’ve got home games on the eleventh and thirteenth.”
“I’ll try.”
“You’ll look at your schedule first.”
“And then I’ll come. You might even know what team you’re going to play for by then.”
He nodded. Satisfied.
I looked at my brother. Four years of building something here and it showed in every room of this apartment and every table at Sal’s and every person at Jensen’s pond.
“I’m going to miss you,” I said. “When you’re somewhere else.”
He looked at the table. “I’m going to miss you too.” He tapped the back of my hand with his knuckle. “But you’re going to come to wherever it is and complain about the weather and eat all my food.”
“Obviously.”
“And I’m going to come to Tempe and lay by the pool with you at Mom and Dad’s and not help with anything.”
“That’s very you.”
“I know. I’m consistent.”
Ryan’s door opened at six fifty. He came out dressed, saw us at the table, said, “Morning” to both of us, and went to the coffee. He poured a cup and leaned against the counter. There wasn’t too much to say, not with all three of us there.
“Morning,” I replied.
“Are you all packed?” he asked.
“All packed.”
He held my gaze for a beat, something unfinished in it, but I got up and headed back to Griffin’s room to grab my bag. It was time to go. Griffin appeared in the doorway of his room while I was zipping my duffel.
“I’ll take that.” He grabbed the bag before I could argue. “Going to go warm up the truck. Take your time.”
He said it casually. Like it was nothing. But he didn’t look at me when he said it, and he’d grabbed my bag without being asked, and Griffin Callahan did not do things without a reason.
I stood in the quiet apartment for a moment.
Then I walked out to the kitchen.
Ryan was still at the counter, his coffee in his hands, a navy sweatshirt on—different one, almost identical to the one I’d packed. He looked at me when I came in. The full look. Not the redirected one he’d been using all weekend when he caught himself looking too long. His full attention.
Neither of us said anything for a moment.
Then he set down his mug and crossed the kitchen and pulled me in without asking. Just his arms around me, solid and warm, my face against his chest.
I let myself have it—his arms, the warmth of him, all of it. Just for a second.
He pressed his lips to the top of my head, slow and deliberate, and held them there for one long breath.
Then he let go.
“Have a good flight,” he said.
“Thank you.” I meant the airport and the hat and the tea and the pond and the tailgate and the dark drive home and the fact that he’d held the line when I hadn’t been entirely sure I wanted him to. “For all of it.”
He nodded once. The single nod that said everything and committed to nothing and somehow still felt like a complete sentence.
“It was good to meet you,” he said. “Officially.”
There was a weight to the word. Officially. Like he was acknowledging that something had happened here that the first meeting two years ago hadn’t been, and we both knew it, and neither of us was going to say that out loud.
“Yeah,” I said. I held his gaze for a beat longer than was strictly necessary. “It was.”
I went down the stairs.
I did not look back.
I wanted to.
Griffin was in the truck with the heat running. He didn’t say anything when I got in, just put it in reverse and pulled out of the lot. I looked up at the apartment window as we passed.
Ryan was there.
Holding his mug of coffee in one hand, he raised the other. Just once. Just that.
I faced forward and watched Minnesota go.
The flight home was three hours. Window seat again. I watched Minnesota disappear under the clouds and let myself have the flight.
The pond and the fire and the tailgate and the four seconds.
Nothing appropriate and what it had felt like to give it back to him and have him understand exactly what I was returning.
Two people holding the same line, both knowing it, both choosing it.
I was proud of that, and I was also going to be thinking about it for a long time.
That was the right call. Both of us knew it. Both of us made it.
The desert came up to meet me the way it always did. Brown and flat and mine. The mountain ranges at the edges, the grid of streets and rooftops. Recognition. Home.
I was glad to see it.
I unpacked that evening in my childhood bedroom, everything back where it lived—sweaters in drawers, my dad’s fleece in the hamper.
I put Ryan’s sweatshirt on the shelf in the back of the closet and went to make dinner.
I tried not to think about it.
Unsuccessfully.