10. Brynn
brYNN
I didn’t have a reason to be at the arena on a Saturday morning.
That was the honest answer. I had community relations emails I could answer from home.
I had a manuscript sitting on my laptop that wasn’t going to write itself.
I had a fridge that needed restocking and a storage unit in Portland I kept paying sixty dollars a month on that I needed to figure out what the hell to do with.
I went to the arena anyway.
The cold hit me the second I stepped inside, that particular arena chill I’d grown up with, the kind that settled into your bones in the best possible way.
I told myself I was just going to check on a few things.
Drop off the signage proofs for the season opener.
Make sure the sponsorship display cases hadn’t been moved again by the cleaning crew.
The ice was already being used.
I could hear them before I saw them. Skates cutting, pucks cracking off sticks, Jett saying something inadvisable that made someone else laugh. I should have gone straight to my office and done what I came to do.
Instead I found myself gravitating toward the stands.
Just for a minute, I told myself. I’d watch for a minute and then get to work.
I slipped into the second row and pulled my jacket tighter around me.
Colton was in the middle of it, on skates, moving the guys through a passing drill I didn’t know the name of but could tell immediately was more complicated than anything the last coach had run.
He wasn’t barking from the boards. He was out there with them, adjusting angles, positioning guys with his hands on their shoulders, demonstrating footwork and then stepping back to watch them replicate it.
Most coaches I’d seen used the clipboard as a shield. Colton had left his on the boards twenty minutes ago by the looks of it.
Moose fumbled a pass and braced for the reaction. The old coach would have blown his whistle three times and run them in circles for five minutes.
Colton skated over, said something I couldn’t hear, and demonstrated the footwork again. Slowly. Like it mattered that Moose got it right, not just that he got it done.
Moose tried it again.
Better.
Colton tapped the boards twice and moved on without making a thing of it, which somehow made it a bigger thing than if he’d said anything at all. I watched Moose’s shoulders drop about an inch — not deflated, just settled. Like he’d been given permission to stop bracing for impact.
I’d seen my father do that exact thing from these same stands.
I sat with that for a second.
Rhett was running a different line through something at the far end of the ice.
Colton had split them up without me noticing, working two drills simultaneously, moving between them like he had eyes on all twenty-three guys at once.
Which maybe he did. He’d been watching the team at the bar Friday night with the same kind of attention — quiet, thorough, not missing a thing.
Jett tried to cut a corner on the drill and Colton’s whistle went off before Jett’s skate had fully pivoted. Sharp. Once. Jett reset without a word and ran it again clean.
I realized I’d been sitting here for forty minutes.
I also realized I still hadn’t gone to my office.
I looked down at my coffee cup. Then back at the ice.
Colton had gathered them all at center now and was talking, low enough that I couldn’t catch the words, and every single one of them was facing him.
Not because they had to. Because he had the kind of presence that made you want to know what he was going to say next.
I knew what I was doing. I was fully aware of what I was doing. I was sitting in the stands of my father’s arena on a Saturday morning watching a man I had absolutely no business watching with the kind of attention I was paying him, and I had been doing it for the better part of an hour.
He is not for you, I told myself. He is not for you and you know exactly why.
I stood up and made myself walk toward my office.
I tried not look back at the ice on my way out. But I failed.
Our eyes caught and he smiled. I felt the blood rush to my cheeks as I smiled back and quickly turned around.
I made it approximately twelve steps down the hallway before my phone rang.
"Why are you at the arena on a Saturday?" Dani said by way of greeting.
I dropped into my office chair. "How do you know I'm at the arena?"
"Because you just posted a story of the ice from the stands and tagged the arena location like you weren't even thinking about it."
I looked at my phone. I had absolutely done that.
"I had signage proofs to drop off," I said.
"Mhm."
"And the sponsorship display cases needed checking."
"Sure."
"Dani."
"Brynn." A pause. I could hear her crocheting. "How's the new coach?"
I leaned back in my chair and looked at the ceiling. "Fine. Good. He seems like he knows what he's doing."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
"You're doing the voice."
"I don't have a voice."
"You have a voice," she said. "It's the one where you're being very deliberately boring about something that isn't boring."
I pulled my feet up onto my desk. "He's tall."
"How tall."
"Has to duck in doorways tall."
The crocheting stopped. "Okay."
"It's not a thing," I said. "I was going to set him up with Mom."
"Were you."
"I was. Mom already shut it down."
"Of course she did." A beat. "So now what?"
"Now nothing. He's the team's coach. I work for the team. That's the whole story."
"Sure," Dani said, in the particular tone she used when she thought you were lying but had decided to let you figure that out yourself.
"It's not a thing, Dani."
"I didn't say it was."
"You were thinking it."
"I'm always thinking something," she said pleasantly. The crocheting started up again. "Tell me about practice."
So I did. I told her about the drills, about Moose's shoulders dropping when Colton moved on without making a thing of his mistake. About Jett getting called before his skate had fully pivoted. About forty minutes turning into an hour without me noticing.
I did not tell her about turning around at the door.
"He sounds like a good coach," Dani said when I finished.
"He is. I think he might be exactly what this team needs."
"Mm." A pause. "Just the team?"
"Good bye, Dani."
She laughed. "Good bye, Brynn."
I put the phone down and sat in my office for another few minutes, looking at nothing in particular.
Then I gathered my things and went home.