2. Maren #3
“It was a good day. Dr. Reyes is sharp. Dom Caruso is exactly what I was hoping for. The equipment situation is not ideal but will be soon.” I swirled my wine.
“The whole facility is impressive, Griff. I kept waiting to find something wrong with it. And the owner is invested. Anything I need, they’re ready to get it.
I kept expecting to hit a wall and there hasn’t been one. ”
“The ice is unreal. Best surface I’ve been on in years.
” He leaned back in his chair with the expression he’d had since we were kids doing our debriefs, giving me his full attention.
He seemed lighter than I’d seen him in a while.
Some tightness gone from around his eyes I hadn’t consciously noticed until it wasn’t there anymore.
Eight years in Seattle, cold and gray and far from everyone he loved, and I hadn’t understood how much it had hollowed him out until I was sitting across from him on a warm Arizona evening watching it fill back in.
“How does it feel? Working with a professional team?” he asked me.
“Good,” I said, and meant it all the way down. “Really good. I’m incredibly happy to be here, and it’s like my dream job.” It was true. “It’s awesome.” I grinned.
“Yeah.” He picked up his wine. “Mom and Dad are twenty minutes away. The team is serious—Maren, I think we’re going to build something real.
I can feel it in the room. Nobody here is acting like they got a short straw or like they don’t want to be here.
I mean the cold weather guys aren’t thrilled, but once winter hits, they’ll love it here. ”
“That’s hilarious. You’re right. The roster is strong.”
“It’s more than the roster. Everyone came here wanting to prove something or having a reason to give it everything they have. That matters.” He grinned. “And my sister is in the building, which is the best part.”
“Above the ice surface?”
“Marginally below.”
“Rude.”
“Very close though.” He topped off my glass. “To the first season of the Sidewinders.”
I raised mine and we touched glasses, and I took a sip of wine that tasted like relief.
“And how was the family skate?” Griffin asked, with elaborate innocence that fooled no one.
I groaned. “I guess I need to actually learn to skate. It was mortifying. Cole saved me. He’s got the patience of a saint.”
“He’s a good teacher.”
“He is. Kind about it too, which I didn’t expect.” I pointed at him across the table. “Not a word about the penguin.”
Griffin held up both hands. “I wasn’t going to say anything about the penguin. You know I could teach you to skate.”
“Griffin.”
“I’m serious. Penguin aside, I could…”
“Don’t you think we’d kill each other?”
“Not if you used the penguin—” He barked a laugh. It was always like that with us, and it was good to have him back in Arizona.
“Drop it.” I gave him a discreet middle finger and picked up my wine.
“Dropped.” He topped off his own glass, still grinning, and let it go.
The evening settled around us. Warm and easy, a faint breeze carrying the smell of night-blooming jasmine from somewhere down the block.
I’d missed this without fully knowing it.
Not just Griffin, but exactly this. Wine and nowhere to be and the ease of Griffin, twenty-seven years of knowing me, not trying to prove anything.
“I’m glad we’re both here,” I said.
Griffin’s face went still and he stared off at the sunset. “Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”
Once I was home, with the ceiling fan turning slow circles overhead, I thought about a man crouched down on the ice with a kid who’d requested his hero teach him, his whole face open in a way it hadn’t been in the corridor that morning.
Colleague, I reminded myself. Completely regular colleague.
I was going to be fine about all of it.
A few days later, I almost walked into someone on my way back from the equipment wing. I really needed to pay attention to my surroundings.
Not a player. A woman about my age, dark hair, a clipboard in one hand and a lanyard still unwrapped in the other, which told me she was newer here than I was; a low bar.
She looked up from whatever she’d been reading and we did the brief mutual assessment of two people who’d nearly collided in a hallway.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m still figuring out which corridors go where.”
“Same, honestly.” I shifted my own files. “Maren Callahan. Sports medicine.”
“Jenna Brooks.” She held up the lanyard. “Comms and social. Started Monday.”
“How’s it going so far?”
She looked at the clipboard, then at the corridor branching in three directions behind me, then back at me with an expression of cheerful defeat. “I’ve been lost twice and I haven’t found the good coffee yet.”
“Third floor, past the film room. Dom guards it but he’ll let you in if you look like you belong. Actually you’re pretty, so I think you’ll get it right away.”
Her face relaxed. The relief of finding someone in a new place who wasn’t performing. “Thank you. It’s a lot. A new city. A new job.”
“Welcome to Phoenix.” I meant it. “It gets less confusing. Mostly.”
She laughed and headed in the direction I’d pointed and I watched her go. Good, I thought. The building needed more women in it who knew what they were doing, and more women in sports was never a bad thing.