3. Ryan #2
Griffin had abandoned any pretense of composure. Tom refilled my water glass without comment, which was the single most compassionate thing anyone had done for me in recent memory. I drank half of it, set it down, and turned to Maren, who had her lips pressed together, fooling absolutely no one.
I had to defend myself. “I had it in eggs,” I said. “I ordered queso that looked normal.”
“Hatch green chile queso,” she said. “Yes. That one will get ya.”
“There was no warning on the menu.”
“There’s never a warning. You just have to know.”
“How does anyone know?”
“You live here long enough.” She let the smile out entirely. “Give it six months. You’ll be putting it on everything yourself.”
“I sincerely doubt that.”
“That’s what everyone says.” She picked up her fork. “Ask me again at Christmas.” She winked at me and went back to eating. Why was that so fucking adorable?
I held her gaze for a beat longer than I meant to, then turned back to my plate.
The brisket was extraordinary even with my mouth quietly on fire.
I ate it and listened to Tom hold court on the Diamondbacks while Griffin disagreed and Linda told them both they were wrong.
The evening moved along with easy warmth like they had been doing this long enough to make it look effortless.
I was glad I’d come. I was glad every Sunday I’d come.
After dinner, Maren started collecting dishes. I stood to help.
“You’re a guest,” she said. “Sit down and relax.”
“I’d like to help.” I picked up the remaining plates and followed her to the kitchen before she could argue.
Linda appeared in the doorway. “You two have the dishes?” She pointed at both of us. “Can you put the coffee on too?”
Maren turned. “Mom, it’s ninety-four degrees. Nobody wants coffee.”
“Everyone wants coffee with dessert.”
“That’s not a universal law.”
“It is in this house.” She pointed at the coffee maker, and the matter was settled. She disappeared toward the back patio.
Griffin stood and stretched. “I’m going to see what Dad’s found to stress about in the garage.” He clapped me on the shoulder as he passed. “Good luck.”
I was certain he meant with the dishes. He meant with the dishes. Definitely not his smoking hot, adorable, funny sister. Nope. Not that.
We made one more trip for the remaining things and found a rhythm in the small kitchen together without having to negotiate it. She washed and I dried, the sounds of the house drifting in around us. Tom and Griffin’s voices. The baseball game. The coffee maker working through its cycle.
I had been in proximity to Maren Callahan for weeks.
In the training room, in hallways, across tables at staff meetings.
I had managed all of it without incident, which I was choosing to view as a personal achievement.
I had a magnetic pull toward her just like I did in college, and I didn’t know what to do with it.
What I noticed in that moment, was that the kitchen was a lot smaller than the training room.
“You know, Griffin talks about you a lot,” Maren said. She wasn’t watching me, just washing a plate, her voice even. “At these family dinners Well, the ones you aren’t at. Since he got back.”
“Good things, I hope.”
“He said you’re the reason the locker room doesn’t feel like a pressure cooker.” She handed me the plate. “He said it like you don’t know you’re doing it.”
I dried the plate, thinking over how to respond. It was a hell of a complement. “I’m doing the job.” Which was true.
“That’s what he said you’d say.” She smiled.
I watched her. She was focused on the sink, not fishing for a reaction, like it was accurate and didn’t need any help from me to confirm it. I had the inconvenient thought I could listen to her talk for a long time and not get tired of it.
“He’s proud of you,” she said. “The captaincy. He says the organization figured out what he already knew.”
“I don’t know how true that is. But I’ll try not to let him down…I’ll try not to let anyone down.”
“I don’t think anyone’s worried about that.”
I didn’t have a response, so I dried the bowl she handed me and didn’t try to find one. Our fingers brushed in the transfer. Her hand warm from the water against my knuckles, and she turned back to the sink and I set down the dish towel and neither of us said anything about it.
The coffee maker beeped. Maren reached past me to flip it to the keep-warm mode and the kitchen got briefly smaller.
She was close enough I could smell whatever she was wearing, something light, faintly citrus, and she didn’t move away immediately, just stood there with her hand on the coffee maker and her eyes somewhere on me, unfocused.
I knew exactly how far away she was. Six inches. It was taking everything I had not to close it.
She raised her head.
It was a small movement, her chin lifting, and what passed across her face in the moment before she got her expression back into order was enough.
The want there and the awareness of it and the fact she knew I could see it and wasn’t quite managing to hide it.
I had the clear thought that if I moved just barely to my left this would stop being a hypothetical.
I wanted to. That was the simple, inconvenient fact.
I wanted to eliminate any distance between us and I was standing there not doing it, and the not doing it required more effort than anything I’d done on ice all week.
“Lindy—” Griffin’s voice came from the garage, rising to get my attention. “Can you come look at this?”
Maren turned back to the coffee maker. I took one breath, deliberate, and stepped back.
“Coming,” I called.
I didn’t look at her on my way out of the kitchen. I didn’t trust what my face was doing. Or my body.
Tom was crouched in front of a water heater that appeared to be at least fifteen years old, studying a fitting with focused concern.
“See this,” he said, pointing. “That normal?”
I crouched next to him and checked the fitting. It was a fitting. It was attached to the water heater. I had nothing further. “Looks okay to me,” I said.
“That’s what I said,” Griffin offered.
“You said fine,” Tom said. “He said okay. That’s not the same.”
“I think you’re fine, Tom,” I said.
Tom studied the fitting for another moment. Then he stood, satisfied. “Good. That’s what I thought.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Another beer?”
“Sure.”
Griffin caught my eye over his father’s head and mouthed thank you. I shrugged. It was the easiest thing I’d done all week and I wasn’t sure what I’d actually done.
When we came back through the kitchen, Maren was pouring a coffee and didn’t look up.
I drove home with the windows down, the desert air moving through the truck. The sky had gone fully purple at the edges, wide and vivid and after living here for a bit, it was something Phoenix skies did, like the city was showing off just because it could.
I thought about green chile sauce and a water heater and Tom’s absolute certainty that okay and fine were meaningfully different.
I thought about the kitchen and the look on Maren’s face when she’d raised her eyes to mine in the moment before Griffin’s voice came through from the garage.
I thought about the decision I’d made in that moment, the deliberate, necessary step back, and the fact I wasn’t sure it had been the right one, only that it had been the required one.
There was a difference in that decision, and I understood it.
It wasn’t even a particularly warm or romantic moment, but I was aching to touch her.
I pulled into my parking garage and sat for a moment with the engine off.
The C on my jersey. A city still deciding whether to trust something new. A family that had folded me into a Sunday like I’d always been there.
I was looking forward to next week and it had nothing to do with Tom’s brisket.
Vad gor du med mig, I thought. What are you doing to me? I blew out a long breath.
I got out of the truck and went upstairs and thought about her the rest of the night.