6. Maren
MAREN
Cole Westbrook’s house was exactly what I should have expected and somehow still wasn’t.
Scottsdale modern, all glass and sharp angles and a resort pool that took up most of the backyard, a place where the listing would have said stunning in the headline and meant it as an understatement.
Cole had leaned into it fully. There was a DJ on the patio.
There was a taco truck in the driveway. Inflatable flamingos in the pool were taller than several of the actual people, and someone had already thrown one of the rookies onto one of them, and the whole situation was being documented on at least four phones simultaneously.
It was a shit show and the best all at once.
The perfect party to let loose, which I rarely did.
I took it in for exactly two seconds, handed Griffin my bag to hold, and went directly to the taco truck. Better to build a foundation for the trough of margaritas I planned to consume.
“You’re not even going to say hello to anyone first?” Griffin called after me.
“The tacos aren’t going to wait,” I called back.
They were extraordinary. I got two, found a spot at the edge of the pool where a group of the younger players were doing something competitive and inadvisable with a volleyball, and inserted myself into a conversation with some of the players and a few of their girlfriends, or maybe just dates, while I ate.
By the time I’d finished my first taco I knew the rookie on my left, Hendricks, twenty-two, from Manitoba, had a sister getting married in December and he was stressed about the road trip conflict.
By the time I’d finished my second I’d learned that the defenseman across from me had a golden retriever named Brisket, which I told him was either the best or worst name for a dog depending on your feelings about my dad’s cooking, and he blinked at me and I made a mental note to introduce him to my father.
Griffin reappeared with my bag and a beer. “You’ve been here eleven minutes.”
“Hendricks needs the December fourteenth game moved. His sister is getting married in Canada. Manitoba to be exact.”
“That’s not how any of this works.” I knew that.
“Someone should look into it.” I took the bag back and set it under the table. “This is a good party, Griff.”
“Tell Cole that. He’s been asking everyone as if this isn’t the best get-together ever already.”
“Where are the flamingos from?” They were so large they certainly weren’t from any pool store I knew about.
They had to be special ordered or something.
In fact, as I looked around the massive yard, I noticed the theme.
Everything was flamingos. Pink straws for drinks from the bar he had set up, and little flamingo charms hanging from wine glasses.
Classy. Yard flamingos. Very Florida, and not particularly southwest, but super festive and bright. It was good for the mood somehow.
“He won’t say, which in and of itself is kinda sketchy.”
“I’m gonna go say hi and get a drink,” I announced, leaving Griffin at the table to take my seat.
Often times if we were invited to the same place, we tried not to hang out together too much.
Not that we didn’t have fun together, but we were related and didn’t want to be considered a package deal all the time.
Cole was by the grill with Theo, an unlikely pairing that seemed to produce longer conversations than anyone expected. Cole spotted me coming and spread his arms wide.
“Little Callahan! You made it.”
“You invited me.” I grinned, his enthusiasm the kind that got into you whether you wanted it to or not.
“I invite lots of people. Not everyone comes.” He handed me his drink. “Just made it, straight from the bartender, I watched the whole thing.” I hadn’t asked, but I accepted it because the afternoon called for it. “What do you think?”
I was scanning the yard when I found Ryan at the far end of the pool with some of the younger guys.
He was laughing and watching him relax and let go with the boys made me happy.
Ryan definitely had a tendency to be Mr. Serious and seeing him this way pleased me.
He must have felt me looking because he glanced over, and I didn’t quite manage to look away in time, distracted by his incredible, shirtless, wet body.
He held my gaze for a half-second and gave me the smallest nod, the kind that said I see you without saying anything at all.
How could he tell through my sunglasses?
I looked back at the grill.
“Interesting,” Cole said, without looking up from the burgers.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your tone is saying something.”
He grinned at the grill. “Okay. What do you really think of all this?” He gestured broadly.
I took in the flamingos, the DJ, the taco truck visible around the side of the house, Sutter on his flotation device, the string lights beginning to matter as the sun dropped behind the roofline. “Honestly? I think you might be a genius.”
Cole pointed at Theo. “She thinks I’m a genius.”
“She’s being polite,” Theo said, but he was almost smiling, which for Theo was a standing ovation.
“I’m not,” I said. “I mean it. These guys have been grinding for weeks. Look at them.” Sutter had drifted to the far end of the pool on his flamingo, eyes closed, completely at peace.
Danny Hart was in the shallow end teaching Kasperi something that required him to draw in the air to make his point.
Even Eli, at the far wall, had a drink in his hand and wasn’t actively looking for a reason to leave. “This is exactly what they needed.”
I turned to Cole. “You knew that.”
The grin dropped. Gone, no warning, and underneath it was someone considerably quieter and more serious than the version he showed the room.
“Yeah,” he said. He gazed out at the backyard.
“I’ve been on teams where everyone goes home after practice and you never know each other.
This one’s different. I wanted to do something about it while it was still new.
” He shrugged and the grin came back, easy as breathing.
“Also the flamingos were ordered from Florida.”
I laughed and watched him for a moment. “Cole Westbrook,” I said, “you are going to be one of my favorite people.”
“Obviously.” He put an arm around me while he flipped another burger.
Theo picked up his drink and walked away without a word which was the most Theo thing he could’ve done.
Cole waited until he was gone. “You and Lindqvist seem like you’ve known each other longer than just this season.”
I kept my eyes on the grill while my heart beat against my chest. “He’s Griffin’s best friend.”
“Sure, but I saw you two at The Rusty Nail. You weren’t sitting together like people who just met.”
My stomach dropped. Not in a bad way necessarily, but it was uncomfortable. Nine years ago, a pond in Minnesota, the tailgate of a truck, a moment I’d spent a long time not thinking about. “We met once. It was like nine years ago though. A lifetime ago. It wasn’t anything.”
“Funny how some connections just—” He glanced at me sideways over his sunglasses. “Nine years?”
“It wasn’t a connection. It was one weekend I had gone to visit Griffin his senior year in college, before he got drafted. We all hung out. That’s all.”
“Right.” He nodded slowly. “Time is a flat circle or whatever.”
“That means nothing.”
“It means something.” He glanced at the drink in my hand. “That’s mine, you know.”
“You gave it to me.”
“I did.” He shook his head with great theatrical sadness. “Guess I need to go get another one.” He turned me gently by the shoulders toward the yard. “Go say hello. See if he needs sunscreen or something. He’s very pale. Wouldn’t want him to get burned by the Arizona sun.”
I turned back. “Cole—”
He winked.
I pushed my sunglasses up with my middle finger.
He was already walking away grinning, and the worst part was I was smiling too, and I was looking for Ryan against my better judgment.
Maybe he did need some sunscreen for that pale, Nordic skin, and I’d be more than happy to rub it all over his body.
I stared down at the drink I was holding.
Maybe I better pace myself before I start acting on my impulses.
The afternoon stretched. I got a second drink and got in the pool because it was a hundred and fourteen degrees and the pool was there and survival instinct is a powerful thing.
Eli was on the steps at the shallow end, which tracked. Not in, not out, just present at the edge of things with a drink in his hand. I paddled over and sat beside him because I’d been wanting to get a real conversation out of him since he’d shown up at the facility in August and hardly spoke.
“How are you settling in?” I asked. “Phoenix is a lot if you’re not from here.”
He thought about it. “Iris, my daughter, likes the pool at our house,” he said. “She’s never had one in Canada of course.”
“How old?”
“Four.”
“Skating yet?”
His whole face brightened. “Since she could walk.”
“Fearless?”
“Completely.” A beat. “Drives me insane.”
“Where is she now?”
“At a birthday party. I’ll have to pick her up in a couple hours.”
I smiled into my drink. I liked him.
Cole had told me to go say hello to Ryan forty-five minutes ago. I’d gotten in the pool instead, talked to Eli, accepted a third drink. I didn’t know what I’d say to him and I wasn’t ready to find out. So, I just watched from afar, hiding behind my sunglasses.