15. Ryan
RYAN
The Sidewinders had twenty points in the standings. Solidly in a playoff position, ahead of two teams that had been in the league for decades, and for an expansion franchise in its first November of existence, that was not nothing.
I was choosing to feel good about it.
The Rusty Nail midweek smelled like it always did.
Spilled beer and citrus from the garnish tray and the faint ghost of whatever Dee had fried earlier that day.
The AC ran too cold near the bar. Outside on the patio it was November Phoenix air, still seventy-two degrees at nine in the evening, warm enough that Dee had the misters going out of habit more than necessity.
The dart board in the back corner thudded steadily.
Someone had put the jukebox on shuffle and it was cycling through classic rock at a volume that made conversation possible but required leaning in.
The big round table near the back wall had become ours somewhere in October. Not claimed in any official sense. Occupied enough times in a row that Dee started having our drinks ready when she saw us walk in. Tonight it was full and the fullness felt, for the first time, permanent.
Griffin was to my left, two beers deep, explaining butterfly technique to Eli who had his forearms on the table and his eyes on Griffin.
A half-empty Labatt sweated in his hand.
Cole and Theo were at the dart board, a game that had started friendly and was now, based on Theo’s posture, something else entirely.
Cole had his jacket off. Theo’s jaw was set. Nobody had suggested stopping.
Griffin’s phone buzzed on the table. He glanced at it, made a face, and turned it over.
“Audrey?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Griffin picked up his beer. “She wants to go over some endorsement stuff. I keep telling her I’ll call her back.”
“She’s been patient about it,” I said. We had shared the same agent since college, and
“Audrey is never patient about anything.” Griffin shook his head slightly, exasperated and fond in equal measure and not going to say either. “She just has a very polite way of making it clear she’s waiting.”
He set the phone aside and went back to his butterfly technique analysis, with seemingly days’ worth of pent-up enthusiasm behind it.
Paige was there. Maren’s best friend, who I had met twice before tonight and who had looked at me both times already having decided about me and was just calibrating how much to show.
She’d arrived with Maren, ordered a margarita, and within twenty minutes had gotten into a debate with Theo about French versus Italian food.
Theo had taken the bait hard. He was currently at the dart board but I could tell from the set of his shoulders that he was still thinking about it.
Paige had a settled quality like none of this was going to surprise her.
Maren was across the table.
She had on a dark green top I hadn’t seen before, soft and fluid, and her hair was down loose over her shoulders, and she was in the middle of telling Paige something, building to the good part of a story with her hands, Paige already pressing her lips together to keep from laughing.
A half-drunk margarita sat in front of her, salt rim mostly intact on one side.
The candle on the table threw warm light up against her jaw and the side of her throat and I watched her for three seconds.
Long enough to feel the pull, short enough to be deniable. Then I looked away.
Wanting someone you couldn’t say anything about didn’t dull with time.
It sharpened. I had an involuntary catalog of her now.
The way she stirred her drink without looking at it, the way she caught Eli’s dry humor a half-beat before anyone else, the way she tucked her feet up on the rung of the barstool when she got comfortable for the night.
The small warm weight of her against my shoulder last week on my couch.
The sound she made when she was almost asleep.
The sounds she made when I ate her pussy. Ugh.
I noticed all of it. Filed all of it. Did nothing with any of it in public.
I was managing.
“You’re up,” Cole called from the back corner, pointing a dart at me. “Winner plays the captain.”
“You haven’t won yet,” Theo said, without looking up from his line.
“Optimism, Marquis. It’s called optimism.”
I pushed back from the table and went to take Cole’s dart. Griffin groaned before I’d even lined up.
“Come on.”
“I haven’t thrown anything yet.”
“You don’t have to.” Griffin dropped his head into his hands. “I’ve watched you do this for three months. I know exactly what’s about to happen.”
“Could be worse,” I said. I found the board’s center on instinct, the same way I found the net. Peripheral, instinctive. The dart hit clean. Then the second. Then the third. “Could be Cole.”
“Hey,” Cole said.
“When did you last beat me?”
Cole took his time. “I beat you in October.”
“You didn’t.”
“I almost beat you in October.”
“Different thing.”
Cole pointed at me. “You’re bad at plenty of other things.”
I rolled the next dart between my fingers. I let my glance slide sideways. Just for a second, just to where Maren was sitting with her back mostly to us, far enough away that the bar noise covered everything. “I’m bad at plenty of things,” I agreed, and looked back at Cole, face neutral.
Cole’s eyes narrowed.
Griffin, oblivious, made a sound of deep personal grievance as my next dart hit the bullseye.
I played Theo after, which was a different experience.
Theo approached the line with his weight already forward and his shoulders squared, the same as he did at a faceoff.
Compressed, deliberate, like losing would be added to a mental ledger he’d been keeping since childhood.
He was also excellent, which I hadn’t expected and was not going to say out loud.
“You’ve played before,” I said.
“I have not,” Theo said, and put a dart dead center.
“That’s a lie.”
“Prove it.” The second landed half an inch from the first.
We split the game, which satisfied neither of us and had Cole laughing loud enough that Dee gave him a look from behind the bar.
I came back to the table and checked my phone. Nothing urgent. I typed a message quickly.
Ryan: Theory: Theo has been playing darts since childhood and is actively lying about it
I watched her across the table. She picked up her phone, read it, pressed her lips together. Picked up her drink. Set it down. Picked up the phone again.
Maren: That is an extremely serious accusation
Maren: Do you have evidence
Ryan: His technique is too good. Nobody is that naturally precise
Maren: Maybe he’s just better than you
Ryan: I split the game with him
Maren: So he’s exactly as good as you
Ryan: No
Maren: You’re very competitive for someone who just tied
I glanced up. She was still looking at her phone, doing the thing where she tried to keep her expression neutral and was losing. I turned back to my drink.
Ryan: I wasn’t trying
Maren: Sure
Ryan: I was being collegial
Maren: You were absolutely trying
I put my phone face-down on the table. Across from me, she took a drink of her margarita, and her shoulders were shaking slightly, and I looked at the ceiling and let myself feel it, this warm, unreasonable pull toward her that I had no business feeling in a bar full of people who couldn’t know.
I came back to the table and found Maren talking with Eli.
I caught the tail end of it, something Iris had said that morning that he clearly couldn’t get over.
Maren had her elbow on the table and her chin tipped toward him, asking follow-up questions that made it clear she actually wanted the answer, like she had all the time in the world and nowhere she’d rather be.
I watched Eli’s face as she did it. Eli, who showed warmth slowly and only when he meant it, had gone almost open.
The tension had dropped out of his shoulders.
She did that. Made people feel like they mattered without performing it, without even seeming to notice she was doing it.
I’d watched her do it with Griffin’s parents, with Cole, with the rookie defenseman whose hip she was rehabbing, who came out of his sessions looking lighter than he’d gone in.
It wasn’t a technique. It was how she was built.
I sat back down next to Griffin and felt, plainly and without qualification, happy.
I had a cold beer and a good team and twenty points in the standings and Maren ten feet away laughing at something Eli had said in his flat, dry deadpan, and the desert night was warm through the open patio door, and this was good. This was simply good.
I went to the bar for water about an hour in. Dee was at the far end with a ticket and the near end was empty, and I stood there and watched the room out of habit. Reading posture, gauging mood, the habit that had been automatic since my first season.
Maren appeared at the bar two minutes later, empty glass in hand. She set it down without looking at me and waited for Dee without flagging for attention. She knew Dee’s rhythm.
“Ice resurfacing still going?” I asked, low enough for just her.
“Eli’s moved on to blade angles.” She still wasn’t looking at me. “I’ve learned a lot tonight.”
“He likes you,” I said.
“Eli doesn’t like anyone.”
“Eli doesn’t perform liking anyone. It’s different.” I took my water from Dee. “He’s been talking to you for forty minutes. For Eli that’s a declaration.”
She pressed her lips together. Not quite a smile but close. “You’ve been clocking how long I’ve been talking to Eli.”
“I clock everything.”
“I’ve noticed.” She glanced at me sideways, brief and warm. “I like that you watch me.”
“Hard not to.”
“I’ll give you something to watch later tonight when we’re alone.” She took a slow sip of her margarita, eyes on me over the rim, letting that sit between us.
I bit back a groan. This woman. She was going to be the death of me, and she knew it. She’d dropped that tease and knew I couldn’t do a thing about it.