23. Ryan
RYAN
I’d been planning to talk to Griffin after Friday’s practice. Well, that was the new plan at least.
I had it mapped out. Catch him before he got to his car, ask if he had twenty minutes, find somewhere quiet.
Not the locker room, too many ears. Not a bar, too many exits.
Somewhere Griffin would have to sit still and hear me out before deciding how to feel about it.
I’d been running the opening sentence in my head all morning.
There’s something I need to tell you, and I should have told you a long time ago.
Clean. Direct. No preamble.
I never got the chance. Griffin had a goalie practice, which wasn’t unusual. I told myself I’d find another moment over the weekend.
It was Friday evening, a slow Phoenix night that came with low light and the smell of creosote drifting in through the cracked window above the kitchen sink.
Maren had shown up around six with grocery bags and an opinion about what I had in my refrigerator, which was apparently not enough, and we’d been in the kitchen together for the better part of an hour.
She was at the stove managing a pan sauce that had been making the apartment smell extraordinary, and I was behind her at the counter breaking down vegetables for a salad.
You’re chopping like you’re filing paperwork, Ryan, just do it.
The windows were going gold with the last of the evening light and there were two glasses of wine on the counter and the whole thing was so easy it almost didn’t feel real.
I had the knife in my hand when the knock came.
He knocked three times, the middle one harder than the others.
I knew the knock and my stomach turned.
I felt it then. Not panic, but the cold clarity of time running out. I turned to Maren. She’d gone still at the stove, spatula in hand, already reading my face.
“Griffin?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah.”
A beat. We took in the kitchen together. The wine glasses, the two plates already set out, the jacket she’d draped over the back of my couch when she’d arrived. The whole evening arranged like evidence.
I set the knife down and went to the door.
Griffin stood in the hallway in sweats and a Sidewinders cap, a six-pack of beer tucked under one arm, his phone in his other hand.
His knee was wrapped. He’d had a rough couple of days and come here for company.
It was written in every line of him and I felt like an even bigger piece of shit knowing what was about to happen.
“Hey,” he said. Easy. Unsuspecting. “Thought I’d see if you wanted to watch the—”
He stopped.
His eyes moved past me into the apartment.
The kitchen behind me. Two wine glasses on the counter, both used.
Two plates set out. Maren at the stove, her hair loose, my Sidewinders training shirt on her because she’d changed out of her own after a sauce splatter, a dish towel over her shoulder.
She’d gone still with the spatula in her hand, facing her brother.
Griffin’s gaze moved over the room as he assessed his surroundings. Her, the shirt, the wine, me, and came back to my face.
The easy expression was gone.
He exhaled once, slow and controlled, through his nose. The silence stretched long enough I registered the ticking of the clock on the wall.
“How long.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a goalie reading a play. Flat, precise, the calculation already done and just needing the final number confirmed.
“Griff, let me—” I started.
“How long, Ryan.” He never used my first name. Ever.
I held my ground. I’d told myself, when I’d imagined this moment, that I would take it straight. On the chin. No deflecting, no softening. I owed Griffin that. “Since October.”
The silence lasted three seconds. I counted them.
Griffin’s face moved through the math of it. October to now, all the dinners and practices and bus rides and phone calls, every conversation where I’d met his eyes and said nothing, and I watched him arrive at the full weight of what that meant. Not a recent thing. Not a slip. Months.
“There’s a reason the rule exists.” Griffin’s voice was controlled, which was worse than if it hadn’t been.
“You don’t do this. You don’t go after your teammate’s sister behind his back.
You’re my captain for fuck’s sake. You’re supposed to be the guy I trust more than anyone in that locker room, and you’ve been—” He stopped. His jaw worked.
“I know.”
“Don’t tell me you know. If you knew, you would have said something, or I don’t know, not touched my fucking sister. You’re supposed to be my fucking friend.”
I took it on the chin. There was no answer that wasn’t an excuse, and Griffin didn’t deserve excuses.
“We didn’t plan for any of this.” I kept my voice even.
“Neither of us went looking for it. It—” I stopped.
I wasn’t entirely sure that part was true.
I’d been excited to see her since I’d seen her name on the team roster.
But that was splitting hairs, and we weren’t doing that now.
“It just happened, and by the time I—we— understood what it was, I didn’t know how to—”
“What happened?” Griffin’s eyes cut to Maren, then back. Hard, now. “You fucking my sister? Is that what just happened?”
“It’s not like that.” He was pissing me off now and if I wanted to preserve our friendship I needed to get this conversation under control.
“No?” Griffin’s gaze dropped to the shirt Maren was wearing.
My training shirt, too big on her, the Sidewinders logo across the chest, my name and number on the back.
He let the silence sit there for a moment, the shirt doing all the work.
“What’s it like, then. Tell me what it’s like, Ryan, because from where I’m standing it seems pretty clear.
” The disgust in his tone was undeniable.
I held my ground, trying to make it make sense to him. “If I had come to you in September. Before any of this. If I’d said, Griffin, I want to take Maren out. What would you have said?”
Griffin’s jaw tightened.
“Would you have said yes?”
“That’s not—”
I stopped him this time. “Would you have said yes?”
The silence that followed was its own answer.
“This isn’t the eighteen hundreds.” Maren’s voice came from behind me, sharp and immediate, and wholly annoyed. “He doesn’t need your permission, Griffin. I’m twenty-seven years old, and this isn’t yours to approve. You’re not my dad. And I’m allowed to be with whoever I want.”
Griffin turned to her. “I’m not talking about approval—”
“Then what are you talking about? Because it sounds a lot like—”
“I’m talking about respect.” His voice cracked on it.
The first fracture in the control. “I’m talking about my best friend and my sister standing in front of me every day for three months and treating me like I was too stupid to be told the truth.
Or that I didn’t deserve… I’m talking about—” He stopped.
When he started again his voice had gone somewhere colder.
“You know what, Maren? At least Josh was upfront about what he was. At least I knew what I was dealing with when it came to that asshole and your relationship and it didn’t have anything to do with me. He wasn’t a fucking liar, like—”
Fuck no. The room went very still.
I moved before I’d even thought about it.
I stepped forward. Not toward Griffin, just into the space between them, my back half-turned to Maren, my voice low and completely level. Protect her. It’s all I could think about. “Don’t.”
One word. Griffin went still.
“Whatever you’re feeling right now,” I said, “she doesn’t get to be the target for it.
You want to be angry at me, be angry at me.
But don’t do that. Don’t treat your sister with that kind of disrespect and use her past against her because you’re hurt or pissed at me.
Don’t.” The anger roiled inside me, and I didn’t want to fight my best friend, but if he kept attacking his sister, even verbally, I’d do what I had to.
The silence stretched. Griffin’s eyes moved between us. Me standing between him and his sister, steady and unhesitating, not asking for anything, not moving, and the anger in Griffin’s face changed. Not softening. Recalibrating. Something clicking into place that hadn’t been there before.
He turned to Maren. Whatever passed between them was theirs and I didn’t understand it. Too old and too private for me to read fully.
Then Griffin picked up the six-pack from the floor.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t slam the door. He stood there for a moment with the beer in his hand, taking in the two of us. The kitchen, the wine glasses, the evening he’d interrupted, and then he turned and walked away.
The door closed behind him with a soft, final click.
I stood at the door and listened to the footsteps recede, the distant chime of the elevator arriving, the silence after. I turned around.
Maren had set the spatula down. She was leaning back against the stove with her arms crossed.
Not in defense, holding herself together.
Her face was carefully still in the way it got when she was deciding not to let something show, but her eyes were bright and her jaw was tight and the line of her shoulders told me everything. Her lower lip was trembling.
“Hey,” I said.
“Don’t.” Her voice was steady. “Don’t tell me it’s going to be okay.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
She watched my face. The effort of it visible, the weight of having hurt someone she loved by omission, over and over, until the moment it couldn’t be held anymore. I knew the weight. I’d been carrying the same one.