35. Lucy #4
For a second, I saw Bea and Alois in the Sunken Garden as clearly as if I were already there.
Greenhouse light. Flowers climbing toward glass.
Rafa watching his daughter. Lo crying gracefully and denying it.
My dad pretending not to. Alois standing tall and still and completely undone by the woman walking toward him.
A life being chosen in public.
A promise made where everyone could see it.
My stomach twisted with something that was not envy exactly. Maybe longing. Maybe fear wearing a prettier dress.
When the meeting ended, Bea lingered after Vivienne stepped into the hall to take a call. “You okay?” Bea asked.
I looked up from the notes I was pretending to organize. “Me?”
“No, Dottie. She seems burdened by the wedding timeline.”
Dottie snored.
“I’m fine,” I sighed.
Bea gave me the look women gave each other when fine was allowed exactly one chance to become more honest. “End of season.”
“Yeah.”
“And other things?”
I capped my pen. “Buzz came by yesterday.”
“The morning after the loss?”
I nodded. “I invited him in for a minute.”
“That’s big.”
“It was one minute.”
Bea smiled like she knew better than to make too much of it. Still, her hand came to her heart for half a second.
I laughed despite myself.
Bea stood carefully, using the arm of the chair. I moved to help, but she waved me off before I got there.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You’re sure?”
“I am thirty-something weeks pregnant and marrying a man who tried to pre-cut my toast this morning so I wouldn’t have to use a knife. Fine is relative.” At the door, she paused. “For what it’s worth, the quiet after the season can make everything feel louder. Feelings included.”
“I hate when everyone becomes wise at me.”
“It’s one of the benefits of being loved by smart people.”
Then she left me with my notes, my sleeping dog, and that sentence sitting in the room like it had been invited.
By the third morning after the loss, the arena no longer felt stunned. It felt hollowed out.
No skates hitting rubber mats. No tape ripping in sharp strips. No players calling down the hall. No sticks stacked outside meeting rooms. No burst of laughter from the locker room that made every staff member pretend not to listen.
The building had become mostly office noise. Phones. Keyboards. Printers. Rainwater dripping from umbrellas left near the staff entrance. The distant, constant breath of ice-making equipment.
I arrived later than usual because Dottie had decided the wet grass outside my apartment required a full forensic investigation before she could pee. By the time we got to my office, my hair had frizzed around my temples, my shoes were damp, and I had already spilled tea on the cuff of my blouse.
Dottie, however, trotted down the corridor with purpose. She reached my office door, sat, and looked down the hall. Her tail swept the floor. She panted happily.
Footsteps sounded around the corner.
Dottie’s whole body lit.
My heart followed before I gave it permission.
Ty came into view wearing jeans, a gray T-shirt under an open dark jacket, and sneakers still damp from outside. No suit. No team gear. No lanyard. No media polish. No reason that belonged to the Frosthawks.
He stopped when he saw us waiting in the hall. For a second, something vulnerable moved over his face so quickly I might have missed it if I had not been learning him in pieces. “Morning,” he said.
Dottie answered for both of us by trying to levitate.
Ty laughed quietly and crouched before she could combust. The sound was still tired, but more him than it had been two days ago. “Yeah,” he said to her. “I missed you too.”
I stood there with my keys in one hand and my damp bag slipping down my shoulder, watching my dog accept love without making a single argument against it.
She was not betraying me. She was just a dog. She knew who showed up with a gentle voice and a cup of whipped cream. She knew whose hands were careful. She knew routine as safety because no one had taught her to be ashamed of wanting that.
Maybe that was what hurt.
Maybe that was what healed.
Ty stood and handed me my coffee.
“You don’t have a meeting,” I said.
“No.”
“No training?”
“Later. Not here.”
The hallway felt very still.
“So you just came here.”
“Yeah.”
I looked down at the coffee. My name was written on the side in Naomi’s handwriting, the y looping too far under the other letters. “Paper Lantern is in the opposite direction from your place.”
“I know.”
I looked back at him. He just stood there, holding Dottie’s empty cup now, letting the truth be as plain as the hallway around us.
He had chosen this. Not because the arena schedule carried him here. Not because teammates would see. Not because hockey had placed him within reach and all he had to do was extend a hand.
He had gotten up after the season ended, after the structure fell away, after the building stopped requiring his body inside it, and he had driven in the wrong direction to bring me coffee.
To bring Dottie her ridiculous cup.
To keep a small promise without asking me to clap for it.
“What happens now?” I asked.
Ty’s eyes searched mine, careful. “With what?”
I could have said us. But what came out was, “The routine.”
His expression softened. “I keep showing up,” he said.