I don’t ask who.
The house is quiet now. The twins are down, the dishes are done, and we’ve settled on the couch—him on one end, me on the other, leaving a careful two feet of cushion between us.
He’s poured wine without asking, red from the built-in wine fridge, which is better than anything I’d ever buy for myself. The couch is deep and soft, one of those L-shaped sectionals you could disappear into. The TV is off, the house is still, and it’s just us.
“Can I ask you a question?” he says.
“Go ahead.”
He turns his wine glass in his hands. “The studio. You always talked about opening your own place someday. Is that still the plan?”
I take a sip. Then another. “I’m not sure.” I pull my feet up onto the couch and hug my knees. “The more I think about it, the more I realize that running a studio would take me further from the part I actually love. I’d be dealing with payroll, leases, and scheduling.”
“And the part you love is dance?”
I nod. “I saw what my boss dealt with—the staffing, the politics, the mom who threatened to leave a one-star review over something that was nonsense.” I shake my head. “Meanwhile, I’m in the studio with these kids who just want to dance, and I’m thinking, this part is incredible. This is the only part that matters. Everything around it is slowly killing my love for it.”
“So opening your own place would be more of that.”
“Times ten. I’d be running a business. I wouldn’t be dancing or even really teaching much. I’d be managing.” I stare at my wine.
He’s quiet. Archer quiet, which means he’s listening hard and thinking harder. “When did you figure this out?” he asks.
“I think I’ve known for a while. I just didn’t want to admit it because the studio was the plan. It was the whole plan. Open my own place, build a program, teach on my own terms. I’ve been telling people that’s what I wanted since I was twenty-two.” I look at him. “It’s hard to let go of a dream you’ve been carrying that long, even when you realize it’s not the right one anymore.”
“Yeah.” He says it like he knows what that feels like. “Yeah, it is.”
“So when you called, and you needed help, I just—” I wave my hand. “It was easy to walk away. Probably too easy. Lauren thinks I used you as an excuse to quit.”
“Did you?”
“Maybe a little. But I also, uh—” I swallow. “I wanted to be here. For you. For the twins.”
He holds my gaze for a beat. “I’m glad you are.” He’s quiet for a second, then he leans his head back against the couch. “Some days, I stand in the crease, the puck drops, and I’m locked in. I’m reading everything, I’m reacting, I’m doing the thing I’ve done since I was six years old. And it still works. The body still knows.” He pauses. “But then I drive home after a game, the twins are asleep, and I’m standing in the kitchen at midnight, eating cold pasta out of a container, and I think—is this it? Hockey and pasta and silence?”
“Arch.”
“I’m not complaining. I know how lucky I am. I have two healthy kids and a house with a wine fridge.” He almost smiles. “But I thought by now I’d have figured out the rest. The part that isn’t hockey. And I haven’t.”
“So we’re both a mess,” I say.
“We’re both a mess,” he agrees.
“A matching set.”
“Paper airplanes and everything.”
I laugh, and he turns his head to look at me, still leaned back against the cushion. I can see the stubble on his jaw, the tired lines around his eyes, and the scar from the puck he took sophomore year. His eyes are gray and warm, looking right at me.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he says again, and this time it sounds different than when he said it the other morning in the kitchen. Less formal. Less grateful. More like a confession.
“Me too,” I say, and I mean it in ways I can’t let myself examine.
We drink our wine. He tells me about a plumber he had to call last week because Lily flushed a sock down the toilet—not accidentally, but deliberately, because she wanted to see if it would fit. It did. Then it didn’t. The plumber charged three hundred dollars, and Lily asked him if he wanted to stay for lunch.
I tell him about Lauren’s latest dating disaster—a guy who brought his mother to a third date, and the mother ordered for both of them.
“She ordered for him?”
