Page 18 of In the Crease

I went.

Chapter Seven

Ryan

I had good days on the ice sometimes, days where it clicked from the first stride and the game opened up flat and legible. Saturday at Jensen’s pond was one of those days.

I was also aware of her on the bank the entire time.

Not distracted—I gave the game what it needed, every shift. In the gaps, the half-second after the puck left my stick, my attention went to the bank. She’d found a spot near the fire with a clear view of the full surface and stayed there, barely moving, for two solid hours. Not casually watching. Reading the plays. It was clear her attention was on the game. Not me. The game. I just wished it was me. I shouldn’t think that. I thought it anyway.

I noticed I was running plays with a little more gusto than necessary for a pond hockey game.

I watched Griffin try to get her on the ice from across the pond. She shut it down before he’d gotten through the first sentence, patient and completely immovable. He did the waiting look. She looked back at him pleasantly until he ran out of runway, pulled his mask down, and went.

Bad idea, I told myself, watching exactly that. Clear-eyed. No hedging.

I got back into the play.

I came off in my rotation and gave her my sweatshirt because I could see she was cold and I had an extra layer and it was a simple transaction. I relaced my skate and went back to the ice.

I told myself I hadn’t clocked the way the sweatshirt hit her mid-thigh. I was watching her anyway. Damn she looks good in my clothes. Stop it. Do not think of your best friend’s sister this way. Fuck. I got back into the play.

The bonfire assembled itself in record time. I guess maybe not a record since there had been a fire already. I pulled off my skates on Jensen’s tailgate and Davo appeared.

“So. Griffin’s sister,” Davo said.

“Is there a question?” I could already feel my jaw clenching, knowing where this was going.

“She’s—”

“Griffin’s sister,” I said with the exact tone needed for him to fuck off with whatever he had on his mind. If I couldn’t have her, he sure as fuck couldn’t.

He thought about this. “Right.” He didn’t sound persuaded.

“Yeah,” I said. “Right.”

He moved on. Smart man.

I watched her mingle with the group and felt the pull I’d been telling myself all day wasn’t there. It was there. It had been there since the pickup lane at MSP and it was not getting smaller. If anything it had grown with every hour she’d spent in my orbit, which was the opposite of how this was supposed to work.

She was talking to Jensen about the ice with the same full attention she’d given everything else all weekend. She gave everything her full attention—the kind where you could tell she was actually filing what she heard. I’d grabbed my coat from the truck and positioned myself close enough to the fire that I could hear her talking to Jensen.

She laughed at something Petey said—the real laugh, head back, completely unguarded, her whole face in it, the one I’d already heard twice and had been filing against my will each time—and it landed somewhere in my chest like a thrown puck. I turned back to the fire and breathed and reminded myself of several relevant facts.

Griffin’s sister. Four months. Different cities. The correct decision here had not changed in the last thirty seconds.

Griffin appeared at my shoulder with two fresh beers.

“Davo,” he said.

“Handled.”

“Good.” He watched his sister across the fire. “She’s been like this her whole life. Walks into any situation and makes everyone around her feel at ease. She doesn’t notice she’s doing it and just fits in everywhere.”

“She notices,” I said. “She just doesn’t make a thing of it.”

Griffin looked at me sideways. I kept my eyes on the fire. A beat of silence I was not going to fill.