Page 19 of In the Crease

“She’s something,” Griffin said finally, quietly.

“Yeah,” I said. “She is.”

He looked at me again. I kept looking at the fire.

We stood there in the warmth and noise. The fire was doing real work now, orange light moving across the snow and the faces around it.

Griffin drank his beer and watched his sister for a moment. Said nothing. Just watched.

He drained his beer and looked across the fire. I followed his gaze. Kowalski had found Maren near the cooler and was doing the thing Kowalski did at parties, which was stand slightly too close and talk slightly too much about himself to the prettiest girl in the room. Which was, by a mile, Maren.

“Come on,” Griffin said.

We crossed to them. Kowalski, reading the situation, found somewhere else to be. We watched him go, then she turned to her brother with her chin up and her shoulders squared, already braced for whatever was coming. I got the impression it wasn’t the first time.

Griffin shifted into full protective mode the second Kowalski disappeared—she was fine, she’d been fine, but Griffin had an older brother setting he couldn’t turn off. She let him go for about thirty seconds before she turned to face him with zero patience. I caught the end of it clearly enough though, and while I was trying not to listen and seem involved, she said something that nearly made my head explode.

“I am eighteen years old and I’ve had sex before. You know that, right?”

I choked on my beer. I couldn’t stop it. She said it without blinking. Completely calm. To her brother’s face.

Griffin made a sound like he’d swallowed a bug and was trying to hack it back up.

“Are you all right?” she said, turning to me.

“Fine,” I managed though another cough. “Beer went down wrong.”

She held my gaze for one second. I kept my face completely blank while Griffin sputtered.

Griffin's jaw dropped, then tightened, then he seemed to remember he was supposed to be the older sibling here and pulled himself together with visible effort. Maren glanced between us, her expression serene and satisfied, completely aware she'd won.

I could feel Griffin staring at the side of my face.

She went to find Petey. Griffin stood beside me in silence for a few long seconds.

“Not a word,” he said.

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You were thinking it very loudly.”

“I was thinking of nothing.” I couldn’t hide my snicker.

He sighed. “She’s fine. Come on.”

I followed him back toward the fire. We stood there for a while, talking, beers in hand, the usual. Griffin went off to talk to someone from Jensen's crowd. I stood at the fire alone for about thirty seconds before I looked across the bank and found her at the waterline.

People had drifted toward trucks and tailgates, looking for somewhere to sit that wasn’t the frozen ground or a chilly cooler. Griffin had moved to the far edge of the group, deep in something with one of the girls from Jensen’s extended crowd. He’d be a while.

I looked across the bank and found her at the waterline—standing alone where the ice met the snow, the fire behind her, looking out at the dark pond. Just past the edge of the firelight, in the dark. The posture she had made it look like she was deep in thought, shoulders slightly relaxed, chin up, weight balanced. I’d been tracking it all day without meaning to. She was observant.

Griffin was occupied. The night was winding down to a less rowdy and more intimate part of the evening, and nobody needed me for anything.

The correct thing to do was stay by the fire.

I stood there for a moment.

Then I walked over.