Page 3 of In the Crease

Not to her, exactly. Just to the airport. The pickup. The forty minutes back to campus.

I put it away and ordered another round.

Griffin was at the end of the bar around nine thirty with two women, which was his natural habitat—easy and lit up, completely at home in his own skin. The woman closer to him was laughing. The other one, a blonde in a jacket that had no business being in Minnesota in February, kept looking my way.

I looked at my beer.

She looked again.

I finished the beer and signaled for the check.

He appeared at my shoulder ten minutes later.

“Her name is Kayla,” he said. “She asked about you.”

“Calling it a night.”

“Lindy.”

“Audrey calls at eight.”

He studied me with the patience he reserved for situations he’d already figured out. I didn’t give him anything.

“Terminal two,” he said. “Four o’clock.”

“I know.”

He pointed at me—the point that meant we’re coming back to this—and I said good night to Petey and headed for the door.

Outside, the cold was immediate and clean, the kind that cleared your head whether you wanted it to or not. I walked the three blocks home with my hands in my pockets, breath coming out in a steady cloud.

The apartment was quiet. I moved Griffin’s gear bag from the hallway to his room out of habit—this was the arrangement, the unspoken deal we’d had since sophomore year—and stood in the kitchen with the lights low.

I thought about the Audrey call. Three real possibilities, one long shot. I set it down and thought about Jensen’s pond instead, the density of it when the cold held steady week after week.

Because it was late and I was tired and some thoughts just surfaced on their own, I thought about a Christmas photo and a voice I’d heard once through the noise of a game.

Sharp. Sure of herself. Right about the call.

I put that away too and went to bed.

Chapter Two

Maren

I’d been looking forward to this trip for two weeks.

Griffin had called on a Tuesday—the usual check-in that ran long because it always ran long. Somewhere between his recap of a road game in Duluth and my update on a volleyball shoulder injury I got to observe that was finally tracking right during rehab, he said, “Come up this weekend. Jensen’s got good ice, and we’re doing the pond Saturday. You’ve never seen it in winter.”

I said yes before he finished the sentence.

That was the thing about Griffin. He didn’t make a production of missing me. He just created a reason to be in the same place, the way he’d been doing since I was twelve and he was sixteen. I’d spent half my childhood at hockey rinks I had no obligation to attend other than not being old enough to stay home alone. I’d never minded once. I loved hockey. I loved watching my brother play. And lately, with him three states away, I’d been missing the version of him that only existed in rooms full of people he trusted.

I packed Friday morning with real enthusiasm, which explained why the duffel looked ambitious for two nights. Three sweaters, two pairs of jeans, the camel coat. I’d looked up the weather four separate times. Thirty-one degrees, wind chill in the twenties. I understood those numbers as numbers. I was choosing to feel prepared.

My phone buzzed from the bed.

Griffin: Did you pack real boots