Page 28 of Offside

I pushed my sunglasses up with my middle finger.

He was already walking away grinning, and the worst part was I was smiling too, and I was looking for Ryan against my better judgment. Maybe he did need some sunscreen for that pale, Nordic skin, and I’d be more than happy to rub it all over his body. I stared down at the drink I was holding. Maybe I better pace myself before I start acting on my impulses.

The afternoon stretched. I got a second drink and got in the pool because it was a hundred and fourteen degrees and the pool was there and survival instinct is a powerful thing.

Eli was on the steps at the shallow end, which tracked. Not in, not out, just present at the edge of things with a drink in his hand. I paddled over and sat beside him because I’d been wanting to get a real conversation out of him since he’d shown up at the facility in August and hardly spoke.

“How are you settling in?” I asked. “Phoenix is a lot if you’re not from here.”

He thought about it. “Iris, my daughter, likes the pool at our house,” he said. “She’s never had one in Canada of course.”

“How old?”

“Four.”

“Skating yet?”

His whole face brightened. “Since she could walk.”

“Fearless?”

“Completely.” A beat. “Drives me insane.”

“Where is she now?”

“At a birthday party. I’ll have to pick her up in a couple hours.”

I smiled into my drink. I liked him.

Cole had told me to go say hello to Ryan forty-five minutes ago. I’d gotten in the pool instead, talked to Eli, accepted a third drink. I didn’t know what I’d say to him and I wasn’t ready to find out. So, I just watched from afar, hiding behind my sunglasses.

He was out of the water now, dry-ish, in a T-shirt that was doing its job almost aggressively well. I knew from treating him what was under that shirt anyway, and I was keeping that knowledge in its professionally appropriate box, but the box had developed some structural issues over the past few weeks, culminating in what he looked like just a half hour ago. I knew the exact topography of that left shoulder. I knew how he breathed when I hit the right spot. I knew the stillness that settled over him when he was trying not to react to something, and I had absolutely no business knowing any of it as well as I did. He had the scar through his left eyebrow and the soft curl his hair got when he didn’t bother with it, pushed back from his forehead, and he was laughing at something one of the guys had said, and it landed on me the same way it had at the family skate in August. He was distracting.

By the time the sun was down and the string lights had taken over and the DJ had shifted to something slower, I’d had plenty and needed some hydration.

I went inside.

The kitchen was cool and blessedly empty, the party reduced to a muffled thrum through the glass doors. I found a glass, filled it at the sink, drank the whole thing, filled it again. Then I leaned against the counter and let the cool air do its work and stared at the ceiling before closing my eyes and thought about nothing for a moment, which felt extraordinary.

I startled. The door opened behind me. I turned.

Ryan stopped when he saw me. Then he crossed to the sink, filled a glass of water, and leaned against the counter across from me like he’d planned to be there all along.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

He looked me over for a moment and if I wasn’t mistaken, he was enjoying the view. I was in a swimsuit cover-up with damp hair and sun still on my skin and no sunglasses to hide behind, and he was looking at me like he had nowhere else to be.

“You doing okay?” he asked.

“I’m great,” I said, which was true. “I’m also maybe slightly—” I held my thumb and forefinger a small distance apart “—this much not completely sober.”

“How much is that?”

I tilted my head side to side. “Enough to come inside for water. Not enough to be a problem.” I refilled my glass.

“It’s a great party.” I came to sit on the barstool next to him, because my legs were tired from the pool and the chair was right there. “Cole really came through.”