Page 43 of Offside

Maren: Yeah. All good. Just tired.

Ryan: Get some sleep.

Maren: You too. Good game tonight.

Ryan: Thanks. Get some sleep, Maren.

Maren: Bossy.

Ryan: You have no idea.

Maren: Goodnight, Ryan.

Ryan: Goodnight, Maren.

I set the phone on the cushion beside me and looked at the ceiling for a moment, smiling at nothing in particular, then picked my book back up and read the same paragraph four times.

I woke up at six-fifteen and stared at the ceiling for eleven minutes before I admitted I wasn’t going back to sleep.

This was Ryan Lindqvist’s fault.

Not the waking. I’d always been an early riser, had learned it from my mother, who treated sunrise like a personal offense if you weren’t awake to witness it. The ceiling-staring was new though. The ceiling-staring was a direct result of having kissed Griffin’s best friend in his truck in my own driveway and then lying awake replaying the sound I’d made against his mouth, which was not a sound I had any intention of having made and which I absolutely could not stop hearing.

I’d kissed him back. That was the part I kept returning to. Not the fact he’d leaned in, not the fact I’d felt it coming and hadn’t moved. I’d kissed him back. I’d grabbed his shirt and kissed him like I’d been waiting to, which I had been, and was its own problem. Then I’d come inside and sat on my couch in the dark and thought about Griffin and the team and the look on Ryan’s face when he’d pulled back, like stopping had required something from him, and then I’d picked up my phone and scrolled back through two days of texts until I found the one I’d sent Thursday at 11:47. No. No, I don’t hate you at all. I put the phone face-down and went to make coffee.

The facility on a Saturday was quieter than a weekday. Reduced staff, no full team practice, a handful of players coming in for optional skates or treatment. I had a nine o’clock patient, a light-duty afternoon, and a firm plan to be professional about everything.

The plan lasted until Ryan walked past my open office door at eight fifty-three.

He wasn’t looking for me. He was heading toward the ice in full gear, helmet under his arm, talking to Eli about something, and he glanced through the open door the way I glanced at things in my peripheral vision. Our eyes met for exactly two seconds before he looked back at Eli and kept walking.

It was only two seconds but also so much more.

I turned back to my computer screen and read the same intake note three times without retaining a word of it.

My patient arrived at nine, which was a mercy.

He found me at eleven-thirty, after my last appointment had cleared out. I was restocking the supply cabinet with my back to the door when I heard him in the frame. I knew his quality of stillness by now, the way the air in a room shifted slightly when he arrived in it, and I kept my hands moving through the supplies and said, “Don’t forget to ice that shoulder.”

“I iced the shoulder.”

I turned around. He was leaning in the doorway in a gray T-shirt and sweats, post-skate, post-shower, hair still damp. I had treated this man’s body professionally for weeks and apparently none of that had prepared me for him standing in my doorway twelve hours after I’d had my fingers in his hair looking like a real life book boyfriend. Shit, that lean in my doorway is fucking hot.

“Good,” I said, and turned back to the supply cabinet because I needed three seconds to get my face together.

“The bookstore,” he said.

My pulse jumped and I was refusing to acknowledge it. “What about it?”

“You promised.”

“I promised to take you sometime, yes.” I kept my back to him, straightening a row of tape rolls that did not need straightening. “That was an open-ended commitment. Sometime could mean any number of⁠—”

“I have this afternoon free.”

I did too. He probably knew I did because he’d seen my calendar when I’d pulled it up to schedule his Thursday appointments, and this was the thing about Ryan Lindqvist. He paid attention to everything, held onto it, produced it later at exactly the wrong moment. Or I guess the right moment, if you’re him.

I turned around to face him, feeling my cheeks heat. “It’s in Tempe. Or did you want to go to the one that’s closer?” I asked. “Tempe is forty minutes.”