Page 80 of Offside

Ryan: I wasn’t trying

Maren: Sure

Ryan: I was being collegial

Maren: You were absolutely trying

I put my phone face-down on the table. Across from me, she took a drink of her margarita, and her shoulders were shaking slightly, and I looked at the ceiling and let myself feel it, this warm, unreasonable pull toward her that I had no business feeling in a bar full of people who couldn’t know.

I came back to the table and found Maren talking with Eli. I caught the tail end of it, something Iris had said that morning that he clearly couldn’t get over. Maren had her elbow on the table and her chin tipped toward him, asking follow-up questions that made it clear she actually wanted the answer, like she had all the time in the world and nowhere she’d rather be. I watched Eli’s face as she did it. Eli, who showed warmth slowly and only when he meant it, had gone almost open. The tension had dropped out of his shoulders.

She did that. Made people feel like they mattered without performing it, without even seeming to notice she was doing it. I’d watched her do it with Griffin’s parents, with Cole, with the rookie defenseman whose hip she was rehabbing, who came out of his sessions looking lighter than he’d gone in. It wasn’t a technique. It was how she was built.

I sat back down next to Griffin and felt, plainly and without qualification, happy.

I had a cold beer and a good team and twenty points in the standings and Maren ten feet away laughing at something Eli had said in his flat, dry deadpan, and the desert night was warm through the open patio door, and this was good. This was simply good.

I went to the bar for water about an hour in. Dee was at the far end with a ticket and the near end was empty, and I stood there and watched the room out of habit. Reading posture, gauging mood, the habit that had been automatic since my first season.

Maren appeared at the bar two minutes later, empty glass in hand. She set it down without looking at me and waited for Dee without flagging for attention. She knew Dee’s rhythm.

“Ice resurfacing still going?” I asked, low enough for just her.

“Eli’s moved on to blade angles.” She still wasn’t looking at me. “I’ve learned a lot tonight.”

“He likes you,” I said.

“Eli doesn’t like anyone.”

“Eli doesn’t perform liking anyone. It’s different.” I took my water from Dee. “He’s been talking to you for forty minutes. For Eli that’s a declaration.”

She pressed her lips together. Not quite a smile but close. “You’ve been clocking how long I’ve been talking to Eli.”

“I clock everything.”

“I’ve noticed.” She glanced at me sideways, brief and warm. “I like that you watch me.”

“Hard not to.”

“I’ll give you something to watch later tonight when we’re alone.” She took a slow sip of her margarita, eyes on me over the rim, letting that sit between us.

I bit back a groan. This woman. She was going to be the death of me, and she knew it. She’d dropped that tease and knew I couldn’t do a thing about it.

It wasn’t just the wanting, though there was plenty of that. I couldn’t stop thinking about the things I wanted to do with her, the things she’d just promised. Underneath it was steadier, and that was the part I kept circling back to. I loved how she was with all of them. Trading insults with Cole, pulling forty quiet minutes out of Eli, reading Griffin’s moods before he had them. She was the center of gravity in every room she walked into, and somewhere along the way she’d become the center of mine too. The wanting and that had stopped being separate things.

That was the problem. Or it wasn’t a problem at all, depending on how brave I was willing to be about it.

Dee slid a fresh one across the bar. She picked it up and started to turn back toward the table and I said, quiet enough that only she could catch it, “You’re the most beautiful woman in the room, and I’ve been thinking about getting my mouth on you since you walked in.”

She stopped. Her shoulders dropped, then went deliberately still, like she was reigning herself back in. She didn’t look back at me.

“Ryan,” she said, low, and I heard the effort it took to keep her voice even.

She licked a slow line of salt from the rim, her eyes on mine the whole time. Then she took a small sip, dragged her tongue across her bottom lip, and turned to walk back to the table like she hadn’t just lit me on fire in the middle of a crowded bar. I groaned, low and entirely internal, and watched her walk away, my eyes dropping to the sway of her hips because I was only so strong. Two could play at this. She was just better at it.

I was still standing there counting to ten when Eli materialized at the bar beside me, apparently also in need of something. He said nothing. He didn’t look at me. He ordered a club soda from Dee with a single gesture and stood there waiting for it with the economy that was Eli, no wasted movement, ever, and I stared at the wall. Eli collected his drink and went back to the table without a word, and I had the distinct sense he had logged whatever he’d just witnessed in the same internal ledger he kept on everything else, to be produced at a later date entirely at Eli’s discretion.

I waited another five seconds and followed.