Page 17 of Offside

"But there is someone."

I looked at her. "There's someone I've been thinking about. I haven't done anything with that. I won't while the situation is what it is."

"At work?"

"Yes." I kept my hands around the coffee.

"Do they know?" Her voice stayed even.

"He doesn't. No. Nothing has happened."

That was the truth. I intended it to remain true for reasons that had nothing to do with Anna and everything to do with the power I held over another person's care.

She took a breath. "Thank you for not lying."

I looked at the untouched tea between us. "I should have told you before you had to ask."

"Maybe. I don't think it would change this."

I could have argued that thought wasn't action. I could have listed the ways I'd remained faithful, the evenings I'd shown up, the future plans neither of us had made far enough in advance to cancel.

All of it would have answered a charge Anna hadn't made.

"No," I said. "It wouldn't."

She put one hand over mine for a moment. Her thumb pressed once against my knuckle, a familiar touch with an ending inside it.

"You're a good man, Declan."

I looked at her hand as she pulled it away. "I wasn't very good at this."

"Neither was I, if I let eight months go by because it was easy." She took her hand back. "I don't want you to fix it."

"I— I don't think I could," I said softly.

We sat until the tea cooled. When we stood, she took the paperback she'd often left at my apartment out of her bag and held it against her coat.

"I found the bookmark," she said. She ran a thumb along the book's spine.

"I wondered where it went."

She put the book into her bag.

She hugged me. I held her carefully, not because she was fragile but because the moment was. Then she stepped back.

"Goodbye, Declan." She settled the bag on her shoulder.

I held the door for her. "Take care, Anna."

The bell over the door rang when she left. Cold air moved through the café.

Outside, I walked three blocks before I recognized the first feeling. There was room to breathe. Relief came before grief, and the guilt arrived immediately after it, as if the order could be corrected by punishing myself for noticing.

I kept walking.

My sister called at four while I was cleaning a refrigerator that was already clean.

"How's the defenseman?" she asked. The refrigerator motor filled my silence.