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“I’ve spent my whole life trying not to make things complicated for my father. I’m not throwing my dignity away because some twenty-four-year-old hotshot with a seductive grin and a revolving door of puck bunnies thinks he can smile at me and I’ll forget everything I know.”

"Seductive grin?"

"Shut up."

Riley laughs softly. Then she reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. "Look, baby girl, I'm not trying to tell you what to do. I'm just saying, if you're going to make a decision about him, make sure you're making it about him. Not about everyone who came before him."

I don't have an answer for that.

"Speaking of everyone else," I say, keeping my voice casual, "did you ever hear that story about the player who got traded a few years back? The one involving someone’s family?"

Riley's expression flickers for a fraction of a second. "I've heard versions," she responds carefully. "Why?"

“Just curious” I take another sip of my latte, mostly so I have something to do with my hands. It’s almost cold now. “I’ve just always wondered how much my dad had to do with that.”

Riley watches me over the rim of her cup. “And you’ve suddenly started wondering about it the morning after kissing one of his players?”

“I said I was curious.”

“Right.”

I give her a look.

She doesn’t push. Instead, she glances toward Molly’s stroller before setting her cup down. “The problem is, stories like that get passed around so much that nobody knows what actually happened anymore. Someone gets traded, someone hears there was an argument behind closed doors, someone else knows somebody who supposedly knows why, and six months later everyone’s convinced they have the whole story.”

I nod, and we let the conversation drift to safer things.

I've spent my whole life being the daughter who doesn't cause problems, who doesn't make things complicated.

But for one amazing, terrible moment last night on the Ferris wheel, I’d let myself pretend I was just a normal girl with nothing but her own feelings to worry about.

Now, sitting in a coffee shop with a latte that was quickly running cold, I have to figure out how to put that girl back in her box.

***

The rink smells the way it always does: of sharp, recycled cold, fresh-cut ice, and the heavy, metallic tang of the Zamboni’s exhaust lingering in the rafters.

I grew up in this smell. I remember vividly the five a.m. skates, the late-night sessions, the thousands of hours of practice I spent shivering in the stands with a textbook in my lap and a thermos of coffee at my elbow.

Not much has changed now that I’m an adult. The rink is still woven into my life in a way I’m not sure it’ll ever stop being.

After college, I started working in marketing for a nonprofit, and I’m lucky enough to do most of it from home. As long as I get my work done and show up for the occasional meeting, nobody particularly cares whether I answer emails from my apartment, a coffee shop, or the stands at LA Ice.

It means I can build my days around everything else. Meet Nadia for lunch. Come by the rink when Dad has something going on. Catch part of a practice while finishing a campaign proposal with my laptop balanced on my knees.

Some people grow up and leave their childhood worlds behind.

Apparently, I just upgraded from textbooks to spreadsheets.

I push through the heavy, propped-open steel door of the employee entrance, passing the scuffed-up walls and the pile of discarded equipment bags that have lived in this corner since approximately 2019.

The sounds hit me immediately.

Sticks on ice, the aggressive thwack of pucks hitting the boards, the low rumble of voices, and the occasional sharp whistle.

It’s a family event, the kind the organization puts on twice a season to keep the Apex Kinetic sponsors happy and our staff feeling appreciated.

Kids are skating in slow circles on the far end of the ice, while their parents keep a watchful eye from clustered groups along the boards.