Page 32 of The Grumpy Defenseman
“You’re going to anyway.”
“Yes.”
I opened the driver’s side door.
Then I stopped.
“I wanted you to kiss me again.”
His eyes liftedto mine.
“I know.”
“I wanted it too,” he said.
I got in the car before I could create another one.
At the garage exit, I glanced in the rearview mirror.
He was still there.
My phone buzzed at the first red light outside the facility.
Bella: You have ignored my spoon question. That means something happened.
I stared at the message until the light turned green.
Then I drove home with both hands on the wheel and no useful defense for what had just happened.
Samantha
Three days after the parking garage, I caught myself framing Evan during a neutral-zone regroup drill, sweat bright at his temple under the overheads. My finger found the shutter before my brain objected. I deleted the frame immediately.
Across the rink, the forwards were running a cycle-and-screen drill, Brick at the point, barking corrections at the rookie wingers who kept drifting too high. Kowalski was at the farend with two defensemen, running edge work, his stick tapping the ice every three seconds like a metronome. Cross and Hendricks were paired up for one-on-one battles along the boards, shoulder-checking each other into the glass with the professional aggression of men who liked each other and expressed it through controlled violence.
Standard Thursday practice. The kind where reps stacked on reps and nothing dramatic happened, but the work got done.
Over the past two weeks, Evan and I had developed a gravitational pull disguised as professional proximity.
We had not kissed since the garage, and we had not talked about it either.
Brick, stretching beside Mack and Kowalski across the lane from me, flicked me a look over his shoulder.
“He’s skating better, you know.”
“Everyone’s skating better. It’s preseason conditioning.”
“Nope.It’s you.”
“Brick.”
“Just saying. The man skates like he’s got somewhere to be when you’re around. Make of that what you will.”
Before Brick could answer, Silas appeared beside the boards, hands in his pockets and his attention on me.
“Walk with me,” he said.
We walked down the corridor that connected the rink to the administrative wing. Silas’s pace was unhurried. His voice, when he finally used it, carried the cadence of someone who had thought about every word before saying it.
