Page 131 of Offside

“Maren—”

“That’s not a conversation we’re having in here.”

Silence. I kept working.

“Is he okay? We haven’t…spoken much at practice.”

I turned to face him fully. “Do you want me to assign you a different therapist?”

Griffin’s head came up off the table. “What?” He sounded incredulous.

“There are three other qualified people on staff. If you’re uncomfortable with⁠—”

“Are you serious right now?” He was genuinely affronted. The idea clearly landing as absurd. “You’re my sister.”

“I’m your sports medicine director,” I said. “And right now those two things are in direct conflict, so I’m asking.”

He stared at me. “I don’t want a different therapist.”

“Okay.” I got back to work.

“Maren—”

I crossed the room and shut the treatment room door. Closed it with a quiet, deliberate click. Then I turned back to face him again and steadied myself.

“You want to know how Ryan is?” I hissed, nothing soft underneath it. I was seething and Griffin was about to be the target of my ire. “I have no fucking idea. Because we’ve barely talked since you had your temper tantrum on Friday night.”

Griffin opened his mouth.

“I’m not a teenager,” I said. “I’m not a child. And since we’re apparently using childish language—” I held his gaze. “What you said to me. About Josh. In front of Ryan.”

His jaw tightened. He had the grace to look away.

“I’m not doing this here,” I said. “Not in this room, not about Ryan. If you want to know how he is, you should fucking ask him, you asshole. I don’t speak for him and I never have.” I picked up my notepad, then slammed it back down on my desk, frustrated. “Right now I have no idea what we even are because the one person who matters most decided he needed space or whatever the hell is going on, and that space apparently includes barely texting me, and I’m—” My voice caught slightly. I pressed my lips together. “I thought it was more than that. I thought we were more than that. Maybe I was wrong. I don’t even fucking know right now. But I’m not talking to you about it while I’m at my fucking job. We’re not all players who can do whatever the fuck we want. I have a job to do too.”

The room was quiet.

Griffin had pushed himself up to sitting. He wasn’t staring at the ceiling anymore. He was looking at me with the goalie’s precision he turned on everything eventually, and whatever he was seeing was making him recalibrate.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. Quiet. Not accusatory. Genuinely asking. “Mare. I thought we were closer than that.”

I let out a short breath. “You don’t tell me about the women you go out with.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?” I knew it was different because my brother was a Class-A fuckboy, but I didn’t have the patience for this conversation with him.

“Yeah.” He held my gaze. “Because this clearly isn’t that.”

He was right. My throat tightened and I hated it, the way it always happened at the worst possible moment, when I’d been doing fine and then someone said the true thing and my body betrayed me.

“No,” I said. “It’s not.”

Griffin was quiet. Outside the treatment room the facility hummed with its usual morning sounds. Skates on ice, the distant thud of pucks, someone’s music bleeding through the walls. The ordinary world going about its business while we sat in this small room with everything complicated between us.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “What I said. About Josh. That was—” He shook his head. “That was me being an asshole because I was hurt. It wasn’t fair.”

I nodded, letting him have the apology without making him work harder for it.