Page 160 of Offside

“Did you already know too?” Griffin asked defensively.

“We suspected,” Mom said carefully.

My father cleared his throat. “We had a small⁠—”

“They had a bet,” I said.

“A bet.” Griffin turned to our parents, deeply affronted. “You had a bet. You knew about my best friend and my sister, you had a bet about it, and I—” He stopped. Looked between all three of us. “I was the last to know. In my own family. I am the last person in my own family to find out.”

“Griffin—” Mom started.

“You knew before I did.” He pointed at his mother. “You knew.” He pointed at his father. “And I—” He stopped again, visibly working through this as he pointed at himself. “I walked in on them. With a six-pack. Like an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot,” I said.

“I walked in on them!” Griffin whined to my parents.

“Oh, honey.” My mom was laughing.

“I brought beer.”

“Griff, get over yourself. You walked in on us making some food. Jeez.” I rolled my eyes hard.

He processed it for a moment. Then he sat down heavily in a chair and put his face in his hands in almost exactly the way I had fifteen minutes ago. I recognized the posture. I’d learned it from him.

Griffin’s voice came through his palms. “How much did you win?”

“Fifty dollars,” Mom said.

Griffin looked up. “That’s it? My dignity is worth fifty dollars?”

“The bet was about Maren and Ryan,” Dad said. “Your dignity wasn’t part of the stakes.”

“Dad.”

“We all love you very much,” Mom said. “Ryan is a wonderful young man and your sister is happy and we’re very glad about all of it. Also, dinner’s in forty minutes.”

Griffin turned to me. The indignation giving way to something more rueful, more recognizable, the expression he’d been wearing since we were kids when he’d been outvoted and outmaneuvered and had to decide whether to be gracious about it.

“Does he know you told them?” Griffin asked.

“He’s coming for dinner.”

“Of course he is.” He picked up his beer. “Fine. I’m going to need a minute with the game film in the other room.”

“There’s no game film,” I said.

“There’s always game film.” He disappeared through the doorway.

My mother watched him go, then turned back to the stove with a smile she wasn’t suppressing very hard.

“He’s fine,” my mother said.

“I know,” I said. “He always is, eventually. He’s so dramatic.”

Ryan arrived twenty minutes before dinner with tulips for my mother. Deep coral. And the steadiness he carried into rooms where something mattered. He came through the front door. He shook my dad’s hand and accepted the hug Mom gave him without awkwardness, and when he came into the kitchen and found me at the counter, he crossed to me and kissed my cheek in front of both my parents, no hesitation.

My mother made a sound that was almost a sigh.