Page 161 of Offside

My father said, “Good to have you, Ryan,” confirming something he’d already known.

Griffin appeared in the kitchen doorway during dinner prep, took in the scene. Ryan at the counter helping Dad with something, me at the stove with Mom, the whole easy domestic arrangement of it, and made the face he made when he had no good objection and knew it.

“You’re early,” he said to Ryan.

“You’re earlier than usual, too,” Ryan said.

A beat. Not quite warmth yet between them, but the shape of where warmth had been and was finding its way back to. Griffin reached past Ryan for a piece of bread from the basket on the counter. Ryan moved aside to give him room. Neither of them made anything of it.

I watched from across the kitchen and felt something in my chest settle. Things were moving. Slowly, in the right direction.

Dinner was loud and warm and tipped over from the formal into the chaotic by the end of the first course. It always did. Nobody at that table had ever finished a second course with their manners intact. My father had opinions about the Sidewinders’ power play that he was not shy about sharing. Detailed, considered opinions, the result of forty years of watching hockey and a subscription to two different sports analytics newsletters that he thought no one knew about. Ryan listened with the forward lean and the stillness he brought to film sessions, his elbows on the table, asking follow-up questions and then asking better ones. My father was fully in his element. My mother watched the two of them and hummed to herself over the gravy.

Griffin ate two servings and didn’t mention the bet. I appreciated it.

“Your defensive zone exits have been better the last three games,” Dad said to Ryan, gesturing with his fork. “Second period Tuesday especially. You changed the angle.”

“We’ve been working on it,” Ryan said. “Calloway adjusted the breakout pattern.”

“I noticed.” Dad nodded. “Smart. The way LA was cheating high⁠—”

“Tom,” Mom said mildly.

“I’m just saying⁠—”

“You’ve been saying so for forty-five minutes.”

“He doesn’t mind.” Dad looked at Ryan.

“I don’t mind,” Ryan said, which was true. He didn’t. I could see it. The ease of him at our table, the way he’d settled in like someone who had been eating here for years and was finally not having to pretend about the reason he kept showing up.

Ryan’s hand found mine under the table at some point during the main course and he intertwined our fingers. It stayed there. Mom saw it. I caught the moment my mother’s eyes moved down and then back up, and said nothing, but her face did several things in rapid succession I was going to think about later. Dad put his arm around Mom’s shoulders and resumed his analysis of the penalty kill.

Griffin, across the table, was quiet. Different from his earlier guardedness. Not shut down. Just watching. The goalie processing the play. When Ryan made me laugh at something Dad said, Griffin’s gaze moved to my face and then away, and his expression moved toward acceptance. Not warm yet. But moving.

After dinner, Griffin found me in the kitchen while Ryan was helping our father carry chairs back to the dining room.

“I should have seen it,” Griffin said. “I didn’t. Which I’m choosing to believe says something good about how careful you were and nothing about me losing my edge.”

“I just wanted to say it.” He leaned against the counter beside me. “You look—” He stopped. Started again. “You look like yourself. More than you have in a while.”

I tilted toward him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He picked up a dish towel and started drying without being asked, the way he had when we were kids. “He’s good for you.”

“You don’t have to say that.”

“I’m not saying it because I have to.” He set a dry bowl in the cabinet. “I’m saying it because it’s true and I should have been able to say it a long time ago. I’m working on getting there.”

“I know you are.” I bumped his shoulder with mine. “That’s enough.”

He bumped me back. We finished the dishes in the warm kitchen of our parents’ house, the sound of Ryan and Dad’s voices carrying from the other room. Something about the playoff bracket, Ryan’s laugh, my father’s satisfied commentary, and I stood at the sink next to my brother and the ease of things going back to where they were supposed to be moved through me.

Griffin headed out after the dishes. Mom and Dad drifted to the living room, the television low, the comfortable end-of-Sunday sounds of a house settling in. Ryan stayed.

He turned his wine glass in his hands. I’d been quiet for a moment, watching the kitchen the way I sometimes watched rooms. Taking inventory, noting what had changed.

He looked at me. Steady, warm, and unhidden. “Maren.”