Page 23 of Offside

“I’ve been a professional gentleman about this for three weeks,” Cole said. “She works here. I see her every day. I have been nothing but respectful and appropriate. I am simply asking if she is coming to the bar after the game with us.”

“The answer is yes, and the rest of the answer is that do not forget she is my sister. And everyone knows the rule about sisters.”

Everyone did know the rule about sisters. You stay the fuck away from them. But I did that once already. Surely the man’s best friend could get a pass. Who am I kidding? The sister rule applies to me too.

“Noted.” Cole turned to the room. “Callahan’s sister is coming to The Rusty Nail tonight.”

There was immediate and predictable interest from the younger players. Griffin pointed at the room. “All of you. No.” He turned back to Cole. “Especially you.”

Griffin leaned back against his stall. “Brooke from PR asked about you, by the way.”

“No.”

“I’m just passing along information.”

“Griff.”

“She’s great. Very fun. Completely non-serious.” He said the last part like it was a selling point, which for Griffin it absolutely was.

“No,” I said again.

Griffin shrugged, entirely unbothered. “Your loss.” He stood and grabbed his helmet. “I’ll tell her you’re very focused on hockey.”

“Tell her whatever you want.”

“I always do.”

Cole glanced between us, delighted. “This team is so fun.”

Griffin dropped into the stall next to me. “How are you feeling?”

“Good.”

“You’re doing the thing.”

“What thing.”

“The thing where you go quiet and your face does nothing and everyone thinks you’re fine but you’re actually⁠—”

“I’m fine, Griff.”

He held my glare for a moment. Then he nodded, because he was a good enough friend to know when to push and when to let it be. “City’s nervous,” he said. “I can feel it in the building. They want to want this.”

“I know.”

“So let’s give them something to want.”

I turned my stick over. The jersey. Thought about what Calloway had said on the first day of training camp—we have to earn it—and about my father’s voice on the phone, and then, without meaning to, about Sunday dinner. About a small kitchen and a coffee maker beeping and Maren looking up at me with an expression that had stopped me completely, and the distance I hadn’t crossed, and Griffin’s voice from the garage that had made the decision for me.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I’d been actively not thinking about it for days and all that had accomplished was thinking about it constantly.

I stood up.

“All right,” I said, loud enough that the room shifted. Heads turned. Cole stopped mid-gesture. Even Eli opened one eye. “Let’s talk.”

The speech was short. I’d agonized over it for three days, thrown out everything I’d written, and said the true things that came to mind in the moment and felt like they mattered. Nobody had given us this. The city had every right to be skeptical. The only answer to skepticism was showing up and doing the work and doing it again tomorrow, and again, the day after that. I reminded them this team, this collection of people in the room, and in the building, was something worth watching. That I believed it. And I needed them to believe it too.

When I finished the room was quiet for a beat.