Page 32 of Offside

“What thing.”

“The thing where you decide what’s best for everyone and then suffer quietly and make yourself miserable while being extremely stoic about it and everyone around you gets confused.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“You always do that.”

“Anna, this isn’t helpful.”

“I’m just saying.” A beat passed and when she spoke again her voice had shifted, less sharp, more like the sister who used to sit outside my door after bad games and wait. “Ryan. You’ve been doing this your whole career. Putting everything into the game and calling it a life. It’s gotten you here, to being a captain, with an amazing hockey career. But hockey doesn’t last forever and you know that better than anyone. You’re allowed to want things. You’re allowed to actually be somewhere instead of performing being there.”

I didn’t say anything, taking in her words. She wasn’t wrong. I was playing the part of the good captain, who did the right things, and everything that went along with the persona as necessary.

“Figure out what you actually want,” she said. “Not what’s convenient. Not what’s uncomplicated. What you want.”

I didn’t say anything, but whatever my face did made Anna laugh before she hung up.

I sat with the dead screen for a moment. Actually be somewhere instead of performing being there. I tried to remember the last time I’d done that. Been fully somewhere. Not managing, not leading, not running the version of myself the role required.

I thought about who Maren had been back in Minnesota. Griffin’s younger sister, eighteen and sharp and impossible to look away from, someone I’d made myself file away because I had to. I’d told myself it worked. But now I couldn’t stop thinking about her. It was like I’d spent nine years pushing that weekend down, packing it tighter and tighter, telling myself the lid would hold—and the second she walked back into my life it had all come loose at once. Everything I’d refused to feel then, every version of the thought I’d cut off before it could finish. It had been waiting the whole time. I’d just been disciplined enough not to look at it.

I thought about who she was now. The woman who had walked into a building full of professional athletes and built a department from nothing. She was not the same person. She was something else entirely, and I couldn’t stop thinking about her no matter how many other things I tried to think about instead.

I pushed myself off the couch and went to bed and stared at the ceiling for another hour before I finally slept.

I ran into her Monday morning. I’d known I would. She was there every day, and so was I, and I’d spent Sunday manufacturing a professional composure I was reasonably confident would hold.

She was in the corridor outside the treatment rooms with a tablet and a coffee, talking to Dr. Reyes. She saw me at the same moment I saw her. She was caught, just for a moment. It crossed her face before composure replaced it. Then she was completely normal, finishing her sentence to Reyes without missing a beat, meeting my eyes with easy steadiness.

“Morning,” she said.

“Morning. Good weekend?”

“Great weekend.” Not a flicker. “Shoulder feeling okay?”

She wanted the subject closed. I let her close it. “Good.”

“Come in Thursday for the follow-up.”

“I’ll be there.”

She turned back to Reyes and I kept walking and made it to the end of the corridor before I stopped and stood there for a second with my hand braced against the wall.

She was going to pretend it hadn’t happened. That was one option. I could pretend it hadn’t happened. Two professionals in a building, completely fine, nothing to see.

I was aware, standing at the end of the corridor, that I did not particularly want to pretend.

I went to practice and spent most of it in my head, but my body knew what to do without me, ten thousand hours of muscle memory carrying me through cleanly enough that nobody said anything.

I was heading toward the coaches’ wing after practice when a hand closed around my arm and pulled me sideways.

What the⁠—

I turned. Maren was already pulling me around the corner into the side corridor between the storage room and the equipment bay, glancing back over her shoulder like someone executing a maneuver she’d planned and was now slightly regretting. She was in her work clothes, Sidewinders quarter-zip, fitted athletic leggings that showed off her perfect ass, and her hair was up in a high ponytail, a few pieces loose around her face, which is what it did every day by mid-morning. She looked, I thought, completely too good for a Monday in a service corridor.

She let go of my arm and turned to face me.

“Hi,” she said.