“Dinner with the captain.” He says dryly, and the world under my feet pitches. He catches the look I can’t catch back and adds, without mercy, “Kidding, Samantha.”
“I didn’t laugh.”
“It wasn’t funny.”
We stand there like two sentries who chose different sides of a war that hasn’t officially started. On the ice, twenty-three takes a pass, winds up, and buries the puck high glove side with a crack that echoes into my chest. The net ripples as if grateful to be hit by something that certain.
Dad’s jaw flexes. Maybe he heard the sound I made when the puck hit twine. Maybe he hears everything. Maybe he is trying to be gentle and it keeps coming out as control. “Keep your focus on the gala.” He says finally. “And the dress you wear to it.”
“I know how to dress.”
“You know how to provoke.”
I swallow hard. It scrapes. “If I breathe, I provoke these days.”
“If you breathe near wolves, they smell it.”
There are things he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say Andrew’s name because he knows I will break if he uses my brother as a weapon. He doesn’t say Triston’s name because saying it would make all of this too solid to pretend around. He doesn’t say that I’m a grown woman because then he’d have to let me be one. He doesn’t say that he’s afraid. He doesn’t have to.
“I’ll be in the office.” I tell him.
He nods and moves away, back to his ice, back to the boys who trust him to demand enough from them that winning is the only relief. I watch him go and then—because I’m weak, because I’m me—I let my eyes drift to the slot, to the circle, to the man who has built an entire house in my head and refuses to pay rent.
Triston pivots, shoulders rolling under navy and white, and for a split second I’m sure he’s going to look up, find me, pin me to the railing with nothing but a visor and will. He doesn’t. He jets to the blue line instead, barking something at a rookie that makes the kid’s back straighten and his stride lengthen. He’s good at makingpeople want to be sharper near him. He’s devastating at making me want to be ruined.
In the office, I put the whiteboard between us.
It’s a mess in here, but it’s my mess. There are lists and markers and two different-colored highlighters because color coding gives me the illusion of control. There’s a half-finished sign-up sheet for volunteers to work the gala check-in table and a stack of pre-printed thank-you notes I keep meaning to send. There’s a photo in a silver frame of Andrew and me at the lake the summer before he died, both of us sunburned and squinting, his arm around my shoulders like he could keep me still there forever.
I press my thumb to the glass over his grin and say the thing I only say to him when it’s just us. I don’t know how to do this without you. I don’t know how to stop wanting what you would have warned me about.
Guilt is a clever beast. It doesn’t come for me head-on. It sneaks. It tells me I’m dishonoring Andrew’s memory, that I’m betraying my father, that I’m stupid to think I can keep something this wild from eating me alive. It also tells me the only way out is through, that if I say no to this now it will carve a hollow in me nothing else can fill. The guilt and the want, braid themselves together like garland, pretty if you squint, strangling if you don’t.
Work, Samantha.
I put on the version of me that gets things done. I call the florist and add two wreaths to the entryway order because the lobby looks bare in my head. I text the caterer to confirm the late-night cocoa bar for after the speeches because I want the donors to feel like kids with oversized mugs and unguarded smiles when they take out their credit cards. I email the team PR lead to beg for one more player basket for the auction because the wives always go feral over those,and feral is good when you’re trying to raise money without turning the night into a guilt sermon.
When I’m done building the part of the evening other people will see, I open the spreadsheet that lives under the spreadsheets. The tab I named PLAN B in a moment of honesty with myself. It’s just the timeline. The way the night will unfold if I let it. The dress. The makeup I don’t wear on non-gala days. The simple necklace that sits right where his eyes went the last time he got close enough to fog my breathing. The backup flats in my bag because heels are a prison when you want to move fast. The hotel keycard I don’t have yet and don’t know if I’ll ever get the nerve to accept.
I close the tab as if someone else could ever see inside me and take the evidence to court.
I’m halfway to convincing myself the office feels safe when the air changes. The office door is closed. There’s no reason for the air to shift like this. No reason for the tiny hairs along the back of my neck to lift as if someone just brushed them with knuckles. I look at the door anyway. It stays shut. I look at the vent. The heat’s on; it rattles and hums in that irregular way that makes you think of lungs, not machines.
It’s stupid to think your body can recognize someone by absence. It’s dumber to be right about it.
There is nothing to see. That’s important. Nothing. I am alone in here with the whiteboard and Andrew’s photo and a stack of donor packets that need ribbon. But my pulse has a specific rhythm when he’s near, and it drums it now.
I stand and go to the mini fridge in the corner to give my brain something to do that isn’t obsession. There’s a Tupperware inside with a label in my handwriting—COOKIES—because parents insist on thanking the people who keep their kids skating by sending sugar.I pop the lid, take one, and bite down. It tastes like stale peppermint and apology.
On my way back to the desk, I notice the corner of my tote is bent under something I don’t remember leaving on the floor. It’s nothing. It’s a shadow. It’s—
I kneel.
It’s a ribbon.
Not red. Not Christmas. Velvet. Dark blue so deep it eats the light the way ice accepts a blade. It isn’t tied to anything. It lies there in an unbothered loop like it grew from the carpet. When I pick it up, my fingers go tight before my brain can stop them. I rub the fabric between my thumb and forefinger and the pressure is obscene in a way no one in the world would understand if they walked in right now and found me kneeling in front of my own bag, shaking.
I look at the ceiling like it might have answers. It doesn’t. It has water stains from the time the pipe burst last winter and my father didn’t go home for forty-eight hours because the rink was wounded and so was he.
