Don’t run. Front door. Morning.
Nogood girl.No claim. Coordinates and a command. The combination makes heat and ice bloom together in my chest.
I slept like a door on a loose hinge. Every sound moves me. When the sky diluted into gray, I was already in jeans and a hoodie, hair braided quickly with cold fingers. At the bottom of the stairs, Dad sat at the table with a mug he must have reheated twice. He looked up, took in shoes, keys, and resolve.
“Text me when you get there.” He said.
“I will.”
“And when you’re on your way back.”
“I will.” I said again.
I opened the door, and October came in like a truth. The porch boards crack under my weight, old, honest, familiar. The yard still holds our shadows from last night if you knew where to look.
On the walk, breath smoking, keys biting my palm, I turned once. Dad was in the doorway, hoodie half-zipped, bare feet on cold wood like he’d come up fast and forgotten himself. He raised a hand. I raised one back. It felt like waving to the person I used to be and promising her I wouldn’t drop her on the way to whoever was waiting at the end of the street.
I slide into the driver’s seat and grip the wheel until my knuckles go white. Dawn laying a thin blade of light across the hood. And I exhale, feeling a second of relief.
I start my car and shift into drive. As I round the corner my phone buzzes with a text.
East side door.
Of course. Not the lobby. Not the place with banners and donors and the public face of things. The service entrance where the paint is peeled and the lock sticks unless you know the trick. The way in for people who work and people who don’t need to be seen.
Daylight. I say out loud to the empty car, a reminder and a dare.
I take the turn anyway.
The rink rose out of the morning like a ship. The east door gives under my hand without a fight. The corridor smells like clean metal and old ice and the faint ghost of a thousand games. My sneakers squeaked on rubber matting. The cold bites sweet and familiar.
At the end of the hall, the rink opens, vast, white, a held breath. He stands on the concrete by the boards, hands in hispockets, eyes on the ice. He looks like a man considering a horizon.
When he turns, the line in his face softens in a way that hits me low and hard. “You came.” He said. Two words and they felt like a palm outstretched so I wouldn’t have to jump the last few inches alone.
“Front door.” I said, because I needed to say it somewhere so it wouldn’t slip. “When I go back.”
The corner of his mouth lifts, the barest show of approval. “Good.”
“And not here.” I added, surprising both of us. “Not like last night. Not in corners, not in places that belong to him.”
A pause, brief and honest. “All right.”
We stand in the cold that makes me more awake than coffee. The boards hold up a row of reflected banners like ghosts of seasons. I put my palm to the glass and felt the rink thrum through the pane, the way the whole building seems to breathe in and out when it’s empty.
“What did he say to you?” I asked finally.
“Enough.” Triston said. Not evasive. Protective, in a way that included my father even if he didn’t wear the word. “And I said enough back.”
“Did you fight?”
He thinks about that. “We drew lines.” He said. “We told the truth of what we could stand to say between the two of us. The rest can wait.”
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been hoarding. “He told me daylight.” I said, and the word hung in the cold, crystallized. “He said if I’m going to do this, I can't do it in the shadows of his house.”
“He’s right.” Triston said, and my head whipped up because I didn’t expect agreement. “He and I don’t agree on much right now, but we do agree on that.”
Something in my chest unknotted a fraction. “Okay.”
