February 22 | Cedar Falls
West
Jane Cooper is holding my hand on a Cedar Falls sidewalk and I am acutely aware of every single point of contact.
Her palm. Her knuckles. The small callus at the base of her ring finger I didn't know existed until right now.
Grace is twenty feet ahead. She’s exactly how she sounded over the phone calls.
And she hasn’t stopped talking since we exited the arena. She’s now describing the overtime goal to a woman she met a few minutes ago whom I’m pretty sure was also there.
The woman is nodding enthusiastically. She is absolutely on board with this.
Jane watches her sister. Something in her expression is soft and fractured at the same time—the particular look of someone watching a person they love step into their own future and feeling the exact weight of what that means.
I tighten my hand around hers.
She looks at me. Her eyes are bright, and she squeezes back.
"So," I say.
"So," she says.
"You're in Cedar Falls."
"You'rein Cedar Falls."
"I was here first."
She tips her head sideways. The skeptical angle. The one I've been cataloguing for three weeks from photographs on my phone at eleven at night like a man with no remaining dignity. "You were here earlier by approximately twelve hours. That's not a flag-planting moment."
"It absolutely is."
"It really isn't."
Grace spins to face us, walking backward, entirely unbothered by the physics of doing this on an unfamiliar sidewalk at eight-twenty in the morning. "Are we going to Mane Street Bistro or are we discussing territorial claims for the next forty-five minutes? Because I require eggs."
"You require eggs," I say.
"Desperately. My body is running on patriotism and a granola bar from the vending machine at the arena entrance. I need protein. I need it now."
Jane looks at me. "Is the bistro good?"
"The windows were fogged last night."
"That's your metric? Fogged windows?"
"Fogged windows mean people are inside. People inside means the food is worth staying for." I pause. "Or the heating system is catastrophically broken. But I'm optimistic."
Grace points at me. "I like him. He reasons correctly."
She turns back around and continues her narrative to the woman who is now, apparently, named Karla, who may or may not run the town's rumor mill and is very invested in both the gold medal play-by-play and whatever is happening between Jane and me.
Jane watches Grace for a moment.
"She's going to be okay here," I say. Not a question.
"I know." Jane's voice is quiet. Certain. The kind of certain that has some sadness tucked underneath it. "That's the part that keeps surprising me."
