Page 152 of Offside

In the locker room after game two, Griffin found me by my stall.

“Power play coverage,” Griffin said. “Third period. Theo’s angle.”

“I know.” I pulled my pads off. “We fix it before Vancouver.”

“Yeah.” Griffin paused. “Good game otherwise.”

It was three words. It was also the first time since the apartment that Griffin had voluntarily brought me a piece of game analysis rather than waiting to be asked. I heard what it was. Not absolution, not everything back to normal, but a door opening. I took it and got up and did not make a production of it, which was all anyone needed from me.

“Vancouver’s got a new winger on their second line,” I said. “Fast. Cuts left every time.”

Griffin nodded. “I’ll watch the film tonight.”

We watched it together. My laptop open on the hotel room bed, both of us in the chairs, rewinding the same clip four times until we’d mapped the winger’s tendencies and had a plan. Like September. Like training camp. Like two men who understood each other’s game and knew how to be useful to each other.

By the time we turned the laptop off it was midnight and we’d been talking for two hours about hockey and nothing else, and I understood this was how Griffin was going to do it. Not a formal conversation, not a staged moment of reconciliation. The slow resumption of what we were to each other, rebuilt one film session at a time.

I could work with that.

I texted Maren before I went to sleep.

Ryan: Film session with Griffin tonight. Two hours.

Her response came almost immediately. Still awake, then. I liked that more than I needed to. Past midnight and she'd been sitting up with her phone, waiting to hear how it went.

Maren: Yeah?

Ryan: Yeah. He came to me.

A pause.

Maren: I’m glad.

Ryan: Me too. Sleep well, solsken.

Maren: You too. Win tomorrow.

I did. We both did.

Maren arrived on Thursday afternoon.

I was at the facility running through a light skate with Theo and two of the younger forwards when my phone buzzed on the bench.

Maren: Landed. I’ll be at the hotel in an hour.

I kept skating. I had a practice to finish. But Theo caught my expression. Whatever my face had done in the half-second before I controlled it. He raised an eyebrow across the ice.

“Callahan?” Theo asked.

“Focus on your crossover,” I said.

Theo smiled. Brief and dry, an expression he used when he was finding something funnier than he wanted to let on and went back to his crossover.

She was in the hotel lobby when the team bus pulled in, standing near the front desk with her bag and her lanyard and the same professional composure she wore at work. I stepped off the bus and she turned and our eyes met across the lobby and I watched her intentionally avoid indifference in front of everyone for the first time as her face lit up, warm and direct and entirely unhidden.

I crossed the lobby.

“Hey,” I said.