Page 58 of Offside

“I was waiting for the water to boil.”

“That takes three minutes.”

“I’m observant.”

She studied me for a long moment. She’d stopped deciding what face to put on. I held it and didn’t do anything with it except be there.

“You don’t have to stay,” she said. “You have skate.”

“I have an hour.”

“Ryan—”

“I’ll make breakfast if you have anything.” I set my mug down and turned toward the refrigerator. “Do you have anything to eat?”

“I have everything,” she said, from behind me. The careful casual had gone out of her voice. What was left was quieter and more real.

She was quiet for a beat. I opened the refrigerator. Leftover pad thai, a lime that had seen better days, eggs on the second shelf.

“Good.” I took them out. “Scrambled or fried?”

She paused. “Scrambled.”

I found a pan.

She sat at the breakfast bar and drank her coffee and watched me move around her kitchen. I could feel her watching but didn’t make it a thing. I asked if she wanted cheese—yes. I asked about the postcard on the corkboard. Turned out Griffin had sent it from a road trip to Vancouver two years ago, which was very Griffin, sending a physical postcard from a hockey road trip like it was 1987.

She laughed and the last of the deliberate casualness went out of her.

I put a plate in front of her and picked up my mug and she ate and I watched the morning come through her kitchen window and let myself feel it all. I was going to have a hard time leaving this house.

At six-fifty I rinsed both of our plates while she refilled her coffee. I checked my phone. Thirty minutes.

“So,” she said, from behind me. Her voice had changed. The easy warmth from the postcard conversation was still there but underneath it something careful had crept in. “About last night.”

I turned around, giving her my full attention. Her body language was closed off; she was getting ready to give me the morning after blow-off, and I wasn’t having it. Nope.

She was standing at the breakfast bar with both hands around her mug, wearing the expression she wore when she was organizing her thoughts before a difficult conversation. I’d watched her use it on Griffin twice at Sunday dinners.

“Don’t,” I said.

She blinked. “I haven’t said anything yet.”

“You were about to tell me it was a mistake.”

“I was going to say⁠—”

“Maren.” I set my phone down on the counter. “Please don’t make this nothing.”

Her lips pressed together, and she was quiet for a moment. I waited, which cost me more than I would have admitted, because I couldn’t read her for a second and that was not a state I was comfortable with. Her eyes went to her coffee, to the corkboard, and finally back to me. Whatever she’d been working through had landed somewhere honest.

“I’m not trying to make it nothing,” she said. “I just want to be realistic.”

“About?” Slight panic settled in my gut. I didn’t understand what she meant, but I knew it wasn’t good. This could not be the last or only time for us. Absolutely not.

She set her mug down. “About what this looks like. From the outside.” She crossed her arms, not defensively. She pressed one palm flat against her own ribs and held it there. “I’m the Director of Sports Medicine for this team. I worked hard for years to be taken seriously in this space. I’m young for this kind of job; the job of a lifetime. Actually seriously, not just oh she’s good for a woman or she’s great with the soft tissue stuff, let the real doctors handle the rest. I earned that position and I need people to see that.”

I was listening.