Page 82 of Offside

Her hand came to rest on me again, and I picked it up by the wrist and set it back in her own lap. Obviously I should have done that to begin with but again, I was trying not to make a scene.

"I have a girlfriend," I growled.

Maybe I didn't growl, but I was trying to get the point across.

"Oh." Tiffany sat back. "Lucky her." She turned toward Cole, recalibrating.

I looked up before I could stop myself.

Maren was turned toward Eli, elbow on the wood, her back three-quarters to me, and Griffin was still going about Calgary two feet from her ear, and the jukebox had picked that exact moment to come back up.

She hadn't heard a word of it.

I had said it, out loud, in a room, and the one person it belonged to had been looking the other way.

Only Eli heard it.

Down the table he looked up from his club soda. Eli, who had two expressions and used neither of them generously, raised an eyebrow at me. And then, the part that should have alarmed me, he smirked.

The man did not smirk. I'd seen him stone-faced through a playoff-clinching game. But he'd heard the word and he was looking at me like he'd just won a bet with himself.

I held his eyes and gave him nothing. He went back to his drink, still smirking.

And I sat with what had just come out of my mouth.

I have a girlfriend.

I hadn't planned to say it. It was just true, and it had come out before I could think about whether to say it. We'd never put a word to it, never had that conversation. Somewhere between the family skate and now I'd decided she was mine, and the word had been sitting there ever since, waiting for me to catch up to it.

Girlfriend. I turned the word over. I had no interest in taking it back.

In fact, I had every interest in her hearing me say it.

Griffin dropped into his seat and caught the tail end of Tiffany turning toward Cole. "Are you serious," he said to me, low. "She was right there."

"I'm good, Griff."

"She literally⁠—"

"I know." I picked up my water. "I'm good."

Griffin shook his head and turned to hand Maren a drink she hadn't asked for, easy and oblivious, and she took it and thanked him and was completely normal with him, and I watched her actively avoid making any eye contact with me. Fuck. I’m in trouble.

I knew that posture. I'd watched her use it in her kitchen the morning after our first night together. Putting a wall up.

I couldn't do a single thing about it. Not at this table, not with Griffin two feet to my left.

That was the deal. That was what we'd agreed to.

I hadn't felt the weight of it land quite this hard before.

Griffin was holding court, talking to the table about something I wasn’t even listening to for at least another fifteen minutes. At some point I looked up and Maren's chair was empty.

I scanned the bar. Bathroom hallway, patio door, the cluster near the jukebox. Not there.

I got up and took Maren's empty chair beside Paige. It was the only way to ask without it looking suspicious.

"Where'd she go?" I didn’t waste any time getting to the point, and I was ninety-nine percent sure Paige knew the score between me and her best friend anyway.