Page 13 of In the Crease

“I know.”

There was a pause, and I heard a smile in it, and then she went back to the eggs and I went back to my coffee and neither of us said anything and the kitchen smelled like butter and it was six thirty on a Saturday morning and I was in big fucking trouble. I couldn’t stop noticing things about her. I was in sensory overload, but it was her. Only things about her.

Griffin emerged at seven fifteen, clearly expecting an empty kitchen, finding the smell of eggs and coffee instead. He stood in the doorway and blinked.

“Did you make breakfast?” he asked me.

I put my hands up in the universal “wasn’t me” gesture and grinned.

“Sit down,” Maren said.

He sat. He looked at the plate the way he looked at a shootout—like it mattered more than he wanted to let on.

“Maren.”

“It’s nothing. You gotta eat if you’re gonna be out there playing this afternoon.”

“These are excellent eggs.”

“They’re scrambled eggs.”

“Thank you. For making breakfast.” I had to say something, and as lame as it sounded, it was better than eating my eggs and saying nothing at all. They were excellent.

Griffin noticed the grocery bag by the door. “What’s in the bag?”

“Chocolate. Hand warmers.” She paused. “I didn’t know if people brought them but I figured it was better to have them since I seem to be perpetually cold here.”

He set down his fork and looked at his sister like she’d just scored on him. Pure shock. A little awe.

“You are the most⁠—”

“If you say precious I’ll eat all the chocolate myself.”

“Thoughtful. I was going to say thoughtful.”

I laughed. They were honestly hilarious around each other, and their banter lightened the room every time they went at it.

“Oh.” She looked at her plate. “Thank you.” They shared a knowing smile.

I got up and washed my plate and left them to it. From the kitchen, I could hear Griffin telling her about the pond—Jensen’s property, the ice this season, how the cold holding through February made the whole surface dense and fast. She asked questions. He answered them with his usual enthusiasm.

She had taken up permanent residence at the front of my thoughts, and I was going to keep calling it something else for the duration of this weekend.

Fourteen hours. She’d been in my apartment for fourteen hours and she’d made breakfast in my kitchen without being asked and taken apart Petey’s trap theory in three sentences and laughed at Griffin’s worst story like she’d been in the room when it happened and stood on the other side of my counter and listened to us talk about a frozen pond like it was the most interesting thing she’d heard all week. Somewhere in those fourteen hours, Griffin’s little sister had completely stopped being background.

I went to get my gear bag.

We drove out in the Silverado, all three of us across the front bench. Griffin called the window before we’d reached the building door— “dibs, obviously, it’s my team’s truck”—which put Maren in the middle. She was the smallest anyway, and it made far more sense for her to be in the middle.

Six inches between her shoulder and mine.

I was very aware of these six inches. They felt like two.

Griffin was in the middle of a story before we hit the highway, the one about Davo and the wrong hotel room in Detroit that had been getting longer every time he told it. Maren was listening with her chin tipped slightly down, tracking it, and I could tell from the angle of her head exactly when she caught the part he’d embellished.

“That’s not how that works,” she said.

“It absolutely is.”