Page 25 of In the Crease

It smelled like him. Woodsmoke on top and underneath that just Ryan, warm and clean and exactly the thing I’d been trying not to think about since Friday night. I stood there in the dark holding it and felt like an idiot and put it in my duffel anyway.

A memento. That was what I was telling myself. It wasn’t entirely a lie.

I went to make coffee.

I sat at the table with my mug and let the weekend settle without trying to edit any of it.

The airport and the cold and the truck and the moose hat, and the thing where I’d said thank you and he’d replied with a hum like it was nothing and somehow that had been more disarming than any actual response would have been. The apartment and the tea cooling on the counter while we talked, and both things are true at the same time, which was such an honest way to say something that I’d thought about it at least six times since. Dinner at Sal’s. Petey and the trap. Jensen refilling my water glass four times without a word—quiet, attentive, nothing made of it. The bar and Griffin’s goalie eyes asking how I was doing, and the way Griffin had nearly choked at the bonfire when I established my credentials as a grown adult.

The pond. The way the cold had come up off the ice when I stepped out of the truck, and I’d just understood, immediately, why Griffin had been trying to describe this place for four years. The fire. His sweatshirt warm around me, hitting me mid-thigh, his scent all through it. Nothing appropriate, said quietly at the waterline, and the way I’d said it back, and the weight of that exchange—two people telling the truth to each other in the dark.

The tailgate. The blanket around both of us. The stars out and the air completely still. His hand on my knee, just there, not a question. The four seconds we’d both held perfectly still at the edge of something. His fingers against my cheek, slow, the back of his hand, just one moment of it, and then gone.

I’d been sensible. I’d looked at the pond and walked away when I said I was going to. The line of what was appropriate had held. I was proud of that. I was also going to be second-guessing it for considerably longer than would make sense to anyone else.

I was also going to be thinking about those four seconds for significantly longer than I should, and about his hand on my knee on the drive home, and the weight of his arm when he’d walked me to the tailgate, and the way he’d stood in the hallway after I went to Griffin’s room, and I’d heard him from the other side of the door, still there, and I’d pressed my back against the door for a moment before I’d moved.

I’m allowed to carry something for a while before I tuck it away.

That was what I was telling myself.

I was going home to a life I loved. The internship—the IT band case the clinic had been tracking all month was finally showing progress and I wanted to be there to observe. Biomechanics Thursday. My apartment in Tempe with the courtyard and the good morning light.

This weekend had been exactly what it was. I was glad.

Griffin appeared at six forty, hair everywhere, shirt on backward. I said nothing about the shirt. He saw the coffee and sat across from me and held out his mug. I filled it. We sat in the quiet we’d been building our whole lives.

“Good weekend?” he asked.

“Really good weekend.”

“Petey texted me about the hand warmers at midnight.”

“He texted me twice. Once about the hand warmers and once about the neutral zone trap.”

Griffin laughed; the real one. “He’s going to be thinking about that trap thing for weeks.”

“He made it easy. He was clearly wrong.”

“That’s Petey.” He wrapped both hands around his mug. “Come back in April. We’ve got home games on the eleventh and thirteenth.”

“I’ll try.”

“You’ll look at your schedule first.”

“And then I’ll come. You might even know what team you’re going to play for by then.”

He nodded. Satisfied.

I looked at my brother. Four years of building something here and it showed in every room of this apartment and every table at Sal’s and every person at Jensen’s pond.

“I’m going to miss you,” I said. “When you’re somewhere else.”

He looked at the table. “I’m going to miss you too.” He tapped the back of my hand with his knuckle. “But you’re going to come to wherever it is and complain about the weather and eat all my food.”

“Obviously.”

“And I’m going to come to Tempe and lay by the pool with you at Mom and Dad’s and not help with anything.”