Page 4 of In the Crease

Maren: I packed boots yes

Griffin: Maren

Maren: They have a rubber sole they’re completely functional

Griffin: It’s going to be cold. Like. Cold cold.

Maren: I KNOW. I looked it up multiple times.

Griffin: Pack the heavy fleece not the thin one

Maren: Already ahead of you, borrowing Dad’s

Griffin: Smart. Ryan’s already got you, confirmed this morning

Maren: You mentioned

Griffin: He’s good people. serious. dry sense of humor.

Griffin: You’ll like him

Maren: I’m sure I will. I met him before you know.

Griffin: Yeah that was a long time ago.

Griffin: Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow. We’re gonna have so much fun.

I set the phone down.

Ryan Lindqvist. I’d been building a picture of him for years from Griffin’s descriptions—serious, read more film than anyone Griffin had ever played with, made the people around him better without announcing it. Griffin didn’t editorialize much about his teammates. The fact that Ryan’s name came up at all, let alone consistently across four full seasons, meant something.

I’d also, at some point in October, looked up the Minnesota State hockey roster online. For purely informational purposes.

Ryan Lindqvist was six-foot-one with sandy-blond hair and a jaw that made you stop scrolling. I had closed that tab immediately and not thought about it again.

That was a complete lie. I had thought about it again.

Multiple times, if we were being honest with ourselves, which I was trying not to be. The scar through his left eyebrow. The way he held himself on the ice even in a grainy practice video—like he already knew where everything was going before it got there. I’d zoomed in on the headshot twice, which was embarrassing, and then told myself it was research.

It was not research.

I’d been to a game in Minneapolis sophomore year and he’d been on the ice and I’d been sixteen and none of that had been relevant. I was eighteen now. He was picking me up from the airport in a few hours. I was going to get in his truck and be a completely normal person and that was the whole plan.

I zipped the duffel.

My mother appeared in the doorway around ten with her coffee and an expression—the one she wore when she was deciding whether to say the thing she was thinking. I’d been reading that expression since I was small. I’d never once headed it off successfully.

“Big weekend,” she said.

“Griffin’s very excited about the pond.”

She sat on the edge of my bed and looked at the duffel, the camel coat on its hanger, the general situation. “The coat.”

“It’s a good coat.”

“It’s a beautiful coat. For October in Scottsdale.” She went to the closet without further debate and came back with my father’s dark-green fleece, thick and worn soft at the cuffs.

“Take this.”