Page 19 of Offside

"You keep staring," she said.

I gestured with my glass. "Hair's different."

"Six months and that's what I get?"

I held her gaze across the table. "Looks good."

"Still devastating with words," she teased. She lifted her glass.

I touched mine to it. We'd been easy together for two years, whenever we were both in Chicago. Neither of us wanted more than dinner and a night that ended before breakfast.

She ran commercial renovation jobs. Her hours changed with permits, inspectors, and other people's mistakes. Mine changed with flights and games. Neither of us had ever asked the other to build a life together. It worked because we liked each other. We were honest about what it was—and wasn't.

She told me about a restaurant job in River North where the architect had moved a wall on paper and not in the plumbing plan. I told her about Volkov losing his organs in practice and finding them before the next rep.

"I missed this," she said.

"Bad construction?" I lifted my glass.

She laughed. "Your face when you tell a joke and refuse to admit it's a joke."

"It wasn't a joke. He really checked."

I liked her laugh. I liked the silver at her ears and the way her fingers looked around the glass. Wanting women had never been an uncertainty. The women I'd dated weren't evidence against what I'd begun to understand about myself. They were part of it.

Mackenzie rested her hand on my forearm when the server cleared our plates. "Do you want to come over?"

Her invitation was clear. So was the warmth in her face. For a few seconds, I thought about giving her the same answer as before. Her apartment. Her bed. My jeans back on before dawn. A familiar night with somebody I trusted, nothing more. My body wouldn't object.

But that wasn't the same as wanting to go.

I thought about a pair of hands on my shoulder and a man who waited for the real answer even when it made both of our jobs harder. Pryce remained my physical therapist. Wanting him didn't give me permission to do anything about it, and going upstairs with Mackenzie wouldn't make wanting him less true.

"I can't," I said.

Her hand stayed on my arm. "Shoulder?"

"No. It isn't the shoulder."

She studied me. "Someone else?"

I looked at her across the table. "Not in the way you're asking."

She took her hand off my arm. "That sounds complicated."

"It is. I haven't figured it out."

"Do you want complicated?"

"Yeah." The answer came without thought.

Mackenzie sat back. She looked disappointed, not mad.

"Well, don't come over just because it's easier than figuring your feelings out," she said fondly.

"I wasn't going to."

"Good. I'd hate to remember you as a coward." She laughed softly. She reached for her coat.