“Yeah. I do.” I tug at the stocking cap I’m wearing. Does admitting that make me sound like a dork? Probably. But it’s how I feel.
She smiles at me. “I think it’s really sweet how much you care about making this camp good for the kids.”
Her sweet words send warmth through me, despite the cold temperature.
She checks her phone. “Kids are due for drop-off in a few minutes. We should head back to the house.”
We walk up the path together.
“If you had gone to a camp like this when you were a little kid, would you have cared if the coach was prepared?” she asks. “I bet all you would have cared about is having fun with your friends.”
I smile at Maya’s question. “I wouldn’t have wanted to go to hockey camp when I was a little kid.”
“Really?”
I nod. “I didn’t start playing hockey until middle school.”
“I guess I just figured all pro athletes played their sport since they were barely able to walk. Shows how much I know.” She chuckles.
“Definitely wasn’t the case for me. Though I’d been ice skating since I was pretty little.”
“Did you skate with Ingrid a lot growing up?”
“Yeah. That’s why we ended up being so close. None of her other siblings ever wanted to go ice skating with her and I was always up for it. Plus we’re only a year apart in age, so we were close to begin with.”
“I took ice skating lessons with Ingrid for a year when we were kids,” Maya says. “We both got told off almost every lesson for being lazy with our spins. And talking while we were supposed to be listening to the instructor.”
I chuckle at the thought of Ingrid and Maya getting in trouble at that age.
“Did you play other winter sports then?” she asks.
“Kinda.” I smile at the snow-covered ground. “You’d laugh if I told you what I was into at that age.”
“What? Investment banking?”
I snort out a laugh. “Horrible guess.”
When I look over at Maya, she narrows her gaze like she’s studying me. “Ice fishing.”
“Nope.”
“Curling?”
“Wrong again.”
She pauses. “I’ve gotta be close.”
“You’ll never guess it.”
Two more wrong guesses later, Maya lets out an exasperated laugh. We reach the back deck of Ingrid’s place and walk up the stairs.
“Okay, I give up.” She stops when we reach the deck. “What weird and random winter sport were you into as a kid?”
“Dog sledding.”
She gawks at me. “No way.”
“I swear. My favorite thing to do was go on dog sled rides with our grandpa. One of his brothers ran a dog sledding tour in Aspen, and our grandpa helped out with it. Of all the businesses he ran, that was his favorite one, so he spent a lot of time there.”
