“Come on.” I stand up, setting my napkin on the table and reaching my hand down for hers. “Let’s go explore the train.”
She takes my hand, and we find a viewing cart that’s wide open to the freezing air. We stand at the rail for a minute, my arms wrapped around her shoulders to try and keep her warm, but have to come back inside when she starts to shiver anyway.
It’s another thing added to my mental catalog of her. She’s always shivering, always wrapping her arms around herself. When we’re at my place, she turns on the fireplace as her first action inside the front door.
Gets cold easily.
“It feels like Christmas,” she says, when I hand her a hot chocolate from the refreshments cart and follow her to one of the window seats.
As we move north, snow-covered evergreens pass by the windows, the snow on their needles sparkling in the sunlight. I wonder if it will compound, if we’ll see more snow as we make our way through the bulk of Wisconsin.
“I bet you miss Colorado, don’t you?” Wren asks, turning to me suddenly. I glance out the window, watch the trees, shrug a bit.
“Sometimes,” I say, taking a sip of my hot chocolate. “But I think it’s more about missing childhood than missing the state itself. I grew up there, my parents loved it there. Cal and I became best friends living on that street and in that state. So, yeah, sometimes I miss it, but I think that might be more about the people.”
“You’re telling me you don’t miss the mountains?”
“There are some people who act like the mountains are deities,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I’m not one of them.”
“You miss them.”
“Do I wish the sky didn’t feel so wide open sometimes? Sure. But what else does Colorado have that Wisconsin doesn’t? There are a lot of lakes here, too.”
She laughs, leaning forward and pressing a finger to the middle of my chest. “You’re trying to convince me that you love Milwaukee and Wisconsin because you convinced your entire family to move here, but you don’t actuallyloveit here. You just love playing for the Frost.”
My heart thuds loudly in my chest, and my blood feels thick. The thing about Wren is that sometimes she points out things you haven’t even admitted to yourself just yet.
I catch her hand, pulling her finger away from my chest and holding her there for a minute, searching her eyes. “I thought we weren’t doing serious confessions today.”
“It’s not a confession.” But her gaze drifts down to my lips, something calmer and more serious in her eyes. “It’s an observation.”
I hum, thinking for a second that I could try and figure out what was in the parking lot today that spooked her. But I won’t, because I get the feeling it’s a lot more serious than whether I miss Colorado, and whether I would ever want to move out of Wisconsin.
I’m almost thirty. It’s not like I’m going to be in the NHL for the rest of my life, and I’m not particularly interested in coaching. Sometimes, especially during the off season, I have thought about my plans post-Frost.
“Sir? Ma’am?” We turn together to find a server in a white shirt and black slacks smiling at us, a bottle of wine in her hand. “The couple on the other side of the cart wanted to gift this to you.”
She pops the cork, pours the glasses, and when she leaves, Wren picks up the little white card, reading out loud from it, “You remind us of being young and in love.”
When she sets the card down, Wren flicks her eyes up to me, and smiles briefly, before bringing the wine to her lips.
Wren
“Wren! Thank you so much for coming!”
I smile when Astrid opens the door to Sloane’s house. She’s wearing a pair of light-wash jeans and a striped sweater, her dark hair pulled back from her face with barrettes.
My chest is tight with a low thrum of anxiety. I shouldn’t be nervous. It’s just a baby shower. For Sloane, and I already know she likes me. And Luca should be here too.
But still.
Astrid reaches out and basically pulls me inside, walking through the living room and telling me about her choice for the decorations, the party favors, and food. I’ve been here before—briefly—for that pool party, but I never came inside.
Their house is massive, the kind of fancy I used to drool over as a kid. That I still drool over. It’s stability in the clean baseboards, the large comfy couch. When I was with my dad, we were either sleeping on trains and finding cheap hostels, or living life large in huge luxury suites—there was no in-between. Nothing like this.
This is the kind of place you live for a long time. The kind of place that holds an entire family all at once, kids in bunk beds and couples in guest rooms. Like the house we went to for Christmas. Something lodges in my throat at the thought of that—Sloane recreating the way she grew up for the next generation.
“Wow,” I say, glancing around as we walk further into the house. I follow Astrid and realize that although all the decorations are up, the place is surprisingly empty. “I thought there would be more people here.”
