Page 27 of Grief & Glitter

Ryan glanced at the chair, then at me.

“You don’t have to,” I said.

“I know.” He sat anyway.

Walker dropped into the seat across from us, trying to act innocent but instead looking smug. Ryan set his plate down carefully.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

His hair was still damp from the shower, red curling at the ends, no makeup around his eyes this morning. Tired, but the good kind—warm and soft and sleepy. I liked it. I liked him, and that was becoming alarmingly easy to admit to myself.

“So,” Chip said, rescuing the table. “How’d everyone sleep?”

“Badly,” Bob said.

“Like an angel,” Arnaud said.

Bob told him he snored loud enough to hear from three rooms away, and Arnaud called it jealousy. Chip announced he hated road trips, then Sable lifted her head at the word hate until Chip clarified it wasn’t about her, and she settled again.

Ryan ate his eggs and let the conversation move around him. He’d come in stiff, elbows tucked close, as if he was trying not to take up too much room at a table full of players, but by the time Walker started in about ketchup belonging on scrambled eggs, Ryan was arguing back as if he’d been doing it for years. When his shoulder bumped mine, easy and unthinking, warmth spread out from the spot where we touched, down my arm, low in my stomach. I shifted in my chair, grateful for the table hiding the rest of me.

I took a drink of coffee to give myself something to do with my hands and looked around the table. Walker was on his phone, smiling at whatever he was reading, probably messaging Finn. Bob was glaring at Arnaud across the length of the table, who was now explaining maple syrup production to anyone who’d listen. Chip was cutting a muffin into equal-sized pieces and pairing each with a slice of apple, and Ryan was beside me. He was someone who’d come into my life through hockey but was starting to feel separate from it.

I’d worked hard for this table. For years, it had been easier to keep to myself, to let hockey be hockey and nothing else, but I showed up to every one of Finn’s sessions anyway, tried to bring something with me each time, even on the days it took everything I had just to get out of bed. Small things. A joke. Showing up at all.

It had taken years before showing up stopped feeling like work. Now I was sitting here wishing Ryan could be part of it too. Then the doubt crept in, the way it always did. What would they think watching Ryan settle in next to me like this? What would Bob say if given the chance? What would it look like if I let this become something everyone could see? Walker was already suspicious. And underneath that, quieter, the thing the black dog liked to whisper on mornings like this one—that I’d find a way to ruin it. That I always did.

“Gids?” Ryan’s voice was close, low, just for me, and it took me a second to blink back into the room. I threw him a smile. He frowned briefly. “You’re quiet.”

“Sorry. Lost in thought.” I glanced toward the buffet, half expecting to see Ryan’s dad hovering, ready to ask why Walker had abducted his son. “Will your dad wonder where you’ve gone?”

Fuck. Did that sound like I didn’t want him sitting here?

If you want him to stay, keep smiling, and don’t be such an idiot.

If you want anyone to stay, try harder.

“Not that I want you to go,” I added too fast.

Ryan huffed a laugh. “He’s fine. Last I saw, he was deep in something with one of the trainers. He’ll survive without me for one breakfast.” He smiled at me and went back to his eggs. His knee bumped mine under the table and stayed there for the rest of breakfast. Neither of us moved away.

The conversation moved on to the casino night.

“I’m not wearing a tie,” Bob said.

“You should wear one,” Arnaud said. “It will distract from your face.”

“My face is fine.”

“For scaring bears.”

“You look like a fucking⁠—”

“Enough!” Walker cut in before Bob could finish whatever insult he’d been building. He pointed his fork at both of them. “One breakfast. That’s all I ask. One meal where nobody threatens anyone.”

“He started it,” Bob muttered.