Weather Girl(27)

“You made it,” he says with a grin. His hair spills out of his knit hat, curling over the top of his glasses. He’s not quite as bundled up as I am, probably because he’s more used to the cold. “I was worried for a moment that you’d changed your mind. Or that you’d gotten lost.”

“I took my niece and nephew to see Frozen on Ice here.” I take the seat next to him and rub my mittened hands together. “Which in retrospect was a little redundant?”

I didn’t think my first foray into sports would happen so quickly, but the game presented itself as a golden opportunity to get to know one half of the Hales—the half I know less about. Seth has two pairs of season tickets he’s in the habit of sharing with the sports desk, and Russell jumped at his latest offer.

I assumed it wouldn’t be very busy the week of New Year’s, but the arena is packed. The whole place buzzes with restless energy, tinged with the salt of stadium food and the brine of beer, and I can’t deny it’s contagious.

“Just know that if you call it ‘sportsball,’ you have to go sit in the nosebleeds,” Russell says.

“I wouldn’t dare. But what about ‘iceball’?”

“While you’re at it, you should yell, ‘GO EDMONTON!’ Especially when Seth gets back.”

I tap my nose. “Got it.”

Seth returns to our section with a buddy of his, a guy named Walt whom he introduced as “my oldest friend,” after which Walt ran a hand through his thinning gray hair and pretended to be wounded.

“What do you think, Ari?” Seth says, nestling his beer into a cup holder on Russell’s other side. “Russ said it was your first hockey game?”

“It’s cold,” I admit, which gets a couple well, duh laughs. “Really, though, I’m excited. Thanks so much for bringing us.”

“I’ll be right back,” Russell says, and I stand to give him an easier exit.

With an empty seat between us, Seth tips his beer at me and gives me an awkward nod. A tight smile. “Everything going all right for you at the station?” he asks. The go-to conversation topic for coworkers who’ve had no reason to spend time together outside of work until now.

“Yep. It’s great.”

“Good,” he says. “And you’re on that billboard up on Aurora? Exciting stuff.”

I nod so vigorously I worry my hat will fly off. I don’t know why people think weather is the worst small talk. Coworkers with nothing in common so they by default talk about work—that’s the worst.

Russell reappears with two spiked hot chocolates and an order of garlic fries, steam rising from the basket and smelling fantastic. I’m not sure who’s more relieved, Seth or me. Probably Seth, who draws Walt into a debate about one of the players.

“They definitely didn’t have these at Frozen on Ice,” I say, marveling at the basket of golden, garlic-flecked goodness. “You are amazing. Thank you.”

“I just . . . really wanted you to have a good time. This is like, a big deal, being part of your first game. This might sound corny, but I’m kind of honored?” There’s a little self-consciousness in the way he says it, and it endears him to me in a way I wasn’t expecting.

I tug off one of my mittens and reach for an overpriced fry, brushing his gloved hand in the process.

A gloved hand should not send a shock of electricity up my spine.

He has a kid, I remind myself. A twelve-year-old named Elodie. If I hadn’t been such a disaster that evening at the taqueria, I’d have told him it’s a beautiful name.

“My first sports,” I say, dipping the fry into ketchup. “And we don’t even have to worry about the weather.”

Russell, bless him, tries his best to explain the game to me as the players take the ice and an announcer calls their names.

“Those two at the red line are the centers,” he says. “And what they’re doing now, that’s called a face-off. It’s how they start every period and every time someone scores.”

The puck is dropped directly between the two centers, and after a brief clashing of sticks, Seattle takes control and bats it back toward another one of their players, the crowd erupting into cheers.

It’s a raucous, fast-paced game, almost dizzying. More than a few times, I lose my eye on the puck.

“What position did you play?” I ask Russell.

“Goalie.” He points at Seattle’s goal. “That shaded blue area in front of the goal—that’s called a crease. The goalie is allowed to do their job there without interference from any opposing players. A lot of goalies are bigger guys. You have to be quick and flexible, too.” He trails off as one of our players takes a shot on Edmonton’s goal and misses, which is met with a collective awwww from the arena. “You have no idea how excited I was when we finally got a hockey team in Seattle. I’d resigned myself to it never happening and needing to go up to Vancouver to catch games, so this . . . this is really incredible.”

It’s very cute, how nerdy he gets about hockey, the way he can recite not just stats but all these details about the players, like how Seattle center Dmitri Akentyev always sleeps in a jersey from the opposing team the night before a game and Edmonton goalie Bo Madigan eats exactly two snickerdoodle cookies before taking the ice. Plenty of people love sports—I’m aware of that. But I’m not sure how many watch a game the way Russell does, like he’s holding his breath, quietly urging his team forward. He’s not rowdy or belligerent, but calm. Focused.