Page 105 of Off-Limits as Puck

Such a simple question. The kind strangers ask in elevators. But coming from him, loaded with months of silence and everything we’ve lost, it feels enormous.

Me:Surviving. You?

Reed:Same. Boston’s good. Quiet. Different.

Me:Good different?

Reed:Honest different.

I smile despite myself. Trust Reed to find the perfect words—honest different. Like authenticity is a location you can move to instead of just a state of mind.

Me:I saw you’re coaching kids now.

Reed:Volunteer work. They don’t care about my history, just whether I can teach them to stop without falling.

Me:Can you?

Reed:Getting better at it. Turns out patience is learnable.

Me:Who knew?

Reed:Certainly not me six months ago.

We text for twenty minutes about safe things—his volunteer work, my community center program, the weather in Boston versus Phoenix. Surface conversation between two people who’ve seen each other naked and broken, who’ve mapped each other’s scars and know exactly which words will cut deepest.

Reed:I should let you go. Just wanted you to know I meant what I said tonight.

Me:Which part?

Reed:All of it. But especially the part about you being the best at what you do.

Me:Past tense.

Reed:Present tense. You’re still helping people. Still seeing the best in them and demanding they live up to it.

Me:How do you know?

Reed:Because that’s who you are. Phoenix doesn’t change that.

The conversation ends there, but I keep staring at my phone long after the screen goes dark. Outside, the city sprawls under desert stars, two thousand miles from snow and hockey rinks and the life I used to live.

I open my laptop again, muscle memory guiding me to the Boston Blizzards website. Schedule, roster, season stats. A photo gallery from community events shows Reed in civilian clothes, teaching kids to skate, his smile genuine in a way it never was during press conferences.

He looks happy. Not performing happiness for cameras, but actually content in a way that radiates from the still images. Like someone who’s figured out how to want what he has instead of mourning what he lost.

I bookmark the page before I can stop myself. Then immediately feel pathetic for cyberstalking my ex-client who just defended me on national television.

My reflection in the dark window shows a woman I’m still learning to recognize—rumpled, uncertain, clutching her phone like a lifeline. But her eyes aren’t empty anymore. They’re cautious, evaluating, like someone considering whether to believe in possibility again.

Tomorrow, I’ll call my father. We’ll have the conversationwe should have had six months ago, before pride and disappointment built walls between us. I’ll probably cry. He’ll probably apologize again. We’ll both admit we were wrong about different things.

Tonight, though, I sit with the radical idea that maybe redemption isn’t about going back.

Maybe it’s about going forward.

Maybe it’s about letting yourself want something new, even when you’re terrified of wanting anything at all.

My phone stays quiet, but the echo of Reed’s words fills the silence:

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