Page 88 of Goalie and the Girl Next Door
His face lights up with interest. He’s into it. This man never stops surprising me.
“You like puzzles?”
“I love them,” he says, fitting two pieces together with a soft click. “Haven’t done one in years. Life was too busy, too loud.”
Hours pass, though it doesn’t feel like it.
We shift and lean and bump knees as we build a mountain range from a thousand jagged pieces, the two of us murmuring little triumphs and softly cursing edge pieces that pretend to fit. Clément tells me about the puzzle he and his mother used to keep on their dining table for rainy Sundays. I tell him about the time I tried a 5,000-piece one shaped like the Eiffel Tower and cried when I realized it was missing the corners.
He makes a scandalized face. “No corners? That’s not a puzzle. That’s emotional sabotage.”
We laugh. We talk. He tells me more about how he’s struggling on the ice, and I tell him about how my dreams are bigger than accounting. Everything feels easy with him. Clicking into place.
Like pieces of a puzzle.
I glance at the stove clock across the room: 3:07 a.m. I’m wide awake. I have that rare feeling of being right where I’m supposed to be, as if something meaningful is happening, and my whole body knows it.
We fall into another comfortable silence, our hands working in quiet synchronicity. The sound of a piece clicking into place feels louder in the hush.
Then Clément speaks. His voice is easy, like he’s tossing off a casual comment. “So… how many men fell head over heels for the cute but intelligent accountant who landed in their tiny town?”
I pause, mid-reach for a piece shaped like Idaho.
“None,” I say.
He looks at me, head tilted slightly.
“I’ve never even had a real date,” I add, surprised at how steady my voice is. “People look at me and they see someone reliable and distant. I’m the ice queen, remember? Romance is wasted on someone like me.”
He studies me for a long moment, and then turns back to the puzzle. “That's funny. I've only ever felt more like myself around you. And no one would ever accuse me of being unromantic."
My whole body stills. His gaze turns from the puzzle back to me.
There’s a faint shadow under his eyes from the late hour, and a tiny furrow between his brows like he’s waiting on tenterhooks for me to laugh or look away or say something to close the moment.
But I don’t want to close it.
This is the true Clément. No spotlight. No swagger. Just a man who told the truth and is hoping I don’t run.
“I’m not great at this,” I say. “The feelings. The timing. Saying the right thing at the right time.”
His eyes search mine.
“But,” I continue, “you’re making it really hard not to want more of this.”
He exhales.
I set down the puzzle piece in my hand, suddenly aware that I don’t want to keep putting space between us—literal or otherwise. Because even if I’m not ready to say out loud what I think this is, I know what itisn’t.
It isn’t temporary. It isn’t casual.
It’s beginning.
I’m starting to believe Clément Rivière might not only be what I want. He might be what Ineed.
Clément shifts closer to me. A subtle lean, like his body can’t bear the space between us any more than mine can.
For once, I don’t overthink. I breathe in the quiet between us, and it smells like cinnamon and cedar and the faintest hint of clean sweat from a long day that somehow only makes him more real.
