Page 7 of Delay of Game

Jammer’s sudden laughter startled him, even though it wasn’t that loud over the noise of everyone else screaming andwhooing. He laughed until he wheezed and coughed, and then said, “Bro.Oh, bro, you got it bad.”

“How do you think I should do it?” Zach said, ignoring him. Not only was Jammer not helping, Zach couldn’t let the idea go. And besides, he didn’t haveanythingbad. In fact, he was excellent and had never been better. Unlike Jammer, who was content to sit here drinking and ogling pool-goers, Zach was being responsible and thinking about the future.

So really, he was great.

Fantastic.

The best.

He struggled into a sitting position. He was aware he probably looked insane. His hair had gotten long over the summer and he had it up in a miniature topknot, but he was drunk and disheveled enough that the overall effect was less hipster, more hobo. He knew he had that manic intensity you could only get when you were completely fucked up, but he couldn’t do anything about that.

He felt slightly insane.

His skin felt hot and tight and uncomfortable, and it wasn’t entirely due to the sun.

“Jammer, I gotta do it, I gotta get it for him, this is gonna be the year, but like...should I fight more? What about in the dressing room, should I like, step it up with the rooks? Bro, I gotta dosomething, we were so close last year. You should’ve seen hisfacewhen we lost, I can’t let him go through that again...”

Jammer stopped laughing and started staring at him like he’d grown another head. “Who are you and what’ve you done with my Reedsy?”

Zach stared at the pool. The girl was smiling at them again. He thought about how much time he was wasting here in Mexico, when he could be at home, helping Nate achieve his dreams. Zach was gripped with the sudden need to see him, like, right now, even though he couldn’t tell Nate about his grand ambitions. It wouldn’t be until Nate handed him the Cup on the ice that he’d be able to say,I did this for you, this was all for you.

He staggered to his feet. “Bro, I gotta... I gotta go.”

“What? Gowhere? Are you gonna puke or something?”

“I’m gonna... I gotta go back to Philly, like, right now, bro. I gotta change my flights. I gotta go, I gotta go.”

“Wait a minute, Reeds—”

But Zach was already half running, half staggering to their suite, and he didn’t hear whatever else Jammer had to say to him.

Nate walked briskly down the half block it took to get to his parents’ house. As always, he greeted them with a new bottle of wine that they would end up storing in the basement and never using. As always, he let his mother hug him and plant an awkwardly wet kiss on his cheek. As always, his father clapped him on the back. His parents lived pretty much around the corner from him; the developers had started building new townhomes nearby, he had jumped at the chance to buy property close to them. It had its downsides, of course, but it was still by design.

The downsides became evident later on, after they’d sat down for dinner.

“You look like you’re a million miles away, kid,” his father said, from across the table. Dad was a big man, although he’d lost a couple of inches as he’d aged. Nate was taller than him for the first time he could remember, and the experience was disconcerting. His parents had been older when they’d had him, and it was weird being reminded that they were aging inrealways.

“I’m just thinking.” Nate pushed the meat and potatoes around on his plate with the mismatched cutlery his mom put out when company wasn’t there. Coming home always felt like this, on the defensive in case his parents were worrying about him again. It was funny: they were so fucking proud of him, but they also still talked to him like he was the shy, anxious teenager they had dragged to a therapist’s office. Who’d refused to talk at all.

Nate had a lot of responsibilities resting on his shoulders. When the season ended those responsibilities, technically, evaporated. At least for a time. Once everyone packed up their lockers and went home to their respective states and provinces and countries, Nate was left alone in Philadelphia, the way he always was. The beginning of the offseason was a familiar routine. Rehab the injuries he inevitably played through by the end of the year. Take a couple of weeks to try to gain back some of the weight he’d lost. Start working out in the gym before eventually getting back on the ice. He usually spent some time at his parents’ house, because they never got to see him as often as they would have liked during the season, and because he was a dutiful son.

None of those things helped him feel any better about the season ending. None of those things actually made him feel any kind of hope about the next season on the horizon, but he did them anyway, because that’s what was expected of him.

“About what?” Mom asked, bringing another serving dish out of the kitchen.

It was always like this, too: too much food, too many things he shouldn’t be eating, even though he did need to pack on some pounds before training seriously started. “The summer. Next season. If the front office is going to make any trades at the draft, or whether they’re going to let us try again as a group next season. You know. The usual.”

He hated talking about this shit with them: they didn’t understand why he got like this in the offseason. They never had. It wasn’t worth trying to explain either, because that just made it worse. Theywantedto get it. But their jobs were so straightforward, with success measured in making a bus route on time or hitting your quotas at the shipyard. Not that either of his parents worked easy jobs. They’d labored hard to put food on the table when he was younger, to pay for his hockey fees and equipment. To make sure he was doing what he loved to do.

It just wasn’t the same. He made more money now than they’d probably made in their entire working careers, and it didn’t matter, because when it came down to it, he was a failure. He looked down at the brisket Mom had probably been cooking since earlier that afternoon and pushed at it with his fork again.

“Have you heard from Rachel at all?” Mom asked abruptly.

“What? No, why would she—why would you even ask?”

“I just worry that you’re lonely, honey. And I thought maybe... I don’t know. Maybe she would have missed you too.”

Nate could feel his face flushing, hot and red. Rachel was his ex-fiancée; they’d been together since high school. She had been planning their life together almost since that time. That hadn’t stopped her from abruptly dumping him two seasons ago, right around when they were supposed to have started planning the wedding.

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