Page 28 of Home Ice Advantage

He wondered what she would’ve thought if she’d been a fly on the wall of his office the other night. Probably better not to know.

Ryan pressed the ignition and pulled out of the space. Jesus, he hadn’t even had the time to think about the game and what he needed to talk to the guys about tomorrow. All right: that was it. First order of business, upon returning home, would be to lesson plan. Aronson, Shannon, all of it: that had to go on the back burner.

Easier said than done, but no one had ever said Ryan Sullivan was anything except stubborn as hell.

Eric woke up the next day to his mother’s phone call and a splitting headache, even though he hadn’t had anything to drink. For once in his life, he didn’t really feel like talking to her.

He answered anyway and they went through the usual greetings and pleasantries. He told her a little bit about the game, about the win. Even though her eyesight wasn’t very good anymore, she watched every match, and she usually had thoughts about them. This time, she wanted to know why he had been arguing with Ryan Sullivan on the bench.

“We just have really different views of the way things should be,” Eric said, which wasn’t untrue.

“You need to learn how to get along with your coworkers, even if they’re wrong,” his mother scolded him. There wasn’t any bite in it, and she’d been telling him the same thing since he was in primary school and getting detentions for fighting. Except in that situation, there had always been the unspoken exception, like kicking the shit out of a boy who’d thrown pennies at him.

Eric thought about the argument on the bench. The frustrating thing was that Sullivan wasn’t evenreallywrong. He’d been especially right about the coach’s challenge. Eric wasn’t about to tell his mother that, though. Even at eighty-two she had a steel trap memory, and he wasn’t going to give her future ammunition. Instead, he went for the tried-and-true tactic of changing the subject.

“What are your plans for today, ’Man?”

“I’m going to meet Hélène Roback for lunch.”

“Oh, that should be nice. Are you going to have someone drive you?”

“She’ll pick me up; she’s eighty-five but her eyes are better than yours, probably. And you know, we were talking earlier this week, and she has a granddaughter who’s living in Boston right now, she’s doing her residency at Boston Medical Center, and she’s a really lovely girlandshe’s going into derm—”

“Maman,no.”

“I could put you in touch if you wanted. I’m sure she’d love to meet you for coffee. She’s a Royal fan, but maybe she could put the rivalry aside for you.”

Eric pinched the bridge of his nose above the glasses. He loved his mom dearly, but she had her fatal flaws. One of them was constantly trying to marry him off to whichever daughter or granddaughter of her friends happened to be single and available. It had only gotten worse since his father’s death, like she had suddenly realized her own mortality and the fact that Eric would be alone when she died. She was determined to find someone to keep him company before she passed and channeled a good amount of her energy into that.

It was annoying, sure. But Eric knew it also came from a deep place of love and loneliness, so even when he got frustrated, he had to temper it. All his mother had ever wanted for him was to be happy, and this was the last gift she was trying to give him. If he thought about it too much—if he thought about losing her too—it was overwhelming. So he put up with her efforts at becoming his own personal shadchan without protesting too much.

It wasn’t like a relationship with a woman was out of the question. Eric liked women, had had short relationships with women. He’d only ever really had short relationships withanyone. But women or men, he didn’t really trust his mom’s taste, which tended to run to “is she available, Jewish and in possession of a pulse.”

Sometimes, if he thought about the nebulous future, it was nice to imagine having Shabbat dinner with some faceless, disembodied person, someone who would understand why he’d want to take trips to the cemetery to leave pebbles on his father’s grave.

In practice, all of the dates he’d gone on that his mother had set up had either ended disastrously when he’d put his foot in his mouth or fizzled out after the fifth or sixth follow-up when he and the woman inevitably realized that they had nothing in common besides their shared cultural background.

Unbidden, an image of Sullivan flashed across his vision. Eyes wide open, looking up at Eric with desire and a challenge he couldn’t resist meeting.

Goddamnit.

“’Man, I have to go get ready for work,” Eric said.

“Okay, tateleh. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he said, and added, “Can you cool it on trying to set me up with anyone for a bit? I’m still trying to adjust to this new work situation.”

“Of course,” his mother said, and Eric wanted to laugh: that would last all of a week, probably. She was almost as stubborn as Sullivan when she had something she wanted to dig her heels in about.

Unfortunately, work was no less frustrating. There was no game today, but they were still having a morning practice, which Eric usually loved. There was nothing like being on the ice again, even if it wasn’t in a playing capacity. Today he couldn’t enjoy it because no matter where he was, Sullivan was always fucking underfoot. It was almost like their playing days again, where no matter what open space he tried to find on the ice, Sullivan was there, blocking the way, being a fucking pest.

The last straw snapped while Eric tried to lead the forwards in one of the small-area drills that Sullivan was so fond of. He buzzed by close, like he was a fighter plane strafing a target. Eric gave him a shove in the shoulder and said, “Watch where you’re fucking going, Coach.”

Sullivan whirled around, those whiskey-brown eyes alight with a challenge. “Get out of my way, then. Coach.”

For a second Eric wished they were wearing pads so he could crosscheck Sullivan. Just a little bit. The players were staring at them, so he didn’t do anything else, even though he dearly wanted to flip his middle finger up at Sullivan to let him know what he thought about all of this. Instead, he turned back to the drill and passed a puck to Härmälä so that the team could begin the next phase of the practice.

It didn’t get any better, though.

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