Page 16 of Home Ice Advantage

“Divorced,” Dad muttered. “Divorced! I never thought I’d live to see the day that a child ofminewas getting divorced.”

“Mark,” Chelsea said, “be kind. I’m sure Ryan’s very upset about it.”

“He doesn’t seem very upset about it, Chelsea.”

Ryan glanced at his watch. He probably had to suffer through another hour or two of this, and then he could go. It was like this every time he came home, and every time he thought maybe it would be different, his family proved him wrong. Well: he didn’t have a choice. He was here now, and they weren’t going anywhere. Ryan took a seat on the couch, as far from Dad as he could get, and prepared to be grilled.

Guess where I am, he texted Shannon, even though he knew it was a bad idea. Being back here made him miss her, the solidarity they’d had even in that very specific misery.All your favorite people are here.

Don’t talk to me unless I reach out first. Or go through my lawyer. You have her contact info, Shannon responded almost immediately.

Ryan sighed, locked his phone, and looked down at his hands. It was stupid to have hoped she’d still be there when he needed her: she wasn’t his wife anymore, even if they hadn’t signed the papers yet, and it was at least 95% his fault that she wasn’t. The realization was unpleasant, along with the realization that he’d been avoiding thinking about it as much as he could.

That was it, though: he was alone, and he was at home with his family. There’d be no getting out of it now.

Chapter Four

October

Sometimes, even though he generally hated most people, Eric wished that he had a better social life in Boston. It was partially his own fault for being busy all of the fucking time, and also partially his own fault for being a prickly, unapproachable jackass. Once you hit a certain age, it was hard to make friends that you hadn’t dragged with you from your youth. And sure, Eric had his hockey buddies, but they were scattered to all corners of the continent, some of them in Canada, some of them in America, none of them in Boston.

Sometimes, he and Petey would go out and grab a beer. As fond as he was of his colleague, Petey was also very...low energy. They had shit in common to talk about, but sometimes Eric didn’t want to talk about work. It was a strange conundrum, really. When his mom was trying to set him up with girls, all he wanted to do was talk about hockey. But when he was hanging out with the boys, all he wanted to do was talk about other shit. Or play pool. Or listen to music. Or maybe that was just Eric and his contrary fucking nature again.

Sometimes, against his better judgment, he just went out alone. It was a half-hour walk if he wasn’t hurrying to one of the few dive bars in the city that still felt like a dive bar, even if it had the kind of notoriety that meant you also needed to avoid hipsters while you were drinking. The walls behind the bar and in the bathroom were scribbled over with messages and caricatures and other invectives lost to time. It had pool tables, and Eric was competitive enough that if he could bully a stranger into losing a game against him, he would. The drinks were cheap. The bartenders weren’t too chatty.

So he walked down Fourth Street, from South End to Southie proper. As he walked, he took a quick picture of the last lingering fall leaves clinging to the trees, the moon in the sky behind them. It was a cliché shot, but he posted it anyway before shrugging his shoulders and heading into the bar.

Whitey’s was loud and crowded as it always was, and Eric elbowed his way up to the pocked and scratched wooden bar to order a whiskey and beer. While he was waiting for the bartender to come and take his tab, he glanced down the bar and did a double take. He recognizedthatgray fucking head, unfortunately. But he’d already paid for his drink, and he would be damned if Ryan fucking Sullivan chased him out ofhis bar.

If he played his cards right, maybe Sullivan wouldn’t even notice.

Of course, Sullivan looked up and saw him, and narrowed his eyes. Even in the dim light of the bar, Eric noticed the line at the corner of his mouth tighten. A face that was usually laughing twisted into a frown. Sullivan slid off of the barstool and almost immediately disappeared in the crowd of taller, standing patrons. The visual effect was so funny that Eric almost laughed himself, except he had the distinct impression that Sullivan was headed his way, and he didn’t want to encourage him.

“What areyoudoing in Southie?” Sullivan demanded.

“I live in South End. It’s not that far a walk. This is one of my favorite dive bars. What areyoudoing in Southie?”

“I grew up here,” Sullivan said. His face was a little flushed; Eric wondered how long he’d been here, how much he’d been drinking. “I was visiting my family.”

Eric wasn’t stupid. He could put two and two together aboutvisiting my familyand then immediately afterdrinking at a dive bar. “So you decided to come and get drunk instead?”

“I’m notdrunk,” Sullivan said, waving his hand emphatically, and Eric grabbed it so he wouldn’t smack the arm of a woman who was trying to squeeze by them.

Sullivan looked up at him sharply and flexed his hand; his skin felt very warm under Eric’s fingers. He didn’t pull away.

Eric let go. “Okay, toasty.”

“Oh Jesus, Aronson, you are just...”

The bartender slid Eric’s beer across the counter to him, and he took it with a lift of his hand in acknowledgment. “I’m what?”

“A pain in my ass,” Sullivan muttered. For once, he didn’t have the beaming, optimistic face that he wore around the guys at the rink. Eric wondered if he was always like this when he was alone. Whether there was a darker underbelly to his sparkling personality. Anyone who played the way he had couldn’t have been all shitting rainbows and unicorns.

“That’s mutual,” Eric said, and Sullivan surprised him by laughing.

He had a wheezy little chuckle, as breathless as he was after repeatedly running the steps at whatever rink they happened to be playing in before every morning skate. “You really come all the way to fucking Southie to drink?”

“I like to play pool,” Eric said, a little defensively.

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