Page 3 of Home Ice Advantage

Eric had worked with Leclerc for three long years, and he wasn’texpectingto be given his ex-boss’s job...but the fact was, he’d earned it. He’d earned it for no other reason than he’d bitten his fucking tongue and hadn’t decked that fuck right in his prissy mouth every time he’d wanted to, which was often.

His phone screen saidMameleh, which wasn’t a surprise, because his eighty-two-year-old mother was the only person who would ever call him at six in the morning, even on days when he was half-expecting the most important job offer of his life.

“Good morning, Maman.”

“Good morning, Éric,” she said, her voice a little wheezy.

The weirdest fucking thing about being in his forties—the age Maman and Papa had been when they’d had him—was realizing that his parents were aging and that they weren’t going to live forever. It had been a really rude awakening. A smack in the face when his father got sick two years ago and Eric had moved home in the offseason to help his mother take care of him until his death.

With his father gone, now it was the insidious little reminders, like how breathless his mother sounded when she’d been going up and down the stairs. That instead of the tall, sturdy woman who had terrified him and his friends when they’d been teenaged hooligans, she was now wizened and weak. Knowing that when he spoke to her, he was speaking to an old lady. Eric still felt as rootless and immature as he ever had, but the fact that his dad was gone, and his mom wasold—it didn’t feel real no matter how often he saw the evidence right in front of him.

“Are you getting enough sleep?” she demanded.

Eric thought about reminding her that she asked him the same question every time she called, but instead, he said, “Yes, ’Man.”

“Why are you up so early?”

“Because you called me at six a.m., ’Man.”

“You were awake before that. I can tell.”

“Can’t get anything by you,” Eric said, smiling as he poured his coffee. Probably to an outsider, it would have sounded short, annoyed. Impatient with a meddling old woman. He couldn’t accurately convey how far from the truth that was.

“What happened with that shande?” She slipped out of the French they usually used and into the Yiddish that emerged when she had particularly strong feelings about something. Today, it was her disapproval of Harrison Leclerc. “They fired him, didn’t they? So how is training camp still running?”

“They fired him. The rest of the coaching staff have been sharing the responsibilities until they hire a new head coach, which they’ll have to do soon, because the season’s right around the corner.”

“Why haven’t they offered you the job?” She sounded annoyed, more annoyed than she usually did these days.

“I don’t know, ’Man. I mean...they’re not obligated to give me the job.”

“You’ve been there for four years. You’regoodat your job, tateleh. You’re better than that man ever was.”

Eric thought about Harrison Leclerc—so sure of himself, so serious about implementing his system, about making sure that everyone played the right way—and the way things had come to a head in such an abrupt manner.

Leclerc hadn’t just gotten himself fired. He’d gotten into a screaming match with Caleb Cook, the Beacons’ hotshot sophomore who wasn’t such a hotshot after he’d had a disappointing rookie year yo-yoing between the big leagues and the Beacons’ minor league affiliate. At one point, it had looked like they were going to come to blows before Eric and another player got in between them.

“Well,” he said, “that man is a prick, unfortunately. But so am I.”

“You arenota prick. The boys like you.”

She was stubborn, and she was loyal, he had to give her that much. “I know, ’Man. But that’s not enough to get the job. Hey—are you okay? You need anything?”

“No, I’m fine.”

She wouldn’t have told him anyway, even if she did need something. It had been hard for her after his father died, alone in the too-big house in Côte Saint-Luc. Eric did what he could. He had hired a caretaker to look in on her a few times a week, but his mother was wily and would pretend that she had gone out for errands when Cecile arrived.

When it was too much for her to make it to the grocery store, she would accept the deliveries he scheduled through an app, but that was about it. There wasn’t much he could do this far away, and as ever, he wondered whether he was doing the right thing, working a job that took him all over the continent but so rarely home to her.

“Okay, well, you just let me know if you change your mind,” Eric said, making a mental note to order her a Sunday delivery with some cupboard and fridge staples.

“And you let me know what’s going on with your job. I’ll come down there and give them a piece of my mind if I have to.”

He laughed at the mental image, all five foot seven of Rosa Aronson, showing up at the Spectrum to give Joe Conroy a piece of her mind. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself, but your support is appreciated. Love you, ’Man. Hang in there, okay?”

“Yes, yes,” she said, and he could picture her dismissively waving her hand at him. “I love you too, Éric.”

Eric poured his coffee into the thermos. He had lived in Boston during the season for three years and he had never understood the local obsession with Dunkin’ Donuts. It tasted like sugary, watered-down milk.

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