Page 60 of Home Ice Advantage

“Like I said inside,” Murph said. It was evasive; he didn’t look Ryan in the eye. “I just needed some air.”

“This whole night hasn’t been like you. You live for this shit. Meeting new people. Talking. And Iknowyou liked the food.” Ryan didn’t like how plaintive his voice sounded, but he had really just needed this day to go well. He’d needed Eric and Murph to hit it off, and they had done the furthest thing from that, and whatever Ryan had tried to do to fix it had only made it worse.

“The food was fucking great,” Murph acknowledged.

They stood in awkward silence, Ryan’s arms crossed over his chest, shivering a little. It was a bitter January, and the older he got, the less he could tolerate the cold. All of those years in Dallas had really ruined him.

They watched people walking by, heading into the restaurant, into other restaurants. It was the kind of area that had gotten trendier over the years; there were young parents with little babies, hipstery-looking twentysomethings and well-dressed older couples. And Ryan and Murph, both out of place without their jackets, eyes fixed firmly on their own feet.

“So what’s the deal with Aronson?” Murph asked, finally, his voice forced and casual.

Ryan’s head rocked back like Murph had actually slapped him, the shock of it vibrating through his whole body. “What do you mean, what’s the deal with Aronson?”

“Come on, Sully,” Murph said. He laughed, although there wasn’t much amusement in it. “We’ve been friends for how long? I know you. Whenever we talk anymore, he’s all you talk about. And I saw the way he looks at you. I saw the—your neck.”

Ryan stared at him. He shouldn’t have been surprised that Murph had figured it out. Not really. Murph was the man who knew him best of anyone. He’d known that Ryan was going to propose to Shannon before Ryan had even figured it out himself. From the very first day they’d met, Murph had justgottenhim. But still, this was so outside of Ryan’s own experience, that part of him had thought that maybe it wouldn’t be so obvious to Murph, either.

He exhaled. It felt strange to say it out loud, to acknowledge it at all. Especially to Murph. But he couldn’t lie to him. It just felt wrong.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “We haven’t actually talked about it at all.”

Murph couldn’t look him in the eye. “Okay,” he said.

“Okay?”

“I gotta...you know. Process it. You’re...?”

“Sleeping with him? Yeah.”

“Okay.”

Ryan kicked a pebble by his shoe tip, watched it spin out across the pavement. “Is that all?”

“Are you—what? Gay?”

He snorted. “No. I don’t know. I loved Shannon, you know? That was real. I never even thought about being...you know. With a man. Until he kissed me. I never thought about it at all, and it’s bizarre, but somehow it just—it just works.”

He was starting to realize that coming out, even in this limited way, wasn’t just a one-time thing. He hadn’t been nervous with Shannon, but today...it felt like picking at a scab and waiting for the wound to start bleeding again. He knew he had to look at Murph, but it was difficult to do it. It wasn’t that he was embarrassed about the whole thing with Eric—it had actually felt like a huge weight off of his shoulders to acknowledge it to anyone. It feltreal. But Murph had sounded so upset about it that Ryan worried about what was coming next. He had never had any indication that Murph was homophobic or bigoted in any way, but this was not what he had expected. He hadn’t expected Murph to look the way he did, almost like he was nauseous.

“Do you have a problem with it?” Ryan asked, finally. “Me? And him?”

“Not the way you’re worrying,” Murph said, again, with one of those short, humorless laughs. He looked up, finally, and for a second he looked so young and lost that Ryan was reminded of their first training camp together in Dallas, the first night they’d gotten fucked up down there together and Murph had confided in him that he was scared about being sent down, that he was scared he wouldn’t live up to his draft pedigree, and Ryan had held him while he puked and said,You’re going to be a fucking Hall of Famer, Murph, I know it.

And here they were, both of them Hall of Famers, and Murph was saying, “I never really had a way to put it into words, especially because of the way our lives ended up going, but now I—I don’t know, Sully. Do you ever think about what could have happened? What could have been?”

Ryan’s ears were ringing. It felt like he’d been slammed into the boards with a high hit. “What?”

“Us. Do you ever think about it. If we’d... I don’t know.”

“What?” Ryan said, again, stupidly.

Murph ran his hand through his hair. He looked like he was torn between laughter and tears, his face twisted up with the kind of emotion that Ryan had never seen from him. Murph was always smiling; Murph was the kind of guy who should always be smiling. “Ryan, you fucking idiot, I’m trying to tell you that this whole thing—you and Aronson—it made me think about things. About us, about the way we used to be together, about the way I’ve—and you know what? You’reitfor me. You always have been. I just didn’t know how to put it in words until we were married to other people. Until now.”

Ryan wondered if it was possible to have to go through concussion protocol without anyone having touched him. He felt concussed, like the world was spinning and he was going to lose the entire dinner he’d eaten. All he could say was the same thing he had been saying. “What?”

“Ryan,” Murph was saying. There was an urgency in his voice that hadn’t been there before. “Can you please...say something besides that?”

“I just—I don’t know what to say. What does this even mean? You’re married. You and Tara have been married for years. You have kids! Thekids are here, Murph, I’m seeing someone, I—what does thismean? What?”

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