He would have tried to smooth it out somehow, made a dumb joke or asked Gabby if she wanted to go play Skee-Ball at the back of the restaurant, but just as he was about to his dad turned to Ryan, his focus like a laser beam across the ragged checkered oilcloth. “So what was going on with you out there, kid?” he asked, leaning back on the hind legs of the rickety wooden chair. “Kind of bit it today, huh?”
Ryan felt Gabby stiffen, like his dad had reached across the table and smacked him; he shrugged, kept his voice light so she’d know the ribbing was no big deal. It just meant his dad was interested, in his hockey game and in him by extension. He actually kind of liked it sometimes. “Yeah, it was a bummer,” Ryan said. “Thanks for coming, though.”
“If you want me to come back, buddy, you’re gonna have to start giving me something to see.” Ryan’s dad shook his head, smirking a little. “You guys looked like a bunch of sad sacks out there, the lot of you. Getting taken down by a bunch of soft-handed, coddled private school kids?”
Ryan resisted the urge to remind his dad that two years ago he’d been one of those soft-handed, coddled private school kids himself. He didn’t mind his dad’s needling—after all, the guy just wanted him to get better—but there was something about him doing it in front of Gabby that made it seem less harmless than Ryan knew it actually was. “They outskated us, I guess,” he said with a sheepish smile.
His dad wasn’t willing to let it go quite so easily, though. “What was that mess there at the end of the second period?” he asked. “You looked like a bunch of damn ballerinas.”
Ryan’s smile dropped a bit. “Well, Coach Harkin said—”
“Coach Harkin doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing,” his dad interrupted. “That guy’s a joke. Your grandma could coach a better hockey team than him.”
“Coach Harkin spends a lot more time watching me play hockey than you do, Dad.”
That was the wrong thing to say; his dad’s face darkened, and Ryan knew he’d probably gone too far. “Well, that sounds peachy for you and Coach Harkin,” he said. “Maybe Coach Harkin wants to pay for all your damn gear from now on, too. Hell, maybe Coach Harkin wants to be your damn father.”
Ryan grimaced, eyes cutting over to Gabby. Shit, this was embarrassing. He needed to dial it back. “Dad,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm and even. “Come on, that’s not what—”
“I’ll tell you, kid, I think I’m about done sitting here listening to this shit from you,” Ryan’s dad said, still scowling.
Ryan realized too late that this was about to go from bad to worse; he was tired, he hadn’t thought fast enough to salvage it. “Look, Dad, I’m sorry,” he started. “You’re right.”
“No, forget it,” his dad said, shoving his chair back, the legs screeching against the sticky wooden floor. “Really. I’ll see you around, kid.”
Then he got up and left.
GABBY
Gabby stared at the entrance to the restaurant for a moment, then looked back at Ryan. “Did your dad just dine and dash?” she asked. It was so far outside her understanding of things that parents did that she sort of couldn’t comprehend it. If his dad had turned into a T. rex, ripped the roof of the pizza place clean off, and eaten it, she would not have been more surprised.
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “I think he did.”
“Is he coming back?”
Ryan rubbed a hand over his face. “Probably not,” he said after a moment. “He does stuff like that sometimes, if we piss him off bad enough. He left my mom and me in Princeton once. We wound up taking New Jersey Transit home.”
“He did what?” Gabby said, but Ryan looked so stricken that she immediately moved on. “Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath and trying to sound casual, trying to sound for his sake like this was no big deal. “Want to just call your mom, then? She’s probably not that far; she could come back and get us.”
“Yeah,” Ryan said, wriggling around to dig in his pocket, then swearing. “Phone’s in my hockey bag,” he said. “In my mom’s car.”
“Use mine,” Gabby said, pulling it out of her backpack. The battery was low—she’d worn it down fiddling around on Instagram at the game—but it had enough juice for a phone call.
But Ryan shook his head. “I don’t actually know her number,” he admitted.
“Your mom’s number?” Gabby asked incredulously. “Wasn’t it like, the first thing she had you memorize as a kid? Where you lived and her phone number?”