Zack(56)

Patting my back pocket to check that I have my wallet, I leave my hotel room, locking the door behind me. The game today against the Dragons was an afternoon game and most of the guys have gone out for a night of partying. Alex and Garrett tried to get me to go out with them, but I just didn’t feel like it. I was looking forward to a quiet dinner, a long Facetime session with Ben before he went to bed, and then going to bed myself, where I may or may not fantasize about Kate and jerk off to the memories I’ve made with her so far.

I catch a quick elevator down to the lobby and head through it, straight to the hotel’s restaurant. I don’t even feel like trying to go out somewhere to eat. As I approach the hostess stand, I see Ryker sitting at the bar just behind her. Before the hostess can even greet me, I say, “I see a friend in there. I’m just going to eat at the bar.”

“Enjoy your meal, sir,” she says with a smile.

I walk to the bar, figuring conversation with Ryker will be much better than eating alone. This road trip is his first time suiting up with the team. He didn’t play, of course, and won’t see much ice time unless Max has a tough back-to-back schedule or gets injured. I’d sat with him on the plane trip out here and he seems pretty cool. We didn’t talk much and slept most of the way, but in what little we talked about hockey, I found him to be gracious about his descent from top starter with the Eagles to backup goalie with the Cold Fury. He knows his career is coming to an end and he’s just trying to squeeze another year or two out until retirement.

“What’s up, Brick?” I say as I clap him on the shoulder. He turns his head slightly and gives me a smile.

“Not much,” he says, kicking at the stool next to him a little so it pushes back from the bar. “Just drinking a beer and getting something to eat.”

I sit down on the offered stool and the bartender comes over, placing a menu in front of me. “I’ll take a Heineken,” I tell him as I open the menu. Then, looking over at Ryker, I ask, “What did you order?”

“Just a burger. I’m not picky,” he says, lifting his glass and taking a swallow of beer. After setting his glass down, he says, “You played great today.”

“Thanks, man,” I say as I close the menu and set it back down.

“This is the part where you tell me I did a great job riding the pine,” he says with a mischievous grin.

I laugh at him, shaking my head. He’s referencing, of course, the fact that he’d sat on the bench during the game. In most arenas, the backup goalies never even sit on the actual bench on the ice, but rather get fully suited up to just sit in the locker room on the chance they’ll be called in to the game. I imagine it was a lonely existence and Ryker has to be pretty disconnected from the ebb and flow of the game while watching it on TV.

He’s not put out by it at all, though. He’s self-deprecation at its finest, and I admire that.

“You have a good attitude about it all,” I say. “It’s impressive. I hope I’m as gracious when my career starts winding down, and that’s not too far off.”

“I knew it was coming,” he says with a shrug. “Known it since I started in this league thirteen years ago.”

The bartender comes back with my beer and Ryker’s burger, and I order up the same. After he leaves, I turn to Ryker, curious to learn more about him. “So are you married?”

“Married, but in the process of a divorce,” he says with a grim smile.

“Irreconcilable differences?”

“I guess that’s a way to look at it. I wanted to sleep with my wife, she wanted to sleep with a different man. I couldn’t reconcile myself to those differences,” he says drily as he doctors up his burger, and I can’t help but laugh.

“Damn, man,” I say sympathetically. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all good,” he says. “We drifted apart long before this happened. Should have happened sooner, but you get caught up with pregnancies and kids, and next thing you know…you’re staring at a stranger.”

I pick up my beer and take a sip, considering this. No doubt Gina and I drifted apart a bit after Ben was born. We just sort of thought that was the natural way of things, children coming between the parents’ bond. I have to wonder…would we have continued drifting? Would either of us have looked at another person and wondered if they held something better? I want to think a resounding no, but I’ve had so many doubts and insecurities about what we really had that I just can’t know for sure. That saddens me greatly.

“Tell me about your kids,” I ask Ryker, and the man’s face lights up brighter than Rockefeller Center at Christmas.