been back, he’d been on my mind constantly. Every place I went, I saw through his eyes, heard his snarky hilarious commentary. I guess when you went home to the place you had your first broken heart, it was normal to think about it.
“Driving without a map was never my strong point,” I replied to Vinny, just as the door to my office opened and Ryan came in.
“No,” he agreed, though he couldn’t have any idea what we were talking about. “Eric likes to have a plan. Likes to know exactly what is going to happen, when it’s going to happen, and who is going to be there when it does. It’s so boring.” He rolled his eyes as he gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and squeezed my ass.
That last bit was for Vinny. Ryan thought it was funny to make him uncomfortable. Too bad for him, Vinny could give a shit. He’d confided in me that he’d fooled around with some of his buddies in his youth. “There’s nothing new under the sun,” he’d said.
You know how people said that going into business with your friends was a bad idea? Going into business with your on-again, off-again boyfriend was a worse one. I wasn’t sure if we were on or off right now. According to Ryan, we were “taking a break” while we got used to living full-time in the same town, a novelty for us.
We’d been long-distance during college and then a similar arrangement after I was playing for a living. I wasn’t exactly out publicly but we’d lived together whenever he liked the town I’d been assigned to and met up on the road when we could. After fifteen years, I was getting tired of it.
Part of it was my own damn fault, I was well aware of that. I hated fighting, and over the years I’d gotten kind of worn down. Fighting for my spot on the team, fighting Father Time, and fighting for our relationship when he left. So each time he’d returned, I hadn’t had the strength to fight him, and I let him come back.
There was enough good to keep us together. When it worked, it was easy. Ryan was handsome and we looked good together. Both over six feet tall, his dark hair and brown eyes complimented my white-blond hair and blue eyes. He had a square jaw and full lips, and the confidence that comes from never doubting your attractiveness and never being the dumpee, but always the dumper. Was that enough? From what I’d seen of other people’s relationships, plenty of people thought so. I couldn’t help wanting more, and that was one of the main things that kept breaking us up. Ryan said I was an idealist and foolish for thinking there should be more. He’d accused me of wanting some fairytale soulmate.
Joke was on him, I hadn’t believed in soulmates since I was seventeen. Deep inside though, I wanted to.
There’d been a four-year stretch where we’d barely spoken. He’d met some up-and-coming film producer at a party in L.A. and had moved in with him within two weeks. The guy had some success at Sundance, but his two attempts at big-budget success had failed. According to the explanation Ryan had given me when he came strolling back, it was because someone somewhere was jealous and had it out for the guy, but failure in L.A. was contagious and the guy had never really managed to get traction in the big leagues.
Then again neither had I. Oh sure, I’d been called up to the show a few times near the end of the season when injuries had taken their toll on the big boys, but my time in the NHL had always been short-lived. And as the years had rolled on by, the call-ups had come further and further apart. My contracts got shorter and shorter, and I’d been passed from club to club like a joint at a high school party. One memorable season I’d been traded twice only to spend a few too many games watching the boys play from the press box as a healthy scratch.
I didn’t blame the coaches. That’s just how the game went. The AHL was a development league, meant to sort the wheat from the chaff, the boys from the men, and train the next generation of hockey superstars. After a certain number of years, you were as developed as you were going to get.