“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.
“Two girls. Violet’s six and Ruby is four,” he says with fondness. “They’re with their mom back in Boston.”
“That’s tough,” I say. “Will she have primary custody?”
Ryker shrugs. “Not sure yet. We were going to try to work out a joint share. She keeps them during the season and I’d have them in the summer, but not sure that’s going to work out.”
“Why’s that?” I ask, and then turn to acknowledge the bartender who brings my burger over.
As I pull the bun off and load it up with ketchup and mustard, Ryker says, “Well, the man that my wife was sleeping with also happened to be a teammate of mine on the Eagles.”
“What the fuck?” I say in surprise as I slap the bun back on my burger.
“Yup. One of my much younger teammates. He’s fucking nineteen years old,” Ryker says, shaking his head with a grimace.
“That’s cougarific,” I mutter.
“Tell me about it. Don’t get me wrong…Hensley, my soon-to-be ex-wife, has it going on in the looks department. She’s hot as fuck, but come on…she’s thirty-one with two little girls and this fucker still gets acne.”
I snicker and pick up my burger to take a bite. That is some whacked shit.
“The worst part is she now wants to travel with him when he’s on the road. She can’t do that with the girls because they’re in school. So she called me the other day and wanted to discuss the possibility of me taking them full-time,” Ryker says, and then picks up a french fry off his plate to wave at me. “I’d kill to have the girls permanently with me, but fuck…I travel too. What am I supposed to do with them when I’m gone?”
“A nanny,” I tell him pointedly.
“Is that what you do for your boy?” Ryker asks, and when I blink at him in surprise, he says, “I had heard about the accident…league grapevine and all. I’m really sorry about that, Zack.”
I nod and give him a smile to let him know it’s okay. “Yeah…well, I hired a nanny to watch Ben when I’m not able to and she’s been working out great so far. I can get you the name of the service my sister used to find her.”
“That would be awesome,” Ryker says gratefully. “It may be moot. I mean, maybe Hensley will come to her senses and realize the girls are more important than her chasing around a young piece of ass.”