I feel a lot more pressure playing as a goaltender than I did as a center. If I play well, it’s all on me, but if I don’t…that’s all on me, too.
My teammates fire at Vic, pucks hitting his padded chest or getting past him into the goal. He’s scowling, because while he’s a happy-go-lucky guy, he doesn’t like being the butt of anyone’s joke. He totally brought this on himself, though. Vic runs his mouth too much.
“You suck!” a defender named Pike yells as a puck slides through an opening between Vic’s legs.
“You get over here and try, motherfucker,” Vic calls back, waving his stick in the air.
I see movement up in the owner’s box, and I look up to see our team owner, Olivier Durand, sitting there watching us. He’s wearing a dark suit and a huge grin. I raise a hand in a wave and he waves back.
Durand’s a good guy. He bought the Chicago Blaze because he loves hockey, and he’s been willing to invest in the team and trust his coaching staff. Other teams have micromanaging owners or worse, cheap ones.
When it’s my turn, everyone turns to watch me shoot.
“He couldn’t score in a whorehouse with a hundred bucks in his hand,” Knox cracks.
I ignore him, skating from side to side with the puck. The other guys just fired from a stationary spot, but I need to handle it from an offensive standpoint a little bit before I shoot it.
As I skate closer to Vic, he crouches down and starts grumbling. “No, dude, no close range.”
He’s so focused on staying upright and protecting his junk that it’s easy to slide one in on his left side. The guys all cheer and razz Vic even harder.
In the second round, the guys start firing at Vic three and four players at a time. He’s got pucks bouncing off him all over the place. Then everyone lines up together and we all shoot at the same time. He gets hammered and ends up falling on his back, laughing.
“This’ll be on YouTube within an hour,” Knox says, holding up his cell phone, which he recorded the last shot with.
“Fuck all you fuckers,” Vic says, pulling off the blocker and trapper I loaned him and dropping them on the ice.
“Don’t just drop my trapper on the ice, prick,” I call out to him, skating over to pick up my gloves. “It takes me forever to break these in, and I take care of them.”
“Sorry, man,” he says, skating to the bench and taking the rest of his gear off.
He’s not sorry. I was right not to loan him my mask, which I had customized with red and orange airbrushed flames.
I shake my head and leave the ice, heading for the locker room. Once there, I shower, change into shorts and a T-shirt, and leave my gear for the equipment guys to take care of.
I’m walking out to my car while checking my phone and see that I have a missed call from my brother Logan. Once in my car, I push a button on the dash of my Tesla SUV to call him back.
“Hey, man,” he says in answer.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“I need a favor.”
“More season tickets?”
“Nah, the four you got me are all I need.”
“Okay, what is it?”
There’s a pause before he says, “Uh…I was hoping we could talk about it in person.”
“Fantastic,” I deadpan. “Are you gonna ask me to donate an organ or something?”
“Nah, nothing painful.”
The line goes quiet again and I say, “Okay, give me something. Whatever you need, you know I’ll do it.”
“I hope so.” He clears his throat. “It’s actually work related.”
That perks my ears up, since Logan is a detective for the Chicago Police Department. “Oh. And it’s something I can help with?”
“It’s something I think only you can help with.”
“Huh. I’m intrigued.”
“Can you come by my office tomorrow afternoon around two?”
I have a massage scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, because the older I get the sorer I get from hockey, but I can reschedule it.
“Yeah, I can do that.”
“Great, thanks man.”
“See you then.”
I end the call and take an exit to stop by a farmer’s market I like downtown. I plan to pick up some fresh vegetables to grill with the New York strip steak I’ve got waiting in my fridge for dinner tonight.
My wife Lily was always the cook in our relationship, and I was always in charge of the grill. I’d be out cooking meat with a cold beer in hand while she chopped stuff for salad or whipped up scalloped potatoes in the kitchen. Since she passed away almost three years ago, I’ve had to learn a few cooking skills, but I still stick to the grill as much as possible.
It’s not the same, of course. Sitting down to eat alone was really hard that first year. I’d look at her empty seat in the silent dining room and miss her so badly I couldn’t even finish eating sometimes. So I started eating in the living room, watching TV with either a game or ESPN on.
The therapist I saw after Lily’s death told me there are no rights and wrongs with grieving. She said making new routines helps some people.
It helped me, but not enough. Everywhere I went in the house Lily and I built together, I saw reminders of the life we had and the future we thought we had time for.
Empty bedrooms we hoped to fill with kids one day. The bed she fell in love with at a little furniture store in San Francisco that I paid an absolute fortune to have shipped to Chicago, just because I knew no other bed would make her face light up like that one did. The corner of our great room where we put up a Christmas tree together every year.
For a couple years, I held on to the house because even though it was painful, it was where I felt closest to her. But when I finally sold it and bought a lakefront apartment, I felt like I left some of the grief behind.
“Jonah West,” one of the vendors at the farmer’s market says when I bring a bag of veggies up to pay for them. “Nice game the other night, my friend. All of Chicago was cheering when you blocked that last shot.”
“Thanks, Cal. I was feeling that dive in my back the next day.”
He chuckles and gives me my total. I pass him some cash, saying, “Keep it. Thanks, man.”
“Thank you. And good luck against Philly.”
“Appreciate it, man.”
I drive home from there, take a run around the lake, get a shower and then make my dinner. When I’m not on the road for work, this is what I usually do in a day, unless I’m hanging out with the guys.
This is my life now. Hockey, fishing trips with my brother or friends, and downtime spent mostly by myself. And I’m okay with it. For me, it’s Lily or no one.
Chapter Three
Reyna
“Holy shit, you’re Rey Diaz?”
A detective gapes at me from behind the front desk of the Investigations Division at a downtown Chicago Police Department precinct. He eyes me up and down and the secretary sitting behind the desk he’s standing next to rolls her eyes in my direction.
“I am,” I say, giving the secretary a small smile.
“I, uh…” the detective runs a hand down his face, grinning. “Sorry, I was expecting you to be…a dude, you know? Not—”