Page 44 of Game On

Poppy, it turned out, was not a chew-on-things type of dog. Dorian had tested this theory over the weekend when he’d left her at home for half an hour, then an hour the next day, while he’d run errands. He’d returned to Poppy napping in the dog bed in his home office, no bite marks on shoes, pillows, or other chewable home décor. He didn’t want to leave her alone for hours while he was at work, though, so he planned on working from the office in the mornings and from home in the afternoon.

Mark sighed and passed a hand down his face. “You do know that your job description requires you to travel with the team occasionally, yes?”

“Sure.” Dorian shrugged. “But I can’t right now. I’ll go next time. Poppy should be in her new forever home by then.” He ignored the spike of pain in his chest the thought caused. “If you’d finally hire a replacement social media coordinator, you could’ve sent them.”

“I haven’t had time to even look at the draft job posting, never mind conduct interviews. I’ll get to it. Eventually. Maybe in the summer when things slow down a little.”

“Send Stanley to California then. He loves it there.”

“He’s covering tonight’s NHL home game against LA.”

“I can do that.”

Covering games was easy. Lurk around the player entrance to snap photos of the guys in their suits as they arrived because fans ate that shit up, especially on Instagram. Lurk around the locker room before the game started to take photos and videos of the guys warming up, because fans ate the shit up too, especially when the players were being goofy. And record the players leaving the locker room for the chute. Any game highlights that Dorian posted during the game were fed to him by the team photographer or the team analyst. Dorian quickly popped the stats and/or photo into a template and posted it within a minute and a half. And he could do that from home.

“Fine,” Mark said with a sigh. “Send Stanley in here, will you?”

Taking that for the dismissal it was, Dorian poked Stanley on the shoulder on his way back to his seat, waited for Stanley to lower his headphones, and said, “Mark wants to see you.”

Stanley gave him the stink eye. Par for the course, really.

Dorian ignored him and got back to work.

Before the Orcas had flown to California, he’d managed to film Matt’s introductory video as well as Assistant Coach Emery Stanton’s. And honestly? They were like night and day. Matt, stone-faced and calm. Emery, throwing around smiles and peace signs like he was married to them. Dorian had almost an hour of footage for each, and he’d spent the past couple of mornings splicing them into fun and coherent two-minute videos for social media.

Turned out the reason Matt had wanted to shoot at Kitsilano Beach Park was because it was his and Pierce’s favourite jogging place.

Who knew Matt was a sap?

Dorian had been watching Matt’s video to ensure he’d edited it correctly with smooth transitions before Mark had called him into his office, and he pressed Play to watch the last thirty seconds.

“I feel a lot of pressure,” the Matt Shore on screen said, walking along the paved path with Pierce at his side. Dorian had been in front of him, playing interviewer and camera guy in unison, rolling the wheeled tripod backward as they walked. “Coming in as a new coach to a team that had come in last in the entire AHL the previous season was a bit like being plunked into the middle of a novel without having read the first crucial fifty pages. But it also meant that I got to rewrite the Orcas’ story, erase those fifty pages and start over from scratch.”

“That’s a nice analogy,” Pierce said.

Matt looked incredibly pleased with himself at the praise. “I like to think so.”

They shared a fist bump.

“There is some truth to what everyone’s been saying,” Matt on screen said now as the shot jumped to Matt and Pierce standing on the sandy beach. “That I helped get the Orcas to where they are now. But it wasn’t just me. I’ve got an incredible coaching staff behind me, and you can’t forget the players either. They show up to perform, to play, to have fun, and that’s what I try to remind them of every day: if you’re not having fun playing hockey, then you’re doing it wrong.”

That had seemed like a good place to end the video, so it faded to black on Matt’s half-smile. It was a powerful statement. Hell, wasn’t that why Dorian had quit hockey after only one season when he’d been a kid? Because it wasn’t fun? His dad had kicked up a fuss about it, but considering Dorian had been enrolled in something new the following year anyway, what did it matter?

And the only reason Dorian had been in hockey in the first place was because one of his classmates was some kind of hockey prodigy, even at six years old. That classmate had been the son of one of Dorian’s father’s business associates, so of course Dad had to shove Dorian in hockey too in a show of one-upmanship that had backfired spectacularly when Dorian had proved to be as adept on skates as he’d been at making friends.

In other words, not at all.

Those were his parents, though. Obsessed with image to the point where they forced their kids into activities and extracurriculars just to prove that they were as cultured, worthy, and successful as their associates. But whereas Dorian had fought his parents until they’d dropped him as a lost cause, his older brother and sister had excelled.

As though his sister had heard him thinking about her from all the way in Toronto, a text from her popped up on his screen.

Adriana

I’ll be in Vancouver in a couple of weeks. Want to have lunch?

Dorian was tempted not to respond again—the whole tit-for-tat thing. He owed her two more unanswered texts. So he didn’t know what prompted him to reply. Perhaps it was the new artwork in his office that Jamie had gotten from his own sister, proving that sibling relationships didn’t have to be so awful.

Dorian

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