Page 76 of It's Mother-Pucking Christmas!

29

DAKOTA

“Oh my gosh!” Gracie exclaimed as the huge men on the ice collided with each other.

Rich pulled the Avengers player off, yelling something about monkeys, then the Icebreakers scored their second goal.

“Whoo!” Gracie cheered.

I was furious.

“What they hell are they doing? They’re attacking Ryder instead of playing the fucking game. If they harm one hair on his fucking head I swear to fucking god…” I swore, hauling myself upright, holding onto to the handrails as I toddled my drunk ass down the steep stadium seats.

“I don’t think this is a good idea.” Gracie raced behind me.

“I’m going to beat the shit out of that fucker Wagner.”

“Ooh my gosh.” Gracie hurried after me, followed by her pugs.

“Yeah, you tell ’em, Dakota!” Granny Murray whooped. “I got Mace too.”

“How did you get that in the stadium?” Gracie was apprehensive.

“I told them.” She shrugged as I staggered down the steps to the Arctic Avengers penalty box. “I told them I had Mace up my snatch but that they’d have to dig in there. The security guy was hot. Too bad he didn’t want to go spelunking. His loss.”

“Excuse me.Excuse me,” I called to the Arctic Avengers coach.

He ignored me.

“You come to show me your tits?” One of the players leered at me.

“Don’t talk to her like that!” one of my cousins, not Gracie—apparently I’d attracted quite the crowd of my family—screamed back at him.

I addressed the coach. “Hey! Asshole in the purple tie.”

That got his attention.

“Yeah, you,” I hollered. “I have been a longtime fan for years, and you need to get your goddam players under control. They need to play hockey and stop trying to start fights we all know they won’t win.”

Gracie tried to grab me. I shrugged her off.

“You all have sucked for the past year, and you’re not going to go after Ryder because you can’t train your fucking players.”

“Fucking uppity cunt,” the coach yelled at me, cursing as Ryder scored another goal, tying the game.

“What the hell did you say to her?” My female family members crowded around, itching for a fight. Aunt Gianna took off her hoop earrings.

I tuned them out.

I wasn’t thinking, probably had too much to drink to think, when I saw the two Arctic Avengers defensemen, known for dirty fighting—that’s why we loved them—barreling toward Ryder.

If there weren’t the tall wall behind him or he weren’t in all that gear, he might have been able to get out of the way.

“They’re going to hurt him!” Gracie cried.

“The fuck they are.” I jumped into the Arctic Avengers penalty box. Ignoring the angry curses of the hockey players, I barreled through them and leapt onto the ice

“Motherfucker!” I screamed, holding my Stanley cup high. It came down on the nearest purple-shirted player, crunching into the soft part of his face under the helmet as the other player spun away from Ryder to attack me.

---