Page 44 of Mr. Charming

Tweetie steals the puck and skates down the ice, dodging and deflecting, shooting it to Henry, who passes it back to Tweetie before he circles the net and shoots it in.

Conor shouts, “Fuck you!”

Tweetie laughs, and he and Henry do a bit of a celebration on the ice, throwing their goal in Conor’s face.

Take that, Bud Caldron.

The team takes a break to get a drink, and Coach Buford and the rest of the coaching staff instruct them on the next drill. Fletcher and I sit on the bench, waiting for things to start up again.

I pull out my phone, ready to film some amateur videos to put on socials. They’ve been going well. Everyone loved seeing Tweetie coming off the ice after his hat trick. I took off the sound, and a bunch of the female fans commented on the look he gave the camera.

“Getting good stuff?” Bud sits down next to me. He’s not in a suit today, but in jogging pants with a matching zip-up sweatshirt.

“Yep.”

“Good. Good. You’ll send it to me. I saw your video from the other night and all the comments it got. You’ve got an eye for this stuff.”

Does he expect me to say thank you over his judgmental comment that he’s shocked I can do my job? I bite my tongue, having learned a long time ago that if I keep fighting upstream, I’m not going to get anywhere. I need to swim with the current if I want to make progress here.

“So, I was thinking,” he says, and I inwardly groan. “Let’s narrow the field even more. Base the social media around Tweetie. Everyone loves him.”

“And just forget the rest of the players?” I try to keep the skepticism out of my tone, but this man makes it impossible with his ludicrous ideas.

“Think about it.” He puts his hands in the air as if a video is about to play.

Is he sane?

“The oldest player in the league.”

“He’s not the oldest player in the league.”

Bud sneers at me. Okay, I don’t need a call up to Mr. Herington, so I zip my mouth.

“As of right now, he doesn’t have a team to play for next year.”

I feel the first roar of the lion coming to life inside me. “You’d be an idiot not to sign him again.”

He turns all the way in his seat to face me. “Do you think you’re more qualified than me to say who should play for the Falcons?”

I grab my coffee, my hand tightening as I tell myself that I cannot throw it in his face. “Sorry, go on with your vision.”

He smiles like the popular girl in high school who just got her way. “Everyone loves an underdog.”

“Underdog? Tweetie?” My voice gets a little too shrill, and some of the players and Coach Buford look in our direction.

Swim with the school of fish, Tedi. Swim downstream with them.

“Perhaps I should make a call up to headquarters. Maybe we need someone else who can see my vision.”

He’s threatening me, and I mentally calculate how much savings I have in the bank if I tell him to go fuck himself and be done with this job. It’s costing me my mental stability anyway. But if I tell Bud to go screw himself, my name will be blacklisted all over the league, and this is what I love, so I swallow my pride.

I give Bud a smile I hope seems sincere. “I’m just saying that I think having the fans getting to know all the players is better for the team’s long-term success.”

He waves me off. “All you younger generations bounce around to whatever’s hot at the moment.” He moves to put his hand on my knee, but I slide it away from him before he has the chance. He pulls back his hand. “I have faith that next year, you’ll have a fresh idea on what kind of campaign we should do, whether Tweetie’s here or not.”

There go my teeth grinding again.

“So, just Tweetie. Forget your entire first line.”

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