Page 26 of Taking It To Overtime
“I didn’t carry a torch.” The response is automatic.
“Yeah, okay, and you’re also not a terrible liar,” Spags winks. “It’s okay, you know.” My teammate continues as if he can’t hear the way my heart is beating its way out of my chest. “We all have someone who pushes all the right buttons. You could do a lot worse than Vera Novak. I mean, she’s probably the hottest—” he clears his throat at my glare, “I meant it as a compliment.”
“It’s not one.”
“Calling a woman attractive isn’t a compliment?”
“No,” I say, jamming my hands onto my hips so I won’t fist them. If I fist them, I’ll be tempted to punch my assistant and I don’t think that would set a good example for the teens, no matter how many points I have this season. Sometimes being a role model sucks.
“So, should I say she isn’t hot?”
My altruism is coming back to bite me in the ass. I took the kid in as a favor to Vic and Tristan, and now I’m going to go down on a murder charge.
“No.” I growl that word as Spags tips his head back and howls. The sound reverberates off the metal beams on the ceiling and a bunch of the kids turn to give us interested glances even as they pick up their pace.
“You’re so easy to rile up,” Spags says, shuffling his feet in a move that reminds me of break-dancers. For a moment, I picture him losing an edge, slamming down onto his stomach. I don’t want him hurt, just embarrassed. Shocked into shutting his mouth. Besides, fantasies don’t count, and I’d nevermakehim fall. On purpose.
Probably.
“Don’t talk about her,” I say, raising my arm to look at my watch.
“You got it, Dad,” Spags winks.
I call the run to a halt.
It’s only the first day, and I spend some time talking to the kids about what to expect from the week. It will not be all fun and games. This isn’t summer camp. Spags and I—and the three other coaches we have on hand—are going to be running drills until they drop. We aren’t teaching them basics. We are going to be honing specific skills to help them improve their speed, agility, endurance, and stick handling on the ice. These kids are going to sweat, their muscles are going to shake, they’re going to be cursing my name by Friday. And when their seasons kick off this year, they’ll be showing new skills on the ice.
For now, we split them into teams and assign each a basic color. They get new practice jerseys and I send them off to the locker room to gear up. From here on out, they work as a unit. They succeed and fail together. Players can be awarded points for improvement, determination, hard work. By the end of theweek, one team will win the Stanley Tucci Water Bottle, aka a new practice water bottle covered in gold with their names on it—thank my mom for that one.
Out in the stands is one lone girl, reading. She has blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail and tucked under a dark green hoodie and the lanky build of a high schooler. She’s chewing on her thumbnail as she turns the pages of a small paperback, her eyes darting toward the ice, Spags, and me. She feels familiar somehow.
She isn’t. I know that. I don’t know any little blondes who would sit in the bleachers, scuffing the toes of their checker print shoes along the seat in front of them. I watch as she pushes her bangs back and starts gnawing on the other thumb. I can’t figure out why my gaze keeps skating toward her, maybe because she’s the only teenager I can think of that isn’t glued to her phone while waiting for someone to finish a multi-hour hockey intensive. She could be a player who had to bow out for injury. I told all three they were welcome no matter what, they could watch all week, but I had too long a waiting list to not replace them with another player.
“My money’s on Green making it back out first. Those kids looked like they meant business.” Spags says to Brad, the varsity high school coach from the next town over.
He nods. “Marlowe will shift them into gear.”
“Which one is that?” Spags asks and I try to pull up the kid’s face in my mind.
It’s mostly to see if I’m making progress with the kids’ names, but I’m also noting the conversation so I can monitor the skater as the week unfolds.
“Tall, floppy brown hair. Came in with the Buffalo hat.” Brad nods.
“They all look like that,” Spags says, as if he doesn’t also fit that statistic—minus the hat, of course. Spags wasn’t born and raised in Central New York.
“Will Marlowe,” Brad says, and Spags shrugs as I make plans to quiz him on the roster as we drive home. “The whole county breathed a sigh of relief when he opted out of varsity and focused only on travel. Although that banner would have looked pretty in my office.”
Either he’s that good or he’s a brawler, but my money is on the first. Especially if he’s here at camp.
Brad nods at the stands. “That’s his girlfriend Nora. She came to every one of his games last year and I let her sit in the warm room during most practices. Not a great home life. She’s a sweet girl. You won’t hear a peep out of her, and Marlowe knows to keep his focus on the ice.”
“He knows you’ll boot his chick if he doesn’t and then he’ll be in the doghouse with usandher,” one of the other coaches says and everyone laughs.
Not me.
“We aren’t talking like that here,” I tell the man with the bushy mustache. “You respect everyone in this building or you’re gone. Staff, skater, or bystander. Understood?”
Both Brad and Mustache nod and I don’t even bother checking in with Spags. He knows better. Vic and I have taught him better. Treat others with respect, especially when in a position of influence. Actually, Tristan taught him that one. Something about taxidermized dicks if he ever even thought about sending photos to unsuspecting models. Considering he didn’t end up on TMZ again, I think her verbal beat down worked.
