“Sorry!” the woman who’d spoken said. She wore a long black coat with a colorful silk scarf and had her hair cropped close to her head. “I guess you weren’t expecting anyone.”
Nico convinced his heart to climb back into his chest. “Not here, anyway,” he said. Then, uncertainly, he added, “Can I help you?”
He knew most of the staff, and she didn’t look familiar.
“I have an appointment with Coach Vorhees,” she said. “The custodian told me how to get there, but either I misheard or some of the hallways moved when I had my back turned.”
Oh—she needed directions. Badly. That was all the way on the other side of the building. “I’m headed that way,” Nico said. “Uh, but I was taking the scenic route. You’re really lost.”
That didn’t seem to bother her. “Lucky I ran into you, then.”
“Come on,” Nico said. “You’re more or less on my way.”
A few minutes later, he left her at the door to Vorhees’s office and continued on down toward the AV room.
Though Phil had many qualities to recommend him, he was not a wizard with audio-visual equipment. But he did have a lot of insight into opportunities Nico was missing on the ice and a way of presenting them that kept Nico from dwelling on what he might’ve done wrong because he was too excited at the opportunity to do better next time.
“Can you play that one again?” Nico motioned to the screen. Because he’d misread the defending team’s strategy, he’d taken a shot with a low chance of scoring rather than pass. “From another angle, maybe?” They were playing Colorado again in a week and he didn’t want to repeat his mistake.
Phil nodded. “Yeah, sure, just let me….” And then he trailed off, obviously at a loss with modern technology.
Nico held out his hand for the tablet that was controlling the big screen. “Maybe I can do the remote-control part and you can break it down for me again?”
“Deal.”
He stayed later than he meant to and only realized what time it was when Ryan texted to ask if he’d be home for lunch.
It was after one.
As if on cue, Nico’s stomach rumbled and Phil laughed. “I think that’s probably enough for today,” he said. “Thanks for indulging me.”
“No—thank you. This is….” Nico hardly knew how to put it into words. This was the first time in years he’d actually felt like a coach knew what they were doing and cared about his development. “This was great.”
Phil smiled. “I’m glad. You do good work, kid.” And Nico actually believed him. He clapped Nico on the back as he sent him out of the room, and Nico left the building feeling better and more confident than when he arrived.
Felicia called the following morning after Nico’s workout.
“I haven’t forgotten,” Nico said by way of greeting. There was no way he could forget the latest PR stunt, even if he wanted to. She had approached them last week and laid out her idea: taking film footage of “Bert and Ernie” at home. Nico mentally cursed Jenna Yorkshire for speaking the idea into existence. They would package it as a short video, playing up the odd-couple roommate angle (probably) and the opposites-attract friendship.
“Good,” Felicia said, “but the issue’s moot. We need to postpone. I’ll let you know if and when we can reschedule.”
“Everything okay?” PR people didn’t like postponing anything likely to be an internet hit.
“Yeah. Everything’s fine. Bureaucracy.” He could hear the shrug in her voice. “Can you let Wright know?”
Nico promised he would and hung up. He sent a quick text to Ryan, then stripped out of his shorts and stepped into the shower.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about the canceled PR visit. He hadn’t been looking forward to it—he would never enjoy being in front of the camera out of his hockey gear, especially when he was expected to “be natural”—but he also hadn’t been dreading it. The thought of spending the day playing happy homes for the cameras had a certain draw.
And it was only partially because his dad would hate it.
In the kitchen, he pulled some of last night’s chicken out of the fridge, checked his phone while he waited for it to reheat, and found two missed messages.
He dialed voicemail first. “Hello, Mr. Kirschbaum. This is Cassandra MacTavish from theAthletic. I was hoping I could ask you a couple of questions. Can you give me a call?” She left her number.
Nico frowned at the microwave and wondered what a reporter would want from him that couldn’t be covered in a scrum. He should probably call her back and find out what she was after. Forewarned and all that. He saved the message in case he needed it for her number and hung up. Then he swiped over to his texts and found several from his father.
He braced himself for whatever he was about to read.Our relationship shouldn’t be like this, he thought bleakly. Then he read the texts.