Page 49 of The Prince and the Puck
“Yeah, good. Busy at work. Also, the wombat is giving me a run for my money.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the shelter did allow me to adopt him, but he doesn’t seem excited to stay at work. So I’ve been bringing him home with me at night.”
I tried to imagine bringing a wild animal into my house. I’d seen some videos online of wombats in domestic situations—would it be like having a cat?
“Oh. I thought the wombat was a girl?”
“I thought so too, when we called him Wilma. But he’s a boy.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, I’m sort of calling to check in on all of that.” How did I tell her that she had adopted a wombat for a mission that no longer existed? “The thing is, I’ve been reassigned.”
“What does that even mean? You sound like you’re a secret agent or something. Ha.”
If only she knew. “Yeah, no, it was kind of an emergency mission. Or—I mean, assignment. My firm needed me to fly to the Caribbean to oversee a new resort launch. And I’m gonna be here for a while.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound terrible.”
“It’s good, but I am having to kind of step away from the Wombats.”
“Oh. Does Deck know yet? He’s gonna be so bummed. You two were really hitting it off.”
“Yeah. I told him. But the thing is, I wondered if there’s any way you might be able to oversee finishing that calendar? And I don’t even know what to do about the wombat.”
“Well, don’t worry about Wilma. I’ve already been familiarizing him with the arena. I don’t think the coach likes him a whole lot. But this weekend will be the first game where he officially appears.
“The calendar though… how much is left to do?”
Joey sounded hesitant to take on the calendar project, and I didn’t blame her. She had her own job.
I was about to let her off the hook when she said, “I bet the guys will finish the calendar if I kind of help them with it.”
“The guys? The hockey players?”
“Yeah, the Wombats were really into this whole idea. They all have different skill sets. I bet they can cobble this thing together. Oh, by the way, they chose a charity I wanted to run by you.”
“Oh, that’s great. What did they pick?” In all the excitement, I’d forgotten about the charity piece.
“There’s an after-school sports and daycare program in Wilcox that needs new equipment and funds for other stuff. The guys want to donate to that, and a few of them have volunteered to run a hockey clinic at the arena.”
“That’s perfect!” It really was. I loved anything that would benefit the local community—especially the youth.
“John already works with them, so he’s talked to the executive director and they’re really excited about the partnership.”
“Oh my gosh, Joey, you’re seriously the best. And you don’t mind kind of managing the guys through the rest of the calendar process? We just need to choose which photo is on which month, pick some wombat facts for each month and get someone to lay it out and print. Oh, and post the social stuff.” Guilt threatened to swamp me. I was pushing off responsibilities onto someone else—something I would never do in my real job.
“I don’t mind at all. It benefits me too—or at least it benefits John, and that helps me. When he’s happy, I’m happy.”
“Thank you, Joey. I owe you.” I really did, and I didn’t think there’d ever be a way to pay her back.
“Well, maybe you can get us a trip to that fancy resort you’re working on.”
“Resort?”
“The assignment you’re on now?”
Oh, yes. The lie. “Oh, right. I’ll definitely see if I can do that.”
