Page 4 of The Prince and the Puck
“Hey, hi,” I said. “Coach told me to come in and… uh… help?”
“Oh, hi, yes.” There was a clatter as the woman I couldn’t quite see dropped something to the floor and leaned down to pick it up.
“Do you need help?”
“No, no,” she sounded flustered, and I felt a little sorry for her. “I’ve got it. Just have a seat there, okay?”
“Sure.” I looked at the stool set in front of the glaring light. There was a microphone on top of it, one of those tiny ones people pinned to their shirts. “The mic?”
“Oh yeah, you’re going to talk into that while I record,” she said, not looking at me. She was gathering papers together onto the clipboard she’d dropped.
“So I just… hold this microphone here?” I asked, perching on the stool that felt about thirteen sizes too small squeezed between my butt cheeks. Shouldn’t they have sized this interview setup for hockey players? Seeing as how they were going to be interviewing… hockey players?
“Yep, perfect. Just like that.” The new team PR consultant nodded from where she stood on the other side of the ring light currently blazing in my eyes.
The stool felt a bit as if it was becoming a part of me, a new appendage attached in a place I most definitely didn’t need to be introducing a new item.
“Hey, uh, would it be okay if I stood? This stool is a bit invasive.”
“The stool?” The woman asked. “Invasive?”
“Yeah, my butt… listen, never mind. I’m gonna stand, okay?” I pushed the stool back and stood, holding the microphone awkwardly. “Okay. Perfect. Are you going to ask me questions?”
“Uh, right. Questions. Okay.” The new PR consultant the team had brought in did not—in my humble opinion—appear to know a good goddamned thing about PR. Not that I was an expert, but this lady hadn’t even introduced herself yet. She looked like a deer in headlights (a very fit deer in headlights—seriously, even with the bright light in my eyes I could see she had guns some of the guys on the team would envy. I wanted to ask her about her protein supplementation strategy, but that would have to wait.)
“What’s your name again?” I asked her now.
“Lizzy Canfield.”
“Okay, Lizzy. Well, I’ve got practice in a minute and kinda need to get going, so let’s do the questions, okay?”
She nodded, shuffling through a bunch of note cards in her hands.
“So you’re?—”
“Deck Gillespie. Left wing for the Wombats.”
“Right. And this is your?—”
“Third season.”
“Tell me about your childhood, Deck. Did you always know you wanted to play pro hockey?”
That was actually a funny question, but I couldn’t tell her that.
In my country, hockey wasn’t a sport you could play, thanks to the sweltering heat and general lack of square footage. No, hockey was pretty much the dividing line between my former life and my current one. The line had been drawn when I was only ten and I was pretty intent on keeping it firmly in place.
“Yep, pretty much from the beginning. I was playing for a travel team here in Virginia when I was twelve.”
“And… you’re from Colorado originally? Or Virginia? My notes aren’t clear.”
“Colorado is close enough.” Ha, not even close. Another question I couldn’t answer truthfully.
“So your family is supportive of your career?”
“Doesn’t really matter, does it? I’m here now.”
Lizzy’s eyebrows went up and a strange look crossed her pretty face.
