Page 4 of Overtime
CHAPTER 2
MADDIE
I’m going to write a hockey romance. As soon as I figure out both the hockey partandthe romance part.
In theory, I already know how to write a love story. After all, my debut novel, a traditionally published young adult romance that is likeThe Princess Diariesbut with a fat princess, is set to release in a few months. The heroine bullied by mean classmates until—surprise!—she turns out to be the long-lost daughter of a remote country’s king. When she travels there, she falls in love with her bodyguard, a super-hot boy her age who was assigned to act as her friend while protecting her from the bad guys. They work together to unravel the secret group that has been trying to dethrone her father, and they fall in love at the same time. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Except romance between two seventeen-year-olds is a bit different from adults. Or at least that’s how it looks in books. I wouldn’t know IRL. But I’ve consumed every hockey romance I could get my grubby hands on, and I have a solid grasp of the tropes and such. Consuming books doesn’t replace the lived experience but, eh, it’s not like I can hire a guy to show me the ropes. Heaven knows I can’t find one for free.
What I’m still relatively clueless about is the hockey part. But I have a plan.
I sit near the end of a long table in the loud part of the library. This section is too far from the librarians who regularly shush students, but it’s my favorite because people are more interested in their conversations than what others are doing. No one minds me as I pull open the athletic department’s website and begin researching the hockey teams.
“Write what you know, they said,” I mumble to myself with a mocking giggle.
What I know is young adult books. I live and breathe YA. I read about a hundred fifty per year. In fact, the reason I’m majoring in English at St. Cloud, despite the monumental debt I’m accumulating, is because it’s the only college program I could find that is geared toward modern genres, including YA. Here, professors and other classmates don’t look down on me for wanting a traditional career in that age category. Without the encouragement of several professors, I wouldn’t have queried my book, landed an excellent agent, and sold it to a Big Four publishing house.
The problem is that the first cut of the advance only covered my rent for a few months. I won’t see the next payment for a while yet, which poses the need for a side gig. Orseveral. I already have one as an English tutor, but I need a hybrid career self-publishing as well if I want to keep a roof over my head. Preferably a different roof from the one I’m living under now.
That’s how I decided I should write a hockey romance. While I know squat about it, it’s what everyone online is obsessed with. I’ve seen what authors in this genre are making on different platforms. If I could get just a fraction of that, I’d be able to move away frommybullies.
As I jot down the numbers of players on each team and their respective positions, the conversation around me shifts into adifferent cadence. A single murmur rises in a wave approaching my end of the table. I lift my head and don’t have to wonder what the deal is for long.
The textbook definition of tall, dark, and handsome walks toward me. Although he’s obviously not looking at me. His attention is set on one of the free chairs by the end of the table. Behind him, he leaves a trail of hushed whispers.
“What ishedoing here?”
I catch that one easily. It comes from a girl with stars in her eyes. Thehein question either doesn’t hear or acts as though it isn’t shocking to see the captain of the Thunder Bolts in the library. Which it is, because these are my haunting grounds, and I’ve never seen him here, unless you count his face on my computer screen, that is.
My pulse spikes as he pulls up the chair two spaces away from me. I lower my head back to the screen and change the roster to the Thunder Strikes, because, whew, I am not immune to Aran Rodriguez. And the up-close, in-person version is overwhelmingly better than his picture.
And also way bigger. As he stretches out his arms to remove his thick coat, I figure his huge wingspan helps him catch a lot of pucks.
Hmm, that’s a good note to make for a future hockey player character. I jot it down in my journal.
“Take a picture,” someone whispers, and sure enough, the sound of a shutter echoes around the silence his arrival has brought over the table.
I cringe. I don’t know who’s worse, the obvious stalker snapping pics of a campus celeb or the covert one like me. Except I’m doing book research. I’m not being a creep. And he doesn’t have to know what I’m up to. In fact, I’m probably invisible to him.
Which is why I figure this is kismet. I said I’d write a hockey romance, andvoilà. The universe has dropped the perfect inspiration in my lap.
Lowering my head, I use my laptop screen to do some discreet people-watching. I’ve only seen the Bolts’ captain on campus from afar and once at a game I was dragged to last year. I could not appreciate the sheer scale of him in those circumstances. After hanging his coat from the back of his chair, he sits down and has to push the chair beside him away so he can squeeze in.
I jot downare all hockey players huge?and underline the question. I’ll fork up tickets to a game to get this answered.
I glance around my screen again. He’s now pulling a laptop from his backpack. There’s already a clear bottle with some green concoction on the table before him. A protein shake? Obviously, athletes need a ton of protein and calories, which isn’t something I think about on a daily basis. That’s good to know, since I’m doing the reverse of writing what I know here.
My phone buzzes against the table with a racket. I pick it up, fearing it may be yet another text from mother dearest, but it must be my lucky day, because the text is from my boss.
Boss who is NOT a lady
Hey, are you busy right now?
Technically, I am. But I don’t know how to explain to her that I’m trying to design a tall, dark, and handsome character out of a real-life TDH.
Me
I’m studying at the library. What’s up?
