Page 25 of Yo Ho Ho
"My point exactly." Amanda sat back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest in triumph. "Some athletes hate that. They want to be with a woman that knows nothing about their sport. But do you remember when I went on the road to fill in for you in February?"
She nodded. "Yeah, you apparently shared your cookies with everyone."
Amanda scowled at her. "I also spent two hours one night in a hotel lounge with a bunch of hockey players and media guys watching hockey and eating cookies, and all Logan Moore wanted to talk about was you."
"Me?"
She grabbed her beer and used her index finger to point in Max's direction. "You," she said before taking a dramatic sip. "For two hours. First, it was about some hockey debate the two of you had. Then it was how much he respected you for your hockey knowledge. Then he started asking me about your job and if you ever covered anything else for the paper." She leaned in, her elbows resting on the table, beer still in her hand. "Then he asked me if you had a boyfriend. He called your bunny slippers 'cute.' He mentioned the time you all got stuck in Denver and the two of you ended up debating something for hours."
"Denver?"
Amanda's eyebrows perked up. "You sound surprised," she said. "Is there something you want to tell me about Denver?"
"No."
Max grabbed her beer and took a long drink from it. But Amanda still stared at her from across the table, leaning back in her chair again, giving Max a thoughtful glance from across the table.
"I know you value your job and your profession above all else," Amanda said. "So if something happened, a kiss or a confession or whatever, it probably happened once and never again. Maxine Quinn, we all know you are a professional who wouldn't do anything or tell anyone anything that would put your integrity as a journalist into question."
"Which I don't have to worry about because nothing like that happened."
Damn, you're such a liar, she thought.
"Well, that man wants something like that to happen, which I'm assuming is what the conversation in the parking lot was about this morning."
Max just kept drinking. It was likely a better idea for her to just keep her mouth shut at this point. Amanda seemed to get the hint, putting her beer back down on the table and biting into her burger while taking a look at the TVs behind the bar.Ignore it, leave it alone.It was what Max had been doing for a year. It was one of the only things she was good at when it came to Logan Moore.
She grabbed a fry from her plate just as Amanda's face lit up with excitement.
"Oh, watch the replay on this dunk!"
Max smiled and turned to see one of Detroit's basketball stars running down the court before making a spectacular jump around a defender and slamming the ball in the hoop.
"Nice!" she replied before turning back to her food. "That trade they made last month is really paying off for them."
"Tell me about it. That guy is a dunking king."
Max was thankful for the distraction so they could move away from talking about what she was going to do next. It was definitely something she had thought about, but not something she didn't want to dwell on right now.
Frankly, her future was a mess. Her job was going to disappear and then what? Journalism wasn't a stable profession anyway. Max had friends at other papers and websites and television stations that had been axed because of budget crunches. Most of them didn't get kicked to the curb in quite the dramatic fashion as theDetroit Heraldwriters, but several friends had already told her they could help her with her unemployment since they had all applied for it sometime in the past few years.
Then there was her personal life. She slept with Logan. She thought about being with Logan again. But Logan really got under her skin today. Maybe she could find another job as a hockey writer somewhere else. Maybe even a commentator. Did she want to risk the possibility of losing a job because she pursued a relationship with him? Especially after what he said to her earlier?
Whatever the answers were, she wasn't going to find them in the hour it took to eat a burger with Amanda. So they started to talk about other stuff like their strategies to pack up their desks or some initial ideas for how to celebrate the paper's last day. They bounced ideas off each other for Christmas gifts for their families. Amanda complained about her mother-in-law's unannounced drop-in visits.
"I've honestly thought of having sex on my couch with my husband just so his mom could walk in on us and get the message that she has to call first."
It was just a normal conversation with Amanda. Max was definitely going to miss that.
When dinner was over and they paid their bill, the two of them walked back to the office parking lot together. The air was a little colder and crisper, but that hadn't seemed to deter people from being out at the local bars or walking over to Campus Martius for ice skating.
They got to Max's car first and she started to dig her keys out of her bag, just like she had done earlier in a parking lot with Logan. She really needed to figure out a better way to find her keys in her purse.
"So can I just say one last thing to you?" Amanda asked.
Max sighed. "Can I say no?"
"No," her friend said matter-of-factly. "Listen, our jobs suck right now. Our industry sucks right now. But you told me to be happy despite the despair, didn't you?"
