Chapter 18
eighteen
The SF Sea Lions begin their sponsorship of the Pot of Gold LGBTQIA+ shelter! Follow the link in our description to find out more she would probably have good ideas about how to do it in a classy way.
Of course, he wouldn’t see her for another few days since the next scheduled shelter event wasn’t till Thursday.
Waiting to see Mara before making any big decisions sounded like something a normal, not pathologically impulsive person would do.
Wait a few days, sleep on it, ask for advice.
Maybe even loop in his agent, though Jax didn’t relish the thought of someone else getting a say in this, especially not someone who had a vested interest in how much money Jax made.
As he passed through the lobby, the receptionist called him over.
She handed him the package with the Prada logo stamped on the outside.
Jax loved the packaging for expensive things.
No cheapo cardboard with a logo on the outside for Prada, oh no.
They sent sleek black boxes with the letters embossed on the sides.
That kind of quality meant Jax had paid north of four thousand dollars for the contents.
He had the money. He lacked the recipient.
He threw the box on the passenger seat and drove to the rink, all the calm and equilibrium from the morning in tatters.
Morris was in, so practice stayed light and mostly effective, largely due to East sitting in the stands with his leg propped up on the chair in front of him.
He called out drills every now and again, and when Morris didn’t protest, the team did those drills.
Occasionally, East yelled out an individual name, and the person in question skated over to get some feedback.
He never called Jax’s name or Tom’s. Not for the first time in the last week, Jax wondered what Phil thought had happened between them. He hadn’t said anything more to Jax after their brief text exchange on Tuesday, and Jax had no idea what, if anything, Tom had told him.
Knowing Tom, he’d probably said they’d had a disagreement about the power play or something. God forbid he had an emotion not about hockey.
After practice, Jax had a meeting with Breezy and the PR department about how things were going with the shelter program.
They went over statistics, and Jax understood a charitably estimated 14 percent of what Kayleigh said.
What he did understand interested him about as much as watching the staff sharpen skate blades for six hours at a time.
The takeaway was that PR had hit their goals.
The videos had caused an uptick of engagement on the team’s social media.
“Um,” Breezy said when Jax thought they were finished. “I mean, there was a lot of engagement, but there were also kind of a lot of nasty comments.”
Kayleigh smiled brightly. “That’s to be expected with such a political topic. But it drives engagement, you know, people discussing stuff in the comment sections.”
A nasty, unclean feeling stole down the back of Jax’s neck. “By discussing, you mean…”
“Oh, you know, debating whether this stuff has a place in professional sports.”
“And I assume you’re deleting every single one of those bigoted comments before the kids we’re working with have a chance to read them?”
“Ah.” Kayleigh paused, fingers steepled. “We haven’t really been moderating commentary so far.”
Blinding rage filled Jax’s lungs, stole his breath and his words. He was seconds from exploding, a hair’s breadth from calling Kayleigh every name in the book, when Breezy interjected.
“Why?” He acted it as if it were a valid question asked purely out of interest, and Kayleigh took it as such.
“Well, the whole point of this from our perspective is to generate more buzz around the team. We don’t have as much strong local support as, say, Chicago or Toronto.”
No one had as much strong local support as Toronto.
“And not to put too fine a point on it, but our department has been struggling to generate content that will get the team noticed on social media. You know how Tom and Phil are.” Kayleigh sighed as if it was a crucial failing in a hockey player not to be particularly good on camera.
Did she know their actual job had nothing to do with Instagram?
“Okay, well, San Francisco’s pretty LGBT-friendly, right?” Again, Breezy sounded as if he genuinely didn’t know the answer.
“Yeah, definitely.”
“I don’t want people thinking we’re using kids to get views, you know? Like, if people think this is just for clicks, they’ll like us even less.”
“Hmm.” Kayleigh pursed her lips. “I guess you have a point there, Chris. So, some comment moderation is important to you guys?”