Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
If there was one thing I didn’t like about being the captain of CFU’s hockey team, it was coming up with fundraising ideas.
As a club team, we weren’t given athletic funds like recognized sports, and instead had to put on fundraisers or pay for everything ourselves.
Our campus government had a certain allotment for clubs, but hockey was a fucking expensive sport, and it barely made a dent.
We basically used it to pay for our coach.
On top of the cost of uniforms and equipment, we also had to pay for travel and the use of the local rink, although the owner had given us a deal because he was an alumnus and a huge Lumberjacks hockey fan.
For once, I was grateful for all the admin tasks my dad had made me do—organizing, reaching out to businesses, negotiating—because they helped me land better contracts and cut down our travel costs.
But we still had to come up with the funds to do it, which was why we were trying to figure out a new fundraising venture that would last a while.
So after our hockey practice on Wednesday, Drew, Liam, Gordy, and I went back to our house, which had been given the unoriginal name of “the hockey house.”
It was in between the Den—best known for the killer parties the football guys hosted—and the music house, which never seemed to party at all.
“Okay, okay, I’ve got it,” Liam said, standing up with his hands spread out like he was trying to captivate the whole room.
“Spit it out already,” Gordy said.
Liam had spent the last five minutes saying he had a genius idea, and our patience was all running thin.
We’d already tried the usual fundraiser avenues—restaurant takeovers, car washes, etc.
“We should have a hockey player auction or dance revue like that one Christmas movie that came out on Netflix.”
Drew turned to him. “Merry Gentleman? You actually watched that?”
Liam shrugged off his best friend’s disbelief. “The girl I wanted to hook up with wanted to watch it, okay?”
Why was I not surprised that this idea stemmed from an experience with a girl? Every time Liam had a story or idea, it had something to do with a girl. Liam was the biggest playboy of anyone I’d ever met, and had a new girl practically every week.
Our campus was big, but not that big.
I didn’t know how any girl still put up with his antics.
“Okay, movie aside, a guy auction probably isn’t a bad idea,” Drew said.
I shook my head. “No way. We won’t be able to get approval for that.”
Not to mention I couldn’t stand the thought of spending time with any woman besides Abby—even if she was currently freezing me out.
“I’m not taking my shirt off in front of an audience,” Gordy added.
He was more reserved and upper-crust than the rest of us.
His family was very well-off and had a summer home in Big Sky, while they spent the rest of the year either in New York or Connecticut or wherever rich folks lived on the East Coast. Gordy had been kind of stingy on the details.
He’d come to CFU because his grandpa had grown up in Montana, and he loved it here and wanted to get as far away from his parents and city life as he could.
I rubbed my forehead. “Okay, we need serious ideas that we can run through the club board.”
All club activities had to be pre-approved by the university’s club board.
A couple of years ago, one club threw a kegger and called it “Kegs for a Cure” claiming all the money went to cancer research.
The money had in fact gone to support breast cancer research, but the university had fielded tons of calls from locals who’d been pissed when word got out.
So the student government had created the club board to oversee club fundraisers.
Any club who ran a fundraiser without pre-approval faced getting shut down.
We couldn’t afford that risk when we were still a relatively new club after a fifteen-year hiatus that ended my freshman year.
Maybe that was why I felt so much pressure to see our team find roots on campus.
I’d been integral in building this program into what it was, and I didn’t want to see it fail.
“What about a Las Vegas night where we create a casino vibe?” Liam threw out.
We all looked at him.
“Gambling? For a fundraiser?” Gordy asked, his brows raised.
“Hey, I heard about a house that did it not that long ago. They did it to raise money for replanting trees or something.”
“Yeah, no,” we all said at the same time.
He threw his hands in the air. “Fine, I give up. I’m not coming up with any more ideas because you guys keep shooting me down.”
Drew laughed at him. “Because your ideas will get us kicked off campus.”
He huffed. “I already talked to the club board, and they seemed open to a bachelor auction as long as we kept it classy. We can’t take anything off below the belt.”
“Oh, that’s reassuring,” I murmured.
Liam winked. “It leaves a little something to the imagination—unless you wear really tight pants.”
“You’re insane, you know that, right?” Gordy asked him, stoic as ever.
“This form has to be turned in this week in order to get everything rolling and moving so we can get the fundraiser done before we need the money. Last year’s funds should get us through this season, but we’ll need some massive fundraising to get next season started off on the right foot,” I said.
“I’m going to get a beer,” Liam said. “I think better with alcohol in my system.”
I didn’t think that had ever been true for anyone, but I let him go.
Drew pulled his phone out of his pocket and started texting.
“Are you seriously texting right now when we’re trying to come up with some ideas?”
“Relax,” he said, not even bothering to look at me. “I’m texting my sister. She might have some suggestions.”
Drew’s twin sister, Ava, was a marketing major, so it wasn’t a bad idea to see if she could come up with something. Clearly putting our four heads together wasn’t getting us anywhere.
I stared at the blank paper in front of me, feeling frustrated that we couldn’t come up with any original ideas that could give us a good boost in funding.
The frats did car washes and shit like that, but we wanted to stand out.
Unfortunately, with every second that passed, Liam’s idea of a bachelor auction looked better and better.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought so.
Gordy sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “You know, Liam might be onto something as loath as I am to admit it.”
“With the bachelor auction?” I confirmed.
He nodded. “It’s not something the frats have done, surprisingly.
We could probably get it approved quickly.
We don’t need a lot of extras. It doesn’t take a ton of time or effort.
We just need a space, the time, and an emcee, which we could easily recruit somebody else to do, maybe even Drew’s sister, or one of the football guys next door.
It’s doable. We can do a quick turnaround, depending on what spaces are available on campus. ”
“Fuck, his ego is gonna fucking blow up if we agree to do this.”
Gordy chuckled. “Yep, probably. But it’s not a bad idea and we need something quick.”
I turned to Drew. “Hey, Ava come up with anything?”
He shook his head. “No, but she does have an in with the sororities and frats. She said they’ve got a couple of fundraisers already lined up. All the usual stuff.”
Which meant if we wanted to get a lot of attention on our event, we needed to do something different. Something flashy.
“I told her about Liam’s idea,” Drew interrupted my thoughts, “and she agreed it’s not a bad one, especially because hockey is so hot right now.”
Gordy and I both looked at him. “What do you mean hockey’s hot right now?”
His smile grew like a Cheshire cat grin.
“You know, there’s all these girls reading, like, hockey romances.
Getting hot over the exercises we do and shit like that.
How do you think Liam and I get as many chicks lately as we do?
We tell them we play hockey, and their panties practically fall to the floor.
They want to live one of their book romances, and we give them a night they’ll never forget. ”
Gordy and I glanced at each other.
“Hockey romance?” he asked, the disbelief clear in his voice.
Liam walked back into the room and handed each of us a beer. “What did I miss?” he asked as he sat down heavily.
I shook my head, silently telling him it didn’t matter. I could not believe I was about to say what I was about to say. “Looks like your idea isn’t so stupid after all. How do you feel about being bachelor number one?”