10. January 31, Monday
Chapter ten
Zoey
Zoey almost talked herself out of pitching her youth hockey camp idea three separate times on the walk from her office to the training facility.
Once by the elevators, when Nina’s chipper voice replayed in her head, “You can pitch it, but don’t be surprised if they say no," like a corporate-approved curse.
Again, in the hallway outside the gym, when a player she didn’t recognize limped by with a bag of ice taped to his knee and the kind of hollow-eyed fatigue usually reserved for new parents and emergency room nurses.
And now, at the end of the corridor opening into the training facility cafeteria, where a long table of large, tired men slumped over half-finished meals like someone unplugged them mid-chew.
She stopped. This was a dumb idea.
Not the camp. The camp was genius.
The timing, though? Very possibly idiotic.
The room smelled like grilled chicken, sweat, and the faint sting of antiseptic cream. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead. Several TVs played muted sports highlights while a couple of guys occasionally glanced up without actually registering anything.
They looked wrecked.
Zoey gripped her to-go cup tighter. The cardboard sleeve dug into her fingers.
If you wait, you’ll email. If you email, you’ll soften it. Then, you’ll apologize for existing. And if you do that, Nina wins.
Her heart jackhammered against her ribs.
Ty laughed at something Ian said; the sound came out hoarse, like he needed a nap. Bobby sat at the end of the table with a book open next to his plate, fork in one hand, page-anchoring thumb in the other. Tommy poked at a bowl of something green with all the enthusiasm of a hostage.
It was one of those rare, unscheduled pockets of group downtime she was learning were weirdly sacred in pro sports. The opportunity buzzed so sharply in her chest it made her lightheaded. If she didn’t do this now, she’d chicken out.
Zoey took one breath, told her anxiety to sit down and shut up, and marched toward the table before she could change her mind.
“Hey, guys,” she said, bright, casual, and absolutely not casual at all.
Several heads lifted.
She immediately regretted everything.
A half-dozen pairs of eyes landed on her; some curious, some politely blank, a few with the wary look of men who suspected more cardio.
“Zoey,” Bobby said, giving her a nod that somehow encompassed both hello and what fresh obligation is this.
“Hey, Zoey,” Ty added around a mouthful of rice.
“Zo,” Ian said. “You lost? Looking for better company?”
She flashed a grin. “Trust me, if I wanted better company, I’d be at the group home. Those kids make me laugh way harder than you do.”
Tommy grabbed at his chest like she had broken his heart. “I never should have bought them that burn book.”
She shifted her mug from one hand to the other, her pulse doing a weird drum solo in her throat. “Do you guys have, like, two minutes? I promise this is not about making you sign autographs in a mall food court.”
Pavel, sitting halfway down the table, visibly relaxed at that. “Okay, then maybe we’ll listen.”
A few of them chuckled.
Go. Talk. Before your brain convinces you this is a hate crime.
Zoey cleared her throat. “So. Um. I’ve been spending a lot of time at the group home on Maple lately—”
“The one with Babs?” Ty interrupted. “Tiny woman, terrifying aura?”
“That’s the one,” Zoey said, smiling.
“She works with Ash,” he explained, mentioning his significant other who was also a social worker.
Zoey nodded. “Exactly…So, yeah…I’ve been there a bunch working on some stuff with them, and it got me thinking.
” She took a breath and launched. “We talk a lot about growing the fanbase and community partnerships and all that PR jazz, but there are these kids who’d literally never get on the ice otherwise.
Like, they watch you on TV when they can, and they love it when you visit…
but a lot of them have never even worn skates. So, I was thinking…”
Words started tumbling out faster. She could feel herself tipping into ramble but couldn’t stop.
“…what if we did a mini-hockey camp? Just for them. ‘Little Cyclones’ or whatever. A couple weekends, maybe some weeknights if that works better. Basic skills, skating, shooting. Nothing super intense. We could bus the kids over to our practice rink, or we could use our main rink if we wanted to really ham it up for the kiddos…and if logistics allowed. I’d handle organizing with Babs, liability forms, transportation, waivers, snacks, all that.
You’d just show up and, you know, teach them how to not fall on their asses every five seconds. ”
She kept going because if she stopped, someone might actually say no.
“It’d give them something that’s theirs,” she said, words tripping over each other.
“Like, a feeling that someone chose them, specifically. Instead of them always being the kids who get hand-me-downs and leftover tickets when everyone else is done. And I know you guys already do a million appearances and hospital visits and whatever, and the trade deadline and then playoffs are coming, and this might be totally insane…”
She heard herself, the high edge of desperation creeping in, and wanted to reach out and physically pull the sentence back into her mouth.
Too late.
A silence settled over the table, heavier than she’d expected.
For one second, one hopeful, buoyant second, she imagined they’d all light up. Pound the table. Say things like Hell yeah, let’s do it and Man, that sounds awesome and We love at-risk youth!
That did not happen.
Instead, they looked at each other.
Not in the coordinate our response way so much as who’s going to say it.
Tommy was the first to speak. “Uh. That…sounds cool,” he said carefully. “For sure. Really cool idea.”
Her hopeful bubble deflated an inch. “But?” she prompted, keeping her tone light. “I definitely hear a but.”
“It’s just…” Ian scrubbed a hand over his face. Up close, the dark circles under his eyes were worse. “We’re kinda heading into, like, the meat grinder part of the schedule.”
“Back-to-back road trips coming up,” Ty put in. “Four games in eight nights. Then home again. And the thing with Coach where he keeps adding surprise bag skates because we keep losing.”
Zoey nodded, trying to ignore the way her stomach dipped. “Right. Totally. I know it’s intense right now—”
Pavel, one of the rookies, lifted his hands in a helpless little gesture. He had tape on three of his fingers. “We’re already, um…how is it? Over-booked? That is the word?”
“Yeah, man,” Ian said. “That’s the word.”
Christian glanced between them, then looked at her with an apologetic wince. “Maybe after the trade deadline?”
No one was rude. No one rolled their eyes or told her to get lost. It was all soft edges and gentle phrasing. But the shape of it was still no. Or, worse, a please don’t make us say no, but we can’t say yes.
She watched Tommy nudge his plate away, hand drifting to his shoulder. Pavel subtly stretched his neck like it hurt just to hold his head up. Someone had an ice pack balanced on their forearm resting on the table.
For the first time since she’d walked in, she really saw them.
Not as faces on a roster or jersey numbers on the ice, but as bodies that had done far too much in far too little time. As men with their own lives and obligations, battered by a season that had chewed them up and was still gnawing.
Taped wrists. Raw knuckles. A bruise blooming along Jason’s jaw she hadn’t noticed from the stands.
Exhaustion clung to them like an extra layer of gear.
Suddenly, her bright little idea didn’t feel visionary. It felt like she’d walked into a hospital ward and asked people in the beds to help her move furniture.
Heat climbed up her neck.
“Oh my god,” she said, breathless. “I’m…sorry. I should’ve thought more about the schedule. I know you’re slammed. You don’t have to…this was terrible timing.”
“No, it’s not—” Ian started.
“It’s a good idea,” Bobby said at the same time. “I think we should––“
“Seriously, Zo,” Ty added, tone earnest. “It is. We just…”
The unfinished sentence sat there, awkward and heavy. We just don’t have anything left to give.
She got it. She really did. She’d been the person squeezing out one more favor on an empty tank before. Had lived with a man who treated every request from her like an obstacle course he had to run before getting to the stuff he cared about.
She’d sworn she’d never be that woman again. The one who asked, then watched a man’s shoulders sag under the weight of her needs.
“Well, like I said, it was just an idea,” she said quickly, forcing a laugh that sounded thin even to her own ears. “A stupid, impulsive idea I probably should’ve run by Coach or someone with an actual grasp of your calendar.”
“Zoey—” Bobby began.
She barreled over him. “I’ll, um, table it. Maybe circle back in the off-season, like you said. No pressure. Seriously. I don’t want to be the person who takes away your only nap time before Coach sacrifices you on the altar of cardio.”
A few of them smiled. But no one looked relieved. For some reason the tension was still in their faces and shoulders as they watched her, their expressions showing they were working on something that she couldn’t possibly understand.
Her heart sank a few more inches.
Nina’s voice floated back to her. You can pitch it, but don’t be surprised if they say no.
Of course. Nina hadn’t been doubting the idea. She’d been betting against Zoey’s ability to get buy-in from men whose primary allegiance was to their sport, not her schedule.
She took a step back from the table, clutching her mug with both hands now, hoping the guys wouldn’t notice her trembling hands.
“It really is a great idea,” Christian said, brow knitted. “We just—”
“Totally, I get it. You guys have one job: win hockey games. My job is to come up with twenty different ways to stick your faces on billboards and into children’s hearts. One of those is clearly doomed.” Self-deprecating humor: her favorite shield.