Chapter 17 Ellie
ELLIE
“Why am I so concerned about who Fletcher’s hooking up with? He’s an NHL player. They like to sleep around.” I pace in front of Harlowe.
I couldn’t sleep last night—I kept thinking about Fletcher and that pretty honey-blonde with the good hair, then to the game that we’re going to lose and my dad being upset, and then back to Fletcher.
“Coffee.” I grab my second mug. Yeah, it’s that kind of day. The jet lag doesn’t help.
“I thought you wanted to practice your media talking points,” Harlowe reminds me.
“That girl was everything I’m not,” I cry. “Same with Dana.” I guzzle my coffee.
In the mirror of the stadium bathroom where Harlowe and I barricaded ourselves, I don’t look like an NHL coach in charge of a team. I look like what I am—a pathetic mess. I blot my cheeks with a wet paper towel.
“He has a type, and it’s not me. And I don’t care.” I fan myself.
“Uh, it kind of sounds like you do…”
“Sure, I always wanted a boyfriend that my aunts, cousins, and sisters would be jealous of. But Fletcher hates me, and I am his boss, technically. So it’s unethical, and I’m not attracted to him, nor do I care what he’s doing on his off time.”
“Exactly. You’re a boss.” Harlowe tries to fix my hair.
The media is setting up in the crowded hallway outside of the locker room, getting B-roll for tonight’s broadcast. Ignoring them, I determinedly start pinning up motivational posters in the locker room.
“The hell is that?”
“Gran!” I drop my box of pushpins.
Granny Murray starts tugging down the posters sporting sayings like ONE TEAM ONE DREAM! “These are grown-ass men. They aren’t skating hard for an arts-and-crafts project.” She unfurls one of the posters in the box she carried in.
“Granny, no!”
“Sex is the Lord’s performance-enhancing drug.”
“Oh, hell yeah!”
I squawk as the players crowd through the door.
Fletcher covers a rookie’s eyes. “Don’t look.”
“Hey, those were expensive,” Gran complains, trying to block me from tearing down the nude posters.
“There’s more where these came from, boys,” Granny Murray declares, “but you only get to see more titties if you win this game! I’ve just put down another fifty grand. Got my life savings riding on you.”
“Gran,” I hiss, “you didn’t take out a loan for all of that, did you?”
“I believe in you, girlie. Make those Orcas players eat unwashed pussy for dinner.”
Fletcher is staring at me, not the giant boobies above my head.
I start sticking Post-it notes over the most egregious sections of the poster.
Jovi is hopping around, anxious. “You’re on my seat,” he finally says, raising his hand.
“You’re in his seat.” Fletcher grabs me around the waist and sets me down on the floor.
He looks down at me. It’s not in that interested, seductive way—the way he looked at Dana. Oh, no, it’s the way you’d look at someone who has a bug crawling on their forehead. “What the hell are you wearing?” Fletcher flicks the collar of my neon-pink suit.
Self-consciously, I touch the rhinestone-encrusted headband.
“I think your suit looks nice,” Bramms says as he starts pulling out his tape.
“He’s color-blind, so he thinks it’s blue.”
“Circle time!” I call, frazzled. Most of the guys are still staring at the posters.
“See,” Granny Murray tells me, “motivation.”
The rookies all sit on the floor around me as I run through the plays. Unlike yesterday, Fletcher and several of the other older players seem to be absorbing and buying into the plays, asking questions and acting them out to the younger players.
Harlowe walks in and blinks up at the posters. “Um, whoa. Um, the press is outside, sooo…”
“Get your last looks in, boys. Seems like communism’s come to the NHL.” Granny Murray sighs and starts taking down the posters.
I turn to the players with a big smile. “You’re in the NHL. No matter what, you’re still winners.”
The players head out for warm-ups. A giant inflatable orca in a Santa hat swings from the ceiling. The stadium’s filling up. Mostly with the blue-and-silver Orca colors, but there’s a large chunk of seats where I see Rhode Island burgundy.
My family cheers when they see the bright-pink suit. I give a weak wave. Then I head to the media scrum.
There’s laughter when I stand in front of the bank of microphones; the light bounces off the rhinestones on my suit, dazzling over the media.
This isn’t worse than dealing with entitled daycare parents, I tell myself.
No one is trying to get every food known to the natural world banned from my classroom because their tarot reader thinks it’s going to make their precious child an educational failure.
I take a deep breath and smile. “Welcome to a bright and beautiful day in Seattle, everyone,” I say with as much cheer as I can. “I’ll take questions.”
The first sports writer pipes up. “Do you have a statement about the Orcas players throwing tampons at your players?”