Finn O’Connell
Finn O’Connell
Callie: You ever gonna tell her how you feel?
Me: eventually
Callie: Before retirement would be ideal.
***
“The guy is a complete fraud, Scottie. A lunatic. A licensed, certified con man operating out of a basement forty minutes outside of Washington.”
I’m gripping the wheel so hard my knuckles are turning the color of the ice we should have been skating on three hours ago.
We’re twenty miles into our drive to Charlotte, the highway stretching out ahead of us under a sky the color of a wet sidewalk, and my blood pressure is currently hovering somewhere near the roof of the Volkswagen van.
“He didn’t let me on the ice once,” I continue, the bitterness sharp in my throat. “Not one single time. I am a goaltender in the National Hockey League. I have a Vezina nomination. And Grant spent a full week treating me like an auditioning clown for a traveling circus.”
From the passenger seat, there’s an ominous, vibrating silence.
I cut my eyes sideways.
Scottie is sitting there with her knees pulled up toward her chin, buried under her oversized blue hoodie, her sneakers tucked against the seat. Her hands are clamped over her mouth, her shoulders doing this weird, rhythmic hitching motion that tells me everything I need to know.
“Are you laughing?” I demand. “Scottie, are you literally laughing right now while my career is being dismantled by a man who eats pickled eggs for breakfast?”
She lets out a high-pitched, muffled squeak into her palms. “I’m not laughing, Cash. I’m… I’m… I’m practicing deep-breathing exercises. The air quality in here is very dense.”
“You’re laughing at me. Your client. The golden goose.
The man who pays for your corporate high heels.
” I slap the steering wheel with one hand.
“What happened to the Shark? What happened to the ruthless, terrifying executive who was going to turn me into a figure skater if my metrics dropped? You should be on the phone with the league office right now reporting a labor violation!”
“Cash,” she gasps, a real, full-blown laugh breaking through. She drops her hands, her face flushed, her green eyes bright with tears. “He threw a rubber chicken at you. And you caught it.”
“He told me that the chicken would help with my hand-eye coordination!” I yell, though the corners of my own mouth are trying to betray me. “It was a scientific proposition, Scottie!”
“You looked like a giant, sweaty seal, Cash. I expected someone to throw you a herring after the third racquetball.”
“Scottie, I am outraged. Truly. You have to be on my side here. Clause 1.1 of the representation agreement: Agent must validate the player’s immense ego at all times, especially when he’s been humiliated by a man wearing an orange hunting jacket.”
“Herb wore the hunting jacket, Cash. Grant was wearing a sweat-stained cutoff shirt,” she corrects me, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye with her thumb. “And for the record, I am on your side. I’m just also capable of recognizing high-quality comedy when it happens three feet away from me.”
The highway stretches out into the gray mist, the rain changing from a light drizzle into a steady, heavy drumbeat against the metal roof of the van.
The wipers are doing their best, but the driver’s side blade has a tear in the rubber that leaves a massive, crescent-shaped smear right in my field of vision.
“We should be in Atlanta by seven,” Scottie says. “The shooting coach there actually has ice booked. Real ice. With lines and nets and everything. I verified it twice. No chickens allowed in the building.”
“Thank God,” I mutter. “If another elderly man throws a small, dense object at my face this week, I’m going to start using my blocker as a weapon.”
The words have barely left my mouth when the steering wheel suddenly rips out of my grip.
The van veers sharply toward the guardrail, the tires letting out a wet howl against the asphalt.
“Cash!”
“I got it! I got it!”
I throw my weight into the wheel, my reflexes kicking in before my brain can even process what’s happening.
I fight the pull, wrestling the steering column back toward the center of the lane while my right foot hits the clutch, letting the rear-mounted engine’s speed drop so we don’t spin out on the wet surface.
The back end of the van fishtails once, twice, the heavy crate of my gear in the back shifting with a massive, terrifying crash against the metal walls.
We skid along the shoulder, gravel spraying against the undercarriage, before the van shudders to a halt against the grass embankment.
Silence hits the cab, save for the heavy, frantic sound of our own breathing and the relentless thud-thud-thud of the rain against the roof.
I look over at Scottie. Her knuckles are white where she’s gripping the dashboard, her red hair fallen forward over her face, her eyes wide.
“You okay?”
“Did we… did the engine explode or something?”
“No,” I say, looking at the right side mirror. “That was a blowout. We have a flat tire.”
Scottie lets out a long, whistling breath through her teeth and falls back against her seat. “Excellent. Perfect. The trip that keeps on giving.”
“Hey, could be worse,” I say, trying to find the humor before the reality of changing a tire in a downpour sinks in. “We could still be in the basement with Grant.”
“I think I prefer the rubber chicken to this, Cash.”
I turn off the ignition, and the engine gives one final, wet sigh before going cold. I reach down, pull the internal handle to pop the front compartment latch, and pull the emergency brake until it clicks into place.
“Alright, Scottie-girl,” I say, unbuckling my seatbelt. “Stay inside. It’s coming down out there. I’ll check the damage and see if the spare has any air in it.”
“I’m coming with you,” she says, already reaching for her door handle.
“Scottie, no. You’re wearing those sneakers, and they’re going to be ruined in the mud. Stay in the dry box.”
“I am your agent, O’Connell. You literally cannot tell me what to do.” She gives me a sharp, stubborn look that tells me there is absolutely no point in arguing. “Besides, you don’t even know where the jack is.”
“It’s under the passenger seat,” I say, feeling defensive.
“It’s stored in the back compartment, Cash. I read the manual while you were sleeping. Move out.”
I open the driver’s side door, and the storm instantly hits me like a bucket of ice water. The wind is blowing sideways, the rain stinging my face as I step down onto the gravel shoulder. The gravel is loose, turning into a muddy soup under my sneakers as I walk around to the front compartment.
It’s a disaster.
The passenger door clicks open, and Scottie steps out, holding her briefcase over her head like a tiny roof. Within three seconds, her red hair is plastered to her skull, her blue hoodie darkening as it absorbs the downpour.
She looks down at the tire, her mouth dropping open.
“Oh,” she says. “That’s… very flat.”
“Told you,” I shout back, my hood blowing off my head as a gust of wind hits us. I grab the edge and pull it back over my wet hair. “Go back inside, Scottie! There’s nothing you can do out here but get pneumonia!”
“I’m helping!” she yells, her voice high and competitive. She turns around, grabs the handle of the side sliding door and yanks it open. “Get the jack from the back! I’ll find the wrench!”
She dives into the back of the van, her legs sticking out into the rain as she rummages through the chaos of my hockey gear.
I shake my head, a grin breaking through the water streaming down my face.
She is the most stubborn, ridiculous, beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
I walk to the back, slide the door shut behind me, and dig behind my spare set of goalie pads until my fingers hit the cold, greasy steel of the scissor jack.
It’s rusted, the crank handle slightly bent, but it’s heavy enough to do the job.
I grab the spare tire—thankfully, it still has some bounce when I press my thumb into the rubber—and drag it around to the front.
When I get back to the right wheel, Scottie is already there, kneeling in the mud on a piece of cardboard she’s found. She’s holding the iron lug wrench like a club, her face covered in a streak of black grease where she must have wiped her hair out of her eyes.
“I started them,” she shouts, pointing proudly at the lug nuts. “But they’re stuck. They’re really stuck, Cash.”
“Move over,” I say, kneeling down next to her on the wet gravel.
The rain is down my collar now, my dark gray t-shirt and jeans soaking wet, but I don’t even care. The smell of the wet earth, the sting of the cold, the absolute ridiculousness of the situation—it feels real.
It feels like the kind of memory that stays with you until you’re old and gray.
I take the wrench from her. I set it on the first nut, brace my foot against the tire, and throw my entire weight down on the iron bar. There’s a loud, screeching crack as the rust gives way, the nut spinning loose.
“Teamwork,” I shout over the wind.
“I softened it up for you,” she yells back.
For the next ten minutes, we work in a weirdly efficient, wordless rhythm. We pull the shredded tire off together, the rim clanging against the gravel, and lift the spare onto the bolts.
My hands are slick with grease and cold rain, my fingers turning numb, but every time I look over at her, she’s right there, holding the bolts, soaking wet, looking more beautiful than she ever does in those sterile Boston boardrooms.
“Last one,” I pant. “We’re good. Lowering her down.”
I reverse the crank on the jack, and the van drops back onto its wheels with a bounce. I throw the shredded tire into the back of the van, slam the hatch shut, and wipe my greasy hands on my jeans.
“Alright!” I shout, the rain coming down even harder now. “Get inside! Before we drown!”
Scottie scrambles up from the cardboard, her hair soaked, her sneakers caked in yellow clay. She runs for the passenger door. She grabs the handle, pulls it—
Nothing happens.