Chapter 4 - Grayson
Grayson
“I won’t do it,” I growled. “Fuck off.”
I was standing at my locker, still wearing all my pads. I usually had half an hour to shower and change clothes after a game before I had to give interviews with reporters and other bullshit, so I was pretty pissed off to be bombarded the moment I got into the locker room.
“This is the big contest we’ve been promoting all season,” said Bob, the head of the team’s marketing department or whatever. “You can’t not do it.”
I pulled my jersey off, then tossed it at his chest. “Fucking watch me.”
I turned toward the locker and started peeling off the layers of hockey pads covering my body, but Bob didn’t leave. He lingered behind me like an annoying pest.
“Here’s the thing,” he said in the same tone a parent took with a pouting teenager. “This isn’t a negotiation, Grayson. You’ve agreed to this.”
“Maybe my agent agreed to it,” I countered, “but I’ve said it all along—I don’t care. I don’t want to do your stupid goddamn promotion.”
I stripped down to my jock strap, then removed that, too. Bob’s cheeks turned red, and he said in a tight voice, “Do you have to change right now?”
“You’re the one who barged in here as soon as the game ended,” I replied, taking my sweet time wrapping a towel around my midsection. “If you don’t want to see a bunch of flopping dicks, you came to the wrong room.”
Bob pursed his lips and began to argue some more, but then an assistant tugged on his sleeve and whispered something in his ear. “I’ll be right back.” He turned to the assistant. “What do you mean he’s not wearing the sponsorship patch? They were sewn into the jerseys this weekend.”
“It appears he removed it with scissors…” Their voices trailed off as they disappeared somewhere else in the locker room.
I let out a long sigh. I loved playing hockey.
The moment I could walk, my dad put me in a pair of skates and taught me the sport.
Getting to play for a living, professionally, was a dream come true.
Not only that, but I’d worked my ass off to become the team captain.
I was a leader and a warrior. I went out on the ice and battled every single game.
I savored every single moment of it.
But I hated all the other bullshit that went along with the job. Marketing. Publicity events. Commercials. Contract negotiations. Press conferences. All of it was a waste of time. After four hours sweating my ass off on the ice, the last thing I wanted to do was talk to fucking Bob from Marketing.
The fact that he was giving me more bullshit to deal with made it even worse.
Mason, the rookie right defenseman we’d drafted in the first round last year, opened the locker next to mine. “Whew. I tell ya, I wish my agent was as good as yours, Captain. I’ve got two Subway commercials this month, but that’s it.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” I replied.
Mason stripped off his shirt and pads. All hockey players were muscular, but this kid was shredded in the way only someone straight out of college could be. “Trading a little bit of your time for millions in sponsorship dollars? Yeah, that sounds terrible.”
“Wait until you’re doing them twice a week. They’ll exhaust you.”
“As long as I’m making eight figures?” he replied. “I won’t mind being exhausted. I’ll buy a really nice mattress and hire my own masseuse to massage my shoulders while I sleep.”
“I’m not getting paid extra for this,” I pointed out. “It’s a requirement in my contract.”
“That just means you already got paid for it!” Mason said cheerfully. “You got that big contract two years ago, right? You’re swimming in cash. Now all you have to do is… what? Make an appearance at a car dealership or something?”
“It’s a date,” I gritted out. Even saying it out loud annoyed me. “That big contest they’ve been running.”
Mason’s eyes widened. “Oh, yeah! Shit, what are you complaining about? That’s way more fun than the stuff they make all the other players do.”
“Going on a date against my will isn’t my idea of fun.”
“What if she’s hot?”
“The attractiveness of my date isn’t what I’m worried about,” I said.
He continued like I hadn’t said anything.
“This woman might be a total smokeshow and you’re sitting here moping about it.
And if it ends up being a shitty date, so what?
Think about it, dude. People all around the country go on shitty dates all the time.
You’re the only one basically getting paid for it.
And yes, you are indirectly being paid since it’s part of that massive contract. ”
Mason made a good point, but I wasn’t in the mood to be agreeable. “I don’t need help with my love life.”
He laughed and pointed at me with his stick of deodorant. “Buddy, you never know when fate might deal you a good hand. And if not, you’ve still got your actual hand to fall back on.”
I grunted.
“Get it?” Mason asked, showing me his palm. “I’m talking about jacking off.”
“Thanks for spelling it out for me, kid.”
He grinned. “Any time, Captain!”
Bob from Marketing returned a moment later, an annoyed look on his face.
“I’m having a day, so I’m going to make this as clear as possible for you, Grayson.
In your contract, you agreed to attend ten marketing events per NHL season, at our discretion.
This is one of those events. You were given more than thirty days notice, as required by the San Antonio Surge.
My assistant is going to send you all the details for the date this weekend.
” He stepped closer to me. “If you fail to attend, you will be violating your contract. I don’t want to get our legal team involved, but honestly, I’m at the point where I don’t want to argue with you anymore, so I really hope you stop fighting us on this. ”
Every impulse in my body was screaming at me to defy him. To say no and tell him to fuck all the way off. Nothing would feel better to me at that exact moment.
But I could tell Bob was out of patience. He was serious. And as much as I hated to go on this insane date, I would hate to get our lawyers involved more.
“Fine,” I said, turning away from the man. “I’ll go on your stupid date. But you can’t make me have a good time.”