Page 5 of Season's Schemings
Please,please,tell me this isn’t a Puck Bunny I took on a date or something.
And if it is, what in the name of all that is holy is she doing in the men’s restroom at the RGM?
I wrack my brain, trying to remember the women I’ve dated since I was sold by the Edmonton Wolverines to the Atlanta Cyclones and moved to Georgia this time last year. But I come up empty. All of my flirtations here have been brief. Unremarkable. Well, they’ve been like that everywhere, given that for a long time now, I’ve been committed to nothing and nobody but the sport I love.
Those eyes of hers, though. I feel like I’d recognize those strange eyes anywhere.
But the fact is, I don’t really know anyone here in Atlanta except my teammates and the women I’ve dated.
Plus, she’s looking at me like I’ve ruined her day.
My panic button segues into alarm bells as I stare blankly at a woman who I may or may not have had a romantic dalliance with, while I may or may not have been suffering a brain hemorrhage and/or temporary amnesia.
Ishouldask if she’s okay.
Should ask if I can help her.
Should ask for her to remind me of her name so I can remember, and maybe apologize, for whatever I did.
But apparently, I really am a dumb jock. Because instead, I blurt, “You missed a spot on your pants!”
Then, like the gentleman and scholar that I am, I turn on my heel and bolt, and the bathroom door slams closed behind me.
* * *
“Who do you think would win in a fight—a narwhal or a unicorn?”
I look up at Jimmy Jones-Johnstone, AKA Triple J, from where I’m unlacing my skates on a bench in the locker room. He beams back at me, like he’s just asked an actual, legitimate question.
“You do know that unicorns aren’t real, right?”
Triple J considers this for a moment as he removes his jersey. “But neither are narwhals.”
For the second time in a matter of hours, I find myself putting my high school education to good use. And you know, my general non-absolute-idiocy. “Yes, they are. They live in the Arctic Circle.”
“Sure, and Santa’s elves ride them to work every morning.” He sticks out his elbow in a littlenudge, nudgegesture, then starts wheezing with laughter.
Is he serious right now? Sometimes when I talk to Jimmy, it’s like he’s tuned into a totally different frequency than the rest of the human population.
“I always imagined that Santa’s elves would be super hot, if they were real.” Dallas Cooper—famous for being one of the best defensemen in the NHL, and for having a roster as long as his arm—pipes up.
“But sadly, they’re about as real as narwhals,” says Aaron Marino, our alternate captain and the world’s biggest softy despite looking like a real-life Gigachad.
I am surrounded by idiots.
And yet, as my teammates traipse off to the showers one by one, I can’t help but smile. Because honestly? I don’t hate it here.
At all.
In fact, I like it a whole lot more than I thought I would.
When the Edmonton Wolverines dropped the bomb that I was being traded and would be going to the Cyclones, I wasn’t exactly delighted—I viewed the Cyclones as a relatively unexciting franchise who didn’t have the best track record.
Like… the team hasn’t even made the first round of the playoffs for years.
Despite my reservations, my agent, Mike Ambrosia, was sure that joining the Cyclones was going to be the best move for me and my career. Give me a chance to be the hero and lead a team in a dry spell to glory.
And I wanted to do anything I could to further my career.