“I always knew I could count on you, sis.” He grabbed his bag and noticed that there was a clothing store across the street. It was getting pretty late, but it looked like they were still open. “I’ve got to go. I need underwear and a shower, and I’ve got to be at the rink early to meet my new team who was likely just as blindsided by the trade as I was.”
“Someone on the Team Services staff can’t get that for you? I thought they were there to make the transition smooth.”
“I amnotasking them to buy me underwear.”
Laura laughed. “Fair enough. Okay, I’ll go get this box shipped. And Connor? Fake it until you make it, right?”
He nodded and smiled. “Fake it until you make it.” It was old advice, but there was something to it. Back in college, his hockey coach had their entire team read a book about how body language caused emotions, not the other way around. Slumping made you feel defeated; feeling defeated didn’t make you slump. So as a team, they would do winning poses before going on the ice to pump themselves up, and Connor witnessed over and over how much it worked.
It was advice that he’d desperately needed at the time. From a therapy standpoint, if there was an underlying problem, pretending it wasn’t there wasn’t likely to fix it. But he’d done the therapy, yet he’d still been angry so much of the time back then. The therapy had helped, but it was taking that book to heart that had gotten him past the anger and on his way to becoming the person he was now. A person he liked.
Right now, he just needed to make his body show happiness, and his emotions would follow. So he stood with his shouldersback, put a smile on his face, then crossed the street to the clothing store.
The men’s underwear section wasn’t hard to find— the four full-size mannequins wearing nothing but underwear, each in a different color, led the way.
He was standing next to a table of underwear packages, finding the style and the size he needed, when a couple of people caught his attention and he glanced over. It was two boys and a girl, all about seventeen years old. One might’ve been her boyfriend. Or possibly brother.
Connor tried to pretend he didn’t notice them as the trio discussed whether the girl should approach Connor and ask for an autograph (since she was a fan and seemed so excited to see him), or if they should maybe hurl insults at “the enemy” instead (which was apparently what the two boys thought of Connor). He wished he was doing anything other than buying underwear at that moment.
Apparently, the girl won the argument, because she straightened her shoulders as if to summon bravery— maybe she read the book, too— and walked over to him with a shy smile. “Hi. You’re Connor Greene, right? The hockey player?”
He nodded, and she let out a nervous laugh.
“I think you’re a great player.” She pulled a Sharpie from her purse. “Can I get your autograph?”
“Sure,” he said. “Um, what would you like me to sign?”
The girl looked around like a piece of paper would materialize from somewhere. When it didn’t, she picked up one of the packages of underwear. “How about this?”
He hadn’t fully formed in his mind the sentence that would suggest they instead ask a cashier if she had a piece of paper before the two guys must’ve decided that the girl had not, in fact, won the debate. They both grabbed unpackaged underwear from a bin, wadded them up, and hurled them at Connor.
The girl turned to the boys, shouted, “Losers!” then stormed off as they continued throwing underwear at him. He wasn’t sure if he’d rather they hurled the insults. At least the underwear was quieter.
They were relentless, though. He turned away from the flying underwear balls to make a quick escape toward the doors and ran right into a woman. He had been in such a hurry to leave that his speed knocked them both off their feet. He wrapped his arms around the woman as they fell, twisting so that he would land on the bottom instead of landing on her.
Which wouldn’t have been so bad, except that they hit a mannequin on the way down, knocking it over. And as it fell, it took out the next mannequin, which took out the next one. Connor, the woman, and each of the four mannequins fell to the ground like dominos. The landing knocked the air right out of him.
His sister was right— he really should’ve let someone from team services buy the underwear.
three
KATIE
Katie pushedthe door of the department store in Denver open and walked inside, her eyes finding the hanging sign overhead for the men's department before going back to the contract on her phone that she’d received from the legal department at the Glaciers. She was scanning it trying to find any clauses related to specific dates as she made her way back to the section where she was hoping to find some funny socks for her brother-in-law, Cory.
The spot for the name of the player she would be filming was blank, which was the source of the problem. Her dad had called to tell her about getting selected for this job weeks ago, and she really thought she’d know who her assigned player was long before now. Other videographers got their player’s names right away and were able to schedule events earlier in the month when things weren’t so tightly packed with Christmas.
She had even started seeing ads from the Glaciers using footage that other videographers had sent in. The ads usually cut between clips of two or three players, each being helpful with some Christmas activity in some town. Every time she sawone, it stressed her out that she didn’t even know who she was supposed to be filming yet.
And she was no longer sure how she was going to fit everything in. She already had scheduled videography jobs coming up with a couple of families to film their Christmas parties, as well as her own family’s traditions, and filming and editing the video she created for them.
Not to mention the stress she was feeling about the possibility that anything she filmed would get to the Glaciers too late for them to even use. And then what if it caused the Glaciers to lose faith in her and not want to use her for anything ever again? Plus, there was a player out there who wasn’t going to get much screen time if things didn’t start happening soon.
She was going to her parents’ house tomorrow night for their annual Santa Hat activity, though, and her dad had promised that everything would be set in stone by then, and he would let her know who her player was at the activity.
She skimmed past a lot of information on what types of things she should film, how many separate activities, and how much footage she would need to send to the team to be compiled into their campaign. There was an entire section that said they had editing rights and that anything could be cut, which she expected.
It included a player confidentiality clause that basically stated that if she discovered something personal about a player that they didn’t want disclosed, she couldn’t disclose it. She also couldn’t film him looking like a jerk. Probably because the purpose of this campaign was to raise the team’s image, not to make it worse. So, hopefully, the player she got assigned wasn’t a jerk.
