Today,Connor got to be on the ice with his new team in Denver and was introduced to everyone. Most players in the NHL had experienced either getting traded or having a teammate they were good friends with get traded. Everyone, himself included, accepted that it was just part of the game. They always embraced the new guy because they understood how hard a trade was on a player. Connor had done it plenty of times with players traded to the Thunderstorm.
But even though the Glaciers embraced him and welcomed him onto the team, he still got the sense that they weren’t entirely happy about the trade. Which was probably pretty common. He’d felt the same about new players to his own team plenty of times.
He didn’t know the details of their feelings about his trade, specifically, though, and didn’t know anyone well enough yet to ask. Although, one player, Erik Henderson, seemed like a cool guy. And another player, Briggs, seemed particularly unhappy about Connor’s presence.
Connor reminded himself that it was all temporary. He’d get traded closer to home soon. Maybe before the trade deadline inMarch, but for sure by summer. He wanted to gel with the team until then, but he didn’t want to get comfortable.
After practice, he met with Reid Allred and immediately liked the guy. He worked with players and their agents to discuss branding themselves and the team and each player’s role on the team. So he’d be working with him off and on while he was with the Glaciers.
Then, Mr. Allred explained that they’d had a few players on the team who wreaked havoc on the team’s image, harming ticket sales, especially for families. They’d traded a couple of players in the off-season, but the player they had just traded for Connor had caused a lot of damage by his actions both on and off the ice, and they were working on repairing that image.
Image repair was a pretty normal part of life for a team. So was having the players do things in the communities where they played. Being assigned to a community to do at least three activities in the week leading up to Christmas, which also happened to be your very first week on the team, was not so normal. Especially when they also had three games between now and then. It helped that the guy acknowledged that it would be a challenge for him and was apologetic about it.
It also helped that the guy recognized that Connor would be away from family for Christmas and offered to let him stay with his family during the three days he’d be off for Christmas. He probably should’ve guessed that there would be a problem going to someone’s home if they lived in Mountain Springs.
Mr. Allred just looked so much younger than Connor’s step-dad that he’d assumed the man’s daughters would be younger— the ages where they’d still be living at home, not that they’d be his age.
And he definitely didn’t expect to show up at Mr. Allred’s house and see the woman he’d plowed into last night at the department store. Sure, she was extremely attractive and hefelt like he’d connected with her a teeny bit, and not in an “accidentally crashed into her physically” kind of way. But the whole experience had been embarrassing in so many ways that he’d hoped that he’d never run into her again.
When she’d made the comment about people still wanting to throw things at him, he had assumed it was a hockey thing, especially since he came from the Thunderstorm. He hadn’t recognized her from high school at all. Even after finding out he’d known her from there, he still had no flash of recognition.
His parents had a plethora of problems in his sophomore and junior years of high school, so most of his high school memories were of that. Apparently, he’d only focused on his own problems and not on anyone else at all. He might have only been in high school with two of these sisters, but by the way all five looked at him, they all knew about him.
And he had already agreed to stay with them over Christmas. Was it too late to back out?
They didn’t leave any time for stewing in the awkwardness, though, before Mrs. Allred pulled out a Santa hat and said, “Are you all ready to get started?”
Everyone shouted yes, the kids most animated of all. Even the black lab seemed excited about it. Connor leaned in toward Katie and asked, “What are we about to do?” And just like last night, when they had fallen, he felt a current run through him at the nearness. A tingle of nerve endings. It was almost as if she exuded an electric charge and by getting close, he was bound to feel it.
She turned her head to him, eyes still on the Santa hat like she didn’t want to miss anything, and said, “Each sibling is a team with their family. My parents are a team, too.” Her eyes met his. “You’re my team, by the way. We didn’t get off on the right foot in high school, and we didn’t again last night. But just so you know, we’re going to win this.”
He smiled at her conviction. He was definitely down for winning.
“We each pull out an assignment— two people get entertainment, which is a skit; two people get decorations; and two people get dinner. Except it’s not that straight-forward. There are obstacles and a time limit and a money limit, and you’re competing against the other team that drew the same thing.”
Connor nodded. Sitting around, socializing with people who only knew him as who he used to be sounded like torture. A competition, he could handle. And as much as he didn’t want to be surrounded by people who didn’t have the best opinions of him, it felt good to be around a family, even if it wasn’t his own, doing family Christmas things. Tonight, his family was decorating the big tree, and he was missing it.
The oldest sister, Becca, if he remembered correctly, drew a paper out of the Santa hat that Mrs. Allred held, and read, “Decorations!” Everyone reacted loudly. This was a group that really seemed to like cheering. It almost sounded like a hockey game in here.
“There are a lot of details to it,” Katie continued. “We don’t need to worry about all that right now. What we need to worry about is not drawingDinner.”
“Why do we need to worry about that?”
Another sister drew out “Entertainment!” and everyone cheered again.
“Let’s just say that every other time I’ve drawn dinner, bad things happened.”
Her sister, Noelle, the one he’d gone to school with, drew out “Dinner!” and again with the clapping and hooting, but this time with a breath of relief from Katie, probably because it just cut down their chances of pulling a dinner paper from the hat, too.
“Like what?” he asked.
“Oh, you know, just things like forgetting a pan of garlic bread was in the oven on broil until the smoke started pouring out, forgetting to put any kind of liquid in the Instant Pot when using it as a pressure cooker, a completely inedible pasta sauce. Once I forgot to turn on the burner for the eggs, realized it at the last moment, and put them in the microwave instead.
“Another time, I dropped a big pot of soup on the way to the table, sending it everywhere. And I do meaneverywhere. Adding a bit too much salt, making everyone say ‘I’m headed into the salt mines’ with every bite they took. Setting a hot pad on fire. Things like that. Some of those things happened in the same year, obviously. I haven’t actually drawn the ‘Dinner’ paper that many times.”
He chuckled. “Okay then, we are crossing our fingers for ‘entertainment’ or ‘decorations.’”
“Either one.”
