As I talk while picturing it, a calmness seeps into me. It gets me into the head space that I need to be in before a game. It grounds me and gives me energy I know I didn’t possess when I first walked into this room.
Laura is quiet for a moment before she whispers, “Wow. Keep talking like that and I might become a hockey player.”
He chuckled.
“Ice in a rink in Denver is the same as ice in a rink in Charlotte. Focus on your love of the ice wherever it is, and I can tell you that you’ll be just fine.”
“Thanks, sis.”
“You’re welcome. Sean and I have a date tonight, so I won’t be able to watch, but call me tomorrow and tell me how the game went?”
“Will do.”
“Oh, and tell me about this videographer who has caught your eye.”
“What? How?” he sputtered. He’d said one sentence to Laura about Katie. And he’d kept it neutral.
“You give away much more in the tone of your voice than you realize. Now, I helped you today, so tomorrow, you tell me all about her.”
seven
KATIE
Katie waitedfor Connor in Mountain Springs’ Downtown Park, standing right between a snow sculpture of an alien wearing a Santa hat while decorating a Christmas tree and a pirate ship with Santa as the captain. Connor wasn’t late yet, but still, she wondered if he was going to show up after how things went yesterday.
Things at Mountain Springs Elementary School yesterday had been a disaster. The only genuine smile he had the entire time might have been the one he gave her when he first arrived and saw her. (Which was, admittedly, pretty fantastic and might have sent her heart a buzzing.) Yes, he also wore a smile when he went up to the first table to wrap a present with the fifth-grade boys— before they started smack-talking— but even that smile had seemed forced. Like he just hadn’t wanted to be there.
She’d expected him to be good with the kids, especially because he had been so great with her nieces when they’d presented him with the Christmas tree to keep in his hotel room. An average response to her nieces would’ve been to thank them, tell them they did a great job, and then set the tree down. But he got down to their level, made them feel like they’d decorated thetree the best he’d seen in his life and that they’d given him the greatest gift ever.
Where had that Connor been yesterday? Yes, the boys had been rude. But he could’ve just joked with them about their comments instead of acting like they were being serious. Laughed with them about it. Pretended to be having a great time, even if he wasn’t, so she could’ve at least turned off the audio and replaced it with something else.
As it was, she had no usable footage. The one part where he genuinely smiled at her? That shot had included no other people, and it was at an angle where it was impossible to tell that he was even in a school. She did try playing it in slow motion, though, just out of curiosity to see how it looked. His walk, complete with that smile, was amazing and looked epic. And, okay, she may have watched it through at least a dozen times.
Other than that, there really wasn’t anything she could send to the Glaciers. Her choice of footage would’ve been limited, anyway, because not all the parents had given permission for their child to be in the video, but she didn’t haveany. She’d spent the night tossing and turning and spent this morning wondering how she was ever going to pull off this job.
She hoped that yesterday was an anomaly. That he wasn’t actually closer to being the kid who ruined the school dance back in high school than he was to being the guy she’d cooked a meal with at her parents’ house two days ago.
But if nothing else, at least she validated her decision to not just go on initial impressions of a guy and to wait for more evidence to know if he was someone worth being interested in.
She shook out her gloved hands and stomped her feet in the snow a bit to get more circulation and warmth to them. And to help her nerves. Maybe she just needed to pull Connor aside often tonight and do what it took to get him in the right mindset so she could get some genuine smiles out of him.
Or… maybe not. From the moment she first spotted him walking toward her from a parking stall, there was a great smile on his face. When he glanced around the park, it didn’t even fade. She didn’t realize exactly how stressed she’d been until she felt relief at that smile. Maybe today wouldn’t be the disaster that she feared.
When he reached her, she said, “So, I heard you won last night. Congratulations.” It didn’t explain yesterday, but maybe that was why he was smiling today. She pulled her camera from its case so she could get some footage of that smile in case it wore off.
“Thank you. It was a great game.” He glanced again at all the snow sculptures lit by landscape lights before his eyes were back on her. “You’re not a hockey fan?”
She looked at him, confused.
“You say you ‘heard’ we won.”
Yeah, she “heard” it from the announcers. And from Emmalee’s screaming. “Nah. I don’t usually watch.” Which was true, even if it wasn’t true last night. She hadn’t planned to watch, but then Emmalee brought home a bunch of flowers so she could watch on their TV in the living room while working. Katie had been at their table, attempting to edit the footage she’d shot during the day, trying to keep her attention off the game.
But she was curious. She had seen how Connor had acted at her family thing and had seen how he’d acted with the kids at the elementary school. Since the two glimpses she’d gotten of him didn’t match up, she wondered which version she’d see at the game. That curiosity won out, so she brought her laptop to the couch to watch while she worked.
She couldn’t really compare the Connor she saw on TV to either one. Although she did see the competitiveness that had come out during the cooking competition. And he did seem to truly love what he was doing when he was on the ice, even whilein a fierce battle with another player over a puck. There weren’t any interactions with kids, of course, so she had nothing at all to compare there.
“Hey, um,” Connor said, rubbing the back of his neck, “I’d like to apologize for yesterday. It was a hard day for a lot of reasons.” He looked like he wanted to say more but then changed his mind. But he added, “I imagine that made your job pretty tough.”
