I feel very out of place against the dark-gray marble floor and walls as I walk in wearing my pilling leggings and my scruffy overcoat, my Rhode Island Hockey Club tote bag slung over one shoulder.
The lobby is decorated for Christmas, though somehow the fifteen-foot-tall Christmas tree with its bloodred ornaments doesn’t inspire warm, fuzzy holiday feelings. The choral holiday carols that filter faintly over the sound system sound like a funeral dirge.
“I, um—” My voice cracks, and I clear my throat.
The receptionist, an older lady, peers over the side of the desk. She slides her glasses down her nose then back up.
“I’m here for a meeting with Dana Holbrook. She asked for me to come see her immediately.”
She nods to one of the security guards. Wordlessly, he buzzes me onto the elevator.
I bite my nails as I ride up. In the mirrored walls, I look like a little girl. Not a cute one. Like an inept one who wanders into traffic on a whim.
On the train on the way to Manhattan, I tried and failed to come up with a PR plan. In the fancy elevator, the plan looks even more anemic in my beat-up RIHC notebook than it did an hour ago.
I’m not a marketing major. I’m not even a girlboss business major. I majored in early childhood development. I can draw a happy cloud that shows you how to use the potty. I can readMax the Greatover and over and over again and still make it entertaining. I know all thePaw Patrolcharacters. I can teach a child how to tie their shoes and put on their own mittens in five minutes with nothing but two stickers and an interpretive dance.
I do not know how to create a PR plan to manage the disaster of your failed NHL team’s GM, head coach, and assistant coach all getting arrested and indicted on federal charges.
Where do you even start?
I should have just moved away once it was clear I was blacklisted in the daycare circuit in Maplewood Falls. My dad said one of his old NHL buddies’ wives was opening a daycare in Colorado and wanted me on. But that’s so far away from home and all my siblings and cousins.
My dream was to fall in love with a local boy—someone kind who loves hockey and has a real job, who wants a big family and can at the very least tolerate my overly large, very codependent family. Someone the opposite of Fletcher, who won’t protest when we buy a house down the street from my parents.
Sucks for me that all the guys I dated thought I was a cool girl because I liked hockey. They didn’t think it was so cool that I know more about the game than them, and they definitely didn’t like that I could play better than them.
I don’t consider myself that good at hockey, but to make one of the Maplewood Falls rec-level players happy, I’d have to give it up. My other option is to date a guy who’s a pro hockey player, neither of which is going to happen.
I’m still young, I remind myself. Twenty-three is young.
I gulp.
The other offices in the hall are empty as I creep along, feet sinking into the plush carpet. It’s December. Most people are probably out soaking up the festive holiday season.
Too soon, I’m standing in front of Dana Holbrook’s office.
There’s a faint clicking noise.
I peer around the doorframe that’s been draped in garland.
Dana is sitting at her oversized mahogany desk, a single lamplight casting her perfect skin, perfect hair, perfectly sculpted cheekbones in sharp relief.
Click.Her nail taps on the wood desk.
Click.
I swallow.
“What are you waiting for?” The words slither out.
Shoulders hunched, I scurry into the office, dump all my stuff on the floor next to the chair in front of her desk, sit down, then stand up. “Hi, Mrs. Holbrook.”
Her lip curls. “I told you to call me Dana, Ellie.”
“Right.” I salute.
“Sit down.”
