“No eggnog. Water. She needs to hydrate.” My dad’s cousin shoos her away.
“Can you”—my cousin waves a sports drink with a home-printed label on it in my face—“make the team drink this?”
“All sponsorships have to go through me!” Harlowe hollers.
“Protein! She needs protein!” someone exclaims.
“She’s not playing,” another uncle argues.
“She’s got to let the players run a train on her,” Dakota says drunkenly. “Isn’t that how you won the last time?”
“Which one has the biggest dick?” My cousin Bella giggles.
“Fletcher’s pretty hung.” Her mom cackles.
“Ooh, but Ren has all those tattoos.”
“Ren’s missing most of his teeth.”
“Oh my,” Mom cries, “I forgot about his poor teeth. I made candy canes for the boys for the game tomorrow.”
“Trina, they can’t eat candy.”
“It’s just one little candy cane.”
“Are you serious? These things”—Aunt Babs holds up one of the biggest candy canes I’ve ever seen—“look like elephant cocks.”
“Oh, do you think Ren’s hung like that?”
“Fletcher for sure is.”
My cousins all collapse in laughter while my face burns as I try not to think about how close I came to his, er, candy cane in my office.
“You need to stop chasing after men with a prison record! That’s why you’re thirty-four and not even married yet!” my aunt screams, chasing her daughter around the crowded living room.
Nate chokes on his merry meatballs—my mom’s specialty.
“She’s just joking.” My aunt slaps my dad on the back. “You got your panties stuffed so far up your ass, bro.”
“You’re not sleeping with them, are you?” Nate asks as my uncle hands him another beer. “I assured everyone at the NHL that it was just the press giving you a hard time—that you promised me.”
“No way, Dad,” I squeak, pretending to be very interested in the buffet spread of Christmas-themed appetizers and nibbles.
“She needs to be sleeping with one of the players!” Granny Murray demands, walking through the house with a band saw.
“Granny, what are you—”
“I had to pawn the band saw that was in the equipment closet at the stadium, and I know how sensitive my son-in-law is about his tools—which is rich, because I ain’t never seen him use one before. I need this to trim the sticks for the game tomorrow.” She hefts it.
“Is that what happened to the freezer?” Harlowe scrunches her nose.
“Just move those turkeys your mom bought out of the way and put the game-day pucks in the deep freezer,” my sister Angie tells her.
“You can use my makeup fridge,” my sister Maxie offers, “to take them to the rink.”
“That’s not—” Dad hisses out a breath. “That’s not regulation.”
“She knows how to keep pucks cold!” one of my mom’s cousins starts yelling at Dad.
