Page 50 of On His Team

They needed Gianna, and that feels different. It feels great.

I push the cart toward Donovan.

On the bus back to the hotel, Stanley talks the entire way despite having just played an overtime hockey game, and I genuinely don’t understand how his body produces enough energy to keep him alive.

When I get to my room, the group chat has been dead for almost an hour.

I answer the last thing Mara sent.

Me: Alive. Kind of. My feet are destroyed.

She answers immediately.

Mara: How was it?

I think about the loading dock. The cases. The crowd. The way the whole operation starts hours before anybody sits in a seat. The fact that I knew where things were when somebody asked.

Me: I had the time of my life.

I put the phone down.

My pitch is still open on the laptop. There’s a Finance quiz waiting for me. Statistics homework. Sport Law reading. Monday with Professor Ives, which I’m already dreading.

None of that feels very important right now.

What I keep thinking about is that I want more of this.

Maybe not equipment specifically. I don’t know yet.

But this part.

The work before everybody else arrives. The part where somebody has to know what door opens, what form gets signed, what case gets loaded, what happens if something breaks, what comes next when nobody in the stands has any idea there was ever a problem.

I want to know what jobs let me keep doing that.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand.

Donovan: Lobby 7:00 a.m. Don’t be late.

I smile.

Me: I’ll be there.

There’s another game tomorrow.

And I get to do this again.

Chapter 6

ROWAN

We lose three-one Saturday.

Minnesota adjusts after Friday, we don’t adjust fast enough, and Percy is the only reason it stays close. By the time Fuller finishes with us, nobody needs the game explained. We know what happened. We have Ohio State next weekend, Monday to fix what needs fixing, and a flight home in the morning.

By Sunday, nobody wants to talk about hockey anymore.

The airport is quiet for our group, which is saying something. Stanley buys enough food at the terminal to survive a weather emergency, complains about the price of an eleven-dollar smoothie while drinking the entire thing, and then falls asleep before the plane finishes climbing.