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He’d said it in a teasing tone, but it rubbed me the wrong way. The newsroom, which the sports department was part of, was separate from the opinion writers for theChronicle. I didn’t care if hockey players liked or talked to the sports reporters here; that wasn’t my concern or my business. And my columns were none of Clark’s business.
“Have a good night,” I said.
“Yeah, you too, Elle.”
He gave me one more longing look from my office doorway before leaving. Clark was a nice guy, but I had no interest in dating someone who worked at the same paper I did. There were too many ways it could go bad.
Besides, who had time for dating? I worked until at least six during the week, and I spent my weekends resting, cleaning, doing laundry, seeing friends, and getting in a little outdoor time when the weather was nice. I hadn’t had a relationship in more than four years, and I was happier on my own. I liked not answering to anyone.
My last boyfriend, John, had been hard to break up with. He knew about my trust fund and had envisioned us getting married and him opening his own bar. Paid for with money from my trust, of course. And anytime I’d objected, he’d told me I was an unsupportive partner.
I’d never know if a man wanted me formeor for my money. Even though I saw it as my grandparents’ money, the five-figure deposits they made into my bank account every month were mine whether I wanted them or not, and so was the trust fund. I appreciated their generosity; it had allowed me to build a writing portfolio in my early twenties that had landed me my dream job at twenty-seven.
I was in the home stretch on my column now, writing that Robert McGann had gotten some, but not all, of what he deserved. His life sentence in prison wouldn’t compare to what he had done to those two little girls. Sometimes I wondered if an “eye for an eye” approach to crime would actually be more civilized than the humane approach we took in the US.
Reading our reporter’s coverage of McGann’s crime, arrest, and trial earlier today had hurt my heart. As soon as my column was filed, I closed down my computer, put on my trench coat, and locked my office.
It was a small, windowless office, but it was all mine. That was a rarity in the news business, and I was proud of my space. I liked that I could lock the door, putting up a physical barrier between me and the workday.
Tomorrow was a new day, and I hoped to write a column about something that might put a smile on readers’ faces.
* * *
Forty-five minuteslater I stood at my apartment door, large pepperoni and mushroom pizza balanced on one hand, apartment keys in the other.
Vanderpump Rulesand yoga pants, here I come.
I’d just unlocked my door when Ford’s front door opened. My gaze was drawn to his bare chest, then to his eyes, and then down to his abs. I had to look like a cartoon character with its eyes bulging and its tongue rolling across the ground.
“Eleanor,” he said, his tone the opposite of friendly.
The pizza box started to slide, but I couldn’t seem to tear my gaze away from his perfectly formed eight pack. It flipped and hit the ground with a thud.
“Shit,” I said, crouching down to retrieve it.
This had escalated from embarrassing to humiliating in a matter of seconds.
“I’d help, but I’m just a caveman,” Ford said.
I winced. Had I really used that word in a column about hockey?
“I apologize for any offense I caused you,” I said, standing up with my upside-down pizza box in my hands.
“That’s a bullshit non-apology. What you should be sorry for is writing about something you have no knowledge of.”
My heart wasn’t racing over his muscles now. It was anger making me clench the pizza box so hard my fingertips burned.
“No knowledge?” I fired back. “There are an average of six concussions in every one hundred pro hockey games. The NIH estimates a quarter of youth ice hockey players are affected by concussions. Ice hockey causes more concussions in children than football. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a degenerative brain disease caused by years of brain injury from contact sports, and a recent study found that every year of playing ice hockey increases the risk of getting CTE by twenty-three percent.”
Ford narrowed his eyes and stepped out of his doorway, closing it behind him.
“Okay, so you know some stats,” he said. “And I’ll agree with you that head injuries are a major issue in hockey. But we go into it willingly. We know the risks.”
“You romanticize the violence.”
He scoffed. “I don’t romanticize shit. Why don’t you come to a few games and see what hockey is really about? Or do you just want to rely on statistics you find online?”
The pounding in my chest wasn’t letting up. Nice, helpful Ford was above-average level attractive. A ten, basically. But intense, scolding Ford was…more like an eleven. It was all I could do not to say yes just to please him.
