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Luke rolls his eyes and serves us four plates of stir-fry. I take a final shot of the finished product and silently motion for Ryan to taste it for the camera. He takes a decent-sized forkful and sighs in pleasure. It's such a sexy sound that my lady bits sigh right along with him.
"That's top-notch Valentine cooking. Well, that's it for now. I'm going to finish this gourmet grub, and I'll see you all at tonight's game. Don't forget to follow us on all our socials for more inside looks into 'The Blue and White Life.'" Jesus Christ, he even added a tag at the end. Ryan was born for this shit.His career as a future broadcast hockey analyst is a sure thing when he decides to retire.
I end the recording, do some minor editing, and post. He was amazing. Ryan makes being on camera look so easy that I wonder if Tyra gave him tips. Even I can admit he is the perfect player to do something like this. He's nice to look at and highly articulate.
I don't need to check our likes and shares to know this project will be a massive success. We will have sponsors and advertisers begging us for spots in no time.
Not surprisingly, as we eat, Holly and I get calls from several businesses and companies who want to be a part of Ryan's segments. Holly contacted a few potential sponsors to encourage them to watch our first post. Ryan's lured them in, and now they're hooked. We have over a hundred thousand views and counting within a couple of hours.
There's no turning back now. Ryan and I are stuck together until playoffs start, and I have a hunch "The Blue and White Life" might become a long-term arrangement.
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"And this, my friends," Ryan grins into my phone's camera, "is the Northmen dressing room. I know. It's not as exciting as many of you thought."
The dressing room isn't exciting at all. Most of the women I interact with day-to-day seem to think the Northmen's locker room is full of gorgeous, naked men showing off their amazing abs and asses you can bounce loonies off. It's not—most of the time.
Obviously, we ladies get an eye-full from time to time, but for the most part, the dressing room is all business. It's player stalls, rank-smelling equipment, hockey tape, ice packs, and other goodies.
The game just finished and the Northmen won three-to-two, so the team is in good spirits, laughing, joking, and whistling. A few reporters are filtering in for scrums and to get quotes from the players.
Ryan leads me to his stall showing off a few items he keeps in there.
"My stall is pretty boring. Unlike Wilder over there, who uses his cubby like a doomsday locker."
I pan the camera over to Chase's locker. He almost flips Ryan the bird but then thinks better of it after I shoot him a warning glare. His stall is crammed with equipment, clothing, toiletries, three boxes of protein bars, water bottles, pucks, and god knows what else.
Ryan's personal space is the polar opposite. It's clean, organized, and has very few superfluous things.
"I like to keep it simple. I have my favourite gum, my lucky loonie from the Winter Olympics, and you know, the usuals," he says, showing off his toothbrush, comb, hair wax, and deodorant. "Hockey players stink, so we need to keep a stockpile of stuff to keep us smelling human.
"And last, but certainly not least, I have my lucky charm. As many of you know, hockey players are notoriously superstitious creatures. Some of us have lucky pucks or sticks. Some of us put on our equipment in the same order every game. Some of us have lucky socks or rituals, but I have the two best lucky charms in hockey."
The hair on my neck raises.There is no way he kept it.
"First, I have my lucky gold chain." From under his t-shirt, Ryan pulls out the gold chain I gave him years ago before everything went sideways. I swear, somehow, the rings dangling around my neck warm at the sight. "This chain was given to me by a very special person. She's my real good luck charm, and I haven't played a game without it in over eight years."
I focus all my attention on keeping my phone and camera from shaking, but I falter when Ryan reaches into the back of his stall shelf and pulls out his other lucky charm.
He smiles at the camera, showing off a wooden treasure chest, small enough to fit in his hands. It's a box I recognize well. When Ryan and I were together, we loved going to weekend fairs and festivals. We would scour the internet and the newspaper's community pages to discover all sorts of summer fairs, craft shows, and chintzy events we could find. Then jump in the car for a road trip.
Southern Ontario is famous for summer festivals. We went to Muskoka Ribfest, where a dozen food trucks serve up awarding-winning ribs slathered in secret barbecue sauces and corn on the cob, shucked and dipped in a vat of butter. We went to roadshows and crash derbies in small towns. We camped at a massive arts and crafts festival with hundreds of tents lining the entire waterfront of Kempenfelt Bay. It was full of crap you don't need and would never think of, like leather foot cushions shaped like pigs and wooden tables made from recycled hockey sticks. Ryan and I went to them all. Something different every weekend.
I had always wanted to go to a Renaissance Faire and Ryan surprised me by dressing up in full historical regalia; tight pants, doublet, billowing white shirt and all. It was so hot that day. We spent the day sweating our asses off, exploring a Renaissance village, eating massive turkey drumsticks, and giggling like two idiots in love.
I remember stopping at a wood carver's shop. His work was intricate and beautiful, and I instantly fell in love with a small, hand-carved box. The craftsman sold me a story about the tiny chest and its magical powers. It's a "Lover's Chest." According to the carver, you place your heart inside and give it to someone who'll protect it forever.
At the time, I was a young, fanciful girl, high on fairytales and happily ever afters. But I was too embarrassed to ask for the chest and too chicken shit to give it to Ryan. I was sure he would think I was an idiot. I left the carver's stall longing for it, and somehow Ryan snuck back and bought it for me. Later, when he handed it to me on the drive home, he told me he expected it back, along with my heart. That was the weekend I knew Ryan was my person. It was also the weekend I tried giving road-head for the first time and almost got us killed.
I purchased a Swarovski crystal heart with a spiral inscription a week later."You have my heart for always. You have my love forever. Forever you have me."
"This here is my real lucky charm," he winks at the camera, showing off the chest, giving it a little shake. I hear the clang of the crystal inside, and my heart squeezes. "But I can't tell you what's inside. It's a secret and something only meant for me."
For a brief moment, we make eye contact. Heat floods my body, right to my bones. He's kept my heart all this time, even though he's a grown man, and I gave it to him as a silly girl in love.
The pieces of my broken heart I've taped together over the last seven years are cracking and fracturing into itty-bitty splinters whenever I'm around Ryan. This is torture.
I'm only half conscious of what's happening around me as the segment ends, and I post it online.
