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Nico
It’s barely eight o’clock in the morning, and I have the makings of a headache forming behind my eyes. Because I’m a sucker for punishment, I read the email once more. After ascertaining that the contents haven’t changed, I delete it and sit back in my chair. Passing a palm over my face, I push back from the desk and head into the hallway in search of coffee. By the time I get back from the staff room, my assistant coach, Myles Avery, is sitting at the desk wedged beside mine. He eyes the coffee mug in my hand and smiles sheepishly, holding up two to-go cups from the gas station on the corner.
“Should have got here five minutes ago and saved you the trouble.” He laughs, placing one of the cups onto my desk.
I slide carefully between the desks, sitting down and angling my chair toward him. “Thanks, but you know you don’t have to bring me coffee every morning, right?”
Last week was my first on the job as head coach for the South Carolina University hockey team, and Avery had brought me coffee every morning. I can’t decide if he’s a kiss-ass or just desperate for a friend. He shrugs.
“I’m getting one for me, so I might as well get one for you, too. The coffee here is shit.”
Well, he’s not wrong about that. Pushing aside the mug I filled in the staff room, I pop the lid off of the to-go cup to let it cool down. When my gaze catches on the computer, I grimace, remembering the email.
“Bad news,” I tell Avery, who raises an eyebrow at me. “We’ve lost our defensive coach.”
“You mean the defensive coach who was supposed to start,” he looks at his watch, “in five and a half hours?”
“The very same.”
“Kind of him to give us notice,” Avery notes, dryly. I chuckle, despite myself. He scoots his chair toward his desk, and I immediately rotate my own to the right, trying to keep him in my direct line of sight. “Lucky for us, I think I might know a guy.”
“You know a defensive hockey coach who can get here today?” Skepticism hangs heavy on my tone.
“Maybe,” Avery says, head down as he taps out a message on his cellphone. I wait, impatience growing. I give him a solid five minutes of texting before I can’t take it anymore.
“Who?” I ask, finally, when it becomes clear that Avery won’t offer the information on his own.
“Oh, sorry. I’m asking Anthony Lawson if he can cover for us.”
I laugh for real, this time. “Funny. Who are you actually thinking of?”
Avery stares at me. When his phone dings with a text, he glances at it before holding it up to show me. Involuntarily, my fingers clench around the coffee cup. Avery is younger than me, with two good eyes, so the font on his phone is set to miniscule. I’d have to put my face within inches of the screen to read that text message. Leaning forward, I reach my right hand up on the pretense of scratching my forehead; behind my hand, I close my right eye. After a few seconds, my left eye is able to focus better and I can read the screen.
“How do you know Anthony Lawson?” I ask, sitting back in my chair and watching Avery carefully. As far as I know, he isn’t aware of my disability, and I mean to keep it that way. His expression is unchanged, but for a cheeky tilt to his mouth.
“I don’t. But I know the head coach over there, and he said Lawson might do it and gave me his number. I asked just now, and he said sure.”
The headache has grown more persistent, and I feel a slight flutter of nerves.Please don’t turn into a migraine. “How do you know the head coach?”
“He’s my step-brother.”
Nodding, I drum my fingers on my desk. I’m torn. This is my first year coaching and, after the disaster of last year, SCU is needing to redeem themselves. In fact, my job depends on it. Having an active NHL netminder helping with the off-season training camps might be a gamechanger; or, it might be a disaster. I’m already going to have thirty college kids to contend with; I don’t need a narcissistic professional athlete as well.
“We can’t pay an NHL salary,” I argue, but Avery is already shaking his head.
“I told him we’d pay him the same thing we were offering Smith. He said he’d do it for free.”
I don’t roll my eyes, but it’s a close thing.How nice of him to volunteer his time.“I thought Lawson was out on IR? Is he even fit to be on the ice?”
“Well, we wouldn’t have him dress out, probably.” Avery sends me a quizzical look. “Do you not want him? It seems pretty much perfect to me. And he already said he’d do it.”
“Let’s see how it goes this week, before we commit to more time.” I take a gulp of too-hot coffee. Avery beams like I just offered him a raise.
“This is going to be great. The boys are going to be excited.”
“Probably.” Another thing I don’t need—a group of teenagers fawning over a celebrity, and wasting practice time. “Tell him the time and place, I guess we will see if he bothers showing up.”
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