Page 37 of Behind the Bench

The only problem is, I have no idea what the hell to wear to my first game. I want to make a statement. I don’t need my first postgame article to be anything like the pregame article I read this morning. I need people to take me seriously.

“Ugh!” Frustrated, with about half my wardrobe thrown on the floor, I give up and take off for reinforcements.

Without knocking, hoping to god she’s not doing anything inappropriate, I barge into my guest room. “Sadie!Help!”

Luckily, she’s fully dressed in front of the mirror, finishing braiding her hair. “What’s up, gorgeous? Want me to take care of that sleazy reporter for you? I brought my nunchucks.”

I plop down onto the edge of her bed and pull my legs up underneath me. “Nope. We’re not going there. I felt my feelings and now we’re moving on.”

She turns to look at me, and no matter how many times I see her, Sadie stuns me silent with her beauty. She doesn’t even try, but somehow she’s always glowing, even in sweatpants. With two braided pigtails, eyes the color of melted chocolate, and a small collection of freckles on her cheeks, she looks effortlessly beautiful.

“So what is it you need help with?”

I gesture to the sports bra and boy shorts I’m currently wearing. “I have absolutely nothing to wear tonight. I’d be better off wearing a garbage bag than anything hanging in my closet. I need an outfit that shouts ‘Confident Badass’ but literally nothing in my closet will work.

Sadie doesn’t respond. Instead, she’s up on her feet and searching for something in her closet.

I follow her into the small walk-in and try to figure out what she could possibly be looking for. “Sades, I love you. But I don’t think your overalls or yoga pants are quite appropriate in my line of work.”

She ignores me and continues searching for whatever it is she’s looking for. How can this many clothes fit into this tiny walk-in closet anyway?

“Ah-ha!” she yells, scaring the crap out of me.

She turns toward me with a mischievous look on her face, holding a black garment bag.

“What the hell is that?”

Sadie walks past me, and I follow her back into my room. She hangs the garment bag on the back of the door, turns around, and starts doing what I can only guess is the lawnmower dance move my dad used to do to embarrass me.

“First, we’re gonna dance it out. Then, you’re going to take a scalding hot shower, shave, and exfoliate.Then, you’re going to put very minimal makeup on that beautiful face, because let’s face it, you don’t even need any. And then, you’re going to put on the most badass outfit I bought for you as a congrats on landing your dream job. I promise, you’ll feel both professional and powerful wearing it.”

I pull Sadie into the biggest bear hug of her life because what the heck would I do without her?

“What kind of badass outfit are we talking?” I let go of her and eye the garment bag hanging behind her.

She turns around and unzips the bag. Before reaching in to show me what she got, she looks over her shoulder at me. “What’s one color a man could never pull off but a woman can make a goddamn statement in?”

Before I can answer, she’s reaching into the garment bag and holding up the most sophisticated suit I’ve ever seen.

“White, of course.”

The buzzer sounds at the same time Lincoln screams, “Fuck!” and storms off the bench. We lost our opening game 4–2. The guys played well, but the bounces didn’t go our way. It’s not how any of us wanted to start our season.

We were down by one goal with two minutes to go. Lincoln called a timeout and told me to draw up the six-on-five situation we’ve been working on at practice for when we pull our goalie. Our guys executed it perfectly, but Chicago’s goalie played out of his mind all night.

After an amazing save, the puck took a weird bounce right over Jefferson’s stick and Chicago’s defensemen launched the puck down the ice and got an empty-netter. There was nothing we could’ve done differently.

Okay, well, maybe we could’ve found a way to put the puck in the net. With how frustrated Lincoln is, I’m trying not to let my own frustrations show. It’s hard not to be angry and disappointed after a loss, but I’m choosing to focus on the positives from the game. I can wallow in my negative feelings later. Away from the rink.

I follow Lincoln down the tunnel to the locker room, where we wait in the coaches’ room until the guys have made it off the ice and back to their stalls. Lincoln and I stand at the far wall, while Hunter takes a seat at his locker on the opposite side of the room.

While we’re waiting, Lucy, the head of PR, pokes her head in. “Hey, I know it's a bad time but we’d like you both to come for the postgame press conference,” she says as she nods to the side of the room Lincoln and I are standing. “Oh, and can you grab Niko too?”

Lincoln makes a disapproving noise before turning back to his notes. I nod toward Lucy and give her a quick, “sure,” before she exits the room.

It’s so damn quiet in here, I swear I can hear Lincoln’s heart pounding next to me. Thankfully, Hunter breaks the silence.

“Well, that fucking sucked but we did a lot of things right out there too. I know it’s not the outcome we wanted, but let’s not go in there and beat a dead horse. They’re already feeling like shit.”

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