Page 38 of The Slapshot and the Single Mom
“Uh, no?” Inside scoops? What?
He brushes that aside with a careless wave of his hand. “It’s the off-season, so they’re probably all off doing whatever. Once things start up again, though, I’m sure you’ll meet the other WAGs.” He claps his hands like a giddy little kid. “This’ll be amazing. Good job, Maggie!” He backs out of the doorway, calling out, “Find me a good assistant, and I’ll give you a raise!”
Rolling my eyes, I call back, “I’ve found you at least five! Call one of them back and offer them the job!”
“No dudes and no uggos!” he yells back, and part of me wonders what would happen if I contacted an employment attorney. Could I file a case against him even though he’s not discriminating against me?
Even if I did, would my word alone be enough for a case to go anywhere?
And then what would I do? Much as Brock annoys me, there aren’t exactly a lot of sports talk shows looking for a social media manager in the area. And Kyle effectively burned all the bridges for me to transition to any other kind of media here.
Gritting my teeth against the unfairness of the entire situation, I sit back down and get back to work, focusing on that until it’s time to leave and get Liam. He’s the reason I’m doing all this, after all.
And tomorrow, I have lunch with Jack to look forward to.
As I drive to pick up Liam from the camp he’s attending this week, I can’t help mulling over all the things that have been happening lately. It took me a bit to understand the significance of Brock talking to me about Jack, but it finally occurred to me that the reason he knows is because pictures of us have been showing up. Going to the baseball game was the tipping point, I think. I’m not sure why it was that—maybe because it was more public? We weren’t exactly hiding away before that, but it wasn’t anything so crowded and nothing else that’s actively televised. I guess I should’ve thought about it before, too. I’ve seen plenty of coverage of sporting events where they highlight the presence of other athletes attending the games—football players at basketball games, basketball players at soccer games, so a hockey player attending a baseball game would definitely merit some attention. And while Jack Bouchard might not be a mega star like some athletes, he’s definitely well-known enough that people would notice he’s there.
That was the goal, though, right? For people to see us together?
I just didn’t think Brock would care, for some reason. I’m the social media manager, after all. And while he does highlight some sports gossip, it’s not usually the who’s dating who variety—unless it’s some big pop star dating a famous quarterback or something equally noteworthy. Any athlete dating a normie isn’t noteworthy enough for him.
Unless that normie is me, I guess.
No raise for me, then, because I’m not doing anything that Brock suggested today. I’ll keep scheduling interviews with possible assistants based on resumes and qualifications rather than gender or looks, and no way in hell am I using my connection to Jack to feed Brock insider information about the Emeralds or hockey.
Not that I really think he’d give me a raise anyway. Taking Brock’s off-the-cuff remarks too seriously is a recipe for disappointment.
I pull up to the front of the pick-up line, and Liam comes bounding out of the cluster of kids, backpack bouncing on his skinny frame, yanking open the rear passenger door and climbing in.
“Hey, dude!” I pause, waiting for him to settle into his booster seat and buckle himself in. That booster seat is still an occasional source of contention. A lot of his friends have outgrown theirs, but Liam’s always been a little on the small side, so he’s not quite tall enough yet. Every month or so, he’ll ask me to measure him to see if he’s grown enough. Or after he’s spent time with his dad. Apparently his dad doesn’t make him sit in a booster seat. That was a fun conversation to navigate because I didn’t want to outright say, “Your dad’s breaking the law by not having you in a booster seat,” even if that’s the case. Finally I settled on, “Ican’t control what your dad does. But you being in a booster seat makes you safer if we get in an accident, and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if you got hurt because I didn’t do something I know makes you safer.”
He was annoyed, but that seemed to do the trick. Now he just knows he needs to be four foot nine in order to get rid of his booster seat. I have a feeling we’ll have a booster seat burning party once he’s finally outgrown it.
Once he’s buckled, he turns to me, all smiles. “Wanna see what I made today?”
“I’d love to!”
Leaning down, he pulls his backpack off the floor and starts rummaging through it while I pull forward enough that the next person in line can pick up their kid.
“Look!” He brandishes something in the space between the front seats, and I glance at it, gathering a quick impression of a colorful clay object. This camp has an arts focus.
“Wow! That’s so cool!”
He launches into a detailed explanation of every aspect of making the thing—and fortunately lets me know it’s an axolotl but he decided he wanted to make it multicolored instead of realistic. I always see pink axolotls on stickers but I got him a blue plush one for his Easter basket, so I have no idea what color they actually are. Maybe therearemulticolored ones. He also tells me how much the teacher helped him.
“I was having a really hard time making the eyes look how I wanted,” he confesses, “so Miss Sarah did those for me. But I did the rest all by myself!”
“Hey, I’d probably need Miss Sarah to help me with the eyes too. I think you did awesome.”
He beams, telling me more about his day, the games he played with his friends during their free time on the playground, and the new painting they’re working on for the rest of the week.
Next week is a sports camp. He’ll be doing soccer and basketball. He doesn’t care that much about the soccer part—though I framed it as cross training that will help him get better in basketball too, so he’s not too grumpy about it—but is really excited about the basketball part.
“Damien said he’ll be at the sports camp next week too!”
“Oh, that’s great. I’m glad you’ll have a friend you already know there. Hopefully you’ll be in the same group. Wanna shoot some hoops after we get home?”
I glance back at him since we’re stopped at a light, and he has his face screwed up like he’s thinking hard about it. “Sure. But can I call Dad first?”
