“Right. Of course.”
“I like my locker rooms to not be converted into party rooms. I like my star players not distracted. I like to not find my team being the punchline in late-night TV shows when our brand-new player plonks onto the ice like my five-year old daughter.”
“Right.”
“To be clear, she doesn’t fall anymore.”
“I won’t fall anymore too,” I promise. “I never fell in the AHL.”
“Saved it for us, huh?”
Tanaka opens one of the wooden doors that manages to look way more expensive than anything I saw in New Hampshire, and ushers Finn and me into aconference room.
My stomach does one of those figure skating twist things, and Tanaka gestures to us to take a seat. If I didn’t know any better, I might be relaxed.
But everyone knows about Hiroshi Tanaka and how he’s grown his business to dizzying heights. He abhors mistakes. He fires people. He’s probably not used to being in the news for anything except articles praising him.
I mean, it is super cool that he’s become so successful. But that doesn’t stop my stomach from knotting, as if it’s recreating the fishing knots my Uncle Will does.
Tanaka enters something into his phone, and I’m not surprised when the room starts to fill with other people.
Other people in suits. Other people who look at Finn and me the way my mother might scrutinize a spider that made its way into the house, calculating whether to smash it with her shoe or go through the trouble of putting a glass and cardboard over it and transporting it outside.
They sit in modern, no doubt ridiculously expensive leather chairs.
Maybe we’re the kind of problem likely to leave stains and antennae on shoes and destroying us is something to be avoided.
“These are the troublemakers,” Tanaka gestures to us. “The ecstatic couple.”
He flashes a cold corporate smile that grabs hold of each of my limbs, and I smile back and attempt to not look on the verge of fainting.
A flurry of unconvincing congratulations ring out in soft voices I almost can’t hear.
“I have been informed that there are rumors online that this love affair is about keeping Noah with the Blizzards. Is that rumor correct?”
Finn places his hand over mine. “That thought never occurred to us when we got married.”
“I don’t think many thoughts occurred to you when you got married,” Tanaka says, and the words leave Finn’s face stained red.
‘There’s some truth to that,” Finn concedes.
“Ha.”
“We were motivated by love.” Finn glances at me. “My honey bunny was looking adorable, and I wanted to make him mine for the rest of time.”
The cold breeze of the air conditioner creeps up my spine.
“Never go into poetry,” Tanaka says.
“I promise, sir.”
Tanaka rolls his eyes, but glances at the people who do not go to work wearing sweatpants and sweatshirts. “What are our options?”
“This is an opportunity to show the country that the Blizzards is at the forefront of diversity,” a woman in a lime green suit says.
“Would have been more convenient five years ago.” Tanaka’s eyes land on Finn. “Couldn’t you have fallen in love then?”
“Um...”
