Page 59 of Pipe Dreams
“They’re desperate,” Beacon reminded the sweaty rookie as he skated by. “We like that.”
“Right,” Trevi said through clenched teeth.
It was a brutal period, but scoreless for Tampa. When the ref caught one of their opponents’ illegal checks, Brooklyn got a power play and used it to score one more goal.
When the buzzer sounded, it was Brooklyn over Tampa, 2–0.
The minute he followed his team back into the locker room, Georgia Worthington scurried up to him. “The network has your face in the clip they spliced together about the Skews ejection. And the journalists are asking questions. I’m going to have them come into the dressing room to ask you what happened, okay? Because if I put you on the dais at the press conference, that makes the incident seem like some kind of Bruisers strategy.”
“Huh. Okay.” He stripped off his pads and tried to shake off his exhaustion. Georgia was a clever girl, and her instinctshad never steered him wrong. Talking to reporters didn’t sound like all that much fun, though.
“What do you plan to say about it?” Georgia pressed. “They’ll want to know what made you prod the ref over Skews’s behavior.”
“I’ll just say that I didn’t want my daughter to think that hockey players were homophobic. And that we don’t ever use that word.” That made for a pretty good quote. He liked the sound of it. “If they press me, I’ll say that Elsa and I have close friends who battle discrimination, and it bothers us.”
“Or itsaddensyou,” Georgia suggested. She was always massaging their language to make them sound more approachable.
He chuckled, grabbing his jersey and hauling it over his head. “Fine. I’m saddened.”
Sure enough, he was saddened to find three sports writers and a cameraman waiting by his bench when he came back from the showers. “Is this where the party is?” he joked, grabbing his suit pants. “Give me sixty seconds and I’m all yours.”
He ducked back into a more private area near the showers to change, so his ass wouldn’t end up on television. Then he came back and put on a shirt while all three journalists asked their questions at once.
“Why did you ask the ref to consider a different penalty for Skews?” “Was it part of a strategy for Brooklyn?” “Are you involved with gay rights issues?”
“I heard the comment, and I didn’t like it,” he said slowly. He buttoned his cuffs and looked into the camera. “My child is a hockey fan. She was watching the game tonight. We talk about discrimination at home, so it, uh, saddened me to hear that word at the rink.”
Georgia gave him a wink from behind the cameraman.
“If a player dropped a racial slur in a game, he’d be punished, right?” he continued. “This was exactly the same thing.”
“It didn’t hurt that Tampa lost one of their best players,” suggested a male reporter who was scribbling on a notepad.
“I had no idea what the officials would decide,” he said, trying not to sound pissed off. “I wasn’t thinking about the outcome—only that his language wasn’t something the league should condone.”
Georgia gave him a thumbs-up. And she was smiling, so he decided to quit while he was ahead.
“That’s all I really have to say about it. Thank you.” He turned around and grabbed his tie off a hook. “I can hear my phone ringing,” he added. “That’s probably my little girl wanting to talk. So if you’ll excuse me.”
The reporters scattered as they often did when he played the single dad card. But his phonewasringing. He fished it out of his bag and took the call. “Elsa?”
“Daddy! You are amazing.”
“Thanks, baby.” At least one fan was happy with him tonight. Sitting down on the bench, he stuck a finger in his ear so he could hear better.
“You could totally read his lips, too. It was so nasty.” She was talking really fast. “I was like, here we go again! And then they threw him out of the game! And then you won!”
He chuckled. “I didn’t know that would happen—the ejection.”
“Hans and I had an extra root beer to celebrate. I don’t know if I can sleep now.”
“Good try,” he said. “Go to bed, sweetie.”
“I love you, Daddy!”
“Back atcha, baby.”
“Hans wants to say hi.”
