Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 115838 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 579(@200wpm)___ 463(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115838 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 579(@200wpm)___ 463(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
“Anytime you need an ear,” I tell him, “my phone is open.”
“That’s good to know,” he sighs deeply. “That’s very good to know.”
I smile big. “I mean I’m still going to keep you on your toes.” He laughs, making me laugh out. “Night, big man.”
“Goodnight, Victoria,” he says, his voice rumbles, “Talk to you soon.”
“You bet,” I say and disconnect the call, looking at my phone and wondering when the fuck things with Zane went from casual to not or was it just me?
seventeen
Zane
“You guys have twenty more minutes out there to turn this thing around,” I declare, my hand gripping the paper with the lines I made today, and then remade on the bench and then re-fucking-made during the first intermission and again the second intermission. “We are only down by two.” I look at the guys, none of them looking at me. “You guys are fucking better than this.” I point to the closed door. “Let’s get our heads out of our fucking asses and score a fucking goal for fuck’s sake.” I stand here waiting for one of them to look at me but not one fucking person does. It’s day four of the road trip and our third game. If we don’t score two goals to at least tie it, it’ll be our third consecutive loss on the road.
When none of them look at me, I turn and storm out of the room, going to the video room we set up. I walk in seeing Claire, who is in charge of our video footage through the game, with Eric going over a couple of the plays that we had on the ice. “I want to watch the second period,” I tell her. “What do you have for me?”
She nods her head as she pulls up the plays she thinks that went badly for us, but in reality the whole fucking game has gone badly. Their passes weren’t executed. They weren’t winning the battles in the corner. They weren’t even trying to shoot the fucking puck to even get a rebound. I watch the two plays and then look at Eric. “Go get Jaxon and Kirby,” I tell him, and he nods, leaving the room as Cam comes in.
“Well, this road trip is a bust.” He sits down in the chair, putting his hands behind his head. “Horrible. They haven’t played this bad since—”
“I got it,” I snap at him as Jaxon comes in first then Kirby.
“What?” Jaxon questions, and I know I don’t even have to tell him what he did wrong. He knows, but he also knows he can’t be everywhere on the fucking ice.
“You want to watch the second period?”
“For you to point out where I fucked up?”
“You aren’t the only one fucking up out there,” I tell him, and he looks up at me, and the look isn’t a friendly one.
“I know what I have to do, and I didn’t do it.”
“I want to see,” Kirby says, and Claire plays the two goals again for us, and then they both nod their heads and walk out of the room.
“He needs to lead the team better,” Cam states to me of Jaxon, and I slowly look over at him.
“Let’s lay off at pointing fingers at the players and instead think about what we can do better instead,” I counter, turning to walk out of the room.
We start the third period, and we end up scoring two more goals, the only thing is, so does the other team, and we end up losing six to four. I walk out onto the ice and head across it to go to our locker room.
The press is there, all lined up, waiting to get into the locker room. I usually go in and give a speech, but everyone is just as pissed as I am. So instead, I look at the media, hoping they get what they want from me and don’t bother sticking around to interview any of the players. “Okay, whatcha got for me?” I ask and the first reporter comes up and sticks his phone in my face to voice record it.
“We get the sense that it was just one of those games, that the first forty minutes you couldn’t get anything going for you. No one was generating anything.”
“I wouldn’t say no one.” I put my hands on my hips. “I think the last three lines were going well. I think when you start a game and you take the two penalties we took, um, you haven’t learned enough yet about playing on the road. It was a disastrous way to have to start the game and it feels like it was downhill after that. We just kept chasing it, instead of playing our game.”
“How do you get past that?” he asks, and I look up at him.