"She would've been proud of you. And she would have told you to fight for what you deserve. When life knocks you down, you get up and punch it in the gut."
His arms tightened around her, and she heard an unmistakable sniff.
"You okay?"
He cleared his throat and pulled away. "S'nothin'. Just got some dirt in my eye is all. Now you gonna stop yammerin' so we can watch the game, or what?"
Holly smiled as he got up and brushed his knuckles under his eyes. "Yeah. I'll stop yammering. How about I make us some popcorn to go with that game?"
He nodded gruffly as he dropped into his beat-up old recliner. "I could go for some popcorn."
15
"PAIGE! OPEN UP! I need to talk to you."
Holly banged on the door again, this time with more force. Paige's phone had gone straight to voice mail-a regular occurrence, as her friend was notorious for forgetting to charge her phone. But Holly was desperate for counsel and she wasn't going to let a dead phone stand in her way.
"C'mon, Paige! I know you're in there. Your car's in the driveway. I really need your advice."
Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, Holly heard the snick of the lock give way. Paige's face appeared in the six-inch crack of the open door. "Holly, what are you doing here? Is everything okay?"
Holly shoved the door open all the way and barged past her friend. "News Now just called. They just gave me Corey Baniuk's old job. I'm the new roving sports reporter for the six and eleven o'clock news."
"Wow, Hols. That's fantastic! That's your dream job, right? Interviewing athletes on TV. That's everything you've been working toward."
Holly nodded, dropping onto Paige's couch-a sleek, robin's-egg-blue torture device that was built for style, not comfort. "I know!" She glanced over her shoulder at her friend. "So why am I not happier about it?"
"Aw, sweetie." Paige rushed over, wrapping the lilac sheet tighter around her before she joined Holly on the couch. "What's going on?"
"I have no idea. This is everything I wanted! And since the Storm fired me, I should be doubly glad because it means I'm not unemployed, trying to scrape by on ghostwriting sports articles.
"I went for the interview this morning, and they offered me the position on the spot. But even as I was shaking hands and signing contracts, something felt...off, you know?"
Paige nodded reassuringly, readjusting her toga. All of a sudden, her new job wasn't the only thing that seemed off to Holly. "Wait a minute. Why are you wrapped in a sheet?" Holly stood. "And why did it take you so long to answer the door? Is someone here? Did I just catch you in flagrante?"
She walked back toward the door, cocking an eyebrow as Paige rushed after her, blocking Holly's path to the bedroom.
"Do you have a sex crush of your own? And is he, or is he not in this house right now? Do not lie to me, Paige Marie Hallett."
"What?" Paige's blush made her whole face blotchy, like she was allergic to the lie she was trying so desperately to formulate. "No, I was just... I mean I, I just..." Her eyes focused briefly on something to Holly's left before they darted back to the floor.
Holly glanced behind her. A familiar pair of worn Vans sat in the entranceway. "Those are Jay's shoes." She whipped around to face her friend. "You're sleeping with Jay? You hate Jay! Since when are you sleeping with Jay?"
There was a long moment of silence, before a deep voice sounded from behind the door at the end of the hall. "Since she already knows, can I come out now?"
Paige sighed. "Yes. Come out."
The door to her friend's bedroom swung open, and Holly could barely process the sight of her bare-footed cameraman wearing jeans and pulling his vintage Ghostbusters T-shirt over his head. His grin was sheepish as he ran a hand through his unruly brown hair. "Hey, Holly. Congrats on the new job."
The entire world had gone mad. Her dream job was making her miserable. Jay was sleeping with Paige. She was going to have to keep an eye on the sky when she left, because the odds of seeing pigs soaring over the clouds seemed pretty high right now.
"I need some water."
Holly headed into Paige's kitchen and grabbed a bottle of Evian from the fridge. She took a long swig of the cool liquid and followed it with a couple of deep breaths. "Okay, so you guys are sleeping together. I can deal with that. I'm an adult. Angry sex is a thing."
"Actually..." Jay slung an arm over Paige's shoulders. "We're kind of past the angry sex stage and on to the dating exclusively stage."
Holly knew he was telling the truth because Paige didn't slug him. Instead, her friend's bright green eyes turned imploring. "I'm sorry we kept it a secret, Hols, but we were trying to get a handle on it ourselves. I'm glad it's not a secret anymore, though, because you deserve to know. This never would have happened if not for you and the Women's Hockey Network."
"Say what now?"
Paige smiled at her. "You think the Women's Hockey Network was a joke, but the truth is you did great research and presented facts in a way that resonated with me. And with a bunch of people who aren't usually interested in sports. You gave us a foothold in a world we didn't understand. And not because we were incapable of understanding. You're not dumbing anything down. You're just coming at it from a different angle. Hockey got a whole lot more exciting for me when you snuck in a little medicine to the spoonful of sugar that is Luke Maguire's abs."
"Seriously, Paige? I'm right here," Jay lamented.
"Understanding the game made it more interesting to watch. Because of you, I suddenly understood offside, or why the whistle blew even though no one had touched the puck and why the face-off was happening somewhere other than at center ice. And that made me care more about the game."
Holly tried not to be touched, but to hear her sports-allergic best friend talking about offsides was kind of a big deal in her world. Damned if it didn't make her a bit misty-eyed.
"Basically, you made me realize what else I was missing out on. I mean, if hockey wasn't as bad as I thought, what else might be better than I gave it credit for?" Paige slipped an arm around Jay's waist. "Sometimes what you want doesn't look at all like what you thought you wanted. Nothing about Jay and I makes sense, but we just fit. And I owe it all to you because I might not have figured that out on my own."
"You think that dumb fluff is me at my most insightful? My mom is probably rolling over in her grave."
"I think she'd respect you for it as much as I do, Hols."
If she was being honest, at some point during this whole farce, the Women's Hockey Network had started to really matter to her. In her heart, Holly knew it was more than fluff, had known it for a long time.
It was just hard to reimagine her future, to reevaluate her priorities. She'd spent so long convinced that real sports reporting was her destiny. The only route to make her dad proud. The best way to honor her mother's legacy. But Paige was right, the only person who wasn't proud of her was herself.
"The thing that makes you great is that you care so much," Paige continued. "You're not supposed to be on News Now reading a teleprompter, you're supposed to be making real connections and improving people's lives." She remembered the little girl she'd met at the bakery. Paige was right. She was making a difference. Sometimes miniscule, like making people laugh, and sometimes major, like helping two people feel closer to one another. But either way, it was rewarding. It was still sports, still her passion, but it was so much more than that, too.
So she let go. All her expectations, all her goals, all her former dreams. Her chest felt light, as if her lungs were full of helium. Or freedom.
For the first time, Holly wasn't in someone else's shadow, or seeking someone else's approval. She knew exactly where her future lay and she had a phone call to make.
16
WAITING WAS A special kind of hell.
Every morning, Luke expected to wake up to an angry phone call from his agent and an even angrier headline in the paper. And every morning, there was nothing.
It was driving him crazy. He'd been sure it would have come by now. He'd worried about it through both of the Storm's out-of-town games, constantly monitoring the internet for any sign that Holly had broken her story. But she hadn't. Yet. The prospect loomed over his head like a guillotine.