Since I was a kid, making it into the World Hockey League was the ultimate goal. No relationship could match my first love, and after my rough childhood, I wasn't putting my heart on the line.
When Bellerive makes a successful bid to move the Califo...
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I point the remote at the TV in the boardroom of the palace, and I rewind the athlete interview again. We've been dissecting videos for at least an hour, and it doesn't feel like we're making progress. Shifting the focal points of my career has been more disorienting than I expected. Second guessing every instinct, never quite sure if I'm on the right track, is not my favorite sensation. The feeling isn't new, but the reason for it is.
"I can't believe I said yes to this," I mutter as Logan Bishop, star hockey player, appears on screen again. Questions are fired his way about being the weak link in his team after the California Crows lost their final playoff game in the World Hockey League last season.
"He's so stiff," Tamiko says. Her long black hair swings as she shifts in her seat beside me. "In every interview he has the charisma of dead air. We definitely need to loosen him up."
"He's twenty-one, shouldn't he be automatically loose?" The other players we've watched often have some natural charisma. Despite being the team captain, there's little evidence of someone personable, worth following.
"Feels like he's holding back, and not in the way you want from a PR perspective," Tamiko says. "The trick is to say the right thing without making it seem like you're trying to say the right thing. Logan isn't saying anything at all. If you want an excellent example of this, it's Travis Kelce. He put himself into a high pressure, high stakes relationship, and he understood the assignment. Give people a glimpse of the truth without filling in all the details."
"Honestly, Tamiko, I don't even know what I'm doing right now." I can't help the self-conscious laugh that escapes. "I'm a physiotherapist, not a PR specialist or a media trainer or whatever King Alexander and my dad are trying to make me seem."
"You're good with people," Tamiko says, "and Logan Bishop is pissed about the California Crows becoming the Bellerive Bullets. Your job is to make sure he's happy about being on this island, being on this team, until he forgets he was ever mad about it."
I've certainly had a lot of practice recently at pleasing men, and I'm not entirely sure the pivot I'm making here is the good kind, the kind that takes someone out of a rut. Instead, I worry I'm only entrenching myself further, pleasing men at my expense—again.
"You must have had lots of contact with the PR machine during Dalton's run for the Advisory Council."
Self-consciously, I touch the back of my head where a goose egg is fading, a dull ache. While Dalton and I were together, I never asked myself if the places he wanted to go were also the places I wanted to go, and I'm not making that mistake again. Getting swept off your feet sounds romantic, until you search for your footing and realize you're standing on quicksand. Never again.
"He had very specific ideas about what he wanted," I say, carefully. Everyone knows we split up a couple of weeks ago, but absolutely no one knows the circumstances. He tried to make me sign an NDA, but I told him that even if he sued me for all my billions, he couldn't stop me from talking if I decided to.
