A Mountain Springs Christmas

Chapter 6

six

CONNOR

It snowed a bit. The big storm hadn’t come in yet— this was officially the “warm before the storm,” and left just enough snow on the roads to really slow down traffic and make the drive between the arena to Mountain Springs that would normally take forty minutes take Connor nearly twice that long.

His nerves were getting more and more frayed the longer past one o’clock— the time he was supposed to arrive at Mountain Springs Elementary— that the clock climbed. This was his first town activity, and he was going to be late. He hated being late. And beyond that, he had some unexplainable need to impress Katie, and being late wasn’t going to do it.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t so inexplicable. At some point last night, he had to admit that he wasn’t just enjoying the competition— he was enjoying Katie. He was attracted to her and wanted to impress her. All while not wanting to get involved with her, of course, since he’d be gone by the end of the season.

Because he’d been traded to the Glaciers so late in the Christmas season, many of the activities they probably would’ve asked him to participate in if he’d been there all month were past. He didn’t know much about today’s activity other than it was at the elementary school, which was fine. He liked kids.

He just wished he didn’t have to go there today. It was a home game day, so most of the team started off the day with a workout before their mandatory team meeting, followed by a morning skate. This morning was only his second time practicing with his new team, and tonight would be his first game with them. He’d usually try to get a workout in after the morning skate, but had to skip today.

When he got into his rental car to head to Mountain Springs, most of his teammates were heading home for a pre-game nap because that was what they did to play their best. Outreach stuff like this usually only happened on non-game days. Adding it in today was hard, but with the short timeline they had to work with, it had to happen.

Whenever he wasn’t focused on how slow traffic was moving, he was thinking about tonight’s match-up, and thinking about plays— the ones he used on his own team and the new ones that he would be using with the Glaciers. He had excited nerves before every game, but it was different this time. He didn’t have any past experience with being traded— he’d been with the Thunderstorm since he’d been drafted. It was strange to think that he’d be on the ice with a different team tonight. The Thunderstorm’s rival, no less. He needed to be getting his head in the game.

No, he needed to get his head on this town activity.

“Oh, good, you’re here,” said the anxious woman with brown hair cut into a bob and an ID badge on a lanyard that read Ms. Messina when he finally made it to the school’s front office. She didn’t even have him sign the Visitors Sign Here clipboard on the counter— she just ushered him into the hall and said, “Let’s get you to the stage quickly.”

“Uh, the stage?”

“Oh, don’t worry— we aren’t having you perform or anything like that. That’s just where we’ve got your costume. And my, you’re a rather big guy. We didn’t know which player we were getting until yesterday so we had to guess on the size, and hopefully we guessed right.”

On the way down the hall, with her short heels clacking twice for every one step he took, she explained that the students had been collecting donations for a toy drive and that the older three grades were already in the gym, wrapping them. “You brought your jersey, right? Good, you can wear it while you’re with the older kids.”

For the younger kids, she informed him that he was going to be listening to their Christmas wishes. While dressed like Santa’s elf, so he could relay the information to Santa.

“Oh, and expect the kids to be a little… rowdier than normal today. It’s the end of the day on the last full day of school before Christmas break. You know how that gets.” No, no he didn’t. Not unless she counted the time when he was a third, fourth, or fifth grader himself. She led him to a storage closet on the stage where he could change out of his suit and into his jersey while she left to check on something with the younger grades.

Once he changed, he went down some stairs at the side of the stage, opened the door leading to the gym, and was immediately hit with a wall of noise and chaos. The stands at the game tonight weren’t likely to be this loud. Luckily, his eyes quickly fell on Katie, who already had her camera up, filming, and he smiled in relief. It was incredible how much of the stress from the day melted away simply by seeing her.

Then she put the camera down and came over to him. Her smile seemed a little hesitant, like it had been a huge problem that he wasn’t on time or because she was worried he wasn’t up to today’s task.

“It looks and sounds more chaotic than it is. That’s just the sound of so many kids talking at the same time in a room where every sound echoes. For the most part, they’re wrapping presents, like they should. They told me they want you to just grab a gift from one of those bins, find a spot at one of the tables, and wrap it while chatting with the kids around you. Then grab another present and find a spot at a different table. Easy enough?”

He nodded.

She studied him for a moment before asking, “Are you doing okay?”

He nodded again. “Great.” Being here was practically the same as being back at his hotel, curled up in his bed for an energizing nap before a big game.

Katie put a hand on his forearm, a touch he swore he felt through his whole body. His eyes went to her hand first, then to her eyes. Once their eyes met, she said, “You’ve got this.” She lifted the camera and started filming again.

Connor could go blade-to-blade with any player on the ice. So, he could wrap a simple present with a bunch of 8-11-year-olds. He grabbed one— a craft kit that looked like an easy box to wrap— and then went to a table where a group of boys who looked like they were probably fifth graders were waving him over. He introduced himself, and things seemed like they were going okay.

Until about thirty seconds in. He’d barely gotten the wrapping paper cut before one of the boys said, “My older brother’s favorite hockey team is the Thunderstorm.”

That… he wasn’t expecting. Especially this far from Charlotte. He smiled. “They’re a great team.”

“Yeah. He says you’re a traitor.”

He might have been able to salvage the conversation at that point, but before he could, another boy said, “My uncle said he went to high school with you and that you’ve basically been a traitor your entire life.”

The comments went downhill from there. And Katie was not only witnessing them all but getting them— and his reactions to them— on video.

The moment he was done wrapping the craft kit, he quickly left that table, put it in the bin for wrapped gifts, and grabbed a new one from an unwrapped bin. He decided to go to a table with a completely different demographic: third-grade girls.

They seemed a lot happier about having him join their table. In fact, the girl to his right really wanted to help him put the tape on his present. As the group chatted about books and gymnastics classes and gossip and what games they were going to play at recess and what presents they thought they were getting, he worked on wrapping presents. The girl next to him sometimes put the tape where she should, but more often tried to tape his fingers to the present, making everyone laugh when she did.

Then, when he turned his attention to a girl on his left who was talking about her brother, the girl on his right started placing the pieces of tape right onto his arms.

“He looooves hockey.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. He’s twelve. He plays right wing, too. He thinks he’s pretty good, but he doesn’t get nearly as many assists as you do.” Then her eyes shifted to the tape on his arm and she said, “Hey, Shaylie, that’s mean!”

Then she, along with the girl across the table from him, both leaned in to help pull the tape off, and pretty soon, he had four hands pulling tape— along with all the arm hairs they were stuck to— from his arms.

He couldn’t guarantee what expression was on his face, but he didn’t yelp. He didn’t curse. He didn’t say any bad words. That had to be worth something.

The third group he visited didn’t seem interested in hockey at all and only talked about Minecraft. He tried to join in their conversations, but he didn’t speak the lingo. He didn’t know what piglins and griefing and spleen meant, or what an Enderman, a creeper, or skelly was. The more he tried to join in, the more they looked at him like he was just another out-of-touch adult in their world.

What was he even doing there? Not anything good or helpful at all. He should be at his hotel in Denver, preparing for his first game day with the Glaciers.

He should have been glad when the teachers finally had the students line up to head back to their classrooms, except that meant that it was time for Ms. Messina to lead him back to the storage room on the stage where there was now an elf costume hanging from a hook, waiting for him.

An elf costume that was much too small. He came out of the room wearing green pants that were super tight and about eight inches too short, pointy-toed slippers that slid on over his own shoes— barely— and a green button-up shirt with a red zig-zag collar that would only button up if he sucked in and then didn’t breathe. The sleeves only came halfway between his elbow and wrists. Luckily, he’d been wearing a white t-shirt underneath his jersey, because if he didn’t have it to wear under the elf costume, he’d be showing a good three inches of his stomach.

He opened the door to see Katie waiting, and she immediately tried to stifle a laugh.

“Katie, what do I do? I can’t wear this.” She brought her video camera up to film, which just annoyed him. “Seriously, what do I do?”

“Maybe I can check with some teachers, and see if any of them have a green cardigan or something stretchy that you can wear over it.”

“Or I can just change back into my jersey. Tell the kids that Santa lets hockey players act as elves, too. Maybe make up something about us spending so much time on the ice as the reason.”

But before he could even take a step back toward the room, Ms. Messina appeared and said, “Oh, my, that really doesn’t fit. Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now— the first class of Kindergartners is already here, and they are extra squirrelly today. Come quickly. We’ve got a throne ready for you to sit on and everything.”

She led him to the front of the stage where there was indeed a throne. Maybe one they’d used for a school play. Katie had positioned herself on the other side of the kids, ready to film their interactions. She gave him a thumbs up with the hand not holding the camera along with a smile, which looked more like a grimace.

He couldn’t take a deep breath, not in this shirt, but he took a shallow breath and then greeted the kids and told them he was one of Santa’s elves and that he would let Santa know about their Christmas wishes. Ms. Messina placed the first kid on his lap, a five-year-old girl who kept poking at his shirt that was showing in the spaces between each button as she told him her mile-long list.

When she hopped down, Ms. Messina didn’t place the next kid on his lap. The little boy just walked right up to him. So he reached down to pick the boy up, and as he was lifting him, the seams on both of his sleeves tore open at both the front and back, leaving only a few threads at the top and bottom to hold it on.

“Oh, my!” Ms. Messina said. “Um, children, it looks like Santa’s elf has been eating his vegetables and has grown big and strong. We need to take a short break while we get a new shirt for him.”

Connor breathed a small breath of relief— he hadn’t popped any buttons, so a huge breath of relief wasn’t exactly possible— and set the boy on the ground as he stood. The motion made one of the sleeves fall completely off, though, and it fell to the floor. Without thinking through the likely consequences first, he bent to pick it up, completely tearing the seam in the rear of his pants from top to bottom. And because they were so tight, he hadn’t put a pair of shorts or pants on underneath them.

The entire class of Kindergartners immediately burst into stomach-clenching laughter. He had been booed at enough stadiums in locations away from home before, but even that wasn’t exactly like a bunch of Kindergartners laughing because they could see your underwear.

Nor was it like having a vice principal who was probably old enough to be your mom take off her cardigan and tie it around your waist to hide said underwear and usher you off stage as your second sleeve threatens to burst free at the slightest move.

Or to have the woman you felt like you really connected with and are attracted to strongly enough to maybe forget your rules filming all of it.

When Connor finally got back to his hotel, he didn’t have long before he needed to leave to head to the arena. The front desk stopped him, though, and gave him a package that had arrived. He looked at the label and saw it was from his sister— it was the package she had put together the day he’d gotten traded and mailed to him. He took the elevator up to his room and opened it as soon as he walked inside. Items from home was just what he needed after the debacle at the school.

He smiled when he saw that his favorite cinnamon caramel hot chocolate mix was right on top, even after telling his sister that he didn’t need her to send it. The contact lenses were a huge relief to find. He’d been wearing the same daily lenses for three days, and his eyes were dying for some new ones. Same with the socks. One of the t-shirts she sent was a greenish color, which would’ve been a life saver today.

The charging cords were a relief to find, too. He’d been relying on charging his phone during practices by borrowing from other players. He laughed when he saw his pajama pants, though, and picked up his phone to call his sister.

The moment she answered, he said, “Really? The pajamas with the flamingo hockey players are my favorites?”

“Well, yeah. They’re from your favorite sister.”

“I should’ve seen that one coming.”

“You really should have. I shipped off a bigger box of your stuff— you’ll get it in a couple of days.”

“Thank you. For both. And thank you for the hot chocolate mix. It’s been a rough day, and it was a nice thing to find.”

“Okay, hot chocolate doesn’t usually warrant that much gratitude in your voice. I’ve got a few minutes before my next meeting. What happened today?”

He told her the entire frustrating and embarrassing story, from showing up late, to Katie being there to film everything, to the vice principal tying her cardigan around his waist. Not just handing it to him— actually tying it on.

“I’ve had two embarrassing experiences related to underwear since I got here, and Katie was there for both of them.”

“Well, at least it wasn’t the fifth-grade boys who witnessed this one.”

He laughed. “True.”

Now he needed to apologize to Katie for his frustration at the elementary school that probably ruined every bit of footage she filmed when he had just apologized yesterday for his behavior at the school dance. She was going to start thinking this was normal for him— act poorly, apologize, repeat.

He was quiet for a minute, and so was Laura. Then she said, “You miss home.” It wasn’t a question, just a simple statement.

“Is it stupid that I’m a twenty-six-year-old man— almost twenty-seven— and I do?”

“No. Missing the place that you love, the people you love, and the team you love has nothing to do with age and everything to do with the strength of your connections.”

It also didn’t help that Charlotte had been where his family moved to get a fresh start. That was where he’d flourished after everything had hit rock bottom. Maybe if he had gotten traded to anywhere other than the place where his dad had left their family, at the same time of year as when he’d left— the place where he’d actually hit rock bottom, things would be different.

“Hey, sis. I’ve only got about ten minutes before I have to change and head to the arena, and I’m not in the right head space to go play my first game with the Glaciers. I need you to pump me up.”

“Okay,” she said, and he could hear the squeak of her office chair as he was sure she was leaning all the way back, putting her feet up on her desk. “Tell me about the ice.”

“The ice?”

“Yep. Talk me through what it’s like the moment you first step a skate onto the ice. Don’t think about where the ice is, just that you’re on it. How do you feel?”

He closed his eyes and pictured it. The stands could be completely full with a raucous crowd, but the moment he stepped on the ice, everything always seemed to quiet. Knowing that his sister might razz him about a lot of things but never would about this, he was willing to talk through it out loud.

“From the first step onto the ice, I’m relaxed. But somehow energized, too. It’s a feeling… I don’t know. Like coming home. No matter where the ice is, the scent of the cold, the gleam on the ice, the expanse of white spread out before me always feels right . Like I’m in control of the space and even of time.

“That first glide is almost… sacred. Untouched by chaos. Smooth. The sound of the blade slicing across it is like music. It’s a whisper, but so full of possibilities and potential. And gliding forward on it is powerful. Like I’m powerful. As I pick up speed and then make a tight turn, the centrifugal force pulling at me, it’s like there’s a trust, an agreement between gravity, the ice, and me. When I come to a stop, the side of my blade cutting across the ice, sending a spray of white ice in an arc, it reminds me that we’re all working together to make something beautiful.

“The ice is where I’m most alive. Most myself. Most free. And as the crowds come back into focus, they energize and exhilarate me. They give me fuel to work with the ice, the gravity, and my team to pull off something amazing.”

As I talk while picturing it, a calmness seeps into me. It gets me into the head space that I need to be in before a game. It grounds me and gives me energy I know I didn’t possess when I first walked into this room.

Laura is quiet for a moment before she whispers, “Wow. Keep talking like that and I might become a hockey player.”

He chuckled.

“Ice in a rink in Denver is the same as ice in a rink in Charlotte. Focus on your love of the ice wherever it is, and I can tell you that you’ll be just fine.”

“Thanks, sis.”

“You’re welcome. Sean and I have a date tonight, so I won’t be able to watch, but call me tomorrow and tell me how the game went?”

“Will do.”

“Oh, and tell me about this videographer who has caught your eye.”

“What? How?” he sputtered. He’d said one sentence to Laura about Katie. And he’d kept it neutral.

“You give away much more in the tone of your voice than you realize. Now, I helped you today, so tomorrow, you tell me all about her.”