“I’m hurrying,” he replies, his tongue sticking out between his teeth as he concentrates on the hockey stick the yeti is holding.
“Time!” Sabrina yells as Kane puts the finishing touches on it.
He looks up, smiling, before his eyes drift to the cupcakes I decorated. “What the fuck is that?” he whispers, a snort-likesound accompanying the question, as Sabrina does some sort of recap up front.
“Rink.” I point at the white ones. They look fine. Better than I anticipated. “And those are the black pits of my soul.”
Kane snorts again.
“Or we could call them pucks if you think the judges would be opposed to soul cupcakes.”
“Pucks, right. You’d think that would’ve been… easier.”
I breathe in, reminding myself that I can never, underanycircumstances, be caught rolling my eyes on camera. Even if it’s almost painful keeping myself from doing it.
“Hey, thanks. And, if you didn’t notice, they’re decorated. All nine of them.”
Sabrina claps her hands, drawing everyone’s attention. She then proceeds to walk around the room, making each group show off their cupcakes before the three judges take a bite.
We all know the interns are going to lose—the smell of their burning cake batter wafted through the place as soon as they opened their oven—but the rest is a mystery to me.
The judges let out gasps of delight when Larsen uncovers their cupcakes, showing off excellent replicas of the team jerseys, each with a different name and number. After the judges try theirs, Larsen picks one up and, with a dramatic flair, flashes Kane his name and number before taking a giant bite out of it.Fucking Rookie.
Finally, it’s our turn.
“Wow!” the woman on the left exclaims. “These look just like the mascot!”
Kane dips his chin while the other two judges look at the pucks. One has his eyebrows drawn down so far; the only explanation is that he’s taking a break from judging cupcakes to solve world hunger.
“Coach really carried the team with the pucks and the rinks, though.” Kane offers me a slight smile. One that definitely doesn’t make my insides swirl.
“The lines are impressive. Very straight,” the enthusiastic woman gushes.
The three judges take bites of the cupcakes, letting us know they’re pretty good before moving on.
What feels like an hour later, Sabrina finally announces the judges’ scores. Li and Larsen, unsurprisingly, won with their jerseys and apparently “very tasty” chocolate cupcakes.
“And, in an unexpected twist,” Sabrina says, “Coach Blake and Kane came in second. What a team, those two!”
A warmth spreads through my chest at her comment that I immediately shut down.Oh, fuck.
I’m barely paying attention as she moves on to announce J.D. and Rob squeaked out a third-place spot over Björk and Volkov; my brain is still stuck on her declaration about us being a good team.
I force myself out of my head long enough to laugh with everyone else when the team captain and Rob chest-bump in their yeti aprons before quickly packing up the extra cupcakes to leave in the front-office breakroom.
“Here.” Kane takes a few out of my box and putting them in a different one. “We’ll give these to the poor interns who burned theirs.”
I nod, not sure what to do with my hands. Or my face. Or my voice.
Kane glances at me. “Not a bad showing for two people who don’t know what Mod Podge is.” He emphasizes the wordtwo.
I shoot him a sarcastic smile. That man totally knows what it is.
“Wedomake a pretty good team, Coach.”
I open my mouth to brush him off. To make some snarky comment about not needing anyone on my team, but that’s not true. I did need him today. And he’s right. Wedomake a good team.
Which is exactly the problem.
