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That was probably an overshare given that Stephanie was more a friend-of-a-friend, than a bestie, but thankfully she didn’t seem to mind.

“You’re not broken. You just haven’t met the right guy yet.”

Now it was my turn to snort. “I didn’t take you for a romantic.”

“Oh, we sassy and cynical girls are the biggest romantics deep down inside. But I’m not going to let tonight’s conversation revolve around either of our non-existent love lives. I’ve got big news of my own, so we can both celebrate.”

I laughed. “You absolutely can’t leave me hanging with that when I told you my good news over the phone. Spill it, Stephanie.”

“Okay, but don’t tell Jordan or Willa. I want to let them know myself.” Stephanie let the silence build dramatic tension until I was ready to burst. “I’m a top two finalist for this fall’s Home Sweet Home show.”

I shrieked, probably shattering her eardrums as she’d done with mine.

“But….”

I held my breath.

“I heard unofficially that they’re going to pick me. I’m going to be renovating a major league baseball guy’s house this fall on television!”

“That’s amazing! You’re going to be famous, Stephanie. I’ll be able to point at the television or the cover of a magazine and say ‘I know her. Like, shared meals and drinks and gossip know her.”

“Same. You’ll be famous too, Abby.”

Not in the same league at all, but I didn’t correct her. Famous among in professional circles? I hoped so. Random people knowing me famous? Hardly. And I was okay with that.

We said goodbye and I glanced at my watch, noting that I had a little over an hour until I had to leave to meet Stephanie. What I should do is go back home and change, but I was too hyped up to begin work on the Tusks account, and two weeks was a very tight deadline. Besides, Stephanie wouldn’t care if I arrived in a business suit. She’d probably be coming from work too, which meant cargo pants and a t-shirt for her.

So I set a timer for an hour and pulled the Tusks’ info onto my screen.

First I drafted an email to Escallates Johnson thanking him for his time and agreeing to the terms he’d set out for continued use of our firm. CC’ing our contracts department, I hit send. They’d take care of ensuring all the fine print and legally binding stuff. I’d make sure we, and by that I meant I, kept this deal longer than ninety days.

Then I opened a fresh document and typed, at the top: TUSKS MEDIA STRATEGY – MASTER PLAN, and I got to work.

5

BWAT

Ispent most of Wednesday afternoon researching Abby’s job and how this social media thing might help bring attention to the team. There were a lot of things I didn’t understand, but I took note of a few that seemed very important. One was that a goal of social media was to help fans get engaged. Engaging content was something every research source mentioned. I had never been engaged, and didn’t have any personal experience with romance or love, but I’d read about it and watched lots of videos. The team viewed me as an expert when it came to research on wooing human females, so I guessed I could use that knowledge on social media as well.

Making a mental note to ask Abby which social media site she wanted us to concentrate on, I took the plunge and opened up an account on a phone application called TikTok as HockeyOrcBwat.

For the rest of the day I watched the short videos on the site. I started with ones geared towards hockey, then I watched an hour of humans becoming engaged to marry. Then I became sidetracked by videos of dogs, humans vehemently decrying invasive shrubberies, humans rating their favorite burgers, then a large number of videos with females discussing books about people riding dragons and having sex with male fae.

Yuck. The idea of being intimate with one of the fae, male or female, made me want to scrub my skin raw under hot water with caustic soap.

I walked home from the arena, thinking of Abby. And dinner. I was starving after a meager lunch of whatever I could shake loose from the snack vending machine in the hallway. Not feeling like eating out, I ordered from the amazing Door Dash app and sat on the floral-print sofa my apartment had been furnished with, and planned my first video-post. By the time my chicken piccata had arrived, I was ready. Propping my phone against my food containers, I began to record.

“Hello. I am Bwat and I play hockey for the Baltimore Tusks team. I am not very good, but I practice and try to improve. I have heard that humans like to see engagements. I would like to be engaged myself. We orcs have come here to the human world to find wives, so engagement is important to us as well. Any information or help you can provide will be appreciated.”

I awoke the next morning to many comments on my video. Quite a few told me that both I and my team “sucked”. Others informed me that we needed to fight more to make up for how bad we were at scoring goals. A few told me that I was overheated and that they were thirsty because of my appearance. I received many messages from females offering to be my wife if I could only give them money to travel to Baltimore first. I was unfamiliar with human travel costs, but the amounts they said they needed appeared to be excessive. Many humans liked the video and about twenty had joined my follower selection. It seemed rude not to do the same so I spent the morning friending and liking videos, then raced to the arena so I wouldn’t be late.

Trap, Morag, and Pfton were in the locker room throwing knives at a hand-drawn target on a formerly blank space of wall. They informed me that Ozar and Ugwyll had been practicing on the ice for the last hour, and that the rest of the team hadn’t come in this morning. Some had decided that since we were traveling to another city tonight, they weren’t required to be at the arena today. Others, like Eng, just didn’t care and only showed up for a random hour or so each day. It shouldn’t bother me, but it did. Improving our game was important to Ozar and Ugwyll. I liked them, and if they wanted the team lose fewer games, and maybe even win the occasional one, I’d help if I could.

And Abby. I would do anything for her. The Tusks doing well would help her, but I was only able to influence team performance during my on-ice time. Given that I couldn’t even skate yet, I was more of a liability to the team. But this social media thing I could do so I took a video of Morag, Trap, and Pfton throwing knives at the wall, then threw one myself at the very end. It wasn’t easy holding my phone in one hand and throwing the knife with the other. My aim went wide and instead of hitting the target I sank the knife into a picture of a human hockey player that someone had taped next to the first row of lockers.

By noon I was starving. I hadn’t quite figured out the cooking machines at my team-provided den, but I had mastered the small metal box called a toaster. We cooked sliced bread over the fire at home, usually covered with melted cheese and often served with a grilled vegetable or meat topping. Unfortunately the slots of the human toaster were not wide enough to accommodate toppings, and when I had tried to shove cheese and bread into the slot, the machine had begun smoking and the cheese burning. The acrid smoke had set off a loud, shrill device on the ceiling. In a panic, I had thrown the toaster into the street from my balcony patio.

The noise had stopped soon after that. And I’d easily ordered a replacement toaster from an internet store named after a large river. I loved that store. Anything I ever imagined could be found there and would be quickly delivered at my den, often by the next day.