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ABBY

Why in the world had I said all those things to Bwat? I’d never admitted them to anyone before, not my best friends, not even my mom. Maybe it was because he was basically a stranger. Therapists were strangers, and that supposedly helped people to open up to them. But Bwat wasn’t a therapist.

Maybe it was that I trusted him. I trusted my friends too, but Bwat had been vulnerable to me, and he’d confessed to having a rocky, barren love-life as well. It was hard to tell Jordan who’d loved and suffered heartbreak before, or Willa who suffered heartbreak on an annual basis, that my own heart felt as if it was encased in granite and had never softened, let alone suffered as much as a scratch. Most of the time I was okay with just dating guys here and there and focusing my the majority of my attention on career and friends. In high school and college I’d told myself that I just hadn’t met the right man yet, that maybe once I graduated and was in the great career world it would happen. I would get into an elevator with a gorgeous guy, an apple would fall from my grocery bag and our hands would touch as we both reached to pick it up. There would be that zing, and I’d know he was the one.

There had been plenty of elevator rides, but no dropped apples and absolutely no zing. The last seven years had been full of meet-cute encounters, and some of those had led to dates. But no zing that lasted more than a week or two. Nice guys. And enjoyable time. Occasionally some really great sex. But I had more fun with my friends, or at work, or even at home with a good book and a glass of wine.

But I was done whining about my arid love life. I had work to do, and not a lot of time to do it in if I was going to double the home-game ticket sales and prove to Escallates Johnson that I was who he needed to make the Baltimore Tusks into a national phenomenon.

So I did get back to work. With Daniella and Malik on my team full-time and flooding social media with pictures, posts, videos and fun contests to get people commenting and sharing, we were on a roll. I scheduled events for when the team would be back in town, rush ordered merchandise, and scheduled a photographer for pin-up worthy photos that would be turned into posters, a calendar, and some less-hockey focused trading cards that I hoped female fans would go for. Malik put his skilled work into editing existing photos to show pics and bios on the Jumbotron during games.

By the time the team hit Tampa, momentum had begun. My team and I shared, cross posted, created memes, and set the groundwork to make the Tusks the most fun team in the NHL, regardless of their inability to win a game. Americans loved an underdog, and they especially loved big, green-skinned, toothy, shirtless underdogs.

Things exploded in Miami, which required more energy drinks for me and my small team as the work doubled. An upward trajectory didn’t mean a campaign was safe. These things crashed and burned as quickly as they rose, and if we didn’t continue to feed the beast of publicity, the pipeline of enthusiastic posters would dry up.

There were no more phone calls from Bwat. Or texts beyond a few check-ins where I vetoed a picture of the hotel breakfast buffet and gave an enthusiastic thumbs up to one a teammate had taken of a seagull stealing a French fry right out of Bwat’s hand. I missed our late-night text sessions and his earnest interest in my job. And while I was a little worried about what he might be posting on social media I was too busy to check his accounts. Besides, he was a grown orc. I’d given him the basics. He wouldn’t do any damage beyond a boring image of hotel powdered eggs or a blurry almost-dick-pic of his roommate.

At least I hoped he wouldn’t.

It was good to be able to send Daniella and Malik home early and head over to Jordan’s to watch the Buffalo game. It was the final game before the team came home.

This Friday would be their first home game after two weeks away. Friday was reckoning day where I needed to have doubled attendance in order to keep this contract my team and I had worked so hard on. Ticket sales were up, but we weren’t in the clear as far as the numbers went.

I should be working, but I desperately needed an evening off. And I really wanted to see this game with Jordan since it was against her own home team and her family would be in attendance.

We opened a bottle of wine and I tried to keep up my end of the conversation while I commented on as many social media posts as I could. Once the game started, I was riveted and kept my social media activity strictly to commercial breaks. The Tusks lost, as usual, but they scored three points to Buffalo’s five. Maybe this would be enough to drive attendance to the levels I needed to keep my job. If not…well, I’d cross that bridge if I came to it.

With my phone glued to my hand and my comments about the Tusk’s daily workouts, practices, and other insider-knowledge tidbits, I’d inadvertently outed myself, and ended up confessing to Jordan that I was only half paying attention to the game, with the rest of my attention on the team’s promotion and social media. She knew that I was managing the marketing and PR for the team, and that a lot was on the line career-wise, but not the incredible goals and deadlines I face. I hadn’t told either her or Willa that the past two weeks had been a sort of trial period with less than two days remaining before I’d need to spin this straw into gold.

As Jordan replied to texts from her family, who’d been at the game, I quickly posted a few comments from my various social media accounts before switching logins and commenting from the official team account, taking careful note of the internet chatter. Ugwyll was quickly becoming the team hottie, closely followed by Ozar. The rest of the orcs…ugh, I had some serious work to do with them. I was sure at least six of the guys would have their own fan followings once I could highlight their individual personalities, and the rest would require only some creative exaggeration on my part. Eng? Even without actively playing, he’d somehow attracted a group of contrarian supporters with his perpetual scowl and position holding up a wall at the edge of the ice. He might not be an athlete, but I could turn surly arrogance into the stuff of gothic romance.

But Bwat? What the hell was I going to do about that orc?

He’d given another post-game interview that I’d sweated through. His posts were all over the place from inadvertently sexy to good-guy friendly to bookishly erudite. Dude needed to pick a lane. He needed some decent branding, and it was clear that even with my occasional coaching, the guy was at a loss when it came to doing this himself.

As Jordan and I went through a checklist of pros and (very minimal) cons on Ozar’s suitability as a spouse, I kept thinking of Bwat.

Pygmalion. Could I craft the perfect brand, the perfect image for Bwat? Or would that effort end in disaster? He was like the tarot fool, his face turned up to enjoy the sunshine as his foot hovered over the edge of a cliff. Honest. Earnest. Kind and strangely innocent. It was so at odds for a hockey player brand. Ozar, Ugwyll, and even Eng were easy. Bwat? Turning that kind of individual brand into hockey-player success would be difficult and probably near impossible.

Challenge accepted.

He’d described himself as lanky. Compared to human men the orc was hardly lanky. Bwat would doubtlessly hold his own next to the gym-bros I’d seen straining at the weight benches, but compared to the other orcs on the team, his muscles were sinewy and lean. Honestly that should have been an asset on the ice with a team that Willa had called “cement blocks with legs”, but the guy couldn’t skate, and lacked the aggression of the other orcs. He was useless on defense, and the few posts I’d made highlighting him had barely received any likes.

But his own social media was gaining a strong following. Frowning, I pulled up his posts again, mentally tabulating the “feel” of the ones that had soared in popularity. The mostly-nude bathroom video with the box of XL condoms on the shelf behind him was the clear winner, but if I were to go for the sexy orc angle, I’d be better off using Ugwyll or Ozar. Bwat could be sexy, but his brand focus needed to be elsewhere.

Looking at the other popular posts I made a decision. Green flag cinnamon roll.

Eng was the rich, cocky hero of a billionaire, prince, bully-romance. Ozar was the earnest, growly lumberjack with a heart of gold. Ugwyll was the alpha mercenary hero protecting a woman from a twisted cartel boss and falling in love with her in the process. They were all the stuff of romance novels. Bwat was too, but those weren’t romance novels I tended to read.

He was the plaid flannel-wearing, small town baker with muscles and a beard who convinced the career-focused girl to give up the big city life for one with him. And while that hero did occasionally have to punch the asshole ex-boyfriend, he would apologize afterward, help the guy to his feet, and send him packing back to the big city with a dozen cranberry scones.

This could work. But first I needed to address Bwat’s terrible lack of prowess on the ice. I didn’t want to see anyone fired, and if there had been orcs lined up to join the team, I got the feeling Bwat would be in the unemployment line right now.

Task number one: Get the dude some skating lessons.

Task number two: Turn Bwat into the cinnamon roll hero of a sweet, feel-good romance.

“Are you working?” Jordan grinned and me then tapped on her own phone. “What’s the best social media account to follow for the team? I can’t keep up with all of them, but I’ll make sure I comment and post daily–well, as often as I can.”