A good part of her wanted to turn tail and run. Not to the nearest bar but to her laptop and the hockey-loving world she’d created there. The Biscuit wasn’t just an Ice Knights fan blog that had grown into the most popular hockey site in Harbor City, it was her outlet. Some people went with exercise, some started vaping, some spent all their time trying to regain everything they’d lost to the bottle. Shelby had turned to hockey, the Harbor City Ice Knights in particular. And now she was graduating to the majors, a job with the team she loved, producing web content and independent analysis as part of the team’s new social media platform that would be home to everything from podcasts to The Biscuit.

No more hustling for side gigs delivering food, making lattes, or temping in an office to pay the rent. This was everything she wanted, and she hadn’t relied on old family connections to get it—even if one of her former stepdads owned the team. Well, not that she could just call him up. It wasn’t like they’d even talked after the divorce more than ten years ago.

Now all she had to do was walk through that door.

She straightened her shoulders, let out the breath she’d been holding, and—didn’t move a single, measly inch.

Girl. Get it together. Do not fuck this up.

She put her red chip with the Roman numerals for six in the inside pocket of her purse, zipping it closed with focused deliberation. Procrastinate? Her? Oh my God, yes. So when her cell buzzed and her mom’s photo appeared on the screen, she didn’t hesitate to answer.

“Hey, Mom,” she said, ducking into the bathroom across the hall from the media room.

“You will never guess what Tina just told me,” her mom said, her loud voice making it seem as if Shelby had her on speakerphone.

Knowing this was about to be an excruciatingly detailed peek into life in the Huckleberry Hills subdivision, Shelby did a quick scan to make sure all the stalls were unoccupied so no one else would be subject to the boring antics of one of Harbor City’s most distant suburbs. Every lock on the floor-to-ceiling doors was turned to green for unoccupied.

“What did Tina tell you?” Shelby asked, not so much curious to know the answer as deeply grateful for the excuse to delay walking into the team media room.

Tina was her mom’s neighborhood walking buddy. They were out together at six in the morning power walking and gossiping about everything from who put up their Christmas decorations extra early to who had the same strange car parked in his driveway three times a week as soon as his wife left for work. Both lived for the latest gossip.