Thursday, April 02, 2020

Clear as Ice - #HockeyFiction Prompt Eleven

Today's prompt is skates.  

Previous days linked below.  Note: The top of this post has been updated to reflect counting by prompts.   Previous entries: Prompt one, day two, prompt three, prompt four, prompt five, prompt six, prompt seven, prompt eight, prompt nine, prompt ten.

"So, I've been invited to be on the hockey podcast," Sienna said.  They were having another KeKi meeting in the coffee shop.

 

"The 'All Things Must Pass' one or a different one," Jay asked.

  

"That's the one," Sienna said.

 

"Okay, so I'm going to say a thing that makes me sound like a fun hating jerk, but hear me out."

 

Sienna nodded.  Jay often brought the practical side to their partnership, and sometimes it meant Sienna needed to push her to be more excited about things, but often she was right.

 

"So," Jay said, "you said when we started that part of your goal was to push away from being just a body.  And I know it's not the same, but there's a way where you turn out to have a really interesting and unique perspective on hockey, and you find people that appreciate that.  And there's also a way where you just become like a glorified trophy girl blowing kisses at the players."

Sienna didn't cringe but she wanted to.  But Jay was right.  Sienna could push this in the direction she wanted, but sometimes her first idea was to blow a kiss for the camera and that wasn't the brand she was building now.  That was old Sienna.  She nodded.  "Yeah, yeah, I hear you."

 

"Okay, I will sit back.  And obviously, I think the stuff you did with the volleyball team was great.  We got a lot of signups that mentioned that.  And the volleyball team applied to be a featured sponsor next month.  So when their season starts up we should look into stuff.  The cross stuff."

"Cross promo?" Sienna asked.  "Yeah,  I'll check in with them on that."

 

Jay turned back to her screen and Sienna scrolled through more of her email.  The junior hockey team wanted to know if she'd come to their last game.  And there was another email from Daisy.  Sienna opened it up.  Yup, they wanted to know if she'd come to another game.  This time the owner was offering to let her join him in his box which was fancy.  She wondered if you still wore a jersey for that or something a little dressier.

 

She told Daisy yes, of course.  Sienna had turned into a hockey fan, even watching their away games on her tablet and adding a score alert app to her phone.  If she had set up a fake insta to check on a certain goalie, well, that was just her newfound love of hockey.  But Jay had a point.  Just like she'd had to lock down her DMs because people thought the #UnderMyJersey stuff meant she had some interest in their dick pics, people were going to try and push her in a lot of directions.

 

The key was to make sure they were the directions she wanted to go,  Skimpy on skates, wasn't anything she needed to do or be.  But sharing interest in a sport she hadn't previously known a lot about, there were plenty of reasons to engage in that.  But given her history, people were going to assume she was in this to find a dude.  And intriguing goalie or not, Sienna could not afford to put herself back in the public relationship space.  It was a danger to her brand, a danger to her heart, and she didn't know quite which one scared her more.  But she could handle this.  Navigating media both social and not, was something Sienna had been doing for quite some time.