Tomboy

“You want to make this whole perception problem go away so you can start the next season on the first line again instead of the bench because the front office wants to make an example of you?” Lucy asked.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, hoping it would stave off the ache making him think his head might explode, and nodded. “Yes.”

“Then it’s gonna happen,” Lucy said. “Lucky for you, Bramble is totally on board with using your redemption story to promote their launch next month. As the founder told me yesterday, if they can make you dateable, then anyone is game.”

Ouch.

“So here’s how it works,” she continued. “Bramble requires a five-date commitment so that everyone really gets a chance to know each other. However, each party must reconfirm their interest after each date, which they will plan for you up to date three.”

His headache was only getting worse. “Five dates?”

“Stop whining, Caleb.” His mom gave him the look. “What’s that in comparison to being able to reach your goal?”

That would be the goal he’d had since before he could remember—getting his name engraved on Lord Stanley’s cup. The Ice Knights were his best chance at that, and he wasn’t going to fuck it up any more than he already had.

“Got it,” he muttered. “Five dates.”

“After each date, you’ll do a little here’s-how-the-date-went chat with your mom. Bramble will use that footage in their launch-week ad campaign to show that anyone can meet their match using the app.”

Oh God. Would this nightmare ever end?

“And I already filled out most of your profile for you,” his mom added, handing him an iPad with the Bramble app open on it.

God’s answer? No. It’s only gonna get worse. Enjoy your time visiting hell, sucker.

He didn’t want to, but he looked down at the screen anyway. She’d filled out the basics, giving him a fake last name.

“Smith?” he asked his mom. “That’s not suspicious at all.”

She raised one eyebrow. “Would you rather go with Pain in the Ass?”

Sighing, he went through the rest of it. It was, like any good lie, as close to the truth as it could be. “Do we have to add a picture?”

“Nope.” Lucy shook her head. “They don’t have photos or job listings in an effort to eliminate unconscious bias in dating, on the theory that users will be more open to the person on the inside that way. Bramble wants to do as much as possible to limit who you are from influencing how your dates go. That means you cannot tell your date who you really are or why you’re doing it. Everything has to be authentic.”

All he could hear in his head was the sword-wielding guy from his mom’s favorite movie talking about how that word didn’t mean what the bad guy thought it did. “Except for the fact that I’m lying about who I am.”

“There’s a price to be paid if you want to reach any goal,” his mom said, using the one phrase she said to him growing up almost as much as she told him she loved him.

She wasn’t wrong. He’d made sacrifices to get to the Ice Knights. Someday, his body would expect payment, and he was okay with that. All of this publicity stuff made his stomach churn. This whole thing just kept getting more and more fucked-up.

“So how do they match people up?” he asked.

The grin on his mom’s face should have warned him of a fresh, new hell. “So glad you asked.”

She reached over and clicked on a question mark icon. A new tab o

pened filled with—he scrolled down and down and down—at least a billion questions.

Kill me now.

“You fill out those, the app will match you with a few possibilities, and then I’ll pick out your new girl.”

That buzz saw in his ears? It turned into mortar fire, deafeningly loud and almost certain to fuck up his world. He looked at Lucy and Coach Peppers, desperate for another option that wouldn’t put his mom in charge of his dating life. When they met his gaze without blinking, he turned back to the woman way too happy to have her control-freak fingers all up in his life.

“Whoever you pick, I’m not going out with her past date five,” he said. “This is a publicity stunt only. Nothing more.”

“No one is saying you have to or that you should,” Lucy said. “The point of this little exercise is to change the narrative and clean up your image. What is more wholesome than a boy’s mother helping him pick out a date?”