Page 37 of Hot for the Hockey Player (The Single Moms of San Camanez: The Vino Vixens #2)

“There’s nobody out there doing this yet.

Not a professional hockey player anyway, with a teammate who is getting ready to go to trial for sexual assault.

You could be the flagship. Get in on the ground floor and start a revolution.

” Tugging her long, light brown-ponytail over her left shoulder, she started to stroke it like it was a cat or something. Probably a nervous tic.

I glanced at the clock on my phone. It was nine-thirty. I needed to get ready for physiotherapy. “I’ll chat with Alice and see. Thank you for connecting us.”

Char’s head bobbed. “I hope to start editing this interview today and get it up and live by Friday. I’ll send you a link when it’s ready.”

“Appreciate it.”

We said our goodbyes and just as I was about to close my laptop, an email from Alice Wu popped up. I still had twenty minutes before PT and it was only a ten-minute drive, so I opened it up.

Hey, Maverick!

So amazing to connect with you. I would love to chat more about what you’re looking for.

I have to say, the concept of this podcast sounds INCREDIBLE and I will do whatever I can to be part of it somehow.

I’m already thinking up ways we can advertise and market this thing to reach the “lonely boy” audience.

You know who else we should target? Moms—and dads.

But particularly those of certain racial backgrounds.

I know for a fact that my parents think my brother can do no wrong, and that any wife he has should basically wipe his ass for him, as well as do all the cooking, cleaning, and child rearing.

Which is probably why that dumbass has never had a date, still lives with our parents, and he’s almost thirty.

They are part of the problem, and if we can somehow reach them, then holy shit, we’re going to be part of a revolution.

Let me know when you want to connect. So excited to work with you, Maverick. Have a fantastic day

-Alice

My jaw dropped. Her enthusiasm was contagious, and excitement began a slow, steady simmer in my belly and arms. I grinned as I re-read her email. Char wasn’t kidding, Alice was a genius.

I shot her back an email right away saying I’d love to connect with her as soon as she could, then headed out the door to physiotherapy, unable to wipe the grin off my face—not that I tried.

Maz made me work hard for the forty-minutes I had him. He corrected my form, because apparently, I wasn’t keeping my hips square at home when I did some donkey kicks and other bilateral movements. I was sore, but in a good way, when I left.

“Oh hey, man,” Jagger greeted me in the parking lot as I headed to my truck. He had a serious limp to his step, but no cane.

“Hey. How’s it going?” We shook hands, and I ran back to open the door for him, which actually earned me a small glower.

“Thanks,” he grunted.

“Have a good day?” I said, though I phased it more like a question, since the man didn’t seem to be having a good day at all.

All he did was grunt again.

Hmm.

I didn’t really have too much time to ponder Jagger’s mood.

I promised Man I’d be at his place by eleven, and he lived all the way out on the peninsula.

Man Patel was a short, thin man from India, but he’d been on the island for at least the last ten years.

His wife had recently passed away, and all his children lived on the mainland.

He spent his days in his little cottage, whittling spoons and feeding his ducks.

When I mentioned to Carol Robbins that in addition to woodworking, I’d love to learn to whittle, she told me about Manpreet, or Man, as he liked to be called, and said I should pay him a visit.

That he sold his spoons at the farmers markets and in the giftshops, but not out of his home and didn’t offer classes.

So I went to see a man named Man about whittling, and he told me to come back today and he’d show me how to whittle.

Like all the other workshops I’d taken so far, I had no idea what to expect, but I was excited nonetheless.

I pulled into Man’s driveway in front of his shake-sided garage, and nearly had a heart attack at the deafening quack of a duck right at my feet when I hopped out of my truck.

“Dandelion, leave him alone,” Man called from the doorway of his garage.

Dandelion, a big white duck with a tuft of feathers on top of her head, didn’t seem to agree, and proceeded to lecture me in her native language, flapping her wings and pecking—not too gently—at my jeans.

“Just keep walking,” Man said. “She’ll get the hint. She’s a … Karen, as the kids say.”

Dandelion followed me as I navigated the narrow stone path with what I’m assuming would be flowers on either side in the spring until I reached Man.

He waved her away, then threw a handful of sliced grapes out onto the grass. Her fluffy little tail wagged, and she quacked loudly, which set off a storm of other quacks from multiple directions. Then, dozens of ducks of every size, shape, and color came out of the bushes and down various paths.

“Inside, before they ask for more.” Man held open the door, and I zipped into his garage which he used as a workshop. The screen door closed with a sharp bang.

A woodstove with a window in the door crackled away, heating up the space while gorgeously carved spoons of all sizes, lengths, and wood variations hung on nails against the wall. He had bins of spoons too. All labeled by size and wood type.

It was a tidy space, if not a little overwhelming with all the “stuff” everywhere.

“Sit here,” he said, gesturing to the small wooden stool across from the other small wooden stool with all the wood shavings around it.

My back wasn’t going to be too happy with me sitting for very long on the squat seat, but if it was good enough for Man, it was good enough for me.

I took my seat, and he handed me a yellowish wood block in a very rough shape of a spoon.

Basically, it had a narrower portion and a square, club-like portion.

“Put the glove on,” he said, handing me a lefthand glove with leather on the palm and fingers.

I did as I was told. Then he handed me a knife with a half-circle blade. “This is a sloyd knife.”

Man didn’t bother with a glove since the skin of his hands appeared to be thicker than leather, and he picked up a knife identical to the one he gave me, as well as an identical piece of wood, and started to peel thick shavings away from what I’m assuming was the handle.

“Shape from handle to scoop. From the middle point to where it swoops in. Don’t remove too much.” His hand came out and stopped mine mid-carve. “Slow. Precise. This isn’t a race.”

Apparently, I’d been going too fast.

I took it down a couple of notches and matched his pace. “What kind of wood is this?” I asked, not entirely comfortable with the silence, save for the scrape of our blades against the wood.

“Butternut.”

“What tree does that come from?”

“Butternut tree.”

“Oh.” I studied the way he used the knife with his right hand, but actually pushed the blade with his left thumb as it held the wood. I tried to copy him, seeing as I wasn’t getting a ton of instruction.

“Turn it around. Don’t do too much on the bottom there.

That’s the scoop.” He was playing with fire—or knives—putting his hand over my blade like that.

I was a noob and could very well accidentally stab him.

“See, here.” He pointed to where the scoop part would be.

“Round it, don’t shave it down. Or it will be too shallow. ”

“O-okay.”

“Watch.” He held his hand in place and just moved the wood. Shavings drifted to the concrete floor as the handle of the butternut grew thinner. I did the same, but it felt weird. So I went back to the other technique, where my left thumb helped push the blade.

He started to round and better shape his scoop, but that also meant he was carving toward himself.

“I didn’t think we were supposed to carve toward ourselves?”

He grunted. “Just don’t stab yourself.”

I nodded. “Noted. I’ll do my best.”

“Stay with the grain. It goes this way.” He went back and forth along his spoon from the handle to the scoop. “Don’t go sideways like that. Go with the grain, but not into it.”

“Right. Sorry.”

Another grunt.

I continued to follow his lead, my hands cumbersome and awkward compared to his, which handled the knife probably better than I handled a hockey stick.

Besides giving me pointers or telling me to slow down—which was quite often—we didn’t talk.

Sometimes I felt like he didn’t want me there since my questions were met with grunts or one-word answers, but then when he asked me if I wanted tea, and he also brought out warm, homemade cookies, it seemed to me like maybe he baked because I was coming over. He was a tough man to read.

“Cut into the curve,” he said, as I guided my knife from the scoop along the curved portion to the handle. “Otherwise, you’ll take off a—”

As he said it, a big chunk of wood flew off from that very spot on my spoon.

“A big chunk,” he finished, frowning.

“Shit. Did I wreck it?”

“No. Just correct it. Change your expectation of the outcome. Don’t give up. Pivot.”

“Pivot.” I nodded and carefully shaved thin pieces off the other side to even them out, and I tapered the handle so it was thinner.

“Good,” he murmured, continuing to whittle his own spoon, even though his eyes were on what I was doing.

I kept having to watch Man, then focus on what I was doing. It was an exhausting juggling act of the eyes. I didn’t want to miss his demonstration, but I also needed to watch my own hands.

“Good,” he said after ten minutes had passed and it started to resemble a real spoon, just with no concave scoop yet. “Now we get the hooked knife and mark out our scoop.”

He handed me the curved knife with the rounded top and showed me what he meant by marking out our scoop size.