Questionable Workplace Romance - Two for Charging Bonus Short Story

"With two Olympic golds under her belt, former Canadian national player Susannah Lindbury is the most practically experienced head coach the Sea Lions have ever had in their fifteen years of existence. While her playing career ended before the nascent PWHL began, her international record speaks for itself—certainly more so than her predecessor's entirely fake records ever could.

But all the laurels in the world might not make a difference in the male dominated world of the NHL. How will an organization where 2/3 of the workforce identify as male (see: 2022 NHL diversity and inclusion report) react to a woman telling them what to do? How will twenty-two of the most aggressive athletes in professional sports react? We're all excited to see.

Top comments:

Jefferson Howard: Who cares about all this gender stuff? It's all about the hockey. If they play up to snuff, the coach could be a baby elephant for all I care.

stickstickpuck: Check out this video of Starling bodying Team USA's captain into the boards. I feel like she will not give a shit if the guys don't take her seriously.

sealions4lyfe: This is why DEI needs to go. It's a MEN'S team, hire a dude! How's she going to hold a decent locker room speech if she can't even go in?

Howza68: @sealions4lyfe—not cool man

(From: "Sea Lions Hire First Female Head Coach in NHL History" by Olivia Starling, published in The San Francisco Herald, 08/30/2025)

****

Susannah rolled her neck from one side to the other, listening to the telltale crack. She needed a massage something fierce. Maybe the team physios could fit her in later. Although tension from sitting in too many meetings keeping an asinine smile on her face so she didn’t alienate one of twelve middle-aged white men didn’t really fall under the purview of a sports therapist. She missed when her worst problem was the shitty tendons in her left ankle that kept giving way under her. Damn things stopped her from an Olympic threepeat.

Oh well.

Canada tanked the year she missed anyway. They let Jocelyn Harbor be team captain and Susannah had never liked her. British Columbians got so emotional and touchy-feely. Susannah appreciated a good ice-breaker as much as the next person in a leadership position: they united all her underlings in embarrassment.

But Jocelyn actually enjoyed getting organized in a line according to date of birth or height. She managed to talk to Olympe Gauthier about the struggles of being five foot six and a half for four whole minutes the one time Susannah played on the same team as both of them. Since it was the Canadian national team, the whole thing was even stupider. Neither of them measured things in feet.

With a sigh, Susannah pushed away from her desk. She could manage some ice time if she got down to the rink before Crowler inevitably arrived half an hour early to run his obsessive-compulsive dexterity drills.

Before she could get as far as the door to her office, a tiny hurricane waylaid her.

“Dr. Horowitz, what can I do for you?” she asked, pasting on her best welcoming smile.

“Un-trade Howie.” For a person who was at most one hundred and sixty centimeters in heels, Dr. Horowitz had a very fierce glare. Cute heels, but still. Heels.

Susannah didn’t sigh or groan or explain that as head coach, she had a minor say in trades, but asset management belonged to the GM’s purview. Alvarez had less experience in the NHL than her, but in her opinion he got a good (and desperately needed) goalie for a steal with the Howard trade.

Good call, dick move to make her break the news.

She knew better than to explain she hadn't made any decisions, only been the bearer of bad news first to Howard and then to the team.

She’d done it once: pointed out when a team manager made a choice and the team blamed her for it, when she started out coaching men’s leagues a few years back. It didn't work out for her. Very quickly, the conversation stopped being about the issue at hand and became about her shifting the blame, avoiding responsibility, and using her gender to account for incompetence.

She'd heard it all. She could take whatever people threw at her. Someday, she’d see her name on the fancy piece of hardware all the boys chased and everyone would know it was her team, her methods, her work.

For now, she kept right on smiling. “No can do.”

Horowitz rolled her eyes. “I don’t know what I expected. You’re so fucking fake.”

Susannah’s mouth dropped open.

“There you go again, pretending to be all surprised. Drop the act already, it’s beneath you.”

“I’m not fake,” Susannah defended, much too late.

Horowitz snorted.

“Okay, what do you know about me?”

“I know you act pathologically friendly so people will think you’re impervious to criticism.”

“I,” Susannah started to respond.

“I know you think you need to be super kind and approachable and a total hardass at the same time because you’re a woman in a male dominated field.”

“Has anyone ever told you it’s rude to analyze people who aren’t your patients?”

Horowitz scoffed. “It’s rude to patients, too. I’m only rude to people who are rude first.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You traded Howie!”

“I didn’t!”

“Well, you didn’t try to stop it and you sure aren’t upset about him being gone.”

Susannah threw her hands up. “What you want me to do? Act as if Howie was God’s gift to the locker room, getting pissed at half the team over bullshit interpersonal issues and tanking three games in a row all by himself?”

A frown line drew down the smooth space of Horowitz’s forehead, roughly at eye level for Susannah. “You’re supposed to send them to me.”

“Huh?” Susannah asked, still distracted by the play of emotion across Horowitz’s freckled face.

“When the team is struggling, when they’re having issues managing their emotions, you’re supposed to send them to me, not to Chicago.” She jabbed her finger at Susannah’s chest, skimming along the lapel of her fitted teal blazer.

“So this is about your ego,” Susannah said. Horowitz’s hand fell away, narrowly avoiding brushing skin.

With a shock, Susannah realized she’d wanted that touch, that fingertip against her collarbone just past the line of the stupid blazer.

"No," Horowitz blustered. "It's not about me, it's about…about principles. And you have none."

She turned on her heel and stalked off down the corridor.

Susannah couldn't help but watch her go. The shoes really were nice.

****

"I'm glad you're taking such a progressive stance on this, Mr. Alvarez." Susannah rose to her feet, hand held out for the Sea Lions' GM Eduardo Sanchez Alvarez to shake.

He did, his trademark dimple popping. "I told you to call me Eddie."

Susannah kept right on smiling and made no response. It would be a cold day in hell before she took him up on that. Crossing professional boundaries was a recipe for disaster. No matter what Phil Easton said or did, a hockey team would not become one big happy family with her as the mom. Not on her watch. Work was work.

He left her office, citing a dinner meeting with the Firecrackers' owner. Lucky sucker. As soon as he was gone, Susannah sagged in her office chair. She regretted it immediately and forced herself up straight. The gargantuan leather masterpiece of an office chair her predecessor's predecessor left behind made her look imposing, but it was not comfortable. At least not with her back all messed up.

She hadn't done any weight training all week, and she knew it would fix her right up. But she didn't have time what with meetings and practices and strategy sessions and the five minutes or so in between appointments she needed to scream into a pillow and stop smiling at everyone.

Her cheeks hurt.

She let her mouth turn down all the way, then widened her lips into an overdone grimace to relax her facial muscles a bit. She had just dropped her jaw to really stretch it out when the door slammed open.

Susannah's smile snapped back into place, but not before Michelle Horowitz saw her grimacing.

"What?" she asked, ignoring the glee spreading across Horowitz's face.

Plopping onto the far less imposing (and far more comfortable) office chair across from Susannah, setting the stack of files she'd brought along onto the desk with a snap.

For such a tiny woman, Horowitz did everything very loudly.

Or maybe she was trying very hard to piss Susannah off. Unfortunately for her, Susannah thought she was adorable.

Until Horowitz opened her mouth. "So," she said brightly. "Since you have yet to take advantage of my professional abilities, here I am, prostrating myself before you."

"I," Susannah tried, but she hadn't processed "take advantage" and "prostrate" yet.

"You have several players—" here Horowitz tapped her folders, but she'd strategically placed them so Susannah couldn't see more of the names than the letter 'C', which could be several people "—who are concerned about damaging the roster by speaking up about lingering strains or injuries."

"Hm," Susannah said.

"What, that's all you got for me?"

"Let me process! Give me a minute!" The words burst out hotter and angrier than Susannah had expected.

An expression of unbridled delight spread across Horowitz's face. Her freckled nose crinkled up and her eyes glinted and a surround sound, 5K image of her making the same expression wearing nothing but one of Susannah's dress shirts with the buttons open, curly hair loose around her shoulders, assaulted Susannah and left her flushed and unsteady.

Fuck.

Professional distance.

The other reason Susannah was glad she wouldn't have been selected for the last Olympics was that the Canadian women's hockey team had at least two love triangles too many for comfort and Susannah prided herself on keeping her personal life out of work.

She took a deep breath and forced the smile to keep shining. "Thank you for bringing this to my attention. How do you suggest we approach the issue as a team? I don't want to single anyone out."

The look Susannah got this time was less hostile. "You could work in some wellness days for everyone," Mich—no, Horowitz suggested. "Or mandatory maintenance days. Tell the guys they have to take two per season or something."

The idea made Susannah snort. Crowler would have a coronary, torn between his obsessive need to constantly do the most while also being the perfect teacher's pet. Maybe she could give him a sticker for taking a day off.

"I like it," she told Michelle. Horowitz. Michelle Horowitz. "What else?"

"Loosen up on the curfew every now and again."

Susannah frowned.

Michelle Horowitz rolled her eyes and Susannah wished it had been because of a lame joke she'd made, not because Michelle was mad at her. "I know you need to be a hardass at all times, but would it kill you to push the time back an hour or two sometimes? It's stressing the guys out."

"It's supposed to, they're top tier athletes. They thrive under pressure."

Michelle raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

Susannah spent a fever-hot moment imagining what she'd have done to impress this woman if she'd happened upon her in the PyeongChang Olympic Village, curfew be damned.

Professional, goddamnit. She was a professional.

But professionals got to have fun sometimes, too.

She heaved a sigh. "Fine," she conceded. "I suppose in Buffalo they can stay out a little longer. Not as though they can get in trouble in Buffalo."

"Have you met—" Michelle cut herself off mid-sentence.

"Am I so terrible?" Susannah wondered, more to herself than to anyone else. She did try hard to cultivate an air of authority, but the goal was approachable authority.

Michelle waved her off. "Doctor-patient confidentiality."

Susannah did not breathe a sigh of relief that Michelle's reticence to name names wasn't about her. She didn't. "Of course."

"Which, by the way, is not technically stipulated in my contract." Michelle's sharp chin jutted up.

Neither of them spoke for a beat.

"This is a test," Michelle added cheerily. "In case you couldn't tell."

Susannah eyed her head to toe. Her glossy curls were in a half-up style which looked fancier than it was. Her pretty, pouty mouth was made up with nearly-nude lipstick, but the edges were a tiny bit smudged where she'd been biting them. The span of her white blouse over her chest moved with each quick breath she took. She had her legs crossed, smooth shins peeking out from the navy pencil skirt. Her shoes were the same copper color as her belt and one of them bobbled in time to the soundless tapping of her foot.

It would be so easy to take her down a peg.

Susannah was taller, stronger, older, and held more sway with the organization.

But Susannah didn't want Michelle down a peg. She wanted Michelle up on a pedestal or entirely naked and in her bed. She wanted Michelle exactly as brave as she was pretending to be right now, and trusting Susannah to know the difference.

She couldn’t have that. They were colleagues, but she could support Michelle’s bravery. Professionally speaking.

"Like I said with the Howard trade," she said, meeting Michelle's gaze. "Contracts are not my purview. I just want everyone doing the best job they can."

"Including me?"

"Especially you. I get the feeling you and I could work together very well."

Michelle's foot stilled. She leaned back in her chair. Her bright, intelligent eyes examined Susannah so closely Susannah fought the urge to squirm.

Then, Michelle thrust out her hand for Susannah to shake.

Susannah took it and did her very best to ignore the frisson of electricity the touch sent down her spine.

****

One by one, the suits filtered out of the room. Eddie left last, giving her a commiserating smile as he left.

Midway through the media firestorm caused both by the Howard trade and everything the Sea Lions had done in reaction, Susannah had to give up and use the nickname. Referring to him as "Alvarez" when she was getting three AM text messages from the man telling her to check what Jax Grant had put on Instagram simply wasn't tenable.

God, had it only been a month since then?

Based on the amount of meetings she'd had about it, Susannah felt as though it had been twenty years. Every other day, the PR department had a new incident or hashtag or optics issue they wanted to discuss, and every other day all the coaches and trainers and front office staff got called in to hear someone with a degree in media studies talk about metrics and viewing figures for half an hour before getting to the point.

The point, every single time, was, "don't be a dick where anyone with a camera can hear you."

Susannah slumped down in her seat, letting her forehead rest against the cool conference table. She was so tired. Why couldn't people just be queer and play hockey? Women did it all the time, it was not as groundbreaking as people seemed to think because there were penises involved.

Her eyes drifted shut as the pressure from the table balanced out the pressure inside her skull. She had to get down to the garage and drive home. But she'd been awake since five and they'd flown in from the East Coast last night and she had severe doubts about her own ability to operate a motor vehicle.

Would anyone notice if she slept on one of the massage tables?

That would probably be one of those bad headlines there would be another meeting about.

The click of heels on the polished vinyl floors alerted Susannah to someone else's presence.

She ought to lift her head and see who it was, and she would. Any second.

The chair beside Susannah's squeaked as someone dragged it out.

With superhuman effort, Susannah forced herself upright only to be greeted with Michelle's smiling face.

"Please tell me there isn't another crisis," she said.

"There hasn't been a crisis in months. The team is playing fine, you fixed the goalie shortage, there's no illegal betting in the organization—"

Susannah laughed. "I keep forgetting I need to worry about that last one. So what brings you here if not concerns about your charges?"

"Oh, I'm concerned," Michelle said. She got to her feet and stepped around the back of Susannah's chair. Two small, firm hands planted themselves on Susannah's shoulder. "See, there's this member of staff who keeps scheduling gym time and not showing up for it."

"Bad look in professional athletics," Susannah managed despite the sudden uptick in her pulse.

Michelle began to knead the tense muscle under Susannah's blue button-up and a moan escaped Susannah before she could stop it. "Right? This person should know better, too, she's the one person in the building with Olympic gold."

"Sounds impressive."

"Impressively stubborn, maybe."

Susannah would be insulted, but Michelle's hands slid up to work at the knots in the base of her neck and she just couldn't care. "Any other concerns?"

"Oh, loads. See, she keeps acting as if she's got it all under control and doesn't need anyone's help, but I found her about to fall asleep in conference room B ten minutes ago."

Guilty as charged.

Forcing her eyes open despite the overwhelming pleasure of being touched gently for the first time in weeks, Susannah made herself focus on the far wall. The halls outside were dark, the glass walls showed nothing but her own reflection with the hazy shape of Michelle behind her.

"I'm not your boss," Susannah said.

Michelle paused in her massage. "Why are you telling me things we both know?"

"If you keep touching me like that I'm going to ask you to come home with me, and I want you to know there's no pressure, and I'm not trying to take advantage—"

"Oh my God." Michelle's hands dropped away from Susannah's skin, and Susannah would have been disappointed and believed she'd screwed everything up, but she didn't have time.

With surprising strength for someone so tiny, Michelle grabbed the front of Susannah's blouse in one fist and dragged her up out of her seat. She pushed Susannah backward until her ass hit the edge of the conference table, and then Michelle got right up in her space, craning up to kiss her.

The heels, Susannah realized foggily with the single brain cell not decimated by Michelle's lips on hers, were very convenient as well as beautiful. There was hardly any height difference.

"I know you're not trying to take advantage of me," Michelle said, not particularly patiently, when they parted. "I'm trying to take advantage of you."

"Sorry for getting in the way?"

"You should be. It was gonna be kind of forbidden, and sexy, and a very bad idea, but you had to go and be nice about it." Michelle's bottom lip stuck out in a slight pout and Susannah wanted to be kissed again so badly she swayed closer to Michelle.

"I'm nice," she found herself saying. "I can be so nice."

Michelle surveyed her. "Real nice, though," she demanded. "Not the fake nice girl boss bullshit you pull around here."

"Real nice," Susannah agreed.

Michelle's nose crinkled with her smile and her eyes sparkled just how Susannah had hoped they would. "All right. I guess I can take you home and be a little mean to you, then."

She turned and headed for the door, not even looking back to see if Susannah was following.

God, she was gorgeous.

God, all the men in suits would have a conniption if they knew.

What the hell. No one else in this organization cared about professional boundaries.

Susannah followed Michelle as fast as her tired legs would carry her.