Two for Holding Paperback + Short Story

Two for Holding is now available as a paperback with all major retailers! Click on either cover to reach the book's amazon page or here for other retailers!

To celebrate this momentous occasion, here comes the second bonus short story accompanying the book: "Performance Consultant", in which Tom Crowler sees a therapist.

Performance Consultant

Title: Performance Consultant

Job type: Full-time

Job description: The San Francisco Sea Lions NHL hockey team seeks applications for the position of Athletic Performance Consultant. The role of the Athletic Performance Consultant is to counsel staff and players in a way which enables their best possible performance in all aspects of their job.

Qualifications: 2+ years work experience in sports psychology working with professional athletes (e.g. lower league teams, other sports), Ph.D. in clinical or counseling psychology

Salary: Subject to negotiation

(From: nhl.com job listings, posted 01/04/2022)

The door to Michelle’s office swung shut behind Chris. She sighed and squished her feet back into today’s heels. They were gorgeous, peep-toe blue numbers with bronze ribbons threaded through the ties around the ankle, but they also made her feet hurt like crazy. 

She strode over to the door. Confidence was key, even when her feet were killing her. She opened it halfway and pushed the stopper under the crack before peering down the corridor.

Empty.

She sat down in her office chair again and looked down at her notes on Chris. Breezy. No, Chris, as a professional she couldn’t do the nicknames. Not that it mattered. Her notes comprised five question marks and a drawing of a seagull. Mostly because Chris spent the entire session talking about whether he could date a girl whose great-great-grandma came from Andorra if the girl thought Andorra was in Italy. Ten years of higher education were either not enough schooling or far too much to provide a therapeutic strategy for Chris’s problems. 

Outside her office door, Michelle heard the familiar tread of footsteps in athletic shoes. They slowed by the door and then retreated again in the direction they’d come from. 

She sighed.

Someday he would come in.

Michelle didn’t study psychology with the intention of becoming a sports therapist—sorry, a “performance consultant”. She just happened to be in a really intense doomed relationship with a soccer player for most of her Master’s degree and ended up spending far too much time talking over each team member’s specific damage until an ankle injury torpedoed her ex’s soccer career and subsequently their relationship.

By the time she managed to drag herself out of the depression hole caused by the breakup, it turned out Michelle had a ton of participants for a Ph.D. thesis study, and everything snowballed from there.

Years of working with women’s soccer teams had done very little to prepare her for the realities of men’s professional sports. Michelle came from Boston and had enough integrity to not be a football fan, so she’d grown up supporting hockey and the nascent women’s team affiliated with the Boston Redcoats. But while she knew ticket prices kept climbing, it hadn’t prepared her for how well the NHL paid. She didn’t want to jinx it, but if she kept this job for a few more years, she might be able to pay off her student loans.

Of course, in order to keep the job, she had to get the guys talking to her.

The generational divide was stark. Chris, Kilian, Diego, almost all the girls in the PR department and the front office, they all stopped by on the regular. Diego, a disgustingly well-adjusted human, didn’t make a formal therapeutic relationship out of it, but every now and again he would come in for a session when he got in his head about his passing or his speed. The others she saw every other week.

But the older players didn’t know what to do with her. Phil Easton regularly showed her office door to the rookies and prospects, but he’d never stepped inside himself despite going through a harrowing injury her first year on the team. Jimmy Hayes snorted dismissively when she introduced herself and hadn’t so much as made eye contact since. And up until a few weeks ago, Tom Crowler speed-walked down the hall any time he knew she was in residence.

So this lingering by her doorway and then retreating again…that interested her. Enough for her to keep the door on the lean.

She leaned back in her chair, propping her bare feet up on the desk. What would be the right tactic to get Chris to face his actual problems rather than weird made up ones? Should she be direct and ask him why he kept dating girls his parents set him up with when he clearly didn’t want to? Or should she keep on with counseling sessions where he told her nothing of importance and after half an hour they segued into discussing what movies they had watched in the last fortnight? How long could she do that before she crossed the line from “building a rapport” to “unprofessional”?

Someone cleared their throat and then rapped twice on her open door. 

Michelle started, swung her bare feet off the desk and stuffed them into her shoes again, ribbons left untied. “Come in!”

Tom Crowler walked inside, all six foot three of him practically shaking with nerves (according to nhl.com, which also called Luca Mazetti five foot eleven, a stat which only held up when he wore skates).

“Tom!” Michelle smiled broadly.

“Um. Were you expecting me?”

“Well, I was wondering a little when you’d stop loitering at the office door.”

Tom’s eyes went wide and his whole body clenched up. Oops. Not ready for teasing yet, then. Weird. Most athletes preferred it when Michelle mocked them a bit before they got into the heavy stuff. Something about it must remind them of the locker room.

“I promise I’m nice,” she told him. “Close the door, have a seat.”

He did as she told, but he did it so slowly he might as well be moving backward.

Michelle put on her most non-threatening smile. “So what brings you here today?”

Tom cleared his throat again. His eyes darted to the door.

She waited a beat, then another.

“You have to keep whatever I tell you secret, right?”

Technically, she didn’t. The job title the organization hired her under didn’t read “therapist” and the GM, Martin Pulvermacher, a man Michelle would describe as “the slimiest guy she’d ever met”, strongly implied she ought to break patient confidentiality if she discovered anything to do with substance abuse or what he called “immoral sexual practices”. She had no intention of doing so. 

“Yes, of course I keep confidentiality.”

Tom let out a long, slow breath. “Okay. Okay, so that’s good.”

Michelle smiled at him encouragingly.

He stared down at his hands.

“How about we start simple? Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself?”

Tom looked up. “I could do that.”

She tried to intensify her smile without appearing creepy. It must have worked, because Tom began to speak, though his tone remained hesitant.

“So, uh, I’m Tom Crowler. I play left wing. Uh, I’m the captain, but I haven’t won any awards or anything. Furthest I’ve gotten is round two of the playoffs.”

Michelle bit the inside of her cheek. “And where are you from?”

“Sudbury. So I grew up a Huskies fan, but I got over it. Uh, I did peewee and U15 at home, and then I got drafted in the OHL and went to London. And then the Sea Lions chose me in 2011 and here I am.” He shrugged and then chose a spot on the wall behind her head to examine.

If Michelle chose to put on her analysis hat, she would have a lot to say about Tom’s choice of important life details to tell her about. If she put on her “member of the Sea Lions organization” hat, she would tell him she already knew everything he’d just said.

“Lots of hockey,” she said instead.

“Yeah.” Tom laughed uneasily. “Yeah. Um. My…”

He swallowed so heavily she could see the movement of his throat and looked her straight in the eye. “My boyfriend says I need to have more in my life than hockey.”

If Michelle were a cartoon, she’d be one of those ones where the character’s mouth dropped open and their eyes went all big and googly. “He sounds smart,” she said, which she thought showed remarkable self-control.

“Yeah.” Tom smiled. “Or, wise, I guess.”

“And supportive.”

“He’s…I’ve never had anyone be there for me the way he is.” 

“I’m glad to hear it.” In all honesty, hearing it saddened Michelle. At thirty-two, Tom had gone a long time without experiencing having anyone in his corner. It wasn’t an individual fate; so many men in professional sports substituted their team for the emotional intimacy they lacked in other areas of their lives, be it due to their own failures or the environment they were raised in. And then pro sports ran its course with trades, injuries and retirements pulling apart the fragile bonds making up a team. Some guys got lucky and found partners or meaning in other parts of their lives before that happened. Some didn’t and turned to the welcoming arms of addiction or the colder embrace of bitterness and hatred of anyone younger and happier. Some got smart and came to her to find the first path.

Across from her, Tom sat up straight. “That’s why I’m here.”

Michelle propped her elbows up on the desk. “Oh?”

“Yeah. I want to be there for him, too. To support him. To be ready for…when he wants to…” Tom huffed, shifting in his seat.

“I usually make a point not to finish a patient’s sentences, but…” Michelle offered.

“Go ahead.”

“Do you mean your partner wants to come out?”

Tom’s breath left him all at once, his shoulder collapsing up into his neck leaving his posture perfect but clenched. “Someday, yeah. He was going to, but he put it off for me, and I need to be worth that, you know?”

“Okay.” Michelle reclined in her chair. She took a calculated risk and slipped her shoes off again, displaying the comfort with each other neither of them felt yet. “Awesome that you want to be there for your…partner? Sorry, you called him your boyfriend, right?”

“Either works.”

“The first thing you can do to support him is to support yourself. What makes you happy, Tom?”

Finally, Tom relaxed into her couch. “I don’t know. I never got around to doing much, besides hockey.”

“Right, tough schedule.”

“Exactly.”

“So how do you deal with stress?”

Tom remained silent for a suspiciously long time in which Michelle drew the conclusion the answer was that he didn’t. Finally, he said, “I used to go jogging, but it’s rough on my joints these days. Sometimes I go to Phil’s place.”

“So getting out of the house helps.”

“Right. I thought about taking walks or something, but I don’t want to be the creepy loner walking around a public park at dawn or whatever.”

“Do you have to go by yourself?”

Tom shrugged. “Jax isn’t really an early riser, and he doesn’t get as in his head as I do. Anyway, if we’re walking around together I’m not getting better on my own, am I?”

“True.” Michelle wondered if he realized he’d revealed his boyfriend’s name. It didn’t matter, she’d be keeping it to herself anyway.

“But I’ve been thinking…” Tom smiled and Michelle remembered for the first time that out there in the real world, thirty-two wasn’t old. She was thirty-five. “I don’t know, it might be stupid, but I’ve been thinking about getting a dog.”