Chapter Ten

Darcy couldn’t believe that Raquel hadn’t shared this stupid-ass plan with her. She’d been at the show for three years and Raquel didn’t feel it necessary to mention that they were going to test her chemistry or whatever with Natalie by having them play fucking Ping-Pong?

Raquel didn’t do things half-assed. She didn’t test people to be on her show by having them watch a video like they were going to learn how to frost a cake or crochet from YouTube. This was the Olympics, so why was Raquel being so weird about this whole process?

“You ready, Princess?”

Darcy glared but wasn’t going to yell at Natalie in front of her boss. She’d find another way to get back at her.

“Princess?” Raquel said with a chuckle. “Don’t tell me you’re secretly royalty. I might feel bad about making you get me coffee.”

Darcy shook her head. “Nope. Just a regular person.”

Natalie bounced the ball on the table. “Aw, come on, LaCroix, don’t be shy. Her dad is in the Hall of Fame. He won the Stanley Cup three times. She’s certifiable hockey royalty.” She smirked and Darcy wanted to wipe it off her face. “I can’t believe they didn’t know that here. I assumed it was how you got the job.”

Darcy was going to kill her. It would be the shortest screen test ever because she was going to launch herself across the room and murder Natalie Carpenter right there.

Raquel gave Darcy an appraising look. “Royalty?”

Darcy hurried to contradict Nat. “She’s exaggerating. It’s a long-running joke. One I thought we had all outgrown.” She threw Carpenter a glare she hoped made it clear that Natalie should shut her stupid mouth for five minutes. Nothing about the way Raquel looked at her gave the impression she was buying Darcy’s explanation, but she didn’t say anything.

Raquel turned on a screen behind the cameras and played the clip of Chip learning how to play table tennis. Darcy got a horrible case of secondhand embarrassment as Chip dropped the paddle, whiffed on his attempts to serve the ball, and got increasingly red in the face the longer the segment went on. At the very least, she and Natalie had more athletic ability in their little fingers than Chip could ever dream of.

A couple of times during the video Darcy caught Natalie’s eye and had to cover her mouth with one hand because they were both on the verge of laughing at him out loud. In those few seconds, she remembered what it had been like to be Natalie’s friend and teammate. There was a time when they’d shared inside jokes, goofy team traditions, and even a few moments alone. She remembered bus rides where their legs touched and neither of them wanted to move away, late nights watching stupid movies and sharing Natalie’s favorite M&M’s and popcorn concoction. “Sweet and salty, like me!” she’d said with a proud smile, like she’d discovered it herself.

But that evaporated the second the video ended. Darcy walked to her side of the table and picked up her paddle. As soon as she did, Natalie started yapping at her.

“You weren’t paying attention. You don’t hold it like that. Come on, Captain Canada, I expect more out of you.” She held up her own paddle to demonstrate the funky way real table tennis players held it.

Darcy glared at her. “Wow, thank you so much for helping me with that, Carpenter. There’s no way I would have been able to figure it out on my own. Thank god you’re here to help me.”

Raquel clapped. “Glad to see you getting along so well. I can only imagine how great you two bickering will look on camera.” The look she gave both women rivaled any they’d received from coaches over their playing careers. “So, if you’re done posturing, would you care to give this a shot?”

Darcy nodded and stuffed down the feeling of wanting to kill Natalie for being such a complete jackass and making her look bad. This was Darcy’s shot at making it onto the Olympics broadcast and Natalie was going to screw it up if she didn’t start taking this seriously.

After flipping her paddle around to match what Chip had done in the video, Darcy grabbed a couple of the balls from a bin beside the table. Raquel disappeared behind one of the cameras to watch via the monitor.

Natalie did a couple of deep knee bends like she was preparing to go for a long run, not play a gentle game of Ping-Pong.

“We’re going to start with you first, Darcy, then pan over to Natalie. Introduce yourselves and then go from there. We just want to get a sense of what you two are like on camera together.”

Darcy’s posture changed when the camera swung her way. She stopped thinking about what Natalie would say about her “princess” posture and faced the camera. “Good morning, I’m Darcy LaCroix coming to you live from inside the studios where we are going to be giving you a taste of the Olympics.”

The camera turned to capture Natalie. She smiled but seemed shaken for a second. “And I’m Natalie Carpenter, happy to be showing you, uh, a little bit about a sport neither of has played professionally.”

The camera paused. Natalie adjusted her grip on the paddle. “But that won’t stop us from doing our best, even if our best isn’t very good.”

Darcy served the ball toward Natalie, who took a swing toward the ball but instead of hitting it back to Darcy, sent it right into the ceiling. “As you can see, we were both better hockey players than we are at table tennis.”

Natalie smiled. “Yeah, there’s no way we’re winning any medals in this sport.” She tried serving this time and they managed a short rally before Darcy accidentally sent the ball right toward Natalie’s face. As she ducked, Natalie was able to slap the ball back toward Darcy and it smacked right into her stomach.

Both women cracked up before Darcy remembered what they were supposed to be doing. “I want a rematch,” Darcy said, pointing her paddle at Natalie. “In the meantime, we hope you will all tune in to see the real table tennis pros take on their opponents today.”

Raquel stepped away from the monitor. “Not bad for a first attempt. Natalie, how do you feel being on camera?”

Natalie shrugged. “Feels fine. How did it look? If I sucked, just tell me.”

Darcy laughed and Natalie gave her a withering look.

“Good to know you won’t melt if I give you feedback.” Raquel walked over to her. “Be sure when you’re saying things to the camera you’re actually looking into it. Otherwise it looks like you’re distracted. I know it’s weird but you have to look right into it, because when you don’t you look like you’re talking to someone other than the viewers.”

Nat nodded.

Raquel turned to Darcy. “You did well, but you’re both going to have to practice moving the segments forward. You’ll have one of us in your ear when we do this for real but it takes practice to keep going back to the guest to make sure they remain a focus of the piece. We want to make sure that the athletes don’t feel like they’re an afterthought for these segments. We expect it to be goofy, but make sure they’re the stars, got it?”

Being judged based on a set of unknown, and impossible-to-meet, criteria pissed Darcy off. But she wouldn’t let that show. Instead, she tried to make her point more subtly. “Got it. Maybe next time we practice we can have a third person with us? That way we can practice engaging them and not just flinging Ping-Pong balls at each other.”

“Yes. I think we can make that happen.” Raquel looked at Natalie. “How do you feel about bobsledding?”

“Bring it on.”