Chapter 6

Shout out to everyone who's been sending the messages and letting me know that they're concerened for Sidney...not sure this is going to help but...here goes

He thought she was a whore, a prostitute. Some men assumed it was the same thing, stripping and tricking.

Curling around herself, Mya brought her knees up to her chest and willed the shaking away but wasn’t ready to get up or turn off the shower, despite the fact that the water spilling out over her had long since gone cold. She wanted not to feel his touch, wanted to wash away their mingled sweat and mostly she wanted to wash away his sticky seed that still clung to her thighs.

Kris must have told Sid about her job. She couldn’t remember him ever being at the club. She was sure she’d remember if he had. There was no other explanation for it, for the change in the way he behaved, in the way he’d treated her and the fact that he left...he’d just...left.

She’d gone from elation, hoping, no believing that he’d come to his senses and was finally admitting that there was something between them. She’d felt it every time they’d met, a sort of electricity in the air. Not to mention the fluttering birds that always showed up in her stomach every time he even looked at her. He’d kissed her like he meant it, like their lips were meant to be locked - forever. And the sex...Mya shut her eyes tight and tried to shut the vision of him moving over out of her mind but it wouldn’t go.

He was amazing. No, he was better than amazing but she couldn’t think of any words that went together with douchebag and loser.

He’d left a wad of bills on the floor, on the fucking floor. He’d gotten up and left right afterwards without so much as a fucking word and tossed money on the floor. Like she wasn’t even a good enough lay to leave it on the pillow, she was supposed to crawl on the floor to pick it up. Like she was the pond scum.

The fucking asshole.

She’d feigned sleep. He hadn’t seemed to be in the mood for talking and he’d already left her boneless and she hadn’t quite trusted herself to say more than some gibberish like she loved him or something, so she’d kept her mouth shut too. It had seemed like that’s what he wanted, to just fuck and go to sleep so she had closed her eyes and did her best to let him think that’s exactly what she was doing, assuming he’d do the same.

It had taken every last ounce of willpower not to get up and run after him to the door, to drag him back inside, to beg him not to leave.

She just couldn’t believe it. Not of him. He’d always seemed so nice, so polite. What was it the Americans always said? Wasn’t it something about polite unassuming Canadians? Good Canadian boys?

Not for the first time, Mya cursed herself out for believing in fairytales that never come true as she leaned her forehead on her knees and cried. She cried for the dream that would never be. She cried because she’d believed she could do what she did for money and leave it behind and not have it affect the rest of her life. She cried because she’d truly believed Kristopher when he’d said that it didn’t matter. She cried because it was so unfair. She cried for herself. She cried for every woman that those boys would make cry.

And they would, the assholes. They would.
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It had been a monumental mistake. A mistake of utter nuclear proportions, Sid thought as he drove across the highway at speeds that would earn him a night in the clink if he was caught and yet he didn’t care. He had to get away from there, miles and miles away and still that wouldn’t be far enough.

He could taste her skin in his mouth. She tasted like lavender and Dove soap and fucking baby powder. She was beautiful and amazing and fucking mind-blowing and he hated her, every fucking gorgeous inch of her.

He closed his eyes, just for a moment and called up Randi’s memory, bringing her sweet open face to the forefront of his memory and only then could he breathe. It was still there. She was still there in his memory. For a moment he’d actually believed she might be gone, as punishment, his memories of her might have been erased. But he could still see her, still feel her, still hear her voice when he closed his eyes and reached for her.

Taking a deep breath he opened his eyes and turned the vehicle towards the off ramp.
He hadn’t been able to sleep. Not for a long time. In fact he couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually slept all the way through the night.

The pain was stronger then he was and it worried him. He worried what it would mean for the season. He’d found out tonight.

He was a count slow. He hadn’t won a single war over the dot. He’d met the boards face first too many times to count. He’d missed three open net shots. He was sluggish. He was tired. He hadn’t been a Stanley Cup champion out on the ice tonight and Max’s words had haunted him. He wanted to feel better. He didn’t want to let his teammates down. He didn’t want to disappoint the fans.

Just have sex with some girl and you’ll feel better.

But he didn’t feel better. He felt like he was drowning. He was kicking and treading water but he was drowning.

At least before he’d felt like he was just sort of floating, aimlessly, but floating. Now he felt the rip tide beneath him and it was dragging him under and he didn’t think he had the strength left to fight.

What he should have done was pick one of those pucks out of the stands. One of those girls who waited around outside the arena in their too short skirts, their white ,white teeth chattering in the cold even as they refused to put on a coat that would hide their over inflated cleavage. He should have picked one of those girls that Max and Jordy and TK shared around. The pucks, pass them around. He should have chosen one of them.

Instead he’d gone to Mya.

Shaking his head, Sidney slammed his fist against the steering wheel. The damned woman had some kind of hold over him. He didn’t want to want her but he did.
Well that was more than obvious. Even when he’d come up with the idea, sitting in the penalty box for losing his cool at the ref, what he’d planned, what he’d wanted was to just to have a couple of drinks and work his way up to it.

So much for going slow he thought as he sighed and slammed on the brakes, spinning the steering wheel until he slid into a spot outside the arena.

He came here a lot when he had shit on his mind. How many other guys could say they had keys to the arena they played in? That they could just show up in the middle of the night and turn on the lights and skate?

Not many he thought as he juggled the keys in his hands. Maybe Ovie, maybe.

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Mya opened the bottle of the expensive red win and poured herself a very full glass. If it was part of her payment, she thought miserably, the least she could do was raise a toast to the memory of her idealistic vision of him. That was fucking over, she sighed, pouring the entire glass down her throat as she took both bottle and glass with her to the living room. She would never think of him as the smiling, polite young man again.

Yes, that was definitely not the way she would think of him now. Fucking great in bed, but an asshole, she thought grimly as she poured herself another glass and sat pondering its ruby depths. Yeah, that was it. He was a self absorbed asshole like every other athlete she’d ever met. Just like the basketball players in her high school back home. They were the kings. They ran the school and they got all the pussy, whether the girls wanted to be fucked or not and no one would even say as much as boo to them about it. They ruled, everyone else drooled, wasn’t that their motto?

So the Pens and Steelers ruled the city. Not the Pirates. Not since the early eighties. They pretty much sucked now. Still, even their players could toss their money around like it meant nothing to them and all the pretty pretties would come running.

Is that what he thinks of me? She wondered as she downed her second full glass of the warm, rich red with an undertone of chocolate covered cherries. A puck fuck? Smooth as peanut butter, she spreads easy? Did he think she’d been asking for it? Did he and Tanger and Max and the rest of the boys think that just because she got her gear off for money that she deserved it? Would they all be lining up at her door pretty soon? Maybe he just got the first crack because he wore the C stitched to his chest? Was that it?

“Assholes,” she muttered, dragging herself back to her feet, taking the glass and bottle with her as she headed for the door. She liked this apartment, she thought resignedly as she reached up and threw the dead bolt and lifted the chain into place, but she’d have to start looking for new digs in the morning. She couldn’t stay here.

Not without worrying about another one of them showing up at her door wanting their piece.

She’d put the bed on craigslist too, she thought as she tipped the bottle to her lips. Maybe if she added that it had recently been rumpled by the Kid it would sell for more.
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It wasn’t her fault. He couldn’t blame her, Sidney realized as he turned the SUV back onto the road and pointed it in the direction from which he’d come. Mya was pretty...no, not pretty, beautiful and obviously far more understanding than he deserved.

The way he’d treated her, Sidney felt his cheeks get hot as he shook his head at himself. From standing her up back on the Island to being rude to her at the cemetery to...to this. She deserved better. It wasn’t her fault that he was grieving and not dealing with it well. She deserved an explanation, at the very least.
He might not want to want her, but it had become clear to him as he’d skated lap after lap of the ice in the Mellon, that he was strongly attracted to her and that fate kept throwing them together. Fate or...he shook his head at the idea again but couldn’t quite get it out of his head.

Randi.

He didn’t believe in ghosts and all that stuff. He’d been brought up pretty much agnostic like most of his friends had. Hockey was the religion. Sure he knew about God and the Saints and all that but it’s not like he went to church on Sunday. He went to the rink. He didn’t pray before a game like Jordy or Geno did. He concentrated, he visualized. So he didn’t believe in Heaven and Hell, not strictly. He didn’t really know what he believed as far as that went. In fact he didn’t really want to think about it at all, but ever since Randi’s death he’d kind of had to.
He wanted very much to believe she’d gone to a better place. A place where she wasn’t in pain, where she had all her hair back and healthy and happy and...and waiting for him. More than anything else he’d wanted to believe that. He pictured himself being with her again, making love on a cloud with sunshine all around them, with her skin glowing and healthy.

He smiled now as he thought about it. That was what he imagined when he thought about heaven. He and Randi, making love, just as she’d said.

But maybe she was trying to tell him something else.

He’d hated it when he’d first woken up in a cold sweat, thinking about Mya. He’d felt awful, felt sick to his stomach. He didn’t want to think about anyone else but Randi that way. It felt wrong. It felt like a betrayal.

But maybe this was Randi’s doing. If he could think of her up on some cloud somewhere, all pink and naked and glowing with ethereal wings sprouting from her back, looking down on him, then he had to think she might want him to be happy too and maybe this was her way of trying to make him happy. To put a woman like Mya, a determined, smart, sexy woman in his way over and over again until he got the message.

He had to admit it was a possibility.

So he pulled into a parking space outside her apartment and took a deep, steadying breath as he tried to work up the courage to go back in there, to finish what he started, to wake up with her, to make love in the half light of morning and to tell her everything that was in his head. He had to tell her about Randi and how afraid he was and to ask her to be patient with him.

Juggling his keys in his hand he put his head down and headed in the doorway and up the stairs, telling himself to be brave, that this was something he had to do, for himself, for her and for Randi. With every step he grew calmer and more certain.
Then he put his hand on the door and twisted and it didn’t move.

He hadn’t been able to lock it from the inside when he’d left. He’d felt bad about that. It had left her vulnerable and though Pittsburgh wasn’t exactly a crime ridden city by Detroit or Philadelphia’s standards, it wasn’t safe to sleep with your door unlocked. Especially a single female with no guard dog, no alarms.

He tried the door again. It was locked. He could even hear the slight rattle of the chain on the inside of the door when he tugged. It was locked tight, which meant she knew he was gone. She knew he’d left, that he’d slunk out in the middle of the night.

She knew and all he could think was she must hate him right now. If he’d been in her place he’d feel the same.

He raised his hand to knock, wake her up and apologize, explain but his hand fell back down to his side.

Maybe it was better this way, he told himself. It was crazy to think this was some kind of fateful meant to be thing.

True love happened once. It had already happened to him. All the rest of that shit was just wishful thinking. Guilt and grief and stupidity he decided as he walked back out to his car and slid behind the steering wheel, putting the key in the ignition and leaning his forehead on the steering wheel. He’d almost made a complete ass of himself. He should be feeling relief. It had been a narrow escape.

So why did he feel so fucking empty?