Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Chapter 7

“Captain pays,” Max yelled as he walked away with his white chocolate mocha, pushing Jordy ahead of him and shooing TK and Tanger away from the cashier with their wallets still out. Sidney watched them, shaking his head. He wasn’t the only guy on the team making plenty of money but he reached into his pocket all the same.

Drawing out his wallet, Sidney flipped it open and stared into the black void inside. There was nothing there. No bills at all.

He’d been in a hurry when he left that beer and wine store, he remembered. Sure it had been a few days ago, before they began the three day road trip, but he was almost sure he’d put the change back in his wallet. He dug into the pocket of his jeans but came up empty. Of course he hadn’t been wearing these when....

“Ugh how come Geno never pays?” he suggested loudly as he reached for his Visa, something he didn’t like to do. It came from growing up where money was tight and the first credit card he’d ever had had been when he was at Shattucks and it had been strictly for emergencies only. It seemed stupid to use plastic to pay for coffee, even if it was for ten of them and he didn’t even drink the stuff.

“I pay, no problem. Big hockey star, lots of money. You single?” Geno asked, leaning towards the cashier with the sort of smile on his face that told everyone in Starbucks that he was imagining her naked already. The guy had a girlfriend, but that obviously wasn’t stopping him from looking.

Taking his passion ice tea, Sidney joined the rest of his teammates back out in the parking lot, who all seemed to be gathered around Tanger, who was cursing at his cell in two languages.

“Merde. Women! Je ne comprends pas,” he was grumbling which seemed to make Max and Fleur laugh.

“What’s up?” he asked MAF who smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

“His girlfriend isn’t returning his calls,” the goalie replied quietly.

“Girlfriend? You mean in Montreal,” Sidney corrected him but Fleur only shook his head, smiling.

“No, he’s started seeing someone here.”

“He’s kept that quiet,” Sidney begian, glancing towards the long haired, usually very quiet and normally private Quebecois defenseman.

“You would too in his case,” Flower began to explain but Max’s booming voice overrode them all.

“Does this mean she’s available? I’m all over that if she’s available. I’ll show her what a real man can....”

“Aucun tu pas!” Tanger snarled but with a grin on his face. It was hard to take Max seriously at the best of times but Sidney could see something in his friend’s face that told him that he wasn’t entirely joking. They were all so damned competitive but other than the pucks, this was one thing that there had to be an agreement on. Teammates don’t fight over women, ever. It was a hard and fast rule on every team. That didn’t mean it never happened but he didn’t think anyone was itching to get traded right now and that would be the automatic result of anyone caught with their hand in that particular cookie jar.
“It’s not like she’s your girlfriend,
you only went out once,” Max complained but the rest of the guys were laughing and Tanger was doing his best to look hurt and outraged all at once.

“Mon fils, you kill me. Truly. It’s true love. How could you doubt it? You saw the way she looked at me. She couldn’t keep her eyes off of me,” Tanger insisted but Max was waving his arms as if to ward off a blow and doing his best not to laugh at the same time.

“It was me she couldn’t keep her eyes off of. Are you kidding me? Je suis la première étoile. I scored the goals in game seven. All the women want a piece of Superstar vingt-cinq.”

“Tue s fou,” Tanger was laughing right along with everyone else, waving Max off as he headed back towards the bus. “What woman would ever want anyone as hairy as you?”

“I keep the women warm mon ami, I keep them very warm!” Max called after him, a big shit eating grin on his face. “Now what about you mon capitaine? How goes your love life? How is this student body of yours?” he asked, drawing a shapely figure in the aIr in front of him with his hands. Sidney felt his grin disappear as heshrugged and tried, in vain, not to think about just how good that shape looked bared to his hungry eyes.

“We’ll see when we get back,” Sidney muttered, stepping onto the bus.

“I thought we talked about getting back in the saddle mon ami? I promise you, it’s just like riding a bike you have to....” Sidney held up his hand and his sometime winger fell silent. They knew each other well enough by now that even Max didn’t push his luck when given the hand. He merely put his hand on his friend’s shoulder as Sidney slid into the seat next to Flower. They shared a brief smile and then the bus lurched into motion and Sidney reached for his iPod and let the heavy sounds of Finger Eleven take him away.

__________________________________________________________________________

Mya snapped her phone closed for the third time and dropped it into the bottom of her book bag. She should block his number she thought irritably as she went back to watching the curser blinking at her on the blank screen.

Damn them both, she cursed as she tapped her fingers against the edge of the desk. She hadn’t been able to think straight for days and she was finding it impossible to sleep to boot, which was not helping in the least. She had a deadline on this story and it was her first attempt for WPXI and she didn’t want to fuck it up. She’d met with the station manager who had been impressed enough with the articles he’d already read but had as soon as they’d sat down one on one, he’d offered her an on camera position if she wanted it. Weather girl of course, which she’d politely turned down.

What was it about men and a pair of tits? Obviously it made their brains stop working, she mused as she took to chewing thoughtfully on the end of her pen. She didn’t need any more evidence of that then the wet t-shirt contest they’d had at the bar last night. The amount of noise the crowd had made, you’d have thought they’d never seen a pair of tits in their life.

Mya wrinkled her nose and shut her eyes tight, willing herself to stop imagining the look on Sidney’s face as he’d looked down at her, his hazel eyes glazed over with lust. Every time she thought about it she wanted him and she hated that.

Sliding her hand into her book bag, she took out wallet. She hadn’t spent any of the money he’d left. It wasn’t that she couldn’t use it; it was just that she wanted to toss it back in his face at the earliest opportunity.

Her phone vibrated again, making her book bag rattle against her chair. Rolling her eyes, Mya reached down and grabbed it and stared down at the display. It was Kris, again. She started to close her phone and then a wry smile crept across her face.
“Hi Kris? You back in town yet?”

__________________________________________________________________________________

She lost her nerve. As soon as she saw him standing there, leaning against his car in his charcoal gray suit, not even having taken the time to go home to change, she knew that her intricately orchestrated plan to embarrass him and make him take her anger out on Sidney was out the window. How could she when he looked so handsome with his dark hair slicked back and a warm inviting smile on his face?

Taking a deep breath and squaring her shoulders, Mya fought the urge to turn and hide inside her apartment, dive into bed and pull the covers over her head and make like an ostrich with its head in the sand. That wasn’t going to solve anything though.

Forcing one foot in front of the other, she made herself walk toward him, reminding herself with each step how humiliated she felt as she wrapped her fingers around the folded bills in her pocket. The dry crisp feel of the faded bills were an indisputable reminder of that.

“Ma Cherie,” he began, straightening up and reaching to brush a stray strand of hair behind her ear, his grin broad and confident. Some of that confidence began to leak away when she noticeably flinched at his touch.

“Who have you told?” she asked, point blank, doing her best to keep her voice strong and steady, not to let it waiver and sound weak.

“About what?” he asked, looking confused, his fingers frozen where they brushed against her ear. She tried to ignore the warmth of his skin and the way the small hairs stood up on the back of her neck when his dark gaze searched hers. She held her chin high and met his gaze, refusing to let his puppy dog brown eyes and soft lips liquefy her resolve.

“How many of your teammates have you told about me?”

“All of them,” he began, his lips turning up into that cocky grin that made his eyes light up and made her want to return his smile. Instead she bit down on the inside of her cheek until she could taste the tang of copper as her own blood ran between her teeth. His grin faded at the edges as she continued to stare back at him, unmoved by his boyish features.

“About what I do...about my job,” she continued, her voice low, pitched for his ears alone. Bewilderment filled his eyes for a moment and he looked past her, like he was going through the roster, seeing the faces of each of his teammates and finally he came back to himself and turned his gaze back on her.

“Only Pascal, Fleur and Max,” he replied, counting them off on his fingers.

“Are you sure?” she asked again, tilting her head to one side so that his hand naturally fell away and she didn’t have to feel his skin on hers. She narrowed her eyes at him when he looked back at her as if butter wouldn’t melt, as if momma’s little boy couldn’t possibly tell a lie.

“Sur la vie de ma mere!” he exclaimed, reaching for her hands which she pulled from his grasp. “I promise you. Why would I tell them so they could go there and ogle you? I told you, ma chérie, I don’t intend to share you with them.” She wanted to believe him. She looked into his velvet brown eyes and almost gave in the plea she saw there, but the crisp bills in her pocket told her otherwise.

“Well then you’d better take this,” she replied quietly, pulling the stack of bills from her pocket and held them toward him. “Ask your friends which one of them left them in my apartment.” She turned to go, expecting him to know immediately, half expecting him to defend his teammate to her, but instead he grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly to him.

“Who gave you this?” he demanded his Québecois accent thickening with emotion as fury and jealousy flared in his dark eyes.

“Ask your...friends,” she replied, as calmly as she could manage, peeling his fingers from her arm and turning away again, heading for the safety of her apartment where she could lick her wounds in privacy.

______________________________________________________________________________

Sidney stared at the crumpled, wadded up handful of bills lying in the middle of the room, in the centre of the Penguins logo. He felt as the wad of bills had eyes and was staring back at him, accusation in its’ gaze. A shudder went down his spine, but not of fear.

He couldn’t erase her from his mind, as much as he’d done everything he could think of to do just that. He wished he could expunge the memory of her curvaceous body pressed against his but every time he tried, the memory only seemed to become even more clear, until he could smell the sweet floral scent in her dark hair and the spicy musk of her skin.

He wanted her. Even now, sitting in the funk of the room, when he should be thinking of the game ahead, he was thinking of her, imaging her golden skin, warm under his lips. He ached for her. She invaded his every thought. It was like a disease he couldn’t shake and the worst part of it was, he didn’t want to.

He’d almost made up his mind to go to her this afternoon. To beg her to forgive his cowardice and beg her to take him to her bed and punish him in any way she thought fit, but his courage had failed him before he had turned the corner towards her apartment. He’d been certain she’d throw him out and now, with the reproachful wad of bills staring back at him, he knew without a shadow of a doubt that she’d do more than that.

The money must have fallen out of his wallet when he’d kicked off his pants. It was the only explanation that he could think of. Of course he hadn’t left all of that behind on purpose; not that she wasn’t worth all of it and more, much, much more.
And now, to make things worse, someone else on the team knew how he’d treated her, what he’d done.

He was afraid to look around the room, afraid whose eyes he’d see staring back at him, accusing him. He kept his head down, concentrated on his routine, on not breathing too heavily, on not giving his guilt away even as it ate at his gut.
You left this where you shouldn’t have. She’s not a whore. You and I have some business to discuss.

That was it. That was all that the note sitting with the money said. Not who it was he’d wronged, or who knew. But someone knew and he was sure if he looked up now, whoever it was that had laid the trap for him would know just by the look on his face.

They’d know and then everyone would know. Everyone would know what he’d done and then everyone would remind him how he said he wouldn’t, not after Randi. Even if they were joking around they’d say it. Even if they didn’t mean it they’d say it.
He didn’t need anyone to say it. He’d disrespected her memory and in the process disrespected a perfectly innocent bystander and now he couldn’t go back to her. How could he? How could possibly apologize for this?

She thought he believed she was some kind of...prostitute, night walker, whore and how could he blame her? He’d treated her exactly that way. He’d used her and left behind a pile of crumpled bills. She must hate him, he thought resignedly as he pulled on his second skate. She must want to rip his out balls off and wear them as earrings. First he’d left and then the money?

No there was no going back now, no matter how much he ached.
It would just have to be another ache he had to get over. Like Randi, a memory to fade away, no more, no less, because he couldn’t go back now.

1 comment:

  1. I just love your story. It's very poignant and different. I cried a lot reading the first part (Cinderella). And now I'm addicted to this sequel. It's very interesting the way you portrayed your characters. Keep up your excellent work!

    Sorry for my english but I'm French Canadian...

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