Thursday, December 8, 2011

Chapter 10


I haven't had access to a computer in daaaaays and it was like having a limb lopped off so I apologize for the wait but I'm back at it!


“Close the door behind you.” 

He feels like he’s walking into the Principal’s office. Not that he’s had that experience exactly but nothing good can ever come from the words ‘we need to talk’. He pulls the door shut and heads for the high backed leather chair, slumping into it, shoulders drooping.

“I spoke with your father,” Mario begins in that soft lilting voice that Sidney usually finds comforting but now it just sounds condescending. 

“I figured as much,” he replies sullenly, picking an invisible piece of lint from his pants. 

“This was something I had to do, to protect you from yourself. Sid,” the big man pauses and Sid knows that he’s waiting for him to look up at him so he purposefully does not. He can already feel the speech coming on and is bracing himself. “This girl…,” Mario begins again and Sid’s hands curl into fists on his knees. 

“Young woman,” he interjects, “and the guys like her,”. 

“They may well like her now but you have to understand, some of these young women are master manipulators. They might seem harmless at first but once they have their claws into you things can change very quickly; hence my concern at your plan to have her move into your house.” The tone in the Pens owner’s voice makes it clear that the plan is dead and not up for discussion but his protégé is stubborn.

“She didn’t even want to take the money. I forced her to,” Sid reminds his mentor, focusing his decidedly unhappy gaze on the sky blue eyes staring back at him. 

“And she turned down the cheque offered her today, which concerns me. It makes me think she’s looking for a bigger pay day further down the line,” Mario continues, sitting on the edge of the big desk so that he looms over his prize Centerman. 

“And if she’s not?” Sidney asks, his tone taking on a threatening edge. Mario raises a single eyebrow as he considers Sid’s words.  “I mean, it’s possible she’s not after me or my money or anything like that. I mean, it’s possible, right?” He can see the surprise register in Mario’s eyes and, knowing he’s made his point, he goes back to picking at a loose thread on the knee of his pants.  

“I suppose that it could be possible but Sidney do you think that is a chance that you can afford to take? If you’re wrong, if she turns out to be one of those girls….”

“Then I’ll live with the consequences. Looks like that’s something I’m starting to live with already anyways,” he sighs, dropping the pretence of picking at his clothes, putting both feet on the floor and pushing himself up to his feet. “I appreciate your trying to protect me but…well…I’d appreciate if you don’t. Not with this.” 

“Sid...,” Mario begins but he is already half way out the door. 

“Thanks for your help but I’ve got it from here,” he says quietly, turning his back on his mentor and pulling the door shut behind him.

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“Je suis désolé,” Marc begins as soon as he walks through the door. Sid waves off the apology and instead walks towards his stall, sits down and puts his head in his hands.

“Don’t be,” he tells his friend quietly. “I’m pretty sure I would have deserved it if I’d done what you thought I’d done. She must think I am the biggest asshole that was ever born.” When there is no reply, not even one dripping with sarcasm he laughs and shakes his head. “Well who can blame her with my track record?” 

“She’s a good person. She doesn’t deserve the way you’re treating her,” Flower tells him and without looking up, Sid nods. 

“I get that you think so, Mario thinks...,” he begins but before he can continue the sound of the rest of the guys coming off the ice interrupts them. 

“Why don’t you just try to get to know her?’ Flower suggests before turning to greet Tanger, who feints a punch towards the net minder’s gut and then laughs as he passes by. Sid listens to his teammates’ easy light-hearted banter enviously and not only because he misses being out the ice but because he has been cast out of the inner circle. All because of a stupid contest he should never have taken part in and one moment when he let his ego dictate his choices. 

“He’s right,” Pascal agrees as he yanks his jersey over his head. Not that he’s worked up a sweat in the pre-game skate but because it’s both habit and superstition. He will tape up another stick and he will adjust the laces on his skates. As far as pre-game rituals go, Dupers only has a few. Compared to himself, Sid knows, Dupes has hardly any. 

“I know he is,” he sighs, getting to his feet. He shouldn’t be in this room now. He is not playing and in his current mood he doesn’t want to watch the game from the box either. He does not want to sign autographs and pretend to be happy to meet anyone. 

“You could try talking to her. She’s a sweet girl,” Pascal adds as he bends to untie his skate, loosening each lace with his thick, calloused fingers.

“If I was her, I wouldn’t talk to me,” he mumbles, watching his teammate’s fingers work quickly and deftly just like they do out on the ice. 

“Lucky you’re not her,” Pascal replies in a monotone that makes it clear that Sid still has a ways to go to make it back in his older teammate’s good graces. “You’re going to have to talk to her some time,” the veteran forward adds dryly, “may as well be now. And Darryl,” he adds as Sidney gets slowly to his feet, “be nice to her. Like it or not, she is the mother of your child.” 

A sullen retort is on the tip of his tongue but Sid wisely swallows it and merely nods mutely before turning to go. 

“Good luck guys. Go get him,” he calls out and then slips out the double doors while TK and Jordy lead a chorus of war whoops. 

He is two steps into the hallway when he hears his name and turns around to see Marc, in full pads, waddling after him. 

“She wanted you to have this.” They both look down at the grainy black and white photograph in the net minder’s hand. He knows there are people in the hallway and he can still hear the boisterous chatter of his teammates just on the other side of the double doors but for what seems like an interminable moment all of that disappears and there is only the light coloured shape against the black background. “That’s your son,” Flower adds tersely, “think about that when you see her.”  

 ______________________________________________________________________


“Hot chocolate and uh...egg white scramble, dry wheat toast and do you have any turkey bacon?”

She scribbles the unusual requests on the small pad of paper in her hand before even looking up at the stranger who requests them. When she does the pen she is holding clatters to the floor and the fake smile she wears for paying customers disappears completely.  

“What are you doing here?” she hisses, her eyes narrowing, her lips thinning. Her hair is pulled back again into that severe pony tail but today she is not wearing those dark rimmed glasses. He wonders, as he looks into her eyes if she is wearing contacts. 

“To explain,” he begins, reaching for the hand that she places flat on the counter as she bends to retrieve the fallen pen. She looks down at his hand and back up at his face and he removes the offending appendage immediately.

“I’m not sure you can,” she begins and he does his best to bite back the smile that suddenly tugs at the corners of his mouth, the smile that tries its best to appear every time she does something unexpected, something ballsy, like now, as she crosser her arms and tries to look at him like he’s something that just crawled out of a nearby gutter. The way her mouth puckers and her nose wrinkles doesn’t suit her and does all at the same time and that makes it very hard not to smile. He reminds himself that he deserves her disdain and lets her have a moment, a long moment where she looks down her nose at him and he takes it and does his best to look sorry and contrite. 

“You’re right,” he says quietly, his shoulders hunching as he reaches up to pull his ball cap lower over his eyes. People are looking, probably regulars, thinking that they’ve never seen the mousy little waitress do anything but smile and flirt. He doesn’t know that girl, but he’s seen her through the window. He guesses the girl that is still staring him down now is a stranger to them. He is beginning to wish that she was to him as well and that the smiling girl who takes everyone else’s orders in the diner would come back. “Look I really didn’t send that guy today, honest, hand on heart.” She rolls her eyes at him, an act of disbelief that he can’t blame her for. Like MAF, she has no reason to believe that he wasn’t in on it so he reaches for the only fact that he believes will change her mind. “I admit I was surprised to hear you tore up the order.” 

Now it is her turn to try and not smile, though the twinkle that immediately appears in her eyes is not so quickly quashed. She is also proud of what Marc articulated as a sudden and furious ripping of the papers the man was trying to force her to sign. He himself cannot fail to smile when he imagines it. 

“Maybe I should get an order against you,” she hisses, regaining her composure, or at least her sneer but the twinkle has not left her eyes. He doesn’t blame her. It must have felt as good as rubbing Ovechkin’s face into the boards feels to him. 

“Maybe, but I’m glad you haven’t,” he tells her and realizes that he means it. Her eyes darken and she searches his gaze with a wary one of her own. Reaching into his pocket, he withdraws the photo and places it on the counter between them. “Otherwise how could I have come to thank you for this?” 

_______________________________________________________________________


She tries not to but the tears fill her eyes regardless as she looks down at the tiny newly formed face in the picture he has placed on the counter between them. Her own hand slips into the front pocket of the apron she’s wearing and she touches her own copy of the picture as if it’s a holy talisman. 

“Thank me?” she brushes her tears away quickly and becomes engrossed in the spacing of the salt and pepper shakers in front of her. “You definitely haven’t been very thankful for anything I’ve done.” She can’t look at him. She’s barely managing to hold it together as it is. She believes that no matter how hard she tries to keep her anger on a slow burn, he will, somehow, manage to pour water over it with one look into his caramel coloured eyes.  

“You’re right,” he replies, picking up the picture in both of his hands and when she glances at him the tenderness in his gaze makes her stomach flip and she stuffs both of her hands in the front pocket of her apron to stop herself from reaching out to run her fingers along the soft lines of his lips. For a man, he is very, very pretty. “I’m not saying I’m used to this yet but...I’m trying,” he tells her softly, turning his gaze up to meet hers and she does not look away fast enough to avoid his gaze locking with hers. Her heart gives a double thud in her chest as if he’s just reached up through her ribs and squeezing it in his massive hands. “What time do you get off?” 

The question comes out of the blue and literally rocks her back on her heels. Her hand freezes above the ketchup bottle and she blinks at him, doing her best impression of a doe frozen in the beams of the headlights of an oncoming eighteen wheeler.

“The right answer is yes,” an older woman with blue rinse curls and bright pink lipstick insists with a smile as she sips at her coffee. “The answer is always yes to a young man with shoulders that wide.” Fern feels her entire face heat up and though she tells herself not to, her gaze immediately falls on the wide shelf of his shoulders and sense memories make her fingers twitch. 

“It’s not a date, or anything,” he quickly adds with a furtive glance at the woman beside him with her battered romance novel and her bottomless cup of coffee. “I just thought...if we’re gonna do this, y’know,” he says pitching his voice low so that she as to lean forward to hear him, “be parents then we should probably talk about...uh...things. We could go somewhere, maybe catch the third period?” 

It’s not a romantic proposal or even a simple but flattering request for her phone number but Fern’s heart flutters like a caged bird all the same, despite her vehement wish that it not do so. 

“I’m off in a half hour,” she replies calmly, digging her nails into the palms of her hands. “You want that order before we go?” 

13 comments:

  1. I loved this update! I'm glad Sid is finally making an effort! :D My only complaint: why aren't your updates longer!! :(
    But seriously I love your stories! They are awsome! Keep up the good work! :)

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  2. Loved it! So glad that he is trying to get to know her!!

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  3. Aw I'm glad he trying to be in Fern and the child's life. Can't wait to see what happens next.

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  4. Loved it :) I am happy because he is trying to know her :) cant wait for next

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  5. you got me at "turkey bacon" lol. sid is finally growing a pair. i keep on saying this but i can't help it, great update! haha. have i told you how much i love this story? please update soon!!

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  6. for me it was the dry wheat toast!!! the temperature is rising across the counter in the diner. Love the tension here and can't wait to see what happens in the third period.

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  7. This was great!
    Can't wait for the next one :)

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  8. Thank you thank you for not having Marc and Fern together. I am so excited for a chapter of Fern and Sid. There haven't been many of these. I'm also really excited about Sid being a dad. Please write a little about that! I love this story so much and I can't wait for the next update!

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  9. I honestly have no idea where you are heading with this story. But so far, I like calm, kind Sid...

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  10. so proud of Sid for trying!
    lol but im still waiting for Fern to leave him speechless!

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  11. i hope this story goes on for a bit!
    i can't wait to see sid with the baby!

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  12. i'm so missing your updates. i need a pick-me-up after hearing about the latest news with sid=(

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