Chapter 6

Happy Turkey Day to all my US readers. Thank you for your patience, I know a couple of you have been all over me to post this week and I am sorry that it took so long but I wasn't in a fab head space this week. More soon, promise.

“Thank you for dinner,” she sighs as she looks at her empty plate and then across the table at the gentle smile of the woman who made it. 

“Well after you told us what you had plans to eat, what could we do?” Veronique beams a playful smile in her direction and then pushes her chair back, taking her own plate that still has a few spoonfuls of mashed potato and half a slab of pork roast on it. It’s no wonder the girl is wafer thin. 

“There’s nothing wrong with macaroni,” she replies, pushing her own chair back and reaching for Marc’s plate. 

“You sit,” Veronique, whom Marc affectionately calls V and who has instructed Fern to call her Vero, smiles and leans in to kiss her boyfriend’s cheek before she takes his plate and cutlery and heads towards the kitchen with its stainless steel appliances, granite counter-tops, terracotta floor  tiles and glass tile back-splash; the best and newest of everything.Fern stares after her, partly grateful to sit and let her dinner settle, while the other part of her knows she would be more comfortable elbow deep in hot sudsy water, talking girl talk and waiting for the kettle to boil than sitting across the table from the slight young man with the kind eyes and the soul patch.   

“She’s so pretty,” she says finally, shooting him a shy glance. His thin lips pull into a wide grin as he sits back in his chair, hands on his flat stomach as if he can feel the food working in his belly. 

“Oui,” he agrees as if it’s something he hears every day and she thinks that maybe he does. Maybe every single day someone tells them that they’re a cute couple. 

“I noticed the ring,” she adds a little sheepishly. The big gem is hard to miss, though Vero doesn’t make a show of it. “So, you’re finally going to do it? Get hitched?” Marc inclines his head and shrugs his broad shoulders. The whole city knows that the two of them have been together since they were kids, that the kind, pretty girl in the kitchen has been waiting patiently for years for the Pens goalie to pop the question. “Can I ask...I mean...if you don’t mind, what took so long?” 

“He wants a big family.” Fern jumps, as much as it’s possible to, in her chair when Vero reappears with a plate of small fancy pastries, the kind that you keep frozen in case company shows up that she slides into the middle of the table and then wraps her arms around Marc’s neck. He puts his hand over bother of hers, making hers’ disappear, and presses his cheek up against hers’. It’s an endearing sight and one that makes her feel very alone. 

“So uh...shouldn’t you be getting started instead of putting it off?” she asks, reaching for a small tart and lifting it to her lips. A blast of tart lemon pours over her tongue and she licks the frosting from her lips. When the silence has drawn out to the point of becoming uncomfortable, she looks up at the adorable pair expecting to find them smiling in that sort of secretive knowing way couples do but instead neither is looking at the other and the air around them feels heavy with things unsaid. “Or there’s lots of time, no need to rush, y’know, like me,” she quickly adds, turning the attention back on herself. “Is there more of these?” she adds, holding up the now empty aluminum cup. 

“Oui, be right back!” Vero brightens and disappears towards the kitchen while Marc gives Fern a grateful smile.

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There is always someone’s daughter, niece, or sister being offered to him. Usually he tries, as politely and politically as possible, to turn down the offers of pimped out family members but it isn’t always possible and sometimes, like tonight, he doesn’t mind the company. Tonight is not a night for a power shake and a pb&j in front of the tube. Tonight he does not want to listen to the voices in his head. Tonight he doesn’t mind the incessant and nervous chatter of the blue eyed blonde seated across the table, the highlights in her hair glowing like spun honey in the flickering candle light. 

She is a little thin for his taste but he already knows that this will not be going anywhere. She is only a momentary distraction, a tool not unlike his stick or skates, to keep him from thinking too much, from brooding. He doesn’t even need to listen to what she is saying. He’s become adept at nodding and making the correct sounds at the right times to keep her talking. He uses the same skills he’s developed over years of dealing with reporters to give her just enough information without actually telling her anything at all. 

Not that she seems to notice. She preens like a peacock and her smile brighten volubly every time he looks directly at her. This is a big deal to her but not to him. He’s hardly even touched his pasta. It’s not the carb loading that he has a problem with, but his appetite has been oddly absent since he got back into town. 

“Do you want to get out of here?” he asks, motioning a passing waiter for the bill. Her eyes get wide and she looks down at her still half full plate, the lobster barely touched probably because she hasn’t figured out how to eat it gracefully. He briefly wonders why women are always ordering it if they aren’t actually going to eat it.

“You mean like a club?” she asks, looking down at the lobster like she’s considering putting it in her purse.

“No,” he says simply. He doesn’t expand, he doesn’t need to. The blush that rises in her cheeks is evidence enough that she understands his meaning clearly. He wants to erase Fern and the entire idea of unwillingly becoming a father from his mind. One way to do that is to practice, hard and often, but the team’s brass isn’t ready to let him do that. So the next best thing is a warm body, in his bed, to help him take his mind off of everything else. “Ready?” he asks as he gets up, drops a hundred dollar bill on the table and holds his hand out towards her. She glances longingly one last time at the lobster on her plate and then puts her hand in his. 

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“Thanks for dinner,” she smiles across the dark interior of the car. Marc nods and smiles back. “And for the ride home, you honestly didn’t have to.” 

“It’s late, we couldn’t let you go home on the bus,” he replies sincerely, not taking his hands off of the wheel but angling his body towards hers. She puts her hand on the door handle but doesn’t push it open. There’s something she wants to ask but doesn’t quite know how to say it. 

“I like Vero,” she says quietly. She hears him chuckle, pictures the way his lips curve up a little at the corners.

“She likes you too,” he replies. It feels like he wants to say more but he doesn’t. The engine rumbles behind them, making the car vibrate around them and the big invisible pink elephant in the car with them. Taking a deep breath she takes her hand off of the handle and sits back in the seat.

“Why are you being nice to me? I mean...everyone knows you two are besties or whatever,” she says quietly, staring out at the dark street because she’s afraid to look into the kind eyes of the man sitting in the dark next to her, afraid there will be pity in his gaze. He sits silently for a long time and she begins to think that he isn’t going to answer and then he drums his fingers on the steering wheel. 

“It’s wrong...what he did...what he’s doing to you,” the young Francophone replies finally. She tries not to smile but can’t help it just the slightest selfish grin. “He’s still my friend,” he adds, his voice a soft lisp. Fern nods and puts her hand back on the door handle. “I think it’s brave...what you’re doing...keeping it.” 

“Oh that,” she smiles to herself and as it has so often since she took that test at the doctor’s office that morning a few weeks back, her hand slides down over her stomach. “I’m not sure I’m not just too chicken to do anything else,” she admits with a rueful smile. She looks over at him and he is looking at the spot where her hand rests over the swelling of her stomach.

“Do you...do you feel anything yet?” he stammers. 

“Yeah,” she replies, feeling that sort flipping over sensation beneath her hand. “You wanna?” His eyes get wide and then he nods. Reaching for his hand she guides it to the spot hers has just vacated. She looks down to see his long fingers spread out over her stomach and then she presses her own over his and guides him to the spot. It only takes a moment or two and then she feels it again, that rolling feeling beneath their joined hands. He grins up at her like he’s just made a save in the third period to keep them in the game. 

“C’étonnant,” he breathes, his gaze filled with child like wonder. 

“I completely freaked out the first time it happened,” she admits readily as he reluctantly withdraws his hand, “but I’m getting used to it now.” 

“It’s pretty amazing,” he agrees but there is nothing in his eyes or in his melancholy smile that tells her that he’s truly happy for her and her own smile quickly fades. 

“You don’t have to be nice to me. I’m really not expecting anything from him or...or any of you,” she says, almost under her breath, withdrawing into herself and folding her arms protectively around her middle. The darkness outside seems to creep into the car and with every silent second that goes by she becomes more and more uncomfortable until she’s reaching for her phone and considering calling a cab.

“We made a mistake...V and I,” he begins haltingly and so quietly that she isn’t sure at first if she is even meant to hear it. “We were ... sixteen...too young so she had a termination but...it went so wrong.” His voice trails away to a sob she can hear him trying to swallow and when she reaches across the interior of the car for his hand he grasps hers as if she is a life line. She feels the bones in her hand rub together. “If I could take it back,” he adds in a hoarse whisper. 

“You would, of course you would,” she finishes his thought, giving his hand a squeeze. “You really love her,” she adds unnecessarily but he gives her a weak but grateful smile all the same. 

“We haven’t told anyone that,” he says as he straightens, lets go of her hand and reaches to put the car in gear. It rumbles to life and lurches forward, tires squealing on the wet pavement. 

“Who am I gonna tell?” she replies with a wink that secures her a broader smile from the Pens goal tender and then he puts his foot to the floor and the low slung Italian sports car almost turns sideways, making her squeal with delight. 

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He sits on the side of the bed, in the dark, his mind racing, too wide awake to even consider sleeping. He glances back at the pale form behind him, her blonde tresses turned to liquid silver by the moonlight. She is sleeping soundly, her lips parted in a contented smile that will be erased in the morning when she finds him gone without a note, without leaving his number or a promise of another date behind. As willing as she was, he knows in a day or two he will have forgotten her name and a few days after that he will hardly remember this night at all. 

Getting to his feet he silently makes his way across the cool wood floor of her room, past the overflowing clothes hamper by the door and out into the hallway. The door to the bathroom is still ajar from when he chased her from the shower to the bed. There wet foot prints are still on the cheap linoleum floor. 

Shutting the door he turns on the light and reaches for the nearly flattened tube of toothpaste. Squeezing some out along his index finger he rubs it along his teeth, the sharp taste of mint chasing the dry taste of the red wine from his mouth. As he rubs his finger along his gums he stares at his reflection. He looks tired. There are dark hollows under his eyes and his skin is parchment pale. 

“You look like shit buddy,” he tells his reflection as he spits into the basin and runs water over his finger and then rinses the bowl. “You are shit,” he tells himself mostly under his breath as he reaches under the cold water and splashes it up onto his face. “And your little plan didn’t work worth shit either,” he adds, lecturing himself as the cold water runs down his face and onto his chest. He doesn’t feel better and despite her best attempts, the blonde sleeping in the next room has not managed to erase the thoughts that now swim to the surface of his mind. 

Fern. 

Jesus, what kind of name is that anyway he asks himself as he leans on the counter and stares at his reflection. He doesn’t recognize the man in the mirror. He thinks that man looking back at him is trying hard to be someone that, deep down, he knows he is not and never wants to be. Not really. He is not Max, not Jordy. He thinks that he wants to be but he can’t turn off his emotions the way they seem to be able to. If he could she wouldn’t still be in his head and he wouldn’t have the lead weight in his stomach right now. 

“Asshole wanna be,” he smirks at his reflection and then runs his fingers through his dark hair before giving his head a shake. “Fucking boy scout,” he mutters under his breath and then turns to pick up the pants he’d abandoned a few hours ago and pulls the cheque out of one of the pockets. He contemplates tearing it up but he only turns it over and over in his hands, knowing that he won’t. “Try again tomorrow,” he sighs and then slides it back into his pocket before tugging his pants on and reaching for his shirt.  

Chapter 2

 Just a reminder to please not throw things at the screen or text me death threats. Please, gentle reader, have patience and remember that people, or in this case, story characters can change. That being said, welcome to the next chapter.

When he poses for promotions and marketing he knows this is a possibility but he’s never been confronted with it in quite this way. As he watches her light candles around the room, small stumps of coloured wax in old wine bottles and oddly shaped glass jars, he finds a number of his own likenesses staring back at him from the walls in her room. From posters that look like they might have been stolen from bus shelters to growth charts, covers of magazines framed and the kinds of prints purchased directly from the league; everywhere he looks he is met with not just his own face but those of many of his teammates on every wall and surface of her room. Including a number of figurines on a bookshelf that’s full to overflowing with thick hard bound novels. 

He looks through their titles, running his finger along their spines but he only recognizes a few and most of them only from movie titles; Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, the English Patient, the Colour Purple, Wuthering Heights. To him they are chick flicks, he can’t imagine taking the time to watch them let alone read them. 

“Do you want something to uh...drink?” she asks. He hears the nervous vibrato in her voice and it stirs something in him that is normally reserved for the ice. He can feel his blood begin to simmer, just when he was beginning to think that he might not be able to go through with this. “I umm...I think we have some vodka and uh...I think there’s some rum in the freezer,” she continues, and when he turns he finds her rubbing her palms anxiously down her narrow hips.  

“Sure, whatever,” he replies as he reaches for the top buttons on his shirt. Her eyes get wide again and he watches with a certain amount of relish as she whets her bottom lip while watching him undo his shirt. “Don’t be long,” he grins and she scampers out of the room like a frightened kitten.

He sits on the edge of her narrow bed and slips off his shoes. He wonders, while he waits, if any of his teammates have ever fucked a girl underneath one of their own posters. When they talk about their conquests the next day in the room they don’t discuss home decor. They talk about how big her tits were and if she swallowed or not. He’s betting Fern won’t. In fact he thinks, as he tugs his socks off, balls them up and shoves them into his shoes, that there probably won’t be anything fancier than missionary position happening in this bed tonight. That idea makes him smile to himself but it doesn’t make him give up on his mission either. He thinks that Fern looks like she needs a good fucking to loosen her up.

That thought makes him laugh out loud which makes her pause as she re-enters the room loaded down with a bottle of Absolut and two glasses. She looks like a startled fawn staring down a set of oncoming headlights and for a minute he thinks that she’s going to turn tail and run from her own room but he pats a spot next to him on what he thinks might be a homemade quilt and, very slowly, her eyes go back to their regular size. 

She puts the bottle down on the night stand, puts the glasses down beside it and then pours a little into each. She downs hers in one, fretful gulp and then pours herself some more before handing him a glass. He sips the clear liquid and wrinkles his nose. It isn’t straight vodka, though it burns like it on the way down. It leaves a berry flavoured after taste on his tongue that he has the sudden urge to taste on her lips. 

When she goes to refill her glass for a third time he pulls her down onto his lap and kisses her, hard. She resists, at first, but when his tongue swipes along her bottom lip looking for entry she relaxes against him and then he feels her hands moving over his shoulders, pushing his dress shirt back and away and that makes him smile. Maybe there is some fire in the skittish little filly after all.

He shrugs his shirt off and then moves his hands to her ass, pulling her down harder against him so that he can feel the press of her boobs against his chest and so he can grind up against her. He isn’t hard, not yet. With a pretty girl, with a girl whose ass he can’t dig his fingers into and whose breasts aren’t more than a handful he might be all ready, but he isn’t. It takes a few more minutes of fumbling with the zipper on the back of her dress and hearing her whimper when he sucks the hard little nubs of her nipples through the black lace and satin of her bra before his dick begins to stir. 

He’s wondered how Jordy does it, how he can take just about anything with a pulse and a set of tits back to his room on the road and still come out smiling in the morning. He’s heard Gronk explain more than once how one cunt is pretty much like another but he’s never believed it. But as she presses him down into her bed and slides her hand down between them to stroke him to full mast, he begins to think that Max’s explanation has more merit. Max has always claimed that ugly girls try harder and the expert tug he feels as her cool hands slide over his thick, quickly hardening member makes him think Max is right. 

“Do you have, y’know, something?” he asks a little breathlessly as she kisses her way down to his abdomen. She looks up at him, doing her owl impression again, and he can hear the guys in his head calling him a rookie. He has a suspicion that Tanger has a pharmacy on speed dial and that Max probably has a year’s supply on him at all times, but when he’d left the house tonight he hadn’t thought this is where he’d be, what he’d be doing right now. 

“Maybe one of my roommates does,” she says quietly and then springs off of the bed. He watches her walk across the room, her black satin panties fitting snugly across her round ass. He thinks she might have the legs of a dancer, or at least of someone that walks a lot. Her calves are muscular and her ankles have a feminine taper. As he rolls onto his back and folds his hands behind his head he thinks that this might not be not be the worst idea he’s ever had.

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She spills out most of the contents of the medicine cabinet and digs through every drawer in the bathroom before she finds what she is searching for, two small foil squares. How long they’ve been in the drawer, between the first aid kit and a box of super plus tampons she doesn’t know. All she knows is she’s relieved she doesn’t have to send him down to the all night market on the corner. If he leaves, she’s absolutely certain that he won’t come back. After all, she’s not really sure why he’s in her room in the first place. 

Palming the two condoms she forces herself to walk slowly back into the room even though she wants to run in and pounce on the bed like a kid waking up her parents on Christmas morning. Seeing him lying there on her grandmother’s old quilt in nothing but his boxer briefs, with all those round muscles and pale skin, is kind of like having your birthday and Christmas presents arrive all at once. 

“Found ‘em,” she calls softly, letting the foil wrappers catch the light of the nearly dozen candles in her room. He turns his head and she is forced to pause, mid step. He is, despite the slightly crooked nose and the tiny nicks and scars that shine silvery white in the shimmering candlelight, heart-breakingly beautiful. His full lips curve into an inviting smile as he reaches his hand out towards her and for one long, breathless moment, she can’t move. ‘This’ she thinks to herself, ‘cannot be happening’. Things like this do not happen to girls like her. 

‘Fuck it’ she decides at last, moving slowly forward until she is kneeling on the edge of the bed and putting her hand in his so he can guide her body down next to his, ‘if I’m dreaming, I hope I never wake up.’

 When his fingers slide beneath the elastic of her panties she tenses, sucking in a sharp breath until he finds that spot that forces her to blow out that breath all at once. He is not like that boy from band camp with whom she had fumbled around in the dark. He doesn’t have to hunt blindly around. He knows just where to go and just what to do with his fingers to make her entire body shudder, make her cry out. He doesn’t press it like a button on a game console, like a monkey pressing a button to get a reward. He strokes it, teases it and when she thinks she’s about to lose her mind, he rubs it exactly the right way to make her dissolve into a thousand pieces. 

“I’m gonna take these off now,” he whispers in her ear and she can only nod, having once again been rendered speechless by this man who haunts her dreams. She is only able to bite her lip and does her best not to make anymore of those embarrassing noises when he kneels between her legs and holds the condom out towards her. She stares at the little foil square and then at him and swallows, audibly. She hasn’t done this task more than once, maybe twice in her entire life. 

‘This is your dream and in your dream you can do this, after all, he wouldn’t be here otherwise’ she tells herself, taking the packet and ripping it open with her teeth. She’s heard of women putting these things on with their teeth but she doesn’t trust herself to try, even if she thinks that it seems like a cool way to do it. The idea of being the girl that accidentally injures Sidney Crosby by trying to be cool doesn’t seem like the best move right at this moment.

She hears his sharp intake of breath as she gently yet firmly rolls the latex down over the cock that she knows she’ll describe to her friends as definitely being bigger than a baby’s arm. She’s already wondering if it will hurt. He, all of him, is bigger than any boy or man she’s been with. Not that there has been a long list. 

She can count the number of men she’s been with on one hand. No, that’s not right; less than one hand and she’s not really sure that the first one even counted. Really there have only been two and both of those now seem like they were a long time ago. She’d made a promise to herself that the next time it would be for love, for always. So much for that, she thinks as her fist reaches the base of cock and rolls her eyes up to meet his.

Even with the teenage groping and the not so satisfying college dorm fumbling she’s never done this, this just because you can kind of sex. She tells herself, as she slowly slides her hand up over that famed six pack, he isn’t exactly a stranger.

He moans, softly, when the tip of her tongue flicks against his nipple. His hands dig into her hair and then he pulls the elastic from around her pony tail and drags her fingers through her non-descript mousy brown hair until it falls around her shoulders. Not too short and not too long. Just long enough so she can pull it back at work and keep it out of her face. It used to be longer but she cut it short when she broke up with her last boyfriend. That’s how long it’s been.

His pulse jumps beneath her tongue as her teeth graze his neck but when she tries to kiss him he picks her up like she weighs nothing and slams her down onto the bed. She lets one of those annoying squeaks escape as he pushes her to the end of the bed and then shoves himself unceremoniously inside of her. 

She gasps and not entirely in a good way. The sensation of being nearly being split in two is pain and pleasure intertwined but she isn’t given time to catch her breath before his hips are slamming against hers again. He is using the edge of the bed for leverage, his massive chest blotting out the light, his muscular arms straining as he grunts above her. 

Tears spring to her eyes even as she tries to blink them away. This is not how she’d imagined it would be. The candles are there and somewhere in the background A Fine Frenzy is playing but he is not how it was supposed to be. 

She stares at the veins popping out in his throat as he strains over her and bites down hard on the inside of her cheek to keep the tears of disappointment at bay. She had been expecting tenderness or maybe that had just been a hope. He is no better than that boy at band camp, only concerned with his own needs, with getting there as fast as possible. 

No, that is not exactly fair she decides as he lowers his mouth in search of hers and she turns her face to only give him her cheek. He’d gotten her off once and that is more than most men do, or so she’s been told. Her friends are always complaining about their boyfriends and how thoughtless they are so why, she wonders to herself as he grunts one last time and then collapses, did she think he would be different?

Because he is Sidney Crosby and he is supposed to be better than this 

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She doesn’t make all of the noises that he’s used to. She doesn’t moan or cry out, doesn’t make him feel like a porn star or any kind of star for that matter and when he tries to kiss her she turns away from him and just lies there like a dead fish. Even when he rolls off of her and lies on his back, breathing hard, she doesn’t try to cuddle into him and coo at him like every other puck bunny he’s been with. In fact she scoots across the bed and grabs a pillow, holding it front of her like a shield. 

“I...I think you should go.” 

Not that he’d planned on staying but he is taken aback by her insistence. He doesn’t argue, merely shrugging as he sits up and begins to search the floor for his clothes. She remains silent and watchful as he tugs on his pants. As he reaches for his shirt he doesn’t even attempt to hide the satirical smile that tugs at the corners of his full lips as he thinks to himself that even the quiet ones are crazy. He’s quite certain that even if she’s having second thoughts about what they’ve just done she’ll still be bragging to all of her facebook friends about it in the morning.

As he stoops to grab his shoes he grabs her panties off of the floor and stuffs them into his pocket. He’ll need them as proof in the locker room in the morning. That’s one of the rules. There has to be evidence but he isn’t Max and he doesn’t think there’s a nanny cam in this room. She doesn’t seem like the type to want to watch herself, which makes him think that it’s too bad her being a prude isn’t enough in and of itself to win the bet. Of course her name is Fern her reminds himself, thinking that has to be worth something.

“Well, thanks,” he turns and smiles at her in the same way he would a TV camera. It isn’t a real smile, not really. She’s still clutching the pillow like it’s her last line of defence and watching him like an animal does when they’ve been in a cage too long; a little eager but a little wary too. He wonders if maybe she thinks that he will ask to stay. He won’t of course because there’s no point. Not with a girl who gives out the milk for free. That isn’t the kind of woman that he will spend the night with and just for a moment he almost regrets his choice of pawn for the game. She isn’t really that bad, not with her hair loose and brushing her shoulders and with her lips bruised from his kisses. That moment quickly passes, however, when she continues to stare at him out of dark, untrusting eyes. “See ya around,” he adds, leaning across the bed to give her a kiss on the cheek. She shrinks from him and his response is to shrug, roll his eyes, turn and walk out.

He thinks he hears the sound of tearing paper when he reaches for the handle on the front door but he can’t be sure.

Chapter 1

“I declare a dog fight.” 

It’s not something that the well raised kid from a small town on Canada’s East coast would normally get involved in. This was something he normally would leave to his more outgoing teammates, guys who, if someone tweeted something nasty about them, would and more importantly could afford to laugh it off. Bad press isn’t something that the crown prince of hockey can afford but tonight, just for tonight, he feels like throwing caution to the wind. He feels like being a bad boy, just this once. Maybe, no, he definitely is feeling sorry for himself. It has been months since he’s been able to do the one thing that makes him feel confident and he has all this pent up energy that makes it feel like ants are crawling around under his skin. 

“What are the stakes?” he asks, turning to survey the women in the club. This is a regular haunt and the all of the regulars are here. There are always hot women at this club, plenty of prime tail for the boys to pick from. However, cutting prime beef from the herd was not a winning move in a dog fight.  

“Whoever sleeps with the ugliest chick gets immunity from being mustache boy until the All Star break.” Gronk grins when he says it because he thinks he’ll win and maybe because he can grow a mean beard but that upper lip of his just refuses to push out more than the barest hint of peach fuzz. Not that that he himself can do much better, so it’s a good prize, a prize worth taking one for the team for.

He surveys the crowd again, this time ignoring the girls with asses that you could bounce a quarter off of and high, firm tits ripe for squeezing. He sips the whiskey from his glass and considers a group of girls dancing barefoot around their purses. 

They’re not exactly barking dogs, but they certainly aren’t the kind of girls that , on a regular night, he’d even look twice at. Not that he has a preference for blondes over brunettes but what he has a penchant for is an athletic build. In fact, if he had to choose, he would pick college gymnasts every time. He likes them muscular, strong, but small. He’s not the biggest guy on the team, or at least not the tallest and only Cookie shares his compact but powerful build. 

“What do you think?” he asks his wiry friend, the quiet one who hasn’t and won’t throw his hat in the ring and not just because he has a girl waiting for him at home. Other guys do too. Flower just wouldn’t take part in something like this, not ever. 

“Gronk will sleep with anything as long as it’s got tits,” the voice at his other shoulder chimes in. “You’d have to pick something with one tooth and a wooden leg to win,” the broody, long haired defenseman adds before turning back to the bar. 

“You just won’t lower your standards,” he muses, giving his teammate an elbow in the ribs. Kris does not move, does not flinch. He downs his drink, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and stares into his empty glass. 

“If I’m going to fuck something, I want it to be nice to look at,” he replies as he taps his glass on the bar, looking for a refill. It must be a French thing, he thinks, the amount of booze that Max and Kris and even Flower can put down and stay upright. For himself, he is onto his third and feeling it. 

“But you’d be making her night. Hell, maybe even her year,” he declares, like maybe he’s still talking himself into it. His chest puffs up when he says it, like he really believes he’s making an offering to charity. 

“Don’t,” his quiet friend says beside him. “It’s not nice.” He smiles, because normally that would be his argument. Tonight he’s choosing instead to go with a different philosophy, to do what Max is already doing over in one dark corner of the dance floor. Tonight he’s going to pick the wallflower, the girl who would never think that in an entire month of Sundays he, Sidney Crosby, would ever even look at her twice and he’s going to make her night by taking her home and making her dreams come true. It’s better than making a hospital visit to hand out hockey cards to sick kids. Like Max always says, it’s a fucking humanitarian donation to the female breed.

Pushing off from the bar he stalks towards the group of women, as unaware as innocent gazelles cropping at the high grass of the Serengeti. As he prowls around them, he imagines that he is the largest male lion with the darkest, fullest ruff. He is well muscled, lean and strong. He has the biggest teeth and the longest claws. He can have his pick of the lionesses but tonight he’s going to...no, not a gazelle he decides as he tracks their movements with his eyes. Maybe a baby hippo he thinks as he sizes up the decidedly full trunk of one of the dancers. Or maybe a giraffe, he muses as he looks at the tall, gawky and decidedly geeky one in the glasses. 

No, maybe a gazelle after all, he decides as he studies the smallest of the bunch with her dark hair pulled back into a simple pony tail and a decided lack of any kind of paint or spackle other than shiny pink lip gloss that puts him in mind of cheap five cent bubble gum. Her breasts are neither too big nor too small, though he decides that it’s hard to tell in the cheap black dress that covers too much and is maybe a little too big, as if she’s recently lost weight or maybe it’s a hand me down. Simple inexpensive silver hoops dangle from her ears, the only adornment she wears, unlike most of the women in the room with arms full of shiny baubles and gems glittering pointing the way down to their cleavage. 

She can best be described as plain, Plain Jane, and she, he decides then and there, is his charity case for the night. 

___________________________________________________________

She harbors no delusions that she or any of her friends are the types of girls that they go home with but a girl can dream, can’t she? She is far from the only woman in the bar with that particular dream tonight but she knows that she is less pretty than most of the other women with their plumage out, writhing in a hopeful mating dance. When she got dressed up after work and spent her last twenty bucks getting into the bar where she knows they come to play, unlike those other girls, she only came to watch and maybe let her imagination run a little wild. 

She imagines him sending her a drink, one that she would raise as she smiles at him down the bar and he would detach himself from his teammates and ask her to dance. She can imagine him moving with her now, to the beat of Cash Cash’s ‘Sexin’ on the Dance Floor’. She can almost feel his hands on her hips, bringing her body back against his solid, muscular frame. She can almost hear him whispering the lyrics into her ear in a voice that even when she hears it on the radio makes her knees get weak.

A shudder runs through her entire body as she sees her best friend’s eyes go wide and reads her lips forming the words ‘oh my god’ as she realizes that there really is a pair of large male hands on her hips and that the neck she’s just wound her arm around is thick and muscular and warm. She wants to look but she doesn’t want it not to be true. She doesn’t want her favourite fantasy to be smashed to pieces if it’s just some guy, some random guy and not one of those gods of hockey and especially if it’s not him. 

The music changes, as if on cue, slowing down to a ballad by a woman with a hauntingly powerful voice. It’s one she knows by heart. It’s a heartbreaking song about wanting to be in love. She mouths the words to herself as he turns her to face him. ‘I’ve never kissed a sweeter mouth. I’ve never been swept away. It’s what dreams are made about.’ She finds herself staring at the mile wide expanse of a chest barely constrained by a light blue dress shirt with pearlescent buttons that catch the light of the cheesy disco ball spinning over their heads.

“Hi. My names’s Sidney.” 

She wants to laugh except she’s trembling so much and her mouth has gone so completely dry that she can’t. As if there would ever be a time he would need to introduce himself or wear one of those ‘my name is’ stick on name tags. And not just in this city either. She knows that he can’t walk down a street in Canada and not be the pride of the nation, the gold medal winning hero. 

“I know,” she manages to reply as she takes a peek up into the face she’s seen a million and one times on TV and then zeroes in on the full, pink lips she’s dreamed of kissing a million and two times. He smiles, that sort of all American boy smile that’s all straight, or almost straight, white teeth and her knees start to give way. Using some kind of super power, or maybe just being very aware of his effect on women and anticipating that she will not be able to maintain her upright posture, he holds her up and that school girl laugh of his fills her ears. 

The music speeds up, something with a bhangra beat and he pulls her into him and she finds herself astride his thick thigh and suddenly she has no doubts about why the commentators are always saying he has legs like a tree. Embarrassingly she lets out a squeak when she feels his hands on her ass and she can just make out his laugh above the heavy bass. 

“This place is so loud.” He practically has to yell into her ear. All she can do is nod. With his massive thigh pressed against her most sensitive parts it’s beyond her abilities to actually form words. That would be asking too much and so would be disagreeing with anything he would say now. “Do you want to get out of here?” 

She blinks at him, knowing full well she looks like a lemur but she has to play each word over in her head to be sure that what he’s just asked is what she thinks she’s heard because of course it’s a possibility that it’s merely a figment of her imagination. After all, this has happened in a hundred dreams or more and there is still the distinct possibility she’s dreaming now. 

“Pinch me,” she whispers because only that, only some short sharp pain is going to prove that he, the man of her dreams is really grinding up against her and really, truly asking her to go home with him. 

“You like it rough eh?” he laughs and then gives her ass a firm swat that makes her yelp. She wants to tell him no, just because his hands are so big and, well, everything she can feel about him seems big and weapon like and she cries if she gets so much as a paper cut but the grin on his face makes it clear that he’s only kidding. Blushing to the tips of her ears she tries to speak but her tongue twists and turns but she can’t make a sound that actually sounds like a word. “C’mon,” he whispers in her ear but he doesn’t wait for her to actually acquiesce. He grabs her hand, giving her just enough time to grab her bag from the floor before he spins on his heel and tows her behind him like a boat on a trailer. 

The seas part like he’s Moses. One minute the dance floor is jammed with bodies and the next moment people are making way for him which seems apt as he is the second coming, in this city at least. As he drags her through the club, guys ogle him like he’s some kind of red Italian sports car and women look at him like he’s a decadent desert covered in hot fudge sauce. Alternatively, the men they pass don’t even seem to register that she is there, which is something she is used to. But the open hostility and repugnance that the women’s glares are filled with, the way that their nostrils flare and their lips turn up when they look at her has her shrinking and trying to hide behind the Grand Canyon like expanse of his back sort of like she’d done in high school when she’d hidden behind her locker door when those girls passed by.

She wants to say that she doesn’t know why he’s chosen her either, wants somehow to apologize for not having the cosmetically straightened, chemically whitened teeth that they gnash at her as she stumbles behind him. In fact, as he gives a thumbs up to two of his other teammates who are propping up the bar she’s going over a thousand scenarios in her head not least of which is that he is, in fact, a serial killer and that his crimes are covered up by his teammates and the league and that she is about to become a statistic, a grainy picture on the back of a milk carton. 

“Do you have a jacket?” he asks when they get to the coat check where he hands over a small ticket. She has to force herself to think about what she was wearing when she and her friends arrived at the club and then mutely nods. “Want mine?” he asks, draping it over her shoulders before she has the chance to reply.

She runs her fingers down the lapel of the brushed wool tailor made suit jacket as he hands over a ticket to the valet. The feel of the soft, smooth fabric under her fingertips and the weight of it across her shoulders is more evidence that she isn’t dreaming, though she remains unconvinced. Even when the low slung, sleek dark car pulls up in front of them and he holds open the passenger door for her, she still believes that at any moment she will wake up to the sound of her alarm clock and the smell of dark coffee wafting from the kitchen. 

“Where to?” he asks as he curls his large hands with their thick digits around the black leather wrapped steering wheel. 

“To?” she blinks, like a lemur again and he aims that poster boy smile at her as if her reply amuses him. 

“Your address, where am I going?” Taking one hand off of the steering wheel he hits a button and a screen rolls up, a map appearing on it that seems too bright in the darkness of his European sports car. “I’m not good at directions but the GPS will get us there,” he adds and then tips his head and stares at her, waiting. 

“Oh,” she reaches for her purse and, with shaking hands, pulls her driver’s license from her wallet to look at the address. Maybe it’s the way his costly smelling cologne pervades the small space or the very nearness of him or maybe it’s the disappointment in knowing that he won’t be whisking her away to his palace in the clouds but it doesn’t immediately spring to the tip of her tongue. 

“Let me see?” he reaches to take the small card from her hand and even as she tries to snatch it back, his professionally honed reflexes are faster than the speed of thought and she can only wince as he holds it towards the illumination that the small screen provides. “Fern? Like Fern Gully?” He says it like he can’t believe it, like it’s funny, just like every single kid in high school did every time they had a sub and she bristles, just like she does every time someone says her name with that mocking tone. 

“Like from Charlotte’s Web, actually, but you’ve probably never read that,” she corrects him, a spark, a glowing ember finally waking somewhere within her even as she wishes that the luxurious overstuffed leather seats of his car would somehow hide her from the scrutiny of his amaretto coloured gaze. 

“You’re probably right,” he smiles as he enters her address into his GPS before handing her back her ID.“You look better without the glasses,” he adds as he hands her back the small plastic card. She tries not to but the sound that escapes her lips reminds of the kind of squeak a dog’s toy makes when squeezed. He looks over at her and laughs and then puts the car into gear and it lurches forward, pinning her to the seat.