Chapter 21

& the moment you've all been anxiously waiting for...drum roll please



“My life is over.” Tabby stares down at the pocket of extra fabric at the front of the jeans she’s trying on and feels tears fill her eyes.

“Well what did you think? You could wear your skinny jeans forever?” Katie muses as she looks up from the magazine she’s reading. For her part, Mel at least covers her mouth to try and hide her giggle.

“Do you know what I was wearing when I first met him?” Tabby sniffs, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand, wishing she’d chosen waterproof mascara that morning. “Daisy Dukes. Do you have any idea what I’d look like in those right now?”

“You’re not really showing,” Mel gets up and tuggs down the loose, slightly flowing tunic top, “and if you have the top down no one knows, see?”

“This screams maternity,” Tabby moans, picking at the hem of the long top.

“Well what you have to ask yourself,” Katie reminds her quietly, “is whether you’re going there to tell him that he’s going to be a daddy or if you’re going there to jump his bones.” A kind of hush falls over the little group as Tabby stares disconcertedly at her reflection.

“I don’t know,” is her honest reply as she turns sideways and smooths the top down over the now more than barely discernable bump.

“She doesn’t have to tell him,” Trina mumbles from behind the ‘What to Expect When You’re Expecting’ Book Mel had picked up for Tabby. She’s been making faces and uncomfortable noises ever since she opened it.

“He has a right to know,” Mel interjects. Tabby sighs. This is the very reason that she hasn’t been able to come to a decision. Her friends are split and every time she thinks about it her stomach rebels and she ends up lying down until the nausea passes.

“He might not want to even see me, let alone talk to me,” Tabby says calmly, reaching for the empire waist dress that she’d first tried on. She takes it and herself back into the changing room. Slipping the top she’s tried on off, she stands in front of the mirror and turns sideways. It had seemed to happen overnight, the expansion of her stomach to where it now looks very much like she’s swallowed a football. It isn’t that she’s regretting her decision, exactly. It’s more like she can’t quite picture herself facing him looking and feeling like this. The problem is, whenever she thinks about him, she thinks about them together and in her current condition she can’t make that picture come clear.

“I never really believed that shit about pregnant women glowing.” Tabby turns to find her friend Trina leaning in the doorway of the change room, “but damn girl, you’ve got that whole maternal goddess thing going on right now.”

“You don’t have to try and make me feel better,” Tabby mumbles, quickly stepping out of the ‘mom jeans’ as she had been calling them and grabbing the dress, she pulls it over her head.

“Hey, would I bullshit you?” Trina grabs the ties on the back of the dress and makes a careful bow. “I mean it. If I was a guy, hell if I even swung a little that way, I’d totally do you.” She tugs the bow to be sure it stays tight and then slides her hands around Tabby’s waist and over her little bump. “And if he did love you, even a little, then I’m telling you girl, he’ll see you like this and he won’t be able to keep his hands off of you.” Tabby’s eyes well up and she shakes her head.

“I’ll be lucky if I don’t throw up on him,” she sighs, turning first one way and then the other in the dress. It ‘s a definite improvement on the ‘mom jeans’ and it doesn’t exactly scream ‘maternity’ but it’s far from shouting ‘sexy’. Maybe it’s a good balance or maybe she’s just tired of thinking.

“You’re supposed to be past that, in the second trimester,” Trina leans her chin onto Tabby’s shoulder. “And if he doesn’t want you, then that’s his loss. You’ll just have to get Bieksa to start a rumor that he’s a raging fag,” she adds with a grin.

________________________________________________________


“Whatcha doin’?” Kris pokes Sidney’s skate with the blade of his stick. Sid drags his attention from the empty arena and turns it towards his friend and teammate.
“What’s that?” he asks, narrowing his eyes in consternation. He hates having his pre-game rituals fucked with.

“Qui es-tu recherché?” Kris asks, looking around at all the empty seats. There are, as there always seem to be in every city they visit, a few reporters, a few company reps from Tim Hortons and other sponsors and a spattering of lucky kids. None of them, however, appear to be what Sid is looking at, or is that for?

“I was just wondering…imagining I guess if she came tonight….”

Tanger raises an eyebrow and then shakes his head, making his hair fall into his eyes. “You don’t think she’ll actually come to a game do you? I mean, if she actually figured out who you really are, do you think she’d just come running to a game after all the lies you fed her?”

“Who are you girls yakking about?” Jordy joins them at the boards, and he too scans the nearly empty arena. “Fuck, I thought there might be some hot chick we were checking out. I shoulda known better.”

“Sid’s hoping Tabby shows,” Max interjects, not even having to be told.

“Personnellement, je pense que tu rêves.” Sid opens his mouth to tell his teammates exactly where they can and should shove it and just exactly how hard, when Kris lets out a long, low whistle and for once, his teammates fall silent.

He feels it like a tickle at the back of his neck and it only takes a brief scan of his friends’ faces to tell him that what he’s feeling is real.

She’s here.

He turns slowly until he’s facing the benches and he forgets to breathe when he sees her standing there at the gate, her gaze searching, waiting for his. It takes him another moment to realize that the Canuck's defenseman is standing guard behind her, with a few other obviously interested on lookers peering out from the corridor that leads to their dressing room.

Part of him wants to dig his skates into the fresh ice, toss his stick and gloves down and fly across it to her but the other part of his brain is screaming ‘caution’ at the top of its’ lungs. ‘You haven’t spoken to her in months’, he reminds himself, ‘and Bieksa looks a whole lot like he’s itching to send you head first through the boards, which can’t bode well’ he adds silently as he puts his head down and glides slowly towards her.

The problem is he can already taste her lips, he can already feel the long, dark silky strands of her hair sliding through his fingers. He’s not even to centre ice and he’s sure he can smell the clean lavender soap scent of her skin. His heart is pumping hard, like he’s been doing wind sprints and the truth is he’s hardly made two laps of the ice, hasn’t even broken a sweat and yet he can feel the cold clammy trickle of sweat dripping down from beneath his helmet. This is what she does to him. She unnerves him, unmans him, and that should matter, but somehow it doesn’t. He knows as approaches the boards that he’d let the Canuck's defenseman put him through the boards, let the zamboni drive over him, if it means that somehow, some way, this won’t end badly.
____________________________________________________


“I’m going to be sick.”

Tabby reaches out to press the flat of her hand to the cool concrete wall and leans over, shutting her eyes against the wave of nausea that engulfs her as they near the end of the corridor. She’d like to believe that it’s the funk coming from the dressing room but she knows it’s not. She can smell the ice and she can hear the sound of skates gliding through the frozen playing surface, pucks ricocheting off the boards and the glass and that means that he is only steps away.

“You don’t have to do this,” Kevin’s hands settle comfortingly on her shoulders and she feels his thick fingers digging into her shoulder blades. “Someone else can tell him, preferably while I have him in a headlock,” he adds with a mocking tone that’s half joking and half not. He’d do it, no questions asked. All she has to do is nod her head. They’ve gotten to be good friends, he and his wife, even in this short time. He's protective. It's his paternal instincts.

“No,” she straightens and waits for the momentary dizziness of her sudden movement to pass. “I have to do this.” Taking a deep breath, she asks her legs to go forward even though they feel like they’re going to give way beneath her. She wishes she could hold Kevin’s hand, as if she were a little girl. It would be comforting but ‘lily livered’ as her grandfather would say.

Stepping out into the box the cold air makes her draw in a ragged breath, or maybe it’s the black practice uniforms of the skaters out on the ice that says they are different, other. They are not the blue and green and white practice uniforms of the Canucks. That’s not to say she was used to Kevin’s uniform, it just meant that he was out there.

She can feel him, like the tug on the other end of a fishing line. She knows, even beneath the bulky uniform, the helmet and pads, she knows it’s him the moment her gaze settles on his back. She doesn’t need to see the small ‘87’ on the back of his helmet.

She grips the top of the half boards, feeling the meeting of wood and plastic under her hands as he turns, as his gaze meets hers’. She hears herself gasp and her hand goes to her swollen midsection. It’s like she’s been kicked, but from which side?
He puts his head down and slowly, too slowly, begins to skate towards her. It’s like watching him move in slow motion, like watching skate through knee deep water. She’s had time to watch almost every video on youtube and she knows he can skate quicker than he is. Does it mean he’s as reluctant for this reunion as she is?

Her nails dig into the boards and she wills herself to stand there and wait. Say nothing. Just breathe. That, in and of itself, is made more difficult by her racing pulse. With every gliding step he takes, her heart beat quickens until it seems like all she can hear is the rush of her own blood in her veins and the frantic hammering of her heart.

When he gets within a few feet of the bench he raises his eyes and she feels the ice she’s surrounded her heart with melt away. He actually looks as vulnerable and scared as she feels.

‘Don’t forget the bomb you’re about to lay on him’, she reminds herself. She knows the look on his face might…no, will change the moment she tells him. ‘He’s got everything, the whole world at his feet. He doesn’t need this. He’s going to hate this,’ she tells herself. It’s sort of like telling herself not to get her hopes up...or exactly like it.

“Tabby.”

His saying her name tastes like dark chocolate sauce over fudge ripple ice cream. She opens her mouth but the name that springs to her lips is ‘Patrick’ and she catches it just in time, and shakes her head and smiles sardonically. Instead she stays silent until he reaches the boards and they find themselves staring shyly at one another like two strangers, or not quite.

“We should talk,” she says quietly, the words she’s rehearsed in her head coming out almost too quiet but she knows he’s heard her as his gaze searches hers’. He wants to know what it means but not here. She won’t say anything to him here in front of his teammates. “Is it okay if we…,” she lets her voice trail off as she glances over her shoulder to find OB and Eddy and Ehrhoff watching her intently, ready to spring to her defense if needed. She smiles and shakes her head and does her best to look confident even though she feels far from it.
___________________________________________________________


He manages to open the gate even though his hands are shaking. That’s why he doesn’t take off his gloves, he’s hoping no one will notice if he leaves them on. He can feel everyone watching him and it should be something he’s used to but this feels more like ‘dead man walking’, like he’s being lead to the gallows.

It can’t be good, he thinks to himself as she turns and heads down the narrow, dim corridor, following her retreating form. She could barely manage a smile for him. ‘Well what did you expect?’ he shakes his head at his own naivety. Had he really expected some scene out of some stupid romantic movie with them running into each other’s arms?

‘Just ask her what it’s all about’, he tells himself firmly, ‘get it over with and get back on the ice.’ Sure he’d wanted to see her but if this was all going to go pear shaped….

She turns into one of those rooms the trainer’s used, with an examination table and as she turns to face him, he finds himself speechless. Sure he’d seen her but not really. He hadn’t registered how her hair is now streaked with some colour, is it dark red? Purple? Both? Or that her milk chocolate eyes are rimmed with kohl or that her full lips are stained blood red. He licks his lips. He wants to kiss her.

She’s paler now, but this is Vancouver. It rains here all the time doesn’t it? Maybe it’s the black dress she’s wearing, he thinks and then he thinks it covers too much of her. He can’t help but want to undress her in his mind but he doesn’t want her to see that he’s doing it. He tries to find something else to look at but as soon as he looks down she’s suddenly there, reaching for his hand.

He stares down at her outstretched hand like he expects it to burn him and her eyes go wide. Their hands pause there, mid air, fingertips almost touching but not.

“You left,” he hears his own voice accusing her and he wishes he could take it back.

“You left first,” she says quietly.

“I went back,” he insists. “You were gone.”

“You practically called me a whore,” she whispers back, and withdraws her hand, backing slowly away from him. He can’t stop looking at her. She’s so damn beautiful. He doesn’t want to fight. So why am I? he asks himself. “ I…I didn’t come to fight,” she whispers and he can’t help thinking ‘thank god’ and then he finds himself reaching out for her and now she’s looking at his hands like she expects him to do something to hurt her. He looks down at his stick and smiles. How can he blame her when he’s got a weapon in his hand? He leans the stick against the wall and moves again toward her but she holds her hand out, like a ward. “You…there’s something you should know,” she says quietly and, as he watches, she smoothes her dress over her belly, only it’s not…it’s not the small, feminine sort of swell but it suddenly looks like she’s hiding a rugby ball under there.

He stares at the bulge she seems to be holding between her hands up for a long time before he looks up and meets her gaze. Her dark eyes are welling over with silver tears. He opens his mouth but no words come out. He feels numb. He’s not sure what he should feel. There’s a voice in the back of his head, more like a warning siren, telling him that this is exactly what Troy has warned him about, saying it’s a trap and to deny it and yet….

His hands reach out and though he can see a flicker of fear in her gaze she doesn’t flinch as his hands slide over hers, cradling her stomach until they’re standing close, his body alongside hers’, close enough that he can taste orange juice on her breath.

“I’m here,” he says out loud, as if he’s made a decision he’s not fully aware of making. She turns her gaze up to meet his and all he can see is her full, red, mouth and in the next moment he’s kissing her, her lips moving and parting beneath his.

Chapter 20

This is a little short but I think the next chapter should make up for it!

“Don’t you think you should tell the poor bastard that he’s gonna have a kid?”
Leave it to her younger brother to put it that way, Tabby thought as she narrowed her eyes and wrinkled her nose up at him across the table. Had they been ten years younger, she would have flipped the spoonful of potatoes she was about to put on her plate directly into his face, but instead she put the spoonful of potatoes down on her plate and gave him the stink eye.

“Why should she?” Trina rose to her defense, like a good friend should and Tabby gave her a grateful smile. “The guy lied like a fucking rug about who he is…was…whatever.”

“Because, if I dropped some illegitimate bastard poop maker, I guess I’d want to know,” Darrel continued and that made everyone around the table laugh.

“No you would not,” Tabby insisted, putting up her hand defensively in front of her mouth in case she spewed corn at him while she laughed. “If some poor girl came to this door right now with a bundle of joy with brown hair and brown eyes that looked just like you you’d tell her to fuck off.” Her brother was proud of his man whoring ways and what Tabby was finding surprising was that his first reaction to her news over Thanksgiving dinner was not to want to track the guy down and put his fist in his mouth.

“Yeah well,” her brother’s face turned pink and he laughed uncomfortably, causing Tabby to stare across the table at her mother with the question clear in her eyes. Had that already happened?

“Darrel’s bark is a lot bigger than his bite,” her father answered, handing the bowl of cranberry sauce towards his errant son with a look of pride on his face. Why was it, Tabby wondered, that men thought it was okay to act like a horny alley cat as long as you had a penis attached to you?

“All I’m sayin’ is the dude has a right to know,” Darrel reiterated, earning him a dirty look from Trina which made him smile his evil little brother smile.

“And if he lied to me about something as simple as who he is, what he does…that’s who you think should be in your nephew’s life? Guiding him? Being his example?” Tabby asked, leveling her gaze at him across the table. The turkey leg he had been lifting to his mouth stayed half way there as he found himself caught in the web that Tabby had woven. It was one thing, all this bro’s before ho’s bullshit, but it was quite another thing to protect your own.

“Nice,” Trina held her hand up for a high five but Tabby didn’t reciprocate. This wasn’t about winning or losing. She’d been staring at his number all day on her new phone, the one she couldn’t really afford, and she couldn’t make a decision. Did he deserve to know, even if he hadn’t bothered to chase after her, if when he’d said he’d loved her, his words had obviously been hollow? She was struggling with the decision and in telling her family, she hoped that they would tell her what the right thing to do was.

“He should at least have to pay something towards the sprog’s care,” her father finally replied, chewing thoughtfully on his brussel-sprouts and giving her that look that said she knew she needed it and this was not the time for pride to override good sense. Of course she knew it and he had seemed to have some money behind him, considering what he was driving and the clothes he wore, and she didn’t really want to be bringing up a child in a damp, drafty, cramped apartment. And yet….

“But then he gets some rights to the kid,” Trina pointed out as she had been doing with Tabby since they had found out about the pregnancy. “Then he can take the kid who knows where and, if he does have money, he could even sue for custody and she’d lose.” Tabby nearly choked on her steamed carrots and Trina reached over to curl her hand around her friend’s. “Sorry babe, but it’s true. The biological mother doesn’t win all the time anymore.”

“If he’s the kind of jerk who lies about his name and shit, he’s not gonna want anything to do with the kid,” Darrel gave his sister one of those ‘all for one and one for all’ looks across the table and Tabby managed a weak smile in return. “Fuck him. You don’t need him. We’ll make sure the kid doesn’t go without,” he added, puffing up his chest, just like he had when he was five years old and some of the bigger kids had been picking on her about her braces. He’d stood his ground in front of her and made it known he’d take on anyone who picked on his big sister. He could be a jerk sometimes but Tabby loved him with all her heart.

“He’s right, for once,” Tabby’s mother leaned over and patted her daughter’s hand. “And I’ll make a call to Uncle Dave, see if we can’t get something done about that house,” she added to which Tabby bristled.

“I was thinking…I mean I know that it would be crazy to be away from all of you, but I own it and…maybe I should move back there.” Every set of eyes stared at her and she shrugged. “It’s just a thought.”

“We’ll get the house sold,” her mother reiterated, “and then you won’t have to worry so much over money.” The pat that she gave Tabby’s hand then made it seem like it was over, there was nothing more to talk about. That was that and suddenly she felt like things were going to be taken out of her hands and the idea of moving back to that rickety old house with its’ creaks and groans and leaking roof didn’t seem like such a bad idea after all.

_____________________________________________________________


“Yes, I had thought of that.” Sidney rubbed at the bridge of his nose, which, along with just about everything else in his head, was beginning to throb. He was beginning to question the references of the private detective that he was sitting across from. He was still having a hard time imagining this guy getting information on hockey players and their agents that Shero could use to entice them to the steel town. “The estate agent referred me to her Uncle, who, I’m pretty sure, was the one who talked her into selling up and leaving in the first place,” he added, grimacing at the short, very impersonal discussion he’d had with dear old Uncle Dave who had been even less helpful than the ladies at Harlequin. “And she doesn’t twitter or facebook or myspace or any of that stuff…at least as far as I can tell,” Sidney added with a sigh.

“And you’ve checked her friend’s networks?” the man asked, noting something in the little black book he carries with him.

“No…I mean…I never got to meet any of her friends and she didn’t really talk enough about them for me to know where to start,” Sidney admits, that heavy feeling in his stomach beginning to make him feel like maybe this was a really bad idea.

“It’s not a lot to go on,” the dick admits, tapping his pen on the paper in front of him before looking across the desk to where Sid feels like squirming. The guy knows who he is and he’s already handed a wad of cash over to him; five hundred a day, plus expenses. It’s kind of like a guy having you by the jockstrap, it’s uncomfortable and embarrassing and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it without making it worse. “You have thought that maybe she doesn’t want you to find her?” the man asks in that slow, straightforward tone that says a lot about what he thinks of Sid’s lack of game. Sid nods, dropping his gaze because it’s hard to have another grown man looking at you like it’s almost funny for a young guy with all the money in the world not to be able to get the woman he wants, like the guy’s enjoying that idea just a little too much. “There are stalker laws…,” the guy begins and Sidney finds his fingers itching to grab the folded bills back, stuff them in his wallet and leave.

“Look…I…I fucked up with her okay? I just want the chance to…,” to fuck her again, to have her in his bed and make her scream his name, “to apologize, if nothing else.” There, he’s said it and the guy gives a slow, deliberate nod as if to say that he can understand that. It’s the best play that he can make. Everyone thinks of him as that good, polite kid and he knows damn well that everyone will buy a story like that. That he just wants to make amends and sure that’s a part of it, but only a part.

“And you’re sure she’s in Vancouver?” the guy makes another note in his book while Sid nods and then the guy snaps his little book shut. “Okay, well, I’ll make some inquiries but I can’t promise anything. I’ll be in touch with you as soon as I know anything.” The man pushes his chair back with a loud scraping sound and Sid takes that as a signal to do the same. He stretches his hand out and Sid finds himself looking into a pair of grey eyes and he can’t help but notice the lack of sincerity in them.

This was a bad idea, he tells himself again as he shakes the man’s hand. It might be a bad idea, the devil on his other shoulder tells him, but what other plays have you got to make hot shot? The game in Vancouver is in three weeks and he knows that will be his best shot and he’ll only have a few hours to try and convince her that he’s not really the biggest asshole in the world.

“I know finding her isn’t a guarantee she’ll see me,” he says quietly, his hand on the doorknob, “but I have to find her, please.” He looks back at the detective who is already moving to go back to his computer. Somewhere in his mind Sid knows that finding her on the world wide web is probably the fastest, easiest way but he can’t help wishing that the guy would pull out a fedora and go charging out into the street to do it the old fashioned way.

“I’ll do my best,” the man with the cool grey stare nods in a dismissive way and Sid slunk back out the door he’d come in and down the dimly lit hall and he couldn’t help feeling as pathetic as Max had told him it was to do this. But then Max hadn’t held her in his arms, hadn’t heard her call out his name.

Would she be flattered, or horrified that he would go to these kinds of lengths to see her again? Either way it was done now, and couldn’t be undone. It was kind of like shaking your gloves off in front of someone you know can and probably will kick your ass. You know it’s going to hurt but sometimes you just have to do it, he told himself as he made his way back out onto the street where Max and Kris were waiting and he deliberately didn’t meet their curious gazes. They could mock him all they wanted, but when he had her back, he’d be the one laughing.

_____________________________________________________________


“Stop dragging your feet momma,” Trina reached back to grab a hold of Tabby’s wrist as they trudged towards the front doors of the big box electronics store.

“I don’t want you buying things for me,” Tabby moaned, eyeing a sizeable puddle near the door and wondering again what the weather would be like back in Nova Scotia. Much the same, or so her Uncle had told her, when she’d phoned to casually inquire about the house the other night.

“So pay me back when you sell another piece,” her friend insisted, giving her a shove through the doors and past the new dvd releases. Tabby gazed longingly at the stack of movies she couldn’t afford and then obligingly followed her taller, leaner friend down the aisle towards the back of the store where they kept the more expensive, high ticket items.

Like fourty-seven inch high def LCD TV’s. Tabby sighed as Trina paused to get her bearings, and stared at all of the thin flat screens that were so much better than the twenty inch tube set she had at home that now looked positively ancient in comparison. Tabby stood in the middle of the store, surrounded by what seemed like a hundred different sizes of television sets and stared.

“Does anyone have a remote? Can someone turn up the sound?” she asked, turning and looking at one of the bigger screens, her fingers itching to reach out and run her fingers over the planes of his face, to wipe away the droplets of sweat from his upper lip, to trace the line of a new scar that bisected the bridge of his nose.

“Tabs, we’re here to get a microwave so that you can heat up baby bottles, not look at shit you so cannot afford with another mouth to feed on the way,” Trina reminded her, tugging at her arm, trying to lead her away but Tabby felt as if her feet were cemented to the spot. No, worse than that, that she was stuck in quick sand and sinking fast.

“That’s him,” she whispered, her voice almost a sigh as she stared at him in full HD. Spots and all, he was just as beautiful as she remembered.

“That’s who?” Trina asked, having given up on tearing Tabby away from the spot she was obviously unwilling to leave. “That’s Sidney Crosby,” she added, answering her own question. “Yeah, I guess he’s cute. I’m more into the dirty Frenchmen on the team and…,” Trina’s voice dropped off as she turned and stared intently at her friend. “He’s…Tabitha King, are you telling me that that,” she pointed at his likeness on the screen just as he smiled widely, making Tabby’s knees go weak, “that is your baby daddy?” Trina added, pitching her voice even lower than a whisper. Tabby nodded without tearing her gaze away from the screen. “Wait, are you actually trying to tell me that the guy you haven’t been able to stop talking about…the guy that you had sex with all summer…is Sidney fucking Crosby?”

“I guess…no…I mean he said his name was Patrick,” Tabby finally turned to her friend, her face a mask of confusion. “Who is this…who is Sidney Crosby?”

“Oh my god…have you been living in a barn or something?” Trina stared at her, disbelief written clearly all over her face. When Tabby continued to stare blankly back at her Trina finally relented and rolled her eyes. “Oh c’mon, the Olympics were even here for crying out loud. He’s like the golden boy for the entire country! What were you like the only person in the entire city not watching the Gold Medal hockey game?”

“Damon and I went to Cuba during the Olympics…you know I don’t watch sports,” Tabby complained, turning back to watch him run a towel over his dark, curly hair. “So his name is…Sidney?” she tried the name out, letting it roll over her tongue. She’d always like the name Patrick and it certainly sounded stronger, more masculine, than Sidney, and yet, she thought, maybe it suited him. “So he plays hockey…here?” she asked, thinking of the arena down at the end of the Georgia Viaduct and wondering how she could have missed seeing him at the couple of practices she’d been at.

“No…no he plays for Pittsburgh,” Trina shook her head impatiently at her friend and pointed at the logo on the front of his black and gold jersey. Tabby nodded silently, the pieces of the puzzle falling into place.

“I mean…I knew he lied to me…I mean, when I tried to track him down through Gatorade and they were like ‘we don’t have a Patrick that works for us in Halifax but…,” she fell silent as the Trina finally got a hold of the remote and turned up the sound. The small hairs on her arms stood on end as she heard his voice, that almost boyish, half hoarse, half adolescent hormone driven cracking voice of his.

“Well…the stuff he told you was half true,” Trina began her gaze also on the large screen in front of them. Tabby glanced at her, her eyes narrowed and Trina didn’t even have to look over to know that she was waiting for an explanation. “Well, Sidney Patrick Crosby, for one,” Trina began, counting off on her fingers, “and he is a spokesperson for Gatorade and RBK, so that’s two,” she continued, springing another finger from her fist. “And he is from Cole Harbor, born and bred, he just lives in Pittsburgh during the hockey season,” she added, sticking her thumb out to make three. “So…yeah he lied but he wasn’t far off.” Tabby blinked at her friend’s fingers and then turned back to stare at the screen. He was laughing which made that scar on his cheek look almost like a dimple and his caramel coloured eyes to narrow and it made her guts hurt. Her hands automatically spread protectively over her stomach and she suddenly felt very light headed. “They’re playing here in a couple weeks,” Trina added quietly, moving in behind Tabby, ready to catch her if she fainted.

“Here?” Tabby repeated weakly as Trina nodded. “Here,” she repeated to herself, wondering at the way her stomach lurched at the idea. Was that excitement or fear? Did it mean she had to tell him?

The interview was over and, running a towel over his dark, wavy hair, he had turned around and Tabby watched him walk down the corridor in his black and gold uniform, teetering comfortably on his skates. She felt an ache in chest. Her mouth was dry.
She reached for her phone and searched for a number before hitting the start button. She waited, holding her breath until she heard the voice on the other end of the line.

“Katie…, it’s Tabitha. I have a huge favor to ask.”