----- Amanda Brown

After a long night out exploring the city I now found myself in a cushioned chair with a rough navy blue seat cover in the Tampa International Airport. I wore a pair of large sunglasses to keep anyone from questioning my evenings activities, but so far most people had walked by me or given me an understanding nod. Half of the women were even sporting pairs of glasses similar to mine. Last night I had gone out planning to get food and find places to go to with Grace tonight, then one thing turned into another and I was drinking with some people from USF. Sometime around 2AM I got back to the hotel and thankfully Grace’s flight wasn’t arriving until 5PM or else I would’ve slept straight through it.

I checked my phone where the time read 5:36. As always the flight had been on time, but the picking up of luggage took forever.

“Hey Amanda!” I heard my name echo around the open room buzzing with people that I was sitting in.

Grace was no where to be seen so I stood to get a better view of the room, “I’m here.”

“I see you, hold on,” again the words echoed around and I couldn’t find the origin of the sound. Normally Grace’s hair stood out and I could easily spot her. This time I could barely recognize her voice. It sounded familiar and called my name so it had to be her, but it didn’t feel right. Had it been so long since I last saw her that I didn’t recognize her voice even though I spoke to her last night?

“Hey Amanda,” the voice was behind my back now and I spun quickly to face it.

Instead of Grace with her reddish brown hair to greet me I was met by the puffy, curly, sandy brown hair of Sara. I couldn’t remember the last time that I saw her or even spoke to her directly.

What felt like nearly a minute passed before I could bring myself to say anything, “Hey Sara. What’re you doing here? Where’s Grace?”

It wasn’t that I didn’t like Sara. We had been close friends ever since elementary school, but we had never spent time alone hanging out. Ever since high school we hadn’t hung out at all actually. Plus, while I knew she liked hockey and we occasionally talked about it, this trip was for Grace and I to try and fix our mistakes. Sara was cool, but she didn’t really fit into that plan at all.

Sara looked momentarily flustered and I hoped that I didn’t sound too rude. She must’ve felt just as awkward as I did taking a plane to meet me in the place of Grace. Probably because they needed her to do med school stuff or something.

“Grace was at the hospital until like 4 this morning and when she got back she was dead, but really excited because apparently something great happened to her. She said it was a crazy opportunity that she had to jump on and she was so sorry for not being able to come. If you check your email I think that she sent you one about it.”

I dug through my brain to try and figure out what could be so important that she’d miss our trip. Did someone propose? Was she graduating early? An internship? Nothing made sense, but was it so unexpected that I needed an email to explain it to me? Maybe she was too scared to tell me herself even over the phone. I probably would have yelled at her a little bit, but only because she promised to come and I was more disappointed than mad.

Whatever came up better have been crazy important for her.

Now I was with Sara in Tampa with glass seats to a Blackhawks game and no options left. Sara and I could get along, that I was sure of, but how would she take to my plan. Did she even have to know? Grace wasn’t much of a talker, so I doubted that she told Sara everything about our trip to Chicago. I still wasn’t sure that she told me everything that happened when she took Jonathan home. That meant Sara was here for the game and that was it. Maybe she’d even catch the eye of a different player and then the three of us could go to a game.

“Well, now you’re here,” I tried to distract her from my momentary lapse of speech while I tried to figure out the situation, “and we better get going if we’re going to make it to warm-ups.”

With the mention of the game Sara lit up and I felt good about having her around. She took her single suitcase and I led her to where my car was parked outside. The air, as it always seemed to be in the Southeast, was humid and clung to us as we stepped through the sliding doors into the shade of the building then finally out into the blazing sun.

“I can’t believe it’s still sunny at nearly 6,” Sara’s face was already covered in beads of sweat from our short walk.

To try and keep her comfortable I stuck my key in the ignition and cranked up the air conditioning. Since my family went on yearly trips to visit the family North Carolina I hadn’t found the transition to Arkansas and the states further south difficult. I had never thought about being grateful for that until I saw Sara directing every fan in the car towards her.

I took off driving and while I knew that our trip was going to be under twenty minutes I couldn’t help but glance at her every so often to check if she was still alive.

“You know what Amanda?” Sara’s mouth barely moved from where she was leaning back in her seat having taken off her light jacket.

Driving close enough to the other cars leaving the airport that I could see the people inside it took every fiber of my being not to laugh at all the visitors doing the same as Sara in their respective cars. “What?” was all I could manage out without laughing.

“I cannot wait to get to the rink and I hope we’re close enough to get cold.”

We were gonna be close alright.

----- Patrick Kane

“Come on Kane, let’s go,” Jonny whined from the entrance to the visitors locker room, but I refused to turn around.

“Our four game road trip just started, can we at least wait until the second before we go out on another one of your crazy nights?”

This time I turned to face him and he took this as my consent to his proposition. In reality I saw the clock on the wall, knew that we had to go now and it had actually been a long time since we had had a crazy night. Sure, we had gone out after games and over the summer occasionally, but I couldn’t remember the last time that we had really hit the nightlife hard. It was about time that we did, even if we didn’t have the same win streaks and points to back our actions up I had spent a lot of time thinking that if we just went out and maybe found girls again we could boost ourselves. In turn that would help the team do better. Kill two birds with one stone.

Walking down the hallway to the rink I could feel the pregame goosebumps rippling across my skin. After years of playing the NHL and an even longer history with hockey in general the anticipation of a game still got my heart racing and my body shaking. Even with Jonny’s longer legs my excited steps brought me me up quickly behind him and by the time he was stepping out onto the ice I was on the heels of his skates, unable to see beyond his towering body.

As the great wall of Toews revealed the rink and crowd to me I was hit by the harsh difference from the wall of red and white that surrounded our rink at home to the now wave of blue with speckles of white. As always, it blew me away to see the crowd of our opponent. It was something incredible to see so many people who, while they wanted my team to fail, were also bonded by a less sinister desire from my perspective: a love of the game.

“Heads up Kaner!” I brought my head back to ice level just in time to see a puck shooting straight towards me. My hand automatically turned my stick to tap the puck ahead of me on my circular course around what would be our defensive end of the rink first. The man who fired the puck at me, Duncan Keith, tapped the ice for the puck back with a wild grin on his face. He could be a pain in the ass, but he was a backbone of the team and without him I’d probably get a lot more shit for my defensive skills. I was fine defensively, no matter what the haters said, but I was no defensive player.

I fired the puck back at him, aiming it barely in front of him so he had to retrieve it from in between his skates, “Watch your shot Duncs! You gotta get in the net, not just hit the screen!” He made a face at me and I made one back knowing that we’d settle our score later. I was serious about him putting the puck in the net though. We were a strong team with a playoff spot and a chance to clinch the division, but until that happened we needed to keep producing. It felt like the 2013-2014 season in the way that we were struggling in the dragging month of March. Except that time I had had to sit and watch helplessly.

I looked up as I skated past the referee’s crease towards the half boards. Seeing the spots of red in the sea of blue I felt a rush of pride in my chest for our devoted fans who put so much faith in us to do well. This year I knew that I could help my team and I planned on doing just that.

As I rounded the half boards across from our bench I saw a royal blue dress, darker than the Lightning jerseys and on a girl much prettier than the Lightning fans. It was the worst case of déjà vu I had ever had and I couldn’t stop myself from doing a double take. This time I got a little bit of a clearer view of her and I knew that I’d seen her before. I still had no idea how I knew her, but there was no way that my stomach would start turning like this just because the game was starting in a few minutes.

Someone shoved me from my thoughts and I got what little breath was in my tightened chest knocked out of me as I hit the boards. In my face was the center of Crow’s face, the rest covered by his heavy-duty helmet, “Focus Kane, and watch where you’re going in my trap.”

“Got it,” over the past week it was easy to see how frustrated Crawford had become with the game in front of him. He tried to act like he didn’t blame anyone and that it was a full team issue, but on the flight down he had confessed to me his real feelings about our play. He said he was trying his best and that he wished the rest of the team would pick up the slack. Usually I would disagree and say that it was the other way around or at least evenly distributed error by everyone, but with the lazy play we had developed Crawford barely had any chances to stop pucks anymore.

Even though I wasn’t supposed to go against the flow I took off away from Crawford back the way I had come. If he hadn’t shoved me I probably would’ve started back before the guys stopped cycling to take shots and gotten reprimanded by our frustrated captain, but instead I skated straight to the girl in the royal blue dress without anyone in my way.

Her reaction when I skated over proved to me that I had met her before. Sparkling eyes told me that she was happy to see me, but her relaxed expression was something that few girls seemed to be able to hold in my presence and those were the memorable girls. That explained my déjà vu,

“Hey,” I yelled hoping that she could hear me though the wobble in my voice and over the booming crowd cheering for their players that took turns flashing on the jumbotron.

The girl next to her shaking, causing her curly hair bounce around in the edge of my vision which was distracting, but she was attractive from what I could tell so I didn’t completely mind. Unlike the girl that I recognized she was in a red jersey, number 88: my jersey. I liked her a little more already.

“Long time no see,” the girl in the royal blue dress shouted back. I was sure that I knew her name. I wanted to use it to show her that I remembered because the memory of our sweaty dancing night was now fresh in my mind and I couldn’t impress her by only remembering her body. She had had a friend, cranberry girl, who was now no where to be seen and her name was Grace. I had heard Toews talk about her enough over the summer after the convention that her name was now imprinted on my mind.

Damn it, Grace and who?

All of a sudden it hit me.

“Mandy!” The sparkle in her eyes spread out across her face and her wide grin made her radiant. The tightness in my chest became a warmth throughout my body that made me thankful for the cool layer of air above the ice. This moment of us meeting made the past five years guessing who she was and waiting for us to run into each other again worth it. I doubted that she just happened to buy these tickets to this game, but the point was that she did and I remembered her.

Toews’ outline appeared on the glass beside me before he reached me, but the violent way that he grabbed my shoulder still caught me off guard.

“Come on Kane. We’ve got a game to play.”

I turned to him to point us both towards the bench. He was a little more violent than he needed to be, but with the way that our team had been playing and with the shit that we were receiving, especially him, I understood and I expected a hardened expression on his face. What I was met with was much more like the face that I made when I recognized Mandy. The surprise and expectation of good things, except I had Mandy here and Grace was no where in sight.

“Jonny,” I began, but he was quick to skate off.

“Come on Patrick.”

Notes

Long story short on why I suck at life. I got into this elite choir and I got to go stay in a hotel for a few days cause we spent 3 days straight singing literally all day. It was an incredible experience and I met some really cool people, but the point is that I left my computer at the hotel because I am an idiot. Thankfully, I got it back yesterday along with all the homework that I left there too.

Now that I've posted this, which I've been so excited to write, I get to write a 2,600 word history paper. About the same length as this, just less interesting to write which means it will take forever. Sorry if you don't care about my life by the way, just tell me and I (might) keep it to my Tumblr.

ALSO I've decided that with sports and school the schedule is really stressful and doesn't make me want to write. Plus, then I miss the date and feel horrible and you guys are left guessing what the hell is wrong with me. Instead I'm going to try to write a chapter a week, but sometimes it might come a little sooner or a little later.