----- Amanda Brown

Watching Patrick skate away after our very brief encounter hurt me more than when we kissed our good-byes five years before. This time I knew that I would be seeing him again, because there was no way that I was losing him twice, but without the buzz from a night of drinking and dancing and a kiss to seal our time together it felt more permanent. Plus, this time I had expectations for our night out and hopes for a future while last time it was enough for him just to show up.

Then there was the way that Jonathan looked at Sara and I. He skated over like he was going to kill Patrick, almost smiled and left looking angrier than when he first came over. How upset could he be about Grace not being here? Sure, Sara was no Grace, but he saw me so he must know that there is at least a way that he can now reach her.

“What was his deal?” Sara said, sounding personally insulted. She leaned up on the glass to see the players who were no longer coming to us and pointed towards the mass of red jerseys across the ice. Narrowing her eyes like a lioness on the hunt and speaking with the sultry voice of a torch singer she pressed her index finger against the glass, leaving her fingerprint on the glass. “That one. I want to know what’s got him bothered.”

If only she knew what really had the captain bothered. Sure, he had been having media on his ass about the Blackhawks struggles for a while, but in that moment when he skated over his heart was obviously broken. You could see it in the way his eyes lost their shine when he got to our seats on the half boards. It barely took a second, but he went from a dignified captain to a sad puppy.

Oh my god.

His heart was broken.

I felt the cold air brush against my gums as my face broke into a huge grin from ear to ear. Five years ago, when Grace had told me about her night at his apartment I was sure that there was more to the story. Even back then I knew that there had to be more to them. Nine out of ten times when I assumed that two people had something, or were meant to be it was just me being my outwardly sappy romantic self, but this proved that I was right for once.

Poor girl, all this time thinking that he didn’t care about her when five years ago she must’ve actually fucked up with her number after all. To think that I had assured her that there was no way that she had put her number in incorrectly when she had. Shit, no wonder she hated talking about it. The whole situation must kill her self-confidence every time she thinks about it.

At this point in my revelations my heart was racing and even at ice level I felt a sweat breaking on my brow. With the way that my body was shaking and my core temperature was rising my body could have appeared like I was coming down with a nasty flu. Although Sara never would have noticed, with her face stuck to the glass still pointing towards the bench even though Jonathan was at the center faceoff circle for the puck drop.

“I bet that if the Blackhawks win tonight then Toews will be fine.” I had gotten lost in my own thoughts and, while I heard Sara’s comment about Jonathan, I had completely forgotten to answer. Patrick and Grace were more important.

Sara stopped cheering in celebration of Jonathan winning the puck on the first drop and resorted to just clapping to say, “Great for him, but I was talking about Kane.”

Somewhere on my chest cavity a cartoon hand appeared and balled itself up to punch me square in the heart with nothing but knuckles. I couldn’t even bring myself to keep clapping for the Blackhawks.

As casually as I could, keeping my eyes glued to the action on the ice, I tried to bait Sara into explaining herself to me, “He didn’t seem bothered to me.”

“Maybe bothered wasn’t the best word for it,” she began what was supposed to be a long description or so I thought. As quickly as she started talking she stopped to gasp a split second after Patrick, who jumped onto the ice to take Hossa’s place because his stick was broken by Stamkos while they shoved each other on the face-off, took a shot that ricocheted off the post. The ping reminded me of five years before when we were in the elevator of Jonathan’s building together before we interrupted him and Grace. I had gotten a text, my ringtone being the popular NOTE from the average quality list of options from Apple.

After the first text message I didn’t notice anything that might have counted as a reaction from him. I had been too concerned with getting my sister to believe that Grace and I were fine, in our hotel room and packed for our journey home. Normally my sister was a very fast texter, but when she got mad or anxious it became rapid fire. She asked me maybe twenty times if I was really in the room and once it felt sincere enough for her she said goodnight and I finally got a look at Patrick. He didn’t look particularly scared like when I would jump out at Grace from around a corner. Instead he made the air feel tense and I felt like I couldn’t say anything to him because he was now guarding himself.

From my perspective nothing had changed in the last minute, give or take a few seconds, except the floor level, so I asked him what was wrong. He did a little shimmy in response and suddenly he was the same fun Patrick again saying that nothing was wrong.

One thing that I have always believed to be true is that if people give you a short, especially clipped, answer to a question about their feelings and you give them enough time they will usually finish their thought and then some.

This time it took him until we left the elevator and reached Jonathan’s door for him to tell me what was up with his mood swing in the elevator. Not knowing where Jonathan lived I followed Patrick out of the elevator and down the carpeted hallway where the sleek dark wood doors were spaced with too much space between them for normal sized apartments. They were either huge or they had very thick walls, and considering the kinds of people who lived in the building and the stuff they were probably up to both possibilities were plausible.

He stopped on a dime in front of a door, but instead of moving to open it he turned to me. At the time I wasn’t thinking about what happened in the elevator, my thoughts were more on how Grace was, so I stood there because I didn’t know what else to do. I’m pretty sure that he was smiling though, and the next thing I knew he started laughing. My throat contracted like my body was trying to do the same, but since he had turned to me I hadn’t taken a breath so nothing came out.

Patrick couldn’t stop laughing, but he did manage to tell me what had gotten to him in the elevator in a broken series of hiccup breaths. My ringtone had reminded him of the ping when a puck hits the post, also known as the sound of his nightmares. That was it, but by then I was prepared for the worst like he knew someone that died in an elevator or worse he didn’t enjoy our night of drinking and dancing. The ping sounding like the puck off a goalpost making him upset was absolutely nothing compared to what I imagined so I started laughing too and the rest of the night was history.

Well, it could have been some real history for the books if we had stayed out later and not interrupted Grace and Jonathan.

The horn signalling the end of the period echoed around the Tampa Bay Times Forum, grabbing me by the shoulders and slapping me out of my daydream. Somehow I had managed to miss and entire period because of Patrick. Damn him.

----- Patrick Kane

It wasn’t a bad first period.

It wasn’t a good one either.

I didn’t want to call anyone out and blame them for their sloppy play hurting our team effort, but I didn’t have to. Before he even reached the locker room behind the team Coach Q was already yelling at Jonny.

“I have never seen such shit playing from you in all my years of coaching you! Nine giveaways in one period when you were on the ice for six minutes. I don’t have a fucking clue how that is even possible. Get you head out of your ass and play the game!” His white hair was blinding on his tomato red head and what little of it he had left was sticking out in all directions from him pulling at it all during the first period to keep his hands occupied. Otherwise he might’ve done something fineable, like when he thrusted at the referees that one time.

He has probably done that more than once.

Jonny barely responded. I know that it’s a tough situation to be in because you’re being yelled at so you should probably shut up and take it, but at the same time you’re being yelled at to get a response that is hopefully productive to fix the problem. While Jonny didn’t get treated like this often he knew that Coach wanted a response. All that Quenneville got was Jonny sitting there staring at his gloves like he wasn’t in the room.

Quenneville coached long enough to know when to back off and moved on to the other guys, praising Duncs for covering Jonny’s ass, which meant that he was still really pissed at Jonny. I felt like it might be in Jonny’s benefit to tell everyone why he was so out of it, but it wasn’t my place. Plus, he might just get mad at me then for thinking that I’m better than him or something. It wasn’t my fault that my girl from five years ago showed up at my game and his didn’t.

My smile felt wrong because Jonny was so down about Grace not being here tonight yet I smiled anyways. Somehow the universe had worked itself out and Mandy had found her way back into my life even though it was my fault that I had never been able to reach her because I had deleted her number. The most unpleasant part of it all was when I called Amanda expecting Mandy and realized what I had done. It made me feel sick and frustrated with myself for a while, but I got over it. Grace hadn’t given Jonny her full number, so it wasn’t even his fault. What was he supposed to do? Try every areacode in America and beyond? I glanced at him doubled over like his gloves were his universe and sure, he was taking it too hard and needed to focus, but I still felt bad.

It wasn’t his fault he was a romantic who felt cheated.

Cheated twice if you bothered to remember Lindsey.

Coach Q didn’t feel the same way as me and held Jonny back as the rest of us filed down the hallway back to the rink for the second period. Staying within earshot meant death by suicides at our next practice, so we all made like scared dogs running away with our tails between our legs.

Sharpy, who was starting with Hossa and Handzus, skated past my seat on the bench and firmly whispered, “Talk to Jonny.”

The other, more mature, Patrick had really embraced the fatherly role on the team while to a large part of the fans he was still the FILF with the pretty eyes. Whenever Jonny needed support and I wasn’t good enough he was there with his big “A” on his chest. He was also very good at getting me to go to Jonny when he obviously could use encouragement and was too stubborn to ask while I was too oblivious to notice. Today I was ready, with an empty seat next to me waiting for Jonny and I gave Sharpy a thumbs up on his way to the nearside of the faceoff circle at center ice.

Nobody said a word when Coach Q came out with Jonny at his heels. Not a single person even took a breath until he started barking at the guys on the ice about the long change and to be ready and listen carefully to avoid too many men on the ice. It was actually to avoid suicides at our next practice if we took such a stupid penalty.

“Hey Jonny,” with Mandy across the ice from us I felt guilty trying to console him.

His voice was quiet, not because he meant it to be, he just sounded weak “Patrick.”

I took a quick glance at where her seat was, but from the blur that I saw she wasn’t there. It was just her friend in my jersey, so this had to be quick before she came back. Being able to see her while I played gave me an urge to score and with Jonny in this emotional state I needed to.

“Look, I’m sorry that Grace isn’t here.” Jonny cringed and one of the trainers next to him made a move to ask him if he was okay. He just barely caught my look to back off and almost seemed to have a look of understanding like he had gone through this before. Could he teach me how to get Jonny through this?

The puck dropped and the arena became drowned in the roar of the crowd. Considering the way that Jonny had been playing it looked like my line was up next and I began spitting out everything that came to mind, “It wasn’t your fault that you guys never got to talk after the convention. She didn’t give you her whole number and I’m sure that it kills her just as much as it kills you. But hey, look on the bright side! Mandy is here and she will have Grace’s number so you can call her. I bet she was supposed to come today and something came up. Doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to be here and if she doesn’t then screw her anyways.”

Thinking about what I just said I decided that it would be a good time to stop talking. My goal was just to get Jonny feeling good enough to play and maybe go out with me tonight. Instead it sounded more like I was trying to get Jonny ready to get drunk and stalk her while whining about how she never meant anything to him even though it really seemed like she did. Thankfully he was just looking up at the ice and watching the game semi-intently.

“I know,” he swallowed hard and his Adam’s Apple took the long slide up and down his throat, “I just really wish that she came tonight. When I skated over I saw you with Mandy and I got so excited that when she wasn’t there it felt like a worse punch to the gut then the morning after the convention and that time I also had a hangover beating me up.”

Duncs and Callahan slammed into the boards right in front of Jonny but he didn’t flinch. His mind was somewhere else and I don’t think that he’d ever been that focused in a conversation with me before.

“I guess I assumed that they were like us. Spending all of their time together and being with each other all the time. My brain just kinda put us four together, two and two, in some perfect match that just isn’t possible in the real world I guess,” he looked out across the ice like it was the window of a plane, ”’Cause what we’re doing, playing hockey, is living a dream.”

After his speech I found myself starting at Jonny with my mouth hanging open. What was there I could say? I could barely even process the ideas that had just come from his broken heart. This explained the success of heartbroken songwriters and poets that no one understood, but went along with anyways because it sounds right and it’s easier to go along with the crazy than to argue. That’s how I felt. Comparable to a population of teenage girls and those going through their midlife crises.

Like the God sent man that he rarely was Coach Q barked at me to get out on the ice before I had a chance to say anything to Jonny. While throwing myself over the boards I caught his eye and tried to smile to make up for my lack of verbal confirmation that I was completely with him on all of what he just told me, but it was like he wasn’t even there.

----- Sara Vold

I had been to plenty of Bruins games in my time, but it was a totally different experience in an opponents arena for a team that wasn’t even my main affiliation. On the drive to the rink from the airport I had decided to wear my Kane jersey so that I’d fit in with a team even with Mandy sitting next to me in a royal blue dress like she was there for the Lightning. She had bought it maybe six years ago for a party around the same time that I secretly bought the jersey I was wearing with my first credit card. Impressive that she still fit in it.

There was something about the idea of buying a Blackhawks jersey while beginning my officially adult life of eighteen in Boston that didn’t really go too well with my new roommates. That’s why I just didn’t tell them and I had it shipped to my parents house for me to fold it into a blanket that I then stored under my bed. I only wore it on Halloween where it got me some action, when my soccer team’s spirit was rival teams and when I visited my brother at the University of Chicago. When people would ask me whose it was I said it was his, so it was only fitting that I brought it back to him, I just never actually gave it back.

One thing that I couldn’t figure out was why she was wearing an old blue dress while we were here to see the red Chicago Blackhawks and she owned a Kane jersey too. It looked comfortable so that she could still jump up and cheer should we score, but we hadn’t yet even had a chance to see how it would really hold up in the act of celebrating and we were already into the third period.

“Anything happen?” I laughed at Mandy’s plain ol’ dumb question with the jumbotron reading Lightning 3 and the Blackhawks 0. “You’re right,” she handed me the third large popcorn that we had eaten, one for each period, “but maybe something will. Three is a magic number.”

Taking a healthy handful of popcorn to my face with the way the game was looking with seven minutes left it seemed unlikely that the Blackhawks would mount a comeback. I wanted them to, but Crawford subpar play looked like that of my high school’s losing record goalie. Across the ice Raanta was grabbing his helmet during a TV stoppade, so it looked like Quenneville had the same idea as me.

Next to me Mandy was on the same page as us and most Blackhawks fans out there, “Finally, let’s go Blackhawks.”

“Why are you wearing blue if you’re here to see the Blackhawks?” I asked her without taking my eyes off the action. Over the course of the second period it felt like Kane did more skate bys looking towards my seat and I refused to miss a chance to catch his eye. Before the game where he spoke with Mandy I had no idea what they were saying, but he looked at me so that was good.

He looked at me.

He must’ve seen that I was wearing his jersey with a happy smile on my face and that was basically everything that he needed to know about me to start.

Kane settled the puck behind Raanta and waiting for the ice to clear ahead of him. He had the choice to go either way around the cage with the Lightning comfortable with their lead. Hopefully he’d pick left and come right up against the glass. I leaned forward with what I believed to be a disinterested but sexy look just in case he did, the kind of look that said ‘I want you but I don’t need you’.

With a hop in his step he took off around boards exactly where I wanted trailed by his flow flapping around out from under the back of his helmet. He wore a white mouthguard that was famously never in his mouth that easily passed for his teeth and this time he was wearing it correctly. My eyes, staying closely to where I assumed his were, watched them meet mine in a flash around the boards. “Oh my God!” I cheered and jumped up in my seat like they had scored. Alongside me Mandy had done the same and the people around us must have thought that we were crazy.

A second later the red blotches in the crowd were joining us.

Looking up at the jumbotron for the replay of the goal it was a typically Kane's style. Flying up the boards he cut back sharply to lose the defense and popped the puck over the pad of Bishop into the back of the net. If it took his single effort to win the game while the rest of the team was cleaning up the captain’s mess I would be completely okay with that. Mostly because it was Kane and he’d be ready to party after the game, but so the team would win too.

Mandy put her hand up for a high five. “That’s why I wore this dress!” The sting of our hands meeting felt more like a tickle with my adrenaline racing, “It’s given good luck when it comes to the Blackhawks!”

Why an old blue dress would do that made no sense to me and with the mischievous look on her face there had to be more to her story. I could ask her, or let it go and focus on getting the attention of one Patrick Kane.

It was almost too easy for me to choose the latter and he did not disappoint.

Six minutes later and the clock ticking through the final seconds of the game Patrick gently passed the puck to the man with the game winning goal, Duncan Keith, after a spectacular hat trick by number 88. Each time before he had scored he had skated by my half boards and I could swear that we made eye contact every time like I was his good luck charm.

“Five, four, three, two, one, we won!” Mandy yelled and began pounding violently on the glass.

I turned to give her a hug, but she was occupied with something on the ice. Turning my head to the left I saw Patrick skating over to us and it was like all the energy I had pounding through my veins froze and I couldn’t move. The closer he got the easier it was for me to see his eyes in my direction and the greater my heart swelled. Somehow over the course of a game I had gotten his attention and stayed on his mind long enough for him to actually want to talk to me.

“Hey,” he spoke with a voice raspy with the exertion that comes with three goals and around twenty minutes of hard skating, “what’d you think of the game?”

My mouth wouldn’t form the words I needed to answer him, but it didn’t matter because he wasn’t talking to me.

“I think you could’ve scored more.”

He laughed, a light sound that carried over the tall glass, “How about we go out and you can tell me all about how I can do that?”

I couldn’t believe that I was hearing. He was asking someone- I glanced at the girl to my left -Mandy out.

Mandy?

“I thought you’d never ask,” her laugh travelled like his, leaving him with a goofy smile on his face.

The situation in front of me made no sense. After a night of eye contact he was talking to Mandy and she was acting like it was no big deal. Did they know each other or something? What was wrong with me compared to her? I felt a jealous pit forming in my stomach and suddenly I was bombarded by nasty thoughts about his choices in women and her being herself.

For a moment they were frozen in their own little space within the rocking arena of angry Lightning fans and defiant Hawks fans. I was a member of the successful group, but the scene unfolding before my eyes infuriated me so much that I couldn’t make a sound.

Eventually after what felt like an eternity Kane made a move to go back to his team and I allowed myself to fall back into my seat heavy with disappointment.

“Wait, I accidently deleted your number,” his cheeks turned pink like he was embarrassed, but I bet it was just from playing an intense game, “It’s a long story. Also, we need to talk about Grace and her phone skills. Meet me at the World of Beer and we can have a drink before going out. Thirty minutes tops.”

He finished with a wink and didn’t wait for an answer before skating away from Mandy with her starstruck eyes twinkling like they supposedly do when girls are around the guy that they’ve fallen for.

He was talking about Grace too? There was no way that they didn’t know each other.

“What the hell was that?” I tried not to sound jealous.

Tried.

Slowly descending into her chair like she was floating on a cloud Mandy took her sweet time turning to me. “Let me tell you what happened five years ago at the Blackhawks convention.”

Notes

Sorry I disappeared. I was grounded and lost computer privileges so I hand wrote this and finally got to type it up today- the day of my freedom.

Long story short tell your parents when your friend needed to leave their house for a while cause they're parents are kinda assholes and they come to your place and check their bag because parents don't like finding weed and tequila.

On the bright side they didn't keep me from the TV and wouldn't let me go out so lots of playoff hockey (sorry if your team didn't make it or is out)