Love Bites

----- Grace Hartin

The crowd lifted into a deafening roar as the three stars stepped on the stage and made their ways to their respective seats. The room of people that had been on their feet since entering made use of their cameras by climbing on chairs and jumping to get any angle that the person in front of them would allow. In the 12th row Amanda and I stood our ground, not letting anyone throw us off our balance. She had her phone out, using her height to take photos over the head of the woman in front of us while I tried to peek over the shoulder of her balding husband. At 5'8" height was never really an issue, but suddenly I was wishing that I had dressed like Amanda in some heels instead of my Vans.

"Thank you," a calm voice came from the speakers, "I'd like to thank you all for the amazing support this year and coming down to spend these special days with the players."

Another wave of cheers came from the crowd, drowning out the rest of his introduction. While the Blackhawks had been knocked out of the Stanley Cup race in the playoffs they still had a fantastic year and there were plenty of reasons to cheer.

I wasn't sure where the voice went, but eventually the cheers died down and people sat down. Thankfully the man in front of me was all leg, and when he sat I had a perfect view of the stage. Granted, it was still underlined by his bald head at the bottom of my vision.

"Hi everyone I'm Patrick Sharp-" a loud cheer went up again and he stopped talking until it died down.

I nudged Amanda who was looking through the photos on her phone, "Hey."

"Look at this photo," she held out her phone to me. It was a horizontal photo of the stage just as the guys sat down. They looked sharp in the HD, with the crowd below them a hazy mess. It looked really professional. "Not bad huh?" her eyes shined like she was a kid in a candy store again, or a sports fan in a pro shop.

"Yea, not bad." She pulled her phone back to her lap, trying to get the perfect crop for her Instagram. "Anyways, Amanda you mentioned a club tonight?"

Without looking up she responded nonchalantly, "Yes."

Did she not understand what I was trying to get at? "What were you talking about? How are we going to get into a club? Why? Where?"

Her exasperated sigh said 'you idiot', but her face said 'I pity you'. "Ms.Harvard girl, I was obviously talking about going to a club," I rolled my eyes and she flicked my forehead, "We'll get in with some confidence and fake IDs because we can and it'll be fun."

Rubbing my forehead I tried to give her my crossest look while my stomach began tying itself up. Like the time when we stole a couple of guys' beers at a Bruins game. "And where Ms.know-it-all?"

Amanda's white teeth flashed in a wide smile like she had been waiting for me to ask that very question and she raised her hand, "I'm about to find out."

----- Patrick Kane

Maybe a half hour had passed and people were still going strong. Questions and comments poured in from around the room and they cheered at everything. Literally everything. After a season of hard work, filled with ups and downs, it was easy to see how the support was always there from these very emotional people. Even after a tough loss they wouldn't give up and it was something that no one on the team could really put a value on until after it was over. If it wasn't for them we probably wouldn't have the drive to push until the very end. Except it wasn't really the end, because these people were still celebrating the highs of the season and preparing for the new one to follow.

"And as soon as Kaner scored his third goal of the game he went to the bench to get his hat and threw it on the ice," Sharpy told the simple story as if it was an intense battle, probably the exact way he told stories to his daughter, "That's when we knew that he needed to be taught a lesson, so we confiscated his hats and he hasn't been allowed a haircut since December."

The crowd erupted in laughter as his story came to a close, even though he told it every chance that he got, and I chose to appear indignant while running my hand through the darker than usual mop on my head. I wouldn't say that I enjoyed the flow that I had grown, but at least I looked better than Jonny who had been quiet the entire time unless spoken to.

Thankfully people had seemed to pick up on the fact that he didn't want to talk, but I could already imagine the tweets and posts full of speculations that would come that evening- if not already in this very moment. Sharpy had become more perceptive since having Madelyn and together we tried to keep attention away from Toews, who could barely manage a smile. Good thing he wasn't put in the photo line.

"Hey, hey," I waved my arms in the air thinking I could get the crowd to quiet. I thought wrong. "I might have been forced to grow my hair out longer that I would have liked it, but unlike the grease master over here," I poked a thumb in Sharpy's direction, "my hair is clean."

Hoots and hollers came from everywhere, led by the very mouth of my adversary in hair. "Anyways," I pointed to a girl in the center of the crowd with her arm raised before he could respond, "how're you?"

"I've been better," she shrugged and crossed her legs so that she turned away from her friend and faced me. One perk of my job that I always appreciated was the girls that I ran into. Sometimes they were crazy, and sometimes they were so bad that they were good. Then there were the ones that were just plain beautiful and I didn't want to do anything with them, I just wanted to be around them.

Suddenly I was caught in what felt like a one on one with one of those girls.

"Oh," I reached for my water and took a swig, feeling a wet trail left by some water that missed my mouth slide through my excuse for a beard, "I'm sorry to hear that." My voice sounded the same, but the words were awkward, "Can I help?"

Her approving, white smile cut through the crowd and my heart swelled with the prospect of having said my next line in her script perfectly, "Well, my YouTube playlist of your highlights from this season was way too long and really cut into my me time more than usual, so if you don't mind cutting down next year that'd be great."

I wondered how long she had been waiting to say that one, but I couldn't help but laugh along with most of the crowd and I didn't know why.

"Are you sure that you really want me to do that?" The eyes of crowd that had been burning into me head now turned to her, even Jonny was interested in the situation and looked up from the table.

Her smile vanished and I found myself disappointed when I saw her shrug again, "I guess not, but I would like you to make it up to me." Girls giggled and 'oo'ed while typing away on their iPhones, "My friend here," she gestured to the girl next to her in the red v-neck, "just turned 21 and she's a smart, but she needs to have some fun."

The girl next to her turned the color of her shirt, and something told me that the girl I was talking to had intended just that. "A smart girl you say?"

"Smart and by the rules, but I think she'll be out past her 10 o'clock bedtime tonight." She emphasized 'smart' and '10' with her signature shrug. Not generally things that I cared about, but she seemed to.

"Smart and out past 10?" I muttered, hoping that the mic didn't pick it up. The girl in the crowd started nodding and smiling as if she was encouraging me on. On to what though?

Suddenly it all clicked. Smart Bar on the North Side of Chicago at 10? Shit, what the hell just happened. Her eyes lit up as I made my realization, "So Kaner, sound like a good plan?"

Did she just secretly ask me out during a convention? "Yea," I felt breathless and some sweat had formed on the back of my neck like during the 2007 draft when I first joined the NHL, "sounds like a great plan."

----- Amanda Brown

I tried to keep the smile off my face as the crowd's attention was redirected across the room to someone new with a new question about a new topic. I really tried, but some how he had understood me and now, hopefully, I would be seeing him later that night.

"Did you hear that?" my whisper wasn't very quiet, but the crowd compensated for my lack of volume control. "Come on Grace, please tell me that you heard that?"

As usual Grace looked skeptical, but she began nodding slowly along with the steady beat being tapped out by her leg, "I heard something, but I'm not exactly sure what I heard."

My arm took control of itself and hit her hard in the shoulder, "You just heard Patrick fucking Kane agree to meet us at the Smart Bar at 10! Why are you not ridiculously excited?" I took pride in not being like the annoying and squeaky fans whose voices were so high that they sounded like squeals. I would never faint, unless on purpose, and I could be ice cold. Unless the situation involved a plan gone right and a cute boy. Then all of rainbow and butterfly hell could break loose.

"Woah hey," Grace's motherly voice came out as she massaged her shoulder, "you need to slow down and lower your voice. All I'm getting right now is an annoying ringing in my ear from you." The crowd laughed on cue. "How do you know that he understood all that from your little flirting session?"

The crowd 'oo'ed and fell silent as they waited for a response from the stage. "I don't know exactly," my hand flew around as I tried to find the words to explain the feeling that I got when I talked to him. It was hard to explain and rationalize it in my own head, let alone out loud to someone else. "Do you know when you get that special feeling where you know that you've connected with someone and you don't really know how?"

"Umm kinda I guess. It seems like something that has to be experienced rather than explained."

"Took the words right out of my brain."

"Well then maybe we have a minor version of it," Grace's eyes flitted around like she couldn't focus as she rushed through the end of her sentence, "Someday I hope I experience it."

I could feel her anxiety radiating off of her in thick waves. It started with the leg tapping, then the looking around and lastly the unusual loss of words.

"Having a little trouble with English?"

"How are we going to get into the club?" her voice spiked and she went through and cracked all her fingers, even the little joints. Around us the energy had been building over the course of a bloopers video that was being played of the guys' heads and we were both speaking at normal volume without care.

"That's what you're worried about?" I scoffed and turned away from her to catch the end of the video, "Just trust me okay? It'll be easy and I'll explain it all later."

Without looking back at her I felt her shift in her seat so that both her legs and arms were crossed. Her hands were tucked into the opposite elbow and while she was probably looking up at the video her mind was free to wander. Grace had a way of multitasking with her attention. In English she used to read her own book while watching presentations then give the most insightful feedback out of everyone in the class. It was disrespectful when you caught her, but she never got caught. I imagined her looking up at the screen with a meaningless smile on her face. Her laughs would coincide with everyone else's, but they'd be hollow while her mind was at work somewhere else.

If I didn't have that evening to look forward to, Kane and getting Grace out into the world, I might have been rather depressed by my educated guess of Grace's expression.

----- Jonathan Toews

I had forgotten how long conventions were, especially sitting on a panel in front of a room of fans who paid good money to see excited and eager players. Not me.

Before the convention schedules were even planned I had made it clear that I didn't want to be-- couldn't be in front of people for a very long time. Rationally I knew that I was being dramatic and it really shouldn't be this hard to recover from a break-up that I asked for after overlooking it for so long. On the other hand I just couldn't let it go. Why was I so stupid? How could I have missed so much?

The guys insisted that I wasn't the stupid one. I worked on our relationship and tried to make it work. When she needed help I was there and even when I was on the road I tried to do everything that I could to keep her happy. She was the one who went back to her old tricks and threw it away, but how did I miss her doing it. I made an effort not to read up on myself, especially in the gossip section, but if I had then I probably would've seen the rumors coming from people that I didn't even know. See the proof that was probably bogus, but would've thrown up red flags.

"Red's a nice color," I spoke into the mic for maybe the third time in response to a question about our jerseys, "I really like that we have a red jersey."

A half hearted cheer followed, even though half of the crowd was dressed in red one way or another. Like the friend of the girl who flirted with Kaner. From where I was sitting it looked like a plain red v-neck, but it looked good and I got the same sort of thrill that seeing a jersey with my name on it still gave me.

The crowd looked less than pleased whenever they glanced at me. Quick and short looks from different areas came in an almost round like fashion, but they all had the same expression. It was the uncomfortable mixture of 'are you okay' and 'just leave'. Neither are things that you want from an audience when you care. Unfortunately I didn't feel like caring and when the video came on I was ecstatic to turn off my mic and let the people entertain themselves with our stupidity and mistakes.

"Jonny," Kane's tight whisper was followed by the muted rumble of his chair as he rolled over to me, "have you been alive? Did you hear that girl?"

How could I have missed that moment? "Yea, of course I did. As did everyone else."

"Ooo, that voice hurts me Jonny," he clutched his chest and fell back in his seat like he had been shot. "You know that I'm sensitive."

That was the first thing to get me to laugh all night.

"But seriously I have no idea what happened and tonight you're coming out with me to the Smart Bar at 10." Before I could question he was already moving on and rolling back over to his spot, "We had a connection and that's what I got from our little talk. As my captain it is your job to supervise me and as my friend your job is to have my back, so you're coming."

Once Kane got an idea stuck in his head, especially if it was plans to go out, it was almost impossible to deter him even if you were Coach Q or his captain. The girl who got the plans in his head had a smile plastered on her face ever since. In the dimmed lights it almost made her glow in the center of the crowd.

Her friend didn't have that same sort of look. Her smile and attentive posture suggested that she was loving the video and having the time of her life. The look in her eyes didn't have the same effect though, it was closer to something that I had become used to seeing in the mirror. Kind of a disappointed worry.

"Thanks for coming everyone, and we all hope that you enjoy yourselves," Sharpy spewed out quickly, still barely beat Kane to the mic as the video came to an end.

Very few people had moved to leave as we got up. None of them bothered to look at me any more, but if that girl could fake a good time I could muster something to wrap up our mediocre time together. Leaning over the back of my chair I turned on my mic and cleared my throat, "I just wanted to thank everyone here for the consistent support we've received and I was you all to know that you're appreciated and that there are plenty more fun things to do so get out of here." I finished with a smile and even hugged Kaner back when he walked up to me.

"There he is," he hit my back a few times for good measure before ushering me off the stage, "my captain is here and ready for tonight."

Notes