The Hockey Life

PART SEVENTY-EIGHT: MISTAKES
Patrick’s POV

After making some phone calls and getting confirmation, Jonathan and I took his car and picked up Brandon Saad, Andrew Shaw, and Ben Smith. Luckily they all were free and ready for a guys night. We headed over to our favorite dancing bar downtown and sat down. They immediately ordered drinks, including one for me.
“He’s going to need a few - girl troubles,” Saader told the bartender, and I punched him in the arm.
“Don’t say that, Saadfather,” I scolded him.
“Hey, why the hell didn’t that one serve us?” Ben wondered, motioning towards an attractive blonde girl behind the bar. The male bartender with large gauges and inked up arms had been the one to give us our drinks.
“I don’t know, Smitty, why don’t you ask her,” Andrew encouraged him. As soon as she got close enough, he started to flirt, and we all just watched and laughed when she walked away.
“Why would you encourage him? That was rough,” Johnny said.
“For that exact reason! Are you not entertained?”
It was all fun and games like that for a while as we enjoyed our drinks and joked with one another. But after I had a couple drinks, things got interesting. We were recognized, which happened often. It wasn’t a surprise or a big deal normally, but this time it was by girls in a bar. That was always a big deal.
“Oh my god. You guys are Blackhawks players!” A blonde exclaimed.
“You’re not wrong,” Shawzy answered.
“We love hockey,” a brunette girl told us, clearly the blonde’s friend. In fact, there were three girls total who were in awe that they were meeting us. They took pictures with us and thanked us, then preceded to head over to the dance floor.
“Would you mind if we joined you?” Ben asked them.
“You really think we’d mind?” they laughed, signaling for us to follow them. The other guys got out of their seats quickly but I hesitated.
“You coming, Kaner?” Brandon asked.
“I don’t know about this,” I answered.
“It’s just dancing,” Andrew told me. “Come on!” The alcohol in my system helped me give in to the peer pressure and I got up and went out to the small dance floor. It wasn’t all that crowded, being that it was a little early, but that didn’t stop the girls from dancing really close to us. I was in the clear for a while, until the brunette started grinding on me. But what was wrong with that? SHE was dancing on ME. It wasn’t like I was putting my hands on her or anything. I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
Everything was fine for a bit, until I remembered being at a club with Tazer and seeing Lena and Tess there. I recalled how much I loved the way she danced. The way her body moved was perfect, but this girl at this bar just didn’t measure up to that. And then I noticed her hair. It was the same color as Lena’s, but it wasn’t as long or pretty. She was even attractive, but she didn’t have the effect on me that Lena always did.
Lena, Lena, Lena. If she saw me with these girls, she wouldn’t be happy. She wouldn’t be able to read my mind. She would never know that I was comparing this girl with her and she just wasn’t measuring up. She would probably assume that I was thinking something completely different. Even though Lena couldn’t see me and she didn’t necessarily have to know about this incident, I still felt so bad. It felt like cheating, whether it actually could be considered that or not.
“Yeah, I can’t do this,” I decided, moving away from the girl.
“What?” she asked, a confused look on her face.
“I have a fiancé, and this just isn’t right. I’m sorry,” I apologized. She couldn’t seem to believe that I, Patrick Kane, was rejecting her pretty face. Before I met Lena, I’m sure I wouldn’t have turned down a girl like this one. Now, nobody was good enough for me except my fiancé, no matter what.

Dylan’s POV

Lena had never been to my apartment before. Despite our good, somewhat lengthy friendship, she never once came over, so I found myself trying to impress her. I didn’t have a lot of time, but I did my best to straighten things up. Fortunately, I was always a relatively neat person, and I didn’t have a lot to clean up. I was satisfied by the time I heard a knock on the door.
“Hey there,” I grinned when I opened the door and saw Lena. She looked so comfy, but still cute. It really wasn’t fun having feelings for a friend…
“Hi,” she answered.
“Come on in.” She gave my place a good look around when she walked in and nodded in satisfaction.
“Nice place. Maybe I should have come over sooner,” she joked.
“I would have invited you, but I didn’t think you’d want to hang out here,” I confessed.
“Yeah, I kind of invited myself over here. Sorry about that.”
“Hey, don’t apologize! I’m just surprised that you wanted to talk to me. I would have thought you’d want to talk to Tess or Patrick.”
“Tess is busy and I can’t exactly vent to Patrick about how mad I am at him,” she clarified. Oh. It was a fight with the future hubby. I got both of us drinks and motioned for her to sit down on the couch with me.
“Alright, tell me what happened.”
Lena explained how she was having a bad day from the moment she woke up. Apparently Patrick wouldn’t stop bothering her when she was trying to actually get things done, which was what set her off. Then he continued to tell her that she wasn’t fun to be around until he eventually decided she didn’t have to be so bitchy about everything.
“He needs a reality check,” I told her.
“I guess. But, I mean, I wasn’t being the nicest person ever. I have been a little bitchy lately. I have my reasons for not being in a good mood and for being stressed, but I’ve been taking it out on him too much, probably. But it just made me mad, the way he was talking to me,” she realized.
“That’s understandable. Honestly, he crossed the line a bit. I wasn’t there, so I can’t say much, but it seems like you have every right to be annoyed with him.”
“Yeah.” Even though we had talked things out like Lena had wanted to, she still seemed unhappy. I couldn’t stand to see a frown on her face. I knew I needed to do more to make her feel better.
“Hey, Mrs. Grumpy Gills, how about we listen to some music? I have some old stuff we can jam out to,” I suggested.
“What do you mean, ‘old stuff’?”
“Like, I found my old iPod from a few years ago old stuff,” I explained. I grabbed it from the kitchen counter and connected it to the iHome in the living room. I found I Don’t Wanna Be In Love by Good Charlotte and pressed play.
“Hey, I remember this! This was a good song!”
“Was? It still is!” I corrected her. She danced a little in her seat and I chuckled. “Do you want to dance for real?” She nodded, so I pulled her to her feet and we started dancing in my living room like a couple of fools. We both sang along with the lyrics that we still remembered, and when the song ended, we continued to dance and sing to whatever came next. We did this for a while until we got tired, and I couldn’t have been happier. It was nice to do silly things with her without worrying about anyone or anything getting in the way.
I got us some chips and salsa from the kitchen as well as refills on our drinks and then we moved on to watching old Youtube videos, due to our throwback mood. We found some real gems that made us crack up laughing, and I was so glad to see that she was smiling.
“Wow, I forgot most of these even existed!” she giggled. “Thanks so much for cheering me up,” she continued, her eyes locked on mine for a moment. When the video we were watching picked back up again, her eyes returned to the computer screen and she started to laugh again, but my eyes never left hers. She was beautiful and happy, and I couldn’t help myself. Without thinking, I pulled her towards me and I kissed her.
For a second, I’m pretty sure she didn’t realize what was even going on. But when she did, she pushed me away. It happened too quickly, and I knew I had messed up.
“Dylan, I’m engaged!” she shouted. She looked completely appalled, like she couldn’t even believe that I had just kissed her. Honestly, I couldn’t believe it either. I think I was in even more shock than she was, because I was speechless while she continued to talk. “I sent you a save the date for my wedding. Did you not get that or something? Did you somehow forget that I’m getting married in a few months?”
“No, I didn’t forget. I just-“
“Then why’d you do that?” Her eyes burned holes into mine, and I didn’t know what to say, so I stayed silent until she spoke again.
“I have to go.”
“No, wait! Lena, I’m sorry! I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean to do that, I swear. Please don’t leave,” I begged, but there was no convincing her.
“I’m sorry, Dylan, but I really think I need to go home. Thank you for letting me come over and talk, I really do appreciate it, but I need to leave.” I got up and followed her, apologizing and pleading for her to stay the whole way to the door, but she said goodbye and exited my apartment, and that was that. This time, I had really done it. I had ruined any chance I had of continuing a friendship with her. There was no way she would forgive me for this. Even if she did, she would never look at me the same way again, and I couldn’t stand the thought of that. What the hell was wrong with me?!

Lena’s POV

I hadn’t been ready to go home. I was having a lot of fun just hanging out with Dylan. I had forgotten all about my problems for a while, until he created a new one. I just couldn’t believe he had kissed me. It came out of nowhere! When Tess would joke about how he still liked me, I always just brushed it off, but she was right. He hadn’t gotten over me yet, and apparently he wasn’t able to hold his feelings back any longer. I felt bad, just leaving like that, but I couldn’t stay. It made things too weird, and I felt too guilty being there after that. I hadn’t kissed him back. I had stopped him as soon as I could, but I still felt like I had done something wrong. I wasn’t even sure that I was ready to face Patrick yet, especially after this, but I had no choice. I had nowhere else to go but home.
When I got to our apartment, Patrick wasn’t there. I assumed he was still hanging out with Jonathan. It wasn’t that late yet, so I wasn’t concerned about it. I turned on the TV in the living room and flipped through channels, eventually settling on one of the housewives shows on Bravo. I tried to watch it, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop thinking about Patrick, and our fight, and the kiss with Dylan, and I just felt guilty about everything. I wanted Pat to come home so I could apologize and make things better. That was all I wanted anymore.
After about an hour, he finally did get home. I took a deep breath as he walked through the door and took off his shoes.
“Hey,” he said timidly, as if he wasn’t sure if things were going to be okay between us.
“Hi,” I answered quietly.
“I was out of line,” he stammered.
“What?”
“I was out of line. I shouldn’t have been so pushy this morning or this afternoon and I shouldn’t have been as rude as I was, either. I just miss the way things used to be and I didn’t know how to handle the situation. I let my anger get the best of me, and I’m sorry,” he explained.
“I’m sorry too. I’ve taken out my frustration on you lately, even when you haven’t done anything wrong. I know I haven’t been myself, and I’m going to take it easy on the planning so I won’t be so overwhelmed and angry all the time,” I apologized. “And as for the whole not getting laid comment: that’s probably not actually true. You might even get lucky tomorrow, if you guys win your first game,” I added, just for laughs. Patrick seemed to get a kick out of, luckily.
“That’s good to know,” he decided, sitting down next to me on the couch.
“Yeah. So…did you have fun with Jonathan?” I wondered. He hesitated, but answered.
“I’ll be completely honest with you. We went out to a bar with Shawzer, Saader, and Smith.”
“And?” I wasn’t sure if I liked where this was going, but when I remembered my big news that I had to tell him, I decided to keep my mouth shut.
“And we met some female fans there. We danced with them. All I did was dance with them. I kept my distance, but one of the girls started dancing on me, and I couldn’t deal with it, Lean. She wasn’t you, and it felt wrong. I didn’t lay a hand on her. I didn’t even talk to her, but it didn’t seem right to me. The guys ended up leaving with me and we spent the rest of our time at Jonathan’s place.” Wow. I had been so nervous for nothing. He had behaved himself, and that was such a relief to hear. I had nothing bad to say to him, but I wasn’t so sure that I could say the same thing about him.
“Thanks for telling me, Pat. I really appreciate your honestly, but if you’re going to be honest, then I am too. I wanted to talk to Tess, but she was busy, so I called Dylan and he invited me to his apartment. So I went there and we talked and listened to music and whatnot, but then out of the blue, he…he kissed me.”
“He what?” It seemed as if Patrick didn’t want to believe what he was hearing.
“He kissed me. On the lips. But I pushed him away. I stopped it before it turned into anything worse, and then I left. I didn’t kiss back. I would hope you wouldn’t think that I would, but I promise I didn’t. It was all on him,” I clarified.
“Where the hell does he live?” Pat asked me, pure rage plastered all over his face.
“Okay, please calm down. I’m not going to tell you where he lives just so you can beat the living shit out of him, because I know that’s what you’re planning on doing.”
“Alright, fine.”
“You’re not going to hurt him at practice or the game tomorrow, either. You need to just be the bigger person and leave him alone,” I said.
“How do you expect me to do that, Lean? He can’t just go around making out with people’s fiancés!”
“It was a two second long kiss, not a make out session, Pat.”
“Oh, whatever. It’s wrong, either way. I don’t even like when guys look at you, so this just really makes me angry,” he answered.
“I know it makes you mad, but please try to calm down. It happened, and there’s nothing we can do about it,” I assured him. A strange silence filled the room, so I felt the need to say something. “But hey, at least we aren’t fighting anymore. There’s always that!”
“Yeah, I know,” he replied, pulling me into his lap.
“Can we have a movie night?” I asked.
“Definitely.”
I put Happy Gilmore in the BluRay player while Patrick made popcorn and once we were ready, we got settled under a bunch of blankets on the couch. It was so nice to just cuddle for a while - that was something we hadn’t done in what felt like forever. But once our popcorn was gone, our eyes quickly began to get heavy. Both of us had seen the movie so many times that we ended up falling asleep on the couch. It was early - probably only about eight thirty - when we drifted off to sleep. But that was a good thing. We had to fly to Dallas in the morning, and that meant getting up early. Fortunately, Patrick had made sure to set an alarm on his phone in case I forgot again.

Notes