I could feel my face illuminating as I stepped on to the ice. Other than employees leisurely cleaning up the stands, the arena was empty. I had never seen Scotiabank Place empty before. It was a sea of red seats, and the lights seemed to glow even brighter from ice level. I looked up, and the tiny screen that was in desperate need of replacing somehow looked even smaller.

Dave had already done a full lap, and I had only been a couple of paces behind him walking out towards the ice. I hadn’t been on skates since the year before, and I was extremely rusty in the hockey department. I hadn’t played since my senior year of high school, which had been three years ago. There was quite a dip from the bench to the ice, so when I took my first step onto the ice, I tumbled to the ground, instantly feeling the cold, wet ground on my yoga pants. I was flat on my stomach, spread out like Superman, my stick out of my glove and slowly gliding across the ice. He quickly skated towards me, taking my hands and lifting me up. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he laughed at me, and his white, straight teeth were glowing whiter than the frigid sheet I had just crashed to. “I’ve never seen you so graceful before! It’s cute.”
I stuck my tongue out at him. “Maybe if I ever put down the Xbox controller and pick up a real stick then I could keep up with you!”
“How do we know you can’t? I haven’t seen your moves!” he replied, stick handling in front of me. He passed me the puck, and I stopped it steadily right in the middle of the tape. “Nice!”
“Why thank you,” I beamed, passing the puck back to him.

We passed the puck back and forth a couple of times, but I had had enough. When he was starting to get settled and comfortable with the rhythm, I faked a pass and tore right. “Oh no you don’t!” he called, pushing off and chasing after me as I dashed by him. He was quick, but too late. I dangled the puck and it hit the middle of the net, a foot and a half off the ground.
Half a second later, he caught up to me. He stopped abruptly, spraying me with snow and wrapping his arms around me. His hockey gloves were almost larger than my tiny upper body. “That was a dirty trick! I think this calls for a little one-on-one.” He released me, dragged the puck out of the net, and turned to face me from six feet away. His almond-shaped eyes were only slits as he stared me down with a sly grin. He was trying to psych me out and fool me into not knowing which way he would attempt to dart by. He slowly pushed off, and I crossed my fingers that my backward skating was still decent enough to not send me hurtling backwards to the rock-hard ice.

He approached me with increasing speed, and I started swiping my stick back and forth on the ice in front of him in hopes of knocking the puck free. Instead, he tapped it through my skates and I gasped as he made his way around me. Before he could continue, I grabbed his arm, bear hugging him so that his arms were trapped between mine. “Holding!” he shouted, tilting his head back to look at me. His mouth hung open in his signature lighthearted smile.
“I don’t see a referee anywhere to save you.”
“Oh, so we’re playing dirty, are we?” he growled suggestively. I instantly went numb at the sound of his low voice, accidentally releasing him front my grip. The instant he broke free, he grabbed the crooks of my knees, hauling me up onto his back. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, and I enjoyed the piggy-back ride across the ice and he pushed off. I yelped softly when he rounded the corner with speed, and I held on tightly to him. The warmth of his body served as a sharp contrast to the surface below us.

As he slowly did a couple laps, he began to hum a tune to himself. “What’s that?” I asked.
“The Blue Danube.”
“The what?”
“The Blue Danube! You know, la la la la laaa...” he turned his head towards me, waiting for me to continue. I stared at him in confusion, and he laughed. His Adam’s apple was bobbing up and down again, and I wanted to lean forward and kiss it. “You know the rest, finish it!”
“La la, la la...” I continued hesitantly, and he gave me a nod of his head in approval.

He hummed the next line, and I finished it again. We did another lap around the ice, goofily singing the tune in unison. Once we'd exhausted our knowledge of the rest of the song, I suddenly became aware of how close my mouth was to his neck. I started kissing it lightly, and Dave hummed in happiness. The amount of heat trapped between our bodies was beginning to increase, and I was aching to get even closer. Practically on the verge of tearing his jersey off, he read my mind, and headed towards the bench. He placed me on the edge of the boards, my butt barely balancing on top. He quickly did a 180 to face me, and placed his hands on the small of my back. His eyes looked sleepy as they stopped on the different features on my face. Right as I was on the verge of practically yanking him towards me, he leaned in and softly pressed his lips to mine. I heard his hockey gloves tumble to the bench floor below me, and his hands settled just below the small of my back, holding me to him. Without even thinking, I instinctively wrapped my legs around his body, not even considering that I had sharp blades beneath my feet. Wrapping my legs around him was helping me keep my balance on the bench, as being so intimate with Dave was making me dizzy.

His hands drifted even lower and his mouth drifted down to my jaw and my neck. I was breathing heavily, tangling my fingers in his thick brown hair. I opened my eyes only for a moment, and I had completely forgotten about the cleaning staff scattered across the rows. I didn’t even care. I wasn’t in any position to stop Dave from doing the heavenly things he was doing to my neck. I tilted my head back even further to signal to him that I liked what he was doing, and his hands glided up my back as I leaned further and further back. As I slipped into a world of euphoria, I was also beginning to physically slip. All of a sudden, a twinge of nausea set in as I slipped backward off the bench. We both emitted awkward noises as our bodies leaned at a steeper and steeper angle, and he pulled me forward and on to the ice just before my entire body could tumble backward. When I slid forward off the bench, we both toppled over, and I landed on top of him with a loud “Oof!”

Dave burst into a throaty laugh, his head parallel to the ice, and I couldn’t help but giggle too. I looked around the arena, and some of the employees had put their work on hold to curiously observe the bizarre couple sprawled out on the ice. “Wow, that was close...I’m so sorry, Leslie!” he said through laughter. He sure sounded sorry.
Sitting up, he pulled me on to his lap, and I put my arms around his neck. “It’s okay,” I replied. I grabbed a small clump of snow from the ice and spread it in a streak across his nose. He closed his eyes and scrunched up his nose at it slowly melted on his warm skin, his face reminding me of a bunny rabbit's. I squealed as he lunged towards me and Eskimo-kissed me, rubbing the melted snow all over my face with his nose. My smile was once again approaching a dangerous level of pain

When he stopped, he took my face in his hand. The warmth of his hand practically boiled the water on my face. He bit his lip as he examined every inch of my face, and my smile had fallen to an entranced stare as he took me in. He pulled me into him and kissed me tenderly, his thin lips slowly separating from mine as he gently pulled back. He ran his tongue across his lips slowly, then stood up and scooped me up to my feet as if I were a feather. He leisurely backed up towards centre ice. “Come on. How about you show me some more of your skills, hm? We can pick up where we left off, erm...later,” he added with a wink. If not for the staff awkwardly pretending they didn’t see us, I would have thrown him over the bench and demanded we pick up where we left off right then and there.

* * *

We continued to play one-on-one as the number of employees in the stands slowly dwindled, and we finally called it quits when I couldn’t feel my legs anymore. He drove me back to his place, only a couple of blocks away from Scotiabank Place. When he turned on the lights and I got my first look at Dave’s house, all I saw was...emptiness. In his large living room, there was only a white leather couch and a television. There was nothing on the walls, and no other furniture in the entire house other than a kitchen table and chairs, the couch, the television, and his bed. “Sorry it’s so bare, I only moved in a couple weeks ago.”
“That's alright. Maybe all it needs is a woman’s touch,” I replied with a wink.
“I *have* been meaning to go to the new Ikea...” He playfully stroked his chin in thought, and I chuckled. “How about tomorrow?”
“If I can move tomorrow,” I answered, flopping down onto his leather couch in utter exhaustion.
“Aw, my delicate flower," he replied mockingly. Before I could rebut with something clever, he walked over to the couch and swept me up into his arms. He carried my up the stairs to his bedroom, and tossed me on the bed like a ragdoll. Instead of pouncing on top of me and ripping my clothes off like he would have done any other night, he simply flopped down next to me, and within seconds I heard the familiar sound of his slow, rhythmic breathing. We were like an old married couple already. Too tired to ravage each other.

As I drifted off to sleep, a few thoughts danced in my head. He’d have practice in the morning, and he’d find out whether or not he was playing the next day against the Washington Capitals. If he was benched again, what did that mean for his future? What about our future? The thoughts slowly pirouetted out of my mind as I fell into a deep sleep.