The flight to Toronto didn’t even take them two hours. Some of the guys used this time to sleep some more, three of them were playing a game of cards and Daniel Paille and Patrice Bergeron watched a movie as usual. Benoit didn’t know what kind of movie it was and he didn’t care right now. There were only about fifty pages left of the book he was currently reading and he was set on finishing it on the flight. But before he could do that, he had to find something out.
“Hey, what did the writer woman want from you?” Pouliot turned around in his seat to take a look at Gregory. His fight the night before had ended in a slightly swollen and stitched up eyebrow for him. Nothing unusual.
“Kara?” Greg looked up from his newspaper and loosened his tie a little bit. “She met someone in the crowd yesterday and that girl was so upset that I had to leave the ice that Kara promised to ask me for a photo that she could send the girl. To see that I was alright.”
“O-kay.”
“I thought it was nice of her, so I said yes.” Greg shrugged his big shoulders and picked up his newspaper again.
“You’re calling her Kara.” It wasn’t surprising for Benny that Soupy had agreed on taking that photo. After all, it really was a nice gesture.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Gregory turned to look at his friend again. “She introduced herself as Kara and I don’t see why I shouldn’t call her that then.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” He didn’t know why he was even worrying about this. Having a woman around during practice, the games and especially on the plane was still a bit disconcerting for him. Of course there had been girlfriends, wives, family members and friends on the plane occasionally, but never someone they hadn’t known. The others were right, they would get used to it, but right now it was strange.
Kara was sitting two rows ahead of him on the other side of the aisle. He hadn’t noticed her until he’d turned around to see Greg talking to her. She looked way more comfortable today than she’d done when he’d seen her the last time. She wore jeans, a simple white t-shirt, green scarf and black converse. Her leather jacket was beneath her seat along with her purse.
Benny could see that she was holding a book in her hands. Every now and then she highlighted a section or wrote something down. Probably research of some sort. When she held the book in her right hand and leaned forward to grab another pen from her purse he could see that it was a book on hockey terms.
Good. At least she was preparing herself.
“What are you staring at?” Shawn Thornton asked from across the aisle. Benny turned to face him and nodded in Kara’s direction.
“Our writer gurl is reading a book about hockey.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
“I didn’t say that.” Benny shook his head in exasperation. “I was merely observing it. And I’m glad that she’s doing this so we won’t have to explain everything to her.”
“If I can give her a chance, you can do the same, Benny.”
Shawn was right there. Benny wanted to give her a chance, so why did everyone think he didn’t? Well, he would get to know her at dinner tonight, because the guys would definitely ask enough questions about her. He was sure she had a lot of questions herself, but tonight was just about getting acquainted with each other, accepting her to the group.
“I will give her a chance. I was just curious. Jeez.”
“You’ve been very tense the last weeks. You need to get a grip.” Shawn wasn’t the captain of the team, but he acted as one sometimes, looking out for the younger ones.
“I will.” He knew that Shawn was right. It wasn’t only the house. He’d broken his hand in training camp and had been in pain since last night. The doctors had said that everything had healed perfectly so maybe this was just in his head. Hopefully.
He didn’t want to take any painkillers for this. It wasn’t that bad after all, but it distracted him. Absentmindedly he clenched and unclenched his fist.
“You should tell Claude.” Campbell said without looking up from his newspaper. “If you’re in pain you have to get it looked at again.”
“It’s okay.” Benoit looked past Gregory and watched the clouds for a moment. “It started yesterday, it hurts a bit now and if it’s not better tomorrow morning, I’ll tell him, okay?”
“It’s your life, man. I’m just trying to help.”
Benoit didn’t want to think about this anymore. He’d promised himself to finish the book on the flight and he would do it. No more distractions, only him and the book.

Kara didn’t go to practice with the team, because she still had to get some research done before she met with them for dinner at seven in the lobby. She didn’t know where they were going. Not that the name of restaurant would have given her that big of a clue since she’d only been to Toronto once a few years ago to promote her book.
She’d promised Madison to call her and that was what she did now. She put in her earphones, shoved the phone into her jeans pocket and waited for her friend to pick up. That way she could arrange a few things in her hotel room.
“I see you survived the trip so far.” These were Madison’s first words. Kara had to laugh at this. When she thought about how tense she’d been for the past few days she wanted to slap herself on the back of her head.
“I know, I know. You were right, I was wrong.” She put her suitcase on top of the bed and took her toiletries out to put them in the bathroom. “But you can’t blame me for being excited about this.”
“At least it’s good excitement now. Not like yesterday evening when you were freaking out about staying alone in the arena.”
“Yeah, about that…” Kara took her black heels out of the suitcase and put them next to the door. She would wear them for dinner tonight. Since Coach Claude had said that the guys would all be wearing their suits, she wanted to match with them at least a little bit. Black pants along with her favorite green blouse landed on top of the bed. It would still be her leather jacket, but to her this worked with everything. “Sorry. But I really didn’t want to be alone there.”
“I know, but in the end it was good for you, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Good.” Kara could hear paper rustling in the background. “Sorry, I gotta go. Write me after the game tomorrow?”
“Sure.” They hung up and Kara immediately turned up the music on her phone. She put her Springsteen tour shirt and her black shorts on the bed so that she didn’t have to look for them when she went to bed that night.
Right, that was it for the stuff in her suitcase. Now she had to deal with hockey. She’d already read about a lot of hockey terms and understood most of it. Offside was easy for her, since it was pretty much the same as in soccer. Icing was a little more difficult to grasp, but in the end she’d understood that as well. At least she thought she did.
She took out the notes she’d taken on the plane and thumbed through them again. It wasn’t hard for her to learn the terms, but recognizing them during a game was something different. Hopefully the guys on the team would help her a little bit with that. She knew that they weren’t particularly happy to have her travelling with them, but maybe that would change after tonight.
The next thing on her list were the names and numbers. She already knew a few faces, names and number like Seguin, Campbell of course, Chara and Rask, but there were so many more she had to memorize. It was a good thing that she still had a couple of hours to take a good look at the photos. She would concentrate on names, numbers, age, former teams, not on statistics. That was something she could take a closer look at later.