Our Town

Tyler sat at the leg press in the American Airline Center, taking a swig of his water bottle before going back to pumping his legs. Jamie had been talking to him about some girl he had brought home last night, then he moved onto how ripped he was going to get for the start of the season in a month. Normally Tyler would have been talking about next season, but not even being anywhere interested in the conversation at hand he just kept pumping his legs.

"Dude," Jamie hit the back of his hand against Tyler's head, "get your fucking head out of the clouds." Tyler just stared his teammate down, soothing the little bit of pain Jamie's hit had caused.

Tyler went back to pumping his legs, back and forth, going through the motion even in his head. Jamie had kept talking even though he knew Tyler wasn't listening and wouldn't contribute to the conversation. His mind had been running between Emma and Emma and a little bit of Emma. And what was freaking him out was that he normally never thought about a certain girl. It had always been hump and dump for him, the girls with the high heels and the hair that was so close to God, He could practically touch it. But Emma, Emma was something different, and whether or not Tyler liked different yet, he couldn't decide. So he went back to pumping his legs, back and forth, forth and back, trying to think about the muscles he was working and what he was going to be working on next.

"It's that chick isn't it?" Jamie said, snapping Tyler out of his workout zone. Tyler didn't remember telling Jamie about Emma. He didn't even remember telling himself about Emma, she had just kind of came and conquered and then left. Not that she actually left, but since it had been a week since the not-so-bad date and neither of them had contacted each other, Tyler thought that maybe it was for the better that they weren't going full force into anything. Especially since he didn't know what he was even doing with Emma.

But even so getting back to the conversation at hand, Tyler just nodded his head yes to his teammate, not knowing if any words could make it out of his mouth regarding the topic.

"Did something bad happen?" Jamie put his weights back down and turned towards his teammate.

"No, we went on a date and it was fine. She was a hell of a kisser but nothing else happened," Tyler said moving off of the leg press and towards the dumbbells.

"Tyler just fucking spit it out, I'm not going to think you're less manly if you like this girl."

Tyler looked towards his teammate, someone he was glad to also call his best friend, “I like her." Jamie nodded his head. "I mean I really like her, which is incredibly crazy for me. I haven't thought about dating or liking anybody for more than just sex since before I was drafted into the league. It's fucking crazy for me to think about honestly, but she's different, she's.. she's."

"Home," Jamie finished for his teammate.

"She's home."

Jamie knew Tyler still missed Boston, even if it was just the slightest bit. It was the first place he had eve won the Stanley Cup, something you don't take lightly. It was where he first played hockey as a true professional. It had been home, and not in the sense of a welcome mat and throw pillows with quotes on them. It was home in the sense of having started and lived your dream there. It was how he felt about Dallas, being drafted there and if he was ever traded, he would feel how Tyler felt. But being traded comes with the territory, everybody knew that.

Jamie looked at his slightly younger teammate, "Look Ty, I don't get the whole being traded feeling but I get feeling something for a girl, and being very confused about it. We're guys it's in our nature the want to fuck a girl and then not feel anything for her afterwards but eventually someone comes along and changes that, so I get it. Don't be an asshole and pretend you don't feel anything and let her slip away, alright? Ya got any questions?"

Tyler put his dumbbell down, "Yeah just one." Jamie looked at Tyler expectantly, "When did you become such a pussy?"

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Emma was staring at her summer student’s essays on the Catcher in the Rye highlighting all the requirements that they had needed but also paying attention to their views on the very emotional book. If there was one thing she liked about being a teacher at such a young age it was that she still had the views of a teenager in the back of her mind, so she knew how to approach such profound topics.

She still had fifteen more to get through by the morning, but she knew that she would get a second wind by the time one a.m. rolled around, so she got up and threw on a jacket over her ratty old shirt and jeans and walked to her favorite restaurant just around the corner. Her mind had been running like a Ferris wheel all night, never stopping, always going. She had thought about her summer school students and how excited she was to go back to actual school and see all the seniors that she would be teaching. Emma always thought it was weird that when she was a kid she practically lived for summer, and now being a teacher all she wanted was for the three months to end so she could go back to teaching. Not that she minded summer school students, it was just a different curriculum.

Her mind had also been thinking about Tyler and how they hadn't talked or gone out in a week. Which wasn't bad especially since Tyler had even asked her out on a date, at the beginning of that one she hadn't been expecting a second date. Now she just wanted one. But he was Tyler Seguin, attractive, famous, rich, athletic, and a player and she was Emma, boring old Emma. She was acting like a teenage girl, obsessing over how the popular jock had asked her out on a date but hadn't called. She was an adult and she needed to act like one, and not get upset over something so little. She could find another guy, one who she knew actually liked her. And wasn't just trying to get in her pants.

But it was almost as if Tyler knew that Emma had been thinking about him. She felt her phone vibrate in her pocket, and she raced to look at it, like any high school girl would do.

Tyler: Where are you right now?

Emma debated on whether or not she should even answer. She didn't have her read receipts on which she quickly thanked God for but she also knew that she didn't want to seem like she was yearning for Tyler to text her or at least make some contact. So she put her phone on the table, and picked up her fork to keep eating. It wasn't even two minutes before she got another text from Tyler.

Tyler: Because I'm outside of your apartment so you should probably come down and get me, unless you're not here in which case I will feel very awkward.

Emma laughed, out loud, causing the attention in the restaurant to turn on her. The girl sitting in a booth by herself, in a dimly lit romantic restaurant. She quickly texted the restaurants address to Tyler and then set her phone in her purse, letting herself enjoy the challenge she had just given him. If he showed up she would probably take him back to her apartment and screw him until the morning and if he didn't she would have no hard feelings.

But her mind took over, Emma do not let him make his way into your heart and then break it. You are better than that, we don't need another Ryan and you know it. Flirt with him a little, have your fun and then let him go, you don't need an anchor, you need a boat.

Emma was mad at her mind for bringing up Ryan unwillingly. She thought she had filed that situation under the "Burn After Reading" section but apparently her brain hadn't listened. She knew Tyler would be no Ryan, or at least that's what she wanted to think.

So when Tyler walked into the restaurant, clad in a quarter zip sweatshirt and khakis, Emma was still at war with herself, and a little upset that she hadn't thought about how she looked at that moment instead of dealing with Tyler theoretically maybe breaking her heart.

But to Tyler, Emma looked prettier in that moment than she had when she was dolled up on their date. No make-up did her just as well as make-up and she wasn't wearing anything fancy. Just a ratty old shirt and a pair of light wash jeans, her hair thrown up in a bun and kept out of her face with a bandana. She looked like Rosie the Riveter to Tyler, a fierce and fiery woman and he was glad he had texted her.

"Do you always come to romantic restruants by yourself?" Tyler asked sitting across from her in the booth she was occupying.

Emma put both her elbows on the table in front of her, ready for a challenge, "Do you always show up randomly at girls apartments?" Tyler raised his eyebrows, a smirk threatening to make itself visible, and shook his head no. Emma laughed silently, knowing she had won the battle, but with Tyler looking at her the way he was in that moment, he would most certainly win the war.

She gestured for the waiter to come back to her table and Tyler ordered the first thing he saw on the menu. It was a nice looking restaurant, couples could be seen talking quietly and closely with each other, some older couples but only a few people here alone.

As if Emma knew what Tyler was thinking she said, "I used to work here when I first moved to Dallas, just to pay rent and now whenever I miss it I just come and say hi to everybody, and it's close to my apartment so that's a bonus." Tyler nodded his head, entrapped in the way her freckles looked under the light once again. It seemed like that would never get old. Her eyes showing lust and seduction but her body showing that she wanted nothing to do with Tyler, or maybe it was sex. He hadn't figured it out yet. "Why are you staring at me?"

Tyler hadn't realized that yet again he had been caught staring at Emma, she had done that a lot, but it was in no way his fault that she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, "You're just beautiful."

Emma twisted her lips to stop herself from smiling like an idiot, and she silently thanked God, something she had been doing a lot lately, that he wouldn't be able to see her blush under the lighting of the restaurant, "Stop."

Tyler smiled, it was slightly covered by his hand that was resting on his chin, "You don't like people telling you you're beautiful?" Emma shook her head no, still trying not to smile, "And why is that?"

Emma took a deep breath, "I don't take compliments well, never have, probably never will."

Tyler knitted his eyebrows in confusion, "You don't like compliments?"

"No I never know what to say, so I get very clammy and awkward, or at least more awkward than I normally am." Tyler chuckled, he knew that a girl like Emma got compliments a lot, she was gorgeous, stunning, every adjective you could use about being pretty, Tyler could use to describe Emma.

"So are you trying to brag to me about all the compliments that you get?"

Emma laughed, happy that Tyler stopped grilling her about why she never liked compliments, she shook her head, but didn't say anything regarding the question at hand. Tyler took that as a modest, I do get compliments all the time, and left it alone.

Tyler ate his meal fast, he was done before Emma had even gotten half way through hers, but she was thankful she wasn't very hungry and could take the other half home. Emma, this time didn't even let Tyler see the check before putting her credit card down, him objectifying but silently thankful that she had just wiped away any leftover fear that she was using him for his money. Tyler kicked himself in the head for ever even thinking that Emma would do that, but in his career he had to be careful that someone didn't end up taking all his money and running.

As Tyler walked Emma back to her apartment, she sliced the silence of the night and said, "I would invite you into my apartment but the issue is that I would probably never let you leave." Tyler laughed, knowing full well that he wouldn't even let himself leave in the morning, keeping Emma in bed with him.

He shrugged his shoulders, neither upset nor happy about the statement that had just come out of the beautiful lips he had been yearning to kiss all night, "Probably for the better eh?" Emma reached into her purse to find her keys to even get into her building. She found the keys, pushing them into the door and unlocking it all at the same time, in only a few seconds.

She could see Tyler out of the corner of her eye move forward, and when she looked back towards him he reached out and put his lips onto her forehead, both of them thankful that there was no searing kiss that would lead to something regrettable. Emma smiled and then walked into her building and then up the three flights of stairs to her apartment.

Now, alone in her apartment, Emma was kicking herself in the head for not letting tyler come up, she could be having an orgasm by now but she was just sitting in her apartment, alone.

Alone. She repeated the word in her head multiple times, hoping each time it would sting less and then she would forget that she wasn't having sex with Tyler Seguin. But her mind was pulled away from the word when there was a knock on her front door. Not knowing who would be at her door this late at night, Emma opened it hesitantly.

"You forgot something." Tyler said, not really as a statement but more as a demand.

Emma smiled, "Yeah and what's that?" Tyler didn't reply he just walked through the threshold of the door and crashed his lips onto Emma's, sweet tasting and soft lips.

It wasn't until Emma was fully out of breath that Tyler pulled away and said one word, one word that would make Emma weak at the knees, "Me."

Notes

Okay sorry everybody I was super sick all week and then I got super behind in school so I couldn't write and I also lost the will power to write but I am back and I have a few ways I could go with the story. So let me know what you think, hopefully I'm not boring you with this chapter, I'll finish what's about to happen in the next chapter.

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xoxo