The harsh phone ring jerked me out of my deep slumber. I rolled over madly flinging my arm around trying to find the damn hotel phone without having to open my eyes.
“WHAT,” I mumbled.

“Good morning, this is your wake up call for 9:30am,” an automated voice stated.

There was no way it could already be 9:30 am. I opened a bleary eye and saw the electronic clock next to the bed and groaned when I saw the time confirmed. I sat up quickly and immediately deeply regretted the action. My head was spinning and my stomach was threatening to show me whatever I had consumed the night before. What the fuck was I doing just wearing a towel?

And then flashes of last night came flooding back.

“Fuck,” I groaned. I threw the blankets around and found my phone, which of course was dead.

“Fuck fuckity fuck fucks.” I yelled to my empty room.

Slowly and carefully, I scooted to the end of the bed and got out, heading over to where my charger was still plugged into the wall right next to my suitcase. ‘At least you had the proper intentions,‘ my brain tried to send a positive thoughts into the room. I shoved the damn positivity into the recesses of my head as I plugged my phone in to charge before grabbing a clean pair of baggy Nike sweat pants, as well as a tank top and a sweatshirt from my bag and heading towards the bathroom.

I glanced in the mirror on my way, and very much wish I hadn’t. Apparently even my hair was angry at me; half of my hair had dried flat and frizzy, somehow, while the other half was its normal curly self. In addition, I had giant dark bags under my eyes, looked sickly pale, and had red blotches all over my face. Great. Just great.

I sped through my morning routine, tugged on my clothes, whipped up my hair in a loose bun, and had grabbed the two key cards on the desk, and was heading out of the door in less than 3 minutes. The door slammed rather loudly behind me, causing me to wince as the sound seem to pound nails into my head as I walked down the hall to Jen’s room. When I reached it took me several attempts to get into her room via the keys.

Jen wasn’t in her room, though all of her things were still there. I walked over to the desk and found a notepad and a pen. I hastily scribbled, “Jen, We need to talk, Lily” before I turned from the room.

I headed back to my room frustrated. My head was pounding and my stomach felt terrible. Both of these things didn’t even account for how terrible I felt for all of my rash decisions from the night prior.

Once back in the room, I went over and I sat cross legged on the ground in front of my phone. Hitting the power button, I gave the phone time to turn back on while I stared at my suitcase, willing it to start packing up all on its own accord. I groaned as I felt my phone start buzzing, letting me know that there were many, many various forms of missed communications to catch up on. Ignoring all of these, I sent a text to Jen, ‘Went by your room, you aren’t there. We need to talk.’

Next I flicked to contacts and found Torstein, and I hit the call button.

“Hello?” his voice was gruff, as if he had been still asleep.

“It’s me,” I mumbled back.

“Mmm,” he groaned.

“I’ll still be over at the proposed time.” I grumbled

“Nooo,” I heard him whine.

“I am sharing the sentiments.”

“Why don’t we just leave later?”

I shook my head as if he could actually see me, “No, we need to get out of here.”

There was a pause from his end, “Are we fleeing from a scene of a crime?” his voice had perked up slightly.

“I don’t know what you are talking about.” I tried to sound innocent.

“Good thing we have a good hour an a half drive back to Denver,” Torstein definitely sounded more awake, “You okay to drive?”

“Eh,” I grumbled, “Be at the house in 20. And call the youngin’ to make sure he is alive and ready.”

I hung up the phone, pausing for a moment to look at the damage from last night. 6 new voicemails and 56 new text messages, new whatsapp messages from 8 different contacts. Yep, not going to open those now. I began to throw things into the suitcase unceremoniously, not caring how wrinkled things were going to get.

After I finished packing everything and I had checked to make sure I hadn’t left anything under or around the room, I grabbed all my stuff, lastly my cell which would have enough charge to make it to the truck.

Once again leaving the room, the door banged much too loudly as I left my hotel room for the final time. I headed back down the hall dragging my suitcase behind me to check Jen’s room. Again, she wasn’t in there.

I sighed and scribbled on the note I had left previously, “Jen, Came back a second time. I am headed back to Denver with the Norwegians as planned. I’ll see you back in town. Call me.”

I dragged myself out of Jen’s room and headed toward the elevator, pulling my Penguin’s hat down low, though feeling strong urge to burn the damn piece of sports memorabilia. Even though it was Geno’s number I was wearing, I was feeling a great lack of warm fuzzy feelings toward the team.

As I waited for the elevator to arrive, I slipped on a pair of shades, which seemed to slightly help ease the pain in my head. I hoped to god there would be some ridiculously unhealthy food at the DC or Rome house or maybe we would stop on the road. The boys tended to be a little more free with their diets than myself, plus I even wanted coffee. The elevator dinged open and I saw it was pretty full, but people were kind and moved around to let me in.

Once on the main floor I headed to the front desk to check out. The woman there was overly helpful, and loud. I smiled and about thirty seconds after our exchange, I literally couldn’t remember anything she had said. My brain wasn’t in good shape. Maybe I shouldn’t be the one to drive back to the city. I hoped to god the kid would be in better shape than Torstein or I.

I headed to the valet, digging in my purse for my tag. I handed it to one of the men once I found it, and then walked back into the hotel to wait. It was a little too cold to wait outside comfortably, so I resigned myself to wait in the front of the lobby.

After staring through the glass doors for a moment, I realized Jen might be down here. I glanced around in feeling hopeful but quickly I felt myself almost throw up in front of all of these people. A blond headed man I wanted to never see again was over in a far corner of the room. He had not seen me yet, so I quickly turned my back and dug through my purse for my phone in attempts to look very busy and hide. I stared intently at the phone, hoping to god Sven hadn’t seen me nor would come over here. I guess the universe did have a way to make me go through my phone.

I looked to see who all the voicemails were from: Crosby, Crosby, Geno, Jen, Geno, and Crosby.

Geno. Oh no. I was going to go down the Florida and kill Steven Stamkos.

I flipped to my texts. I had texts from Crosby, Geno, Steven, Jen, James, and Vero.

James?

I flicked to James’s text message and opened it, “Lily, why aren’t you sending me pictures like that all the time?”

I didn’t even realize what I was doing until I had the phone up to my ear and heard the ring on the other line. It went to voicemail.

“Of course you don’t answer. James-whatever-your-middle-name-is-Neal. I don’t know how you got the photo. I don’t know who else you sent the photo to. You better be explain why Stamkos would send you a photo I had sent him. Furthermore, you better tell me who else you sent that photo to. I expect a phone call from you pronto. And James, don’t mess with me right now, I do know where you live.”

I glanced around feeling eyes on me; it Sven was staring me down. I whipped my eyes back forward right as someone was pulling my truck up. Once again, I fled as if I were fleeing the site of a crime.

---

“We’ve come too far to give up who we are. So let’s raise the bar and our cups to the stars. She’s up all night to the sun, I’m up all night to get some, She’s up all night for good fun, I’m up all night to get luckyyyyyyyy.”

“You two are obviously trying to kill me.” Torstein’s cried mournfully from the back of the truck.

I turned my head to look back at Tors grinning. Sure, I felt dreadfully hungover still and I was in complete denial about the complete mess I had help create the previous night, but the three of us were having such a fun time. Well, Stale and I had been singing back the last couple songs to each other like we were rock stars on a huge stage while Torstein was basically moaning and covering his ears in the back.

Stale glanced over at me from the drivers seat. He had apparently not really had any alcohol the previous night and was fresh and ready when Torstein and I had arrived at the Nike house for him. Which was a very good thing, because both Tors and I looked like we had been run through the ringer.

“I am vetoing and am changing the music,” Tors leaned between the seats and grabbed my phone which was hooked up to the auxiliary system.

“Just be careful!” I complained as he pulled my phone back to to him, “It’s charging.”

Torstein began muttering some choice words in Norwegian which cause both Stale and I to chuckle. I glanced out of the window, going back to watching the road. Stale was doing an excellent job getting us back to my house. I had witnessed the kid driving hundreds of times in Norway, but never in the States. Considering that he and Tors would be staying at my house for the next week and a half thus using my truck to get to different mountains around the area, I felt much better with him driving the truck for the first time with me in it.

The music stopped suddenly

“Hello?” I heard Torstein say from the back seat. It sounded as if he were on a phone call by the way he said it, much more formal than how he would talk to us. It also explained why the music had been stopped; Torstein must have been the one to turn it off.

“No, this is it,” He said. There was a pause.

“Oh, so you are the guy she is so smitten with. Yeah, she is okay.” At that last sentence, I whipped my body around and I felt like throwing up. He was definitely talking on a phone. My phone.

I lunged over the divider making a mad scramble for my phone.

“Oh, I guess she is interested in her phone now,” Torstein gleefully said to the person he was talking to. I could only assume who it was. Finally I managed to snatch it away from him and held the phone up to my ear.

“Hello?” my voice shook as I spoke

“Rivers.”

I hung up. It was Crosby.

There was a heavy silence in the car.

“Did you just hang up?” They both asked at the exact same time.

“Maaaybe.” I answered looking back out the window.

My phone started to ring again.

“Are you going to get that?” Stale asked quickly glancing over at me before returning his eyes on the road ahead.

I sighed and answered it. The guys would be more suspicious if I didn’t.

“Yes?” my tone was clipped. I wanted to yell and scream, but I was acutely aware of how much Stale and Torstein were paying attention to me.

“Did you just hang up?”

“Yup.” I didn’t even bother to deny it.

“Was that Torstein or Stale who answered the phone?” Crosby asked. Of course he remembered the conversation we had about how the two Norwegians would be coming back to Denver and staying with me for a week and a half. I cursed myself for letting this man worm his way into my life.

“The boytoy knows who we are?!” the voice made me jump. Torstein had leaned right up on the divider as to try to listen as best as he could. Apparently he had heard Crosby say their names. I glared at Torstein before switching the phone to my other ear and leaning my head against the window.

“Sorry about that, and it was Torstein,” I admitted. There was a pause.

“Did you listen to the voicemails?”

“No. I’ve been busy.” It wasn’t a lie, but I had been avoiding listening the the voicemails. I was pissed off at Crosby, and I didn’t want to have this confrontation. I knew this was going to be the end, and even though it turned out he was an asshole when it came to women, it wasn’t just him that caused the fiasco of last night; I was just as responsible if not maybe more because of my reaction. ‘Next time be a grown up and confront him head on and tell him he is a pig,’ my brain scolded me.

“How did you find out about the bra?” Clearly he was steering the conversation.

“Look, you obviously know I am in the truck with my friends. Do you really want to have this conversation now?” I was scowling, though not really at anything in particular. I was hoping he would say we should talk later; I didn’t want to have this awkward conversation in front of the guys. My chest was hurting, and I was pretty sure it had something to do with the fact Crosby was about to tell me he wanted nothing to do with anymore. I was upset about everything, but I knew I hadn’t handled last night with much grace.

“Lily, if we don’t talk now, you will just flit away again,” his voice was steady and so damn calm. I hated it.

“Geno.”

“Geno told you?”

“Geno knows.”

“Geno knows what?”

“Geno knows about us.” I felt my lip tremble as I said the word us. Us. What an incredible two letter word. I heard him draw in a breath.

“What do you mean he knows about us?” the calmness in Crosby’s voice was gone. The resolve in my head was gone as well when he said us.

“The picture, he knew it was mine.” I said, “He sent me the picture, I realized he couldn’t have been the one to take it and demanded he send me the messages.”

“And that’s how you--” he began.

“How I found out you called me a puckbunny” I finished his sentence.

“Lily, I wasn’t calling you a puckbunny. James found the bra when he went upstairs to look for something and took a picture of it. I wanted to keep our privacy, so I just made something up,” Crosby was trying to rationally explain his actions.

“By being a misogynistic pig?” there it was, it had come out of my mouth.

“What?”

“See, you don’t even realize the impact of using that term. You used it without a fucking thought. And as a public figure, really? So as a player, it’s okay, not only okay, but expected for you to sleep with women, but the women who sleep with you, are labeled not only by you, but by everyone else as a puckbunny. A puckbunny, a slut, a whore. For what? Wanting to have sex with an attractive man? Don’t deny it, across the league you, you as players, are all ridiculously attractive males who are all in incredible physical condition which honestly, is a turn on for most females. But focus on the people who are interested in someone just because of status or wealth; that is called being a jackass and there are those types of people in all walks of life. But do you automatically attack their sexuality? ONLY, only if they are women. As in everything, society teaches us to attack a women’s sexuality first. This term is dehumanizing and demeaning the woman who wanted sex just as the player did. And really, honestly, how many times do the women actually have sex with someone? All of this is slut shaming, what good does it do? It just feeds into male entitlement and rape culture leaving it as the female’s fault. Would you rape a women just because she wore a short skirt or a dress. Hell, what about the dress I wore last night? If I had shown up to a game wearing that and had been raped, would it have been okay because I was obviously a puckbunny and asking for it? And no, I am not going overboard on this. I am not doing it justice,” I said into the phone. My hand holding the phone was shaking at the end.

There was a very long pause on the other end of the phone, before he finally spoke, “Oh god, I never-I never even thought about it.”

“People don’t,” I sighed, “That is the problem.”

“Lily, I am so sorry. I never meant it in any of those ways.” Crosby was getting it, “I will definitely not use it again. I am going to bring it up with the guys as well.”

“Okay.” My voice was small. I was such a fucking idiot. Why hadn’t I just been forward in the beginning. It would have saved us all of this grief plus it wouldn’t be then end.

“Is, is that why you sent the picture to Stamkos? You were mad?” Crosby asked, his voice was very gentle.

“Yeah.” I answered. I felt exhausted. I took a breath before letting the words come tumbling out, “Look, I understand if you want to call whatever we have off. I acted like an idiot last night. I have absolutely no interest in Stamkos, it was petty and stupid. I am really sorry.” By the end, I was whispering in the phone at this point; I really thought I was going to throw up.

“What?” Crosby said, he sounded startled.

“I completely understand.” Why did my eyes feel wet? Crosby and I weren’t even really seeing each other.

“Lily,” his voice was soft and gentle and so so smooth, “Lily, people get into fights. We just got into a stupid fight and both of us acted like idiots. But the thing is, we have to talk when we do. You need to talk to me when something is bothering you between us.”

“Okay.” I mumbled. I was feeling so many things, but mostly like an idiot and relieved.

“I am assuming your friends are really listening in right now?” he asked slightly more playfully.

“Yeah.” I admitted.

“I’ll say bye for now, okay?” Sidney said

“Alright.”

There was a long silent pause between us.

“Lily, ” Sidney was so serious and sincere as he said that, “I will do better too.”

I felt my heart clench, “I’ll talk to you later.”

I brought the phone away from my ear and hit the end call button. I sighed and handed my phone back to Torstein without even looking, and asked, “Can you pick something upbeat for us to listen to?”

Both guys suddenly began speaking at once. I shook my head, not catching what either one of them were saying.

“Who is this person?” Stale asked over Torstein’s ramblings.

“Just a person. It isn’t important,” I muttered.

“Right.” Torstein snorted, “Not important.”

---

It had been two days since we had returned to Denver and things were all rather tense in my life. James was avoiding me like it was his job, as was Jen. Geno was checking up on every 5 minutes, well, not literally but it felt like it. Geno was not talking about Crosby at all. I was sort of worried about what would happen when Geno got back to Pittsburgh. Sidney and I were not texting as frequently as before, but it seemed that things were okay. When I had gone through the voicemails, I had just deleted the ones from him, not even bothering to listen them. Mostly, I was just cranky because I hadn’t slept well the two nights we had been back. Torstein and Stale had a habit of not knocking, so I didn’t want to wear my favorite sleep shirt.

I hadn’t gotten around to changing Sidney’s contact information from Crosby, so Torstein had thought whoever this guy I was interested in, well, his name was Crosby. Tors hadn’t quite put Crosby with Sidney or Crosby with the Penguins. I wasn’t exactly in a rush to aid in connecting the dots.

While the two were gone during the day, I had been holed up in my off ice getting some of the tedious work I had been putting off done; summer planning. I was getting my rehab planning schedule as well as possible trips, charity fundraisers, photo-shoots, sponsor events, and the like.

I felt my phone buzz and I hurriedly grabbed it, hoping it was Jen. It wasn’t, it was an number I didn’t recognize. I frowned slightly as I opened the text.

“Lily, it Artem Anisimov. We met at World Cup.”

I blinked a couple of times, as I placed the name with the Russian. I had briefly met the tall hockey player a few years ago at Worlds, but hadn’t really had contact with him since.

“Hey Artem! How are you?” I quickly texted him back.

“Good. Will be in Denver in day for game against Avs. You come to game?”

I glared at my phone. Geno. Absolutely Geno’s doing without a question. He was trying to get eyes on me. Well, a Russian’s eyes on me. I sighed before answering, “That sounds great!”

---

“Uh, hi! I’m here to pick up tickets under Anisimov!” I said to the young woman behind the ticket counter, and I slid my ID under the small glass window. Artem had texted me to just pick up the tickets at the will-call ticket counter. He had told me that there would be two tickets, so I should bring someone. The woman behind the counter slowly flicked through some things. I shrugged off my coat and adjusted my sweater as I waited. Eventually, she passed my ID and an envelope without saying a word back under the glass to me.

“Thanks!” I said turning away from the box office. I opened the envelope, and saw the two tickets, and a note. The note directed me to come back here after the game ended so someone could bring me down to the dressing room. I glanced back up feeling eyes on me and my breath caught. Jen was standing a couple feet away, looking nervous. I had left a message on her voicemail telling her about the game, and gave her the time and place to meet me at the Pepsi Center. She never got back to me, but I still was hoping she would show.

I took a couple steps towards her, “I wasn’t sure you were actually going to show up.”

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d invite me,” she replied taking a step towards me.

We sized each other up for a moment.

“I was such an asshole!” Jen sobbed before launching herself at me and throwing her arms around me.

“And I should never have said what I did in retaliation!” I sobbed back hugging her fiercely.

“I shouldn’t have assumed what I did. I should have known you wouldn’t actually sleep with the guy.” she said into my shoulder.

“It’s alright,” I shushed her, comforting her. I was just glad the two of us were okay. But wait. I pushed her back and to look at her, “Wait, how did you know?”

Jen looked at me through her teary eyes, “I went and tracked down the Swede the next morning. He told me that you two just came back to the hotel together and then went your separate ways.”

“He said what now?” I said as my heart started to beat irregularly.

Jen repeated herself looking confused and then added, “Isn’t that what happened?”

I shut my eyes debating what I should do, but I figured that what caused this fight in the first place was not telling her what was really happening with Crosby. I slowly shook my head.

“Lily!” she screeched, her voice echoing around the lobby. Everyone in the radius was now watching us very intently. I grabbed her elbow and started walking away from where we were.

“We didn’t!” I assured her quickly, “I--I couldn’t.”

“You couldn’t?” she asked confused.

I shook my head, “It just felt wrong.”

“And?” she pushed. Jen had a look in her eye; she knew there was something I wasn’t telling her about the Swede specifically.

“I said ‘Sidney’,” I answered.
“Sidney what?”

“I said ‘Sidney’”

“I don’t get it. Sidney what?”

“Like, just Sidney.”

“Just Sidney? What?”

“I MOANED SIDNEY AS HE WAS KISSING ME!” I said this rather loudly and once again, we had drawn the attention of the people around us. I ducked my head, but Jen wasn’t helping.

“YOU SAID SID’S NAME WHILE WITH THE SWEDE?”

“Jen,” I moaned. I was going to die. I was going to die right there in the Pepsi Center.

Jen glanced around and realized that we had drawn quite the attention of the crowd around us. Luckily, it appeared that the people around us just saw two young women being obnoxiously loud gossiping about boys or what naught. Jen grabbed the tickets, read them, and then hurried in a direction, of which I followed her.

“But I don’t understand,” she hissed at me when we were away from the group of people we had been near before, “If you said Sidney’s name, if you are calling him Sidney now, and you had been texting him before, what was with the dress, the hair, the make-up, and well, why did you pick up the Swede and plan to go to bed with him? Clearly, I am really missing something.”

I sighed as we made our way through the building catching her up on Geno,the bra incident, Crosby’s use of “Puckbunny” (it felt good when Jen became furious when I told her about the use of this), the texts with Steven, Neal’s subsequent involvement, the phone call in the Truck, and now not only had I shared my feelings in a sorta grown up way, but we had talked and were going to continue on with whatever thing we sorta had going on.

We had reached our seats long ago but just had been very busy catching up with all the crazy that had happened. Frankly, I was just relieved everything was going back to normal. I was also very touched that Jen had gone to hunt down Sven to figure out what had gone on the previous night. I also figured that Jen had done so incase she needed to do damage control with him, though, it seemed he was actually quite an incredible human being.

But our seats for the game were incredible; Artem had outdone himself, though, I was wondering at this point how much of this was Artem and how much was Geno. We were on the away team’s side of the goal, glass seats, and on the aisle. Once again, I took the aisle seat.

“So do you and Sid-”

I quickly nudged her into silence. Out of the corner of my eye, I had seen two youngish girls coming down the stairs, and now they had made their way towards us.

“Excuse us,” one of them mumbled. She indicated that they were moving to the two empty seats next to Jen. I moved to give them more room to get into their seats, as did Jen.

I assessed the girls quickly. My guess was the two girls were 15 or 16, and best friends. They were decked out in Colorado gear, and were chatted animatedly to each other. From what little I heard of their conversation, I could tell they really knew their hockey players. And they had recognized me.

I glanced back to the ice. The teams were just getting onto the ice for warm up. A guy skating around caught my attention pretty quickly, he looked oddly familiar, but I couldn’t place him. He had blond hair, and though he wasn’t extremely tall, he was massive.

“Hey, girls,” I leaned over Jen to address the girls. One girl turned bright pink, the other looked so excited she might burst.

The one who turned pink answered, “Ye-yes?”

“I am really sorry for interrupting, but I feel like you two really know your hockey,” both of the girls puffed up a little at this compliment, I smiled and continued, “The blond guy on the Columbus Blue Jackets, with Johnson on his jersey, can you tell me anything about him?”

“That is Jack Johnson,” the excited girl supplied.

“He used to play for the LA Kings,” the pink girl interrupted.

“But he was drafted third overall by Carolina in the 2005 draft.” the excited girl re-interrupted.

“Yeah, but he didn’t actually play for them, he went to college instead, at the University of Michigan,” the pink girl corrected the excited girl.

“Still counts though,” the excited girl snapped at the pink girl. It was obvious this, or something like this had been an argument between the girls before.

I bit my lip as I watched him. The information still wasn’t jogging any reason why I would know him.

“Thanks girls,” I muttered as the two teens still argued the significance of whether a player could really be counted as part of a team if they had been drafted there but they hadn’t actually ever played as part of the team.

Jen raised her eyebrows at me questioningly, and I shook my head. There was a knock on the glass and both of us jumped.

Artem was standing looking at us, smiling politely. I stiffly stood up smiling.

“Hi! It is nice to see you! Good luck tonight!” I said in Russian loudly over the sounds of the crowd around us, especially the shrieking girls next to us.

His smile widen at my obvious language improvement, and his reply was simply, “See you after.”

And he skated away to finish his warm up.

The game seemed to drag on forever. It was odd. This game was the first time I wasn’t particularly close to anyone playing. I still enjoyed it; it was a close game which eventually went into overtime leading to a Columbus Blue Jackets win, 4-3.

---

It was eerily how the same everything was as the time Jen and I went to the Islanders’ locker room, sans the wheelchair and the different teams. Plus there was little chance I would end up in a closet with anyone, right? Shut up brain.

The person who led us down to the locker room left us outside it without a word once we reached the door.

Jen looked over to me, “Do we go in?”

I shook my head, “I barely know Artem. I actually went through a bunch of photos online to make sure I would be able to recognize him. I am glad he knocked on the glass, so we both got the visual.”

Jen started to cackle.

“You can’t be serious?” she asked.

I nodded, grinning. The door opened and we both whipped our heads around to see who was coming out. It was a group of guys; I bit my lip as I looked them up and down.

“Any of them?” Jen whispered slightly louder than necessary.

It caught the attention of a blond hair man in the group. It was the blond guy who had looked so familiar from before, Jack Johnson. Standing now only about twenty feet away, I knew I had to know him from somewhere, I just couldn’t place it. He was incredibly well muscled, and a good couple inches taller than myself. His eyes flicked over the two of us quickly, but then did a double take on me. He grinned and excused himself from the guys he was with, and made a beeline for us.

“Rivers,” He opened his arms for a hug.
“Hi!” I hugged him back out of not wanting to be rude.

“I can’t believe I haven’t seen you since that party at the house. Jesus that was a night. I still can’t believe you took a body shot off of Kaner. So how are you doing these days? When can you start rehabbing for next year?” He asked.

And it clicked. Olympics. Vancouver. Oh god. The win against Canada. I must have partied with him the night they beat Canada or something. I did a body shot off of a Kaner?

“Oh, hanging in there. I get this off in another week. Jen, this is Jack Johnson, he was in Vancouver, on the USA hockey team.” I said without missing a beat.

“Pleasure,” Jack flashed a grin at Jen. Jen gave him one of her heartbreaking smiles, which seemed to do nothing to him. He was rather focused on me.

He turned his attention back to me, and asked with a slight flirt in his tone, “So came to see me? I knew you couldn’t stay away.”

“Sorry, I am here just to say hello to a Russian,” I said shaking my head. My tone was pleasant, but it was clear and free from any sort of flirting.

“Are you willing to date an American now?” he pressed.

I raised a brow, apparently I had spent some time with him before. At the USA house in Vancouver as none of them had known of the real escapades with my Swede, so this excuse had been my out, “No, still not dating Americans.”

“What about Canadians?” he pressed.

I blinked a couple of times, my mouth opening slightly. Stamkos.

“For fucks sake. Stamkos sent you the goddamn picture too?”

Now he started blinking a couple of times, “What?”

“You hockey guys are ridiculous. Jen, let’s go. I’ll text Artem to meet us somewhere else.” I tugged at Jen who had been watching us slightly amused.

“Wait, Lily,” Jack grabbed my hand.

“What?” I snapped glaring up at the tall defenseman.

“Sidney is one of my closest friends,” Jack explained a slight blush crossing his cheeks.

My mouth opened and shut several times while Jen started laughing.

“I wasn’t really flirting with you. I was trying to do that thing you girls do, you know, scoop out how serious you are about my friend,” he explained as he turned a brighter shade of red, “But I don’t think I was doing a very good job of it.”

“Does he know you are doing this?” Jen gasped between her giggles.

“Not, exactly,” he admitted.

“Not exactly?” Jen whooped, “You, Jack Johnson, and I should be best friends.”

I buried my face in my hands. Sidney has been talking to this Jack all along about things between he and I? Sidney was talking about me, about us. Granted, I was talking with Jen about it, and even Vero knew more than she let on. And Torstein and Stale knew there was a guy, though they thought Crosby was his first name. And even now Geno knew, though that wasn’t really going over well. ‘Focus!!’ my brain shouted. Sidney was talking to Jack about me, so I wasn’t some secret.

“Lily?” I heard a new accented voice.

I glanced up between my fingers. Artem had just walked out of the locker room with another man.

“Artem,” I said trying to sound normal despite feeling the need to hit my head against the wall. Artem came over and gave me an awkward one arm hug and kiss on the cheek.

“Lily, this is Sergei Bobrovsky. He is our goalie and he is originally from Novokuznetsk.” He said in English as not to be rude to Jen or Jack who were both standing there. Jen was even still giggling to herself.

“Pleasure. And this is my friend Jen.” I replied gesturing to Jen.

“Hi!” She said brightly, “I am sorry, but you three should catch up! Jack and I were just going to go discuss something.”

And with that, she grabbed onto Jack’s arm, shooting me a quick appreciative glance, before whisking Jack away speaking lowly and excitedly.

I shook my head and looked at the Russians, before switching languages, “I sorry, I think she had too much to drink during the game.”

They both laughed as a courtesy to me before the three of us followed the same path Jack and Jen had set forth upon, but slower and chatting politely in Russian. By the questions Artem posed, it was clear Geno had asked him to check up on me, though, I played along. Though, even in this conversation with the funny polite Russians, my mind was one-tracked on Sidney.

Notes

Hello Friends. Long time no read. I am sorry in this delay (you don't want to know).

First, we have arrived at the end of the 'puckbunny'. The worst thing is, we are so desensitize to it that people call each other it without even batting an eyelash. I have been called this, mostly by guys, but by girls too, which I find even more horrifying. I have a confession I will tell you all, ready? Come close so I don't have to yell..... I have never ever ever had sex with a nhl hockey player (and the likelihood that I would ever is very slight{Dammit Danny B for being too old for me})! Gasp! I am sure you are all surprised and shocked. But you know what, if I had, what fucking difference does that make? If any of you readers have, I wouldn't care, honestly I would probably high five you. What do you all think about it?
Second, The game actually happened between the Avs and Lumbus, though Artem didn't actually play (though did I actually say he did in the story...? :P )
Third, The song is "Get Lucky" by Daft Punk
Fourth, a huge thank you to the wonderful Flyers_girl. Everyone should go read her works, though, I am pretty sure you have all read One-Timers.

As always, I am in awe of all of you. Never did I think there would be so many people who read/commented/rated/subscribed/actually liked this story. I will try to update soon.