Of Icings, Halfpipes, and Pterodactyls

“You know, instead of scoring the hat-trick last night, you could have just whipped it out and compared sizes with Murray,” I grumbled from the backseat of Sidney’s car as the two of us waited for Taylor to come out of the house. And then I added, “Or Geno.”

To say it had been a very tense last couple of days would be rather a large understatement.

The moment the kiss had happened, I had pushed away followed by almost clocking Douglas Murray in the face, not caring that we were in public or about my normal rather pacifist attitude on life or anything.

“Why don’t you ever greet me like that?” a voice whined nearby.

I had glanced around and saw the speaker was James; who technically was still on my shit list. James went completely silent under the glare I sent his direction before I looked back around for Sidney, who was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Paul.

“Murray, you can’t be doing that,” I glared up at the giant man. And without another word, I stormed away; both out of anger and because I didn’t owe anyone any explanation. Well, no one in the surrounding area any explanation.

I ended up texting Mama Malkin asking her to let the Crosbys’ know that I would be catching a ride back with Sidney. True, Sidney didn’t know I would be catching a ride back with him, not yet. But I solved this by proceeding to a very specific parking level in the ramp where the players all parked of their cars; I knew his car would be there.

Forty minutes of waiting later, I saw Sidney making his way through the ramp to where I was standing. He looked rather surprised to see me leaning on his vehicle waiting patiently for his eventual arrival. He beeped the car so it unlocked and we both got in. Silently.

The first bit of the car ride was one of the more uncomfortable rides I ever participated in. It brought up a lot of memories of that first shared cab ride together in New York. I felt anger in the the pit of my stomach begin bubbling up; I had nothing to feel guilty or bad about. It wasn’t like I had flung myself at the Swede or something. I was literally standing there and Murray had kissed me.

I guess there were many things that Sidney and I had neglected to talk about. Never in a million years did I think Murray would have responded like so. But really, never in a million years would I have ever thought I would be in a car with Crosby now being so concerned about his feelings.

I thought Crosby was much better at this relationship type thingy, but it seemed like we were both not very good at it. So maybe it was important to talk about exes?

“Vancouver,” I finally said breaking the silence in car.

“What?” he asked turning his attention from the road for a moment to look at me.

“I met Murray during the last Olympics,” I paused wondering how much I should actually tell him. How much did Crosby need to know about past relationships?

“So you had sex with him there?” he asked gripping the wheel tightly.

I turned to glare at him, “You think I had sex with him? Really?”

Crosby didn’t respond.

“I met Murray in Vancouver because I was spending a good amount of time at the Swedish house,” I paused wondering how to best phrase the next part, “I was, in a relationship with a Swedish skier.”

“You and Murray didn’t?”

“No, we just talked a couple of times,” I answered honestly. I was leaving out the part of how the Swedish hockey player incessantly flirted with me and I was putting more weight in the loose relationship I had been in with Evert at the time, but I didn’t think that those details were exactly pertinent at the moment.

“Oh.”

“Oh indeed.” I sighed staring into the dark night.

“I guess we never really talked about exes.” He dully replied, his eyes not leaving the road, but he seemed to relax, fractionally.

We. Even with the bizarre roller coaster of events that occurred over the course of the night, I felt my stomach start flipping.

“No,” I replied mono-tonally. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know about his exes, nor was I sure I wanted him toknow a lot about Evert. It wasn’t like I had anything to hide about my lone relation (if you could call it that), but it entered a lot of territory that surrounded the more sensitive topics in my life that I didn’t like to talk about.

“I didn’t know,” he confessed.

I shrugged my shoulders, “It was a long time ago and not a lot of people knew about it.”

We were both silent for a while.

“Is there anyone else I should know about? Anyone else in the league?” He asked in an attempt to break the silence and lighten the air.

I felt my lips twitch slightly.

“Nah. I haven’t found myself in any dark closets with any other hockey player,” I teased, “I mean, other than with Geno.”

The car jerked as Sidney almost hit a parked car.

“EVGENI MALKIN?” he roared as he whipped his head to the side to look at me.

‘Oh fuck,’ I shut my eyes.

“I assumed that you knew?” I attempted calmly; I was anything but calm. How the hell didn’t he know? The first interaction Sidney and I had, he had assumed there was something between Geno and I.

“No.” his voice was flat.

“I thought he talked about it with everyone,” I muttered my eyes still shut.

“Not with me.”

“Oh.”

The car was silent once more.

“It was years ago, the first time I saw him in Russia. It wasn’t a big deal. It was after the first time Geno and Sabina broke up, it’s why she hates me so much. Nothing really happened, it was just like, for appearance sakes. Like, we kissed a couple of times and we ended up in my hotel room and talked all night and fell asleep. He even slept on the couch,” the words poured out of my mouth like vomit, it just kept coming and I couldn’t stop it. I was pretty sure I was just digging myself in a bigger hole.

Sidney was silent as he pulled into the driveway to his house, and to my dismay, his parents and sister were already home so we didn’t have the opportunity to discuss any of it further that night.

The next morning while Sidney headed back to the rink for practice, Taylor and I had headed to tramp gym. My ankle held up just fine and I taught her some tricks and flips. She was a natural athlete which wasn’t surprising at all. What was surprising was that after a while, her guard did start to come down a bit. We talked about her time at her boarding school where she played hockey; all she wanted to do was to play hockey for Canada’s National team and win Olympic gold.

The following day was quiet but awkward. I had rehab in the morning and that night, we all went to the game. A game that turned out a lot closer than it should have. Sidney flew out on the ice scoring 2 in the first period and completed his hat trick during the second. Yet by the end of the game, the final score was 4 to 3 for the Penguins. Unlike the previous game, it was nice to see that our team had settled down quite a bit, only 2 penalties versus Ottawa’s 7. Though, it was clear the Pens needed to work on their powerplay, at least that was what Mr. Crosby was agonizing over during the game; all those damn wasted chances.

We all waited for Sidney to finish up before the 5 of us went out for a super late night dinner. Once again, it was impossible to actually find time to talk to Sid because Troy and Sidney had rode together while the three of us women went in a car together. By the time we had finished a scrumptious meal, we were all exhausted most notably Sidney.

Thus in the morning, I made a plan of attack. I finished up everything and was ready to go a little early in an attempt to try to sneak up to Sid’s room to talk to him before we had to leave for the airport. When I reached the door, I realized someone had beaten me to this.

“I can’t even believe you.”

“Taylor, what are you-”

“No, no. I’m not stupid Sidney. I can’t believe you would do this to him. I can’t believe you would put her in this type of position. And us.”

“Taylor,”

“Don’t Taylor me! You haven’t even realized what it is doing to us. Namely me! I am allowed to be fucking selfish here!”

“Taylor,”

“You are my big brother, what sort of example are you setting?”

I grimaced and attempted to sneak away as quietly as I could. Most certainly I didn’t want to interrupt brother-sister time especially when it sounded like they were arguing about something.

“Mother-fucker!” I yelled as I tripped over the flat hard wood surface. Or was it my own feet I tripped over? I wasn’t sure but I was sure I was flat on my face outside of Sidney’s room.

The door swung the rest of the way open.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I moaned, while not moving from my facedown position on the ground. I heard someone crouch down next to me.

“Lily, what are you doing?” It was definitely Sidney.

“Yoga?”

“Yoga?”

“Yes?”

“On my landing right before we are heading out?” Sidney’s tone was more amused than anything else.

I turned my head to him grinning like an idiot, “Corpse pose.”

I then quickly moved my hands forward, pushing my body into a downward facing dog before jumping into a forward fold before standing up quickly and bringing my hands to center.

“Namaste,” I was entirely unable to keep a straight as I looked down at Sidney who was still crouching.

Sidney shook his head, “You girls are going to be the death of me.”

Thus here we were, Sid and I sitting in the car waiting for Taylor before the three of us headed to drop Sidney off at the airport. Taylor had come out of Sidney’s room claiming she needed a few moments to change and grab somethings before we left; Taylor and I were headed back to the tramp gym after we dropped Sidney off at the airport.

Sidney sighed. I moved to the edge of my seat and put my chin on the top part of his chair behind him. I was looking into the mirror and he was looking back at me through it. Those damn eyes drew me in and the proximity did nothing to help. I could see some anger in those amber eyes but also so hurt and confusion.

“Sidney,” I paused glancing towards the front of the house. I saw Taylor coming out of the front door thus not leaving me much time, “You know I wouldn’t be here if I-I wasn’t, if you were, if I didn’t, if you know.”

I cursed myself at not being able to be more eloquent as Taylor reached the car at that moment opening the front passenger seat of the car.

She promptly flipped on some music as Sidney started to pull away from the house.

When we finally pulled into the private area of the airport where the players parked or were dropped off, Taylor didn’t even get out of the car, which felt really odd to me. However, I did slid out of the car.

“See you in a couple of days,” Sid said gruffly as he pulled his carry on from the trunk of the car before shutting it with a little more force than what was needed.

I winced at the loud noise and stood awkwardly unmoving as he started to walk away.

Sidney stopped walking when he was about twenty feet away. I saw his shoulders sag a little before he turned around and started walking towards me with a purpose.

“What’d you forget?” I called to him as I began to turn to look in the back of the Range Rover. I didn’t see anything so I turned back around and jerked back a bit when I found Sid standing right next to me.

“You.” he mumbled. Sid looked around the parking lot, as did I; it

He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me in.

“Taylor,” I warned.

“I know,” he sighed burying his face in my hair, “I’ll call when we all get settled in, okay?”

“Okay, good luck.” I said into his chest.

He released me and once again was walking away from me. I stood for a few moments as I watched him walking away before I myself turned around and headed to the front of the car. I opened the door to the driver’s seat.

“You not going to go find Geno to say goodbye?” Taylor asked looking up from her phone.

“Nope!” I said as I clicked my seatbelt.

“But--” she cut herself off, as if she wanted to say something, but held herself back.

I glanced at her as I turned the car back on, as I explained“He’ll arrive with only a minute or two to spare and have to run to catch the plane.”

“Oh.” she returned her attention to her phone and was frowning.

I studied her for a moment, confused in her change of demeanor from the day before. Sighing, I turned on the car and began to back out of the spot.

Notes

Dear Friends.

It's been a while. And this one is rough but I really wanted to give you all something. Things on my side are all pretty complicated. Due to my situation, I am sometimes unable to write. But you all have no idea how much I have appreciated the comments and messages of support. Enough of my rambling. There will be another update rather soon and it is a much more exciting one!

Anyways, I hope you keep with the story and comment/subscribe/rate etc. cheers.