The Moonstone Starlet

Chapter 17

“You have to beat these guys tonight. I’m serious. You have to.” Elia said, enunciating every word, as soon as she burst into the locker room before the Bruins game that night. The team looked over to her from their lockers.
“They are all assholes.”
“What did you do to them?” Jonathan asked, nonchalantly.
“What? Why do you think I did something?” Her voice was becoming high pitched in the way it did when she was angry.

Elia hadn’t done anything unusual. She showed up to the Bruins morning skate, like she had been doing to all the opposing teams for the past month. It had been cleared with Peter Chiarelli and Claude Julien. The players, however, were not into it. They told Elia they weren’t interested in being “buddy buddy” with someone that was friends with Matt Cooke.

“Then, their goalie called me a brainwashed Obamabot that was ruining the country. That doesn’t even make sense, I can’t be brainwashed AND a robot, it has to be one or the other. Robots don’t have brains, they’re computers.”
“What about those robots from I, Robot?” Dave Bolland asked.

Elia paused, thinking. If Sonny could dream, maybe it would be possible for that advanced of a robot to be brainwashed. She stopped.

“You know, that’s really not the point.” She said, trying to get back on track with her anger. Then she remembered the last bit.
“One of them called me an All-Star Puck Bunny. And I looked up ‘puck bunny’ on urbandictionary.com, and it is not fair to call me that when I’m not even getting laid by an NHL player!”
“Why do you say ‘not even getting laid’? You have had ample opportunities to get laid by an NHL player,” Versteeg started to say before being interrupted by Toews.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who said that to you?” Toews asked. This was apparently an offense they would take seriously. Elia pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket.
“I wrote his name down so I wouldn’t forget. Boychuk.”

The Captain didn’t say anything after that. He was going into pre-game serious mode. Byfuglien asked Elia where she was all day if she hadn’t filmed anything with the Bruins. After she left the TD Bank Garden she stopped somewhere to get a slice of pizza. She got a phone call from the Bruins back up goalie, apologizing for being rude, and asking if she wanted to get a cup of coffee. They met up at Voltage Coffee, a coffee shop art gallery combo. Tuukka said he felt really bad that he didn’t say anything when the other guys were being jerks. Somehow they decided to visit the Paul Revere house, and that led to recreating the Paul Revere Midnight Ride. It turned out to be a 16 mile route.

“Yeah Tuukka is real sweet, and he looks kind of like a squirrel, I like that.” Elia said.
“He’s Finnish.” Niemi pointed out.
“Antti, sometime during the off season I’m going to come visit you in Finland, because I’m getting the feeling I would really like your country, although to be honest, I’m not even sure where it is.”

She hugged Antti good luck, he was starting in goal that night. Elia made the guys promise not to out Tuukka as being friendly to her before heading to her seats. Instead of sitting in the box suite with the Blackhawks staff Elia was meeting Ben Affleck in the front row. She was wearing black Gucci leather leggings under her Kane jersey and some standard black Louboutins. To her dismay, sitting next to Ben was his brother Casey.

“What the fuck Ben, I thought Jen was coming!” She yelled. Ben shrugged.
“I don’t understand what the problem is that you have with me,” Casey said slowly, in his nasally scratchy voice.
“You know exactly why I have a problem with you, you little creep.”
“Can we just watch the game? Just don’t look at each other.” Ben said putting his arms out to settle them both.

Within the first five minutes Jonathan had given the Bruins a power play by slashing Mark Recchi. Elia cursed under her breath as the Bruins scored. Three minutes later Boston netted another goal.

“This is a good game so far,” Casey started to say.
“Fuck yourself Casey.” Elia said, not even looking at him.

Elia didn’t have to wait long for the Blackhawks to respond. Versteeg and Buff set up Keith for a slapshot and the puck flew past Tim Thomas. The Blackhawks scored again before the end of the first period. After another two goals were scored in the second period the Bruins pulled Thomas and put in Rask. Going into the third period the score was now 4-2 for the Blackhawks. A few minutes into the period, Colin Fraser started yelling at Johnny Boychuk, who hit him into the boards. Fraser got up and skated at Boychuk, shoving him. He slid his hands out of his gloves and went for Boychuk’s face. Johnny got out of his gloves and grabbed Colin by the jersey, holding him an arm’s length away. Fraser swung repeatedly, not making good contact, while Johnny set himself up for a strike. He only needed one punch to bring Colin down, and soon they were both on the ice getting broken up by the refs. When he finally got up, Colin skated silently to the penalty box. Boychuk was pissed, throwing his hands in the air and shouting as he went in for his penalty.

Tuukka made eleven saves the rest of the game, allowing only one goal when Kaner snuck one past on a wrister. He was now on a ten game point streak, and the Blackhawks had won five in a row. Ben invited Elia out to a bar after the game, but Elia declined. She wanted to go celebrate with her boys.

Colin Fraser wore a black eye for the next week and a half, but nobody would ever confirm or deny if the fight had been called as payback for Elia. It was Fraser’s sixth fighting major of the season, so it wasn’t necessarily unusual for him. He was surprised that Boychuk was such a good fighter considering it was only his second of the year.

January was a long hard month, wrapping up with another long road trip. The Blackhawks won ten of fifteen games, earning a point for OT in one of their losses. Elia missed the first half their road trip due to the Cubs Convention weekend where she spent three days drinking all day and night and giving bullshit answers to bullshit media questions. She called Kane every night she was there to complain the baseball players were boring divas and they were constantly whining about playing day games and having a long schedule. Why is it exhausting to stand around for ninety percent of the game? Try talking to Duncan Keith about being exhausted, she kept saying. It was official. Hockey had ruined her for all other sports.

February was already a short month, but the game schedule was even shorter due to the Winter Olympics in Toronto. In the second week of February the Blackhawks had a short three day break between playing the Stars and playing the Thrashers. Elia had been invited to sit front row at the Marc Jacobs show at New York Fashion Week. She brought Abby and Elina with her for a short girls only trip in between the games. They stayed at 60SoHo, a small luxury boutique hotel in the SoHo neighborhood. Instead of separate rooms they had booked the Sixty suite and an attached King Suite room. The rooms were gorgeous, with dark wood floors, rich suede accent walls and a balcony overlooking the Manhattan skyline.

Elina could not have been more thrilled to be on the trip. She had brought two suitcases with her, and spent the first day shopping for more clothes to bring back with her. Elia and Abby spent the day taking photos for Elina and thumbs up or thumbs downing her outfit ideas. The first night there they went to the Diane Von Furstenberg show, and met up with Alexa Chung for an after party. Elina was fast friends with everyone at the party by the end of the night while Abby and Elia mostly chatted with each other and a couple other wallflowers. The girls went home just before midnight, not wanting to get burned out on their first night of the trip. Abby was staying in the attached room, and Elina in the main king bed. Elia had volunteered to sleep on the pull-out couch in the main room of the suite.

Once the other girls had gone to sleep, Elia quietly left the room. She had a black Lincoln Town Car waiting for her outside. They headed north and east, away from the city. At 1:00 a.m. the car reached their destination just outside of Bridgeport, Connecticut, a red brick building with a big bay window, white and red trim, and a sign that said “Circle Diner”. She saw him when she walked in, sitting at the counter drinking water. He was wearing a pullover sweater and the same backwards cap. He turned as she walked towards him, looking her up and down and half smiling.

“Hey,” he said as she sat down.
“Hey.”

They exchanged how-are-yous and then there was a somewhat awkward silence. It had been a month since he had texted, but had been in opposite places until now. He hadn’t wanted to talk over the phone, only in person. She wasn’t sure what to say. Should she apologize? He spoke first.

“I wanted to meet you here, get your side of the story, cause the way I’m seeing it? I met this cute girl, we had a really good time, I go home the next day and see her on t.v.--She has a different name, she has a boyfriend--”

Those were all fair accusations. Elia hadn’t thought about what would happen if he realized who she was, and it did look bad from his angle.

“We were broken up, he wasn’t my boyfriend at that time--”
“Did you think I was going to go to the press and be like, I slept with Elia Downs, I’m a bad ass? Cause I’m not that kind of guy, I’m a really simple guy, this is me. That’s it.”

She thought about it for a while before responding, taking a sip of the water she had just been served.

“Maybe it was a little bit of that, but I just really wanted you to treat me like a regular girl, I didn’t want you to see me with a bias. I’m sorry I lied to you.”

He looked at her, quizzically. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking at all.

“Well maybe I wanted to be treated like a regular guy,” He started smiling, the left side of his mouth curling higher and dimpling one side of his face. “I’m sitting around all afternoon thinking, damn this girl just used me for my hot body, she didn’t even give me her real name.”
“Aww, that hurt your feelings?” Elia smiled back at him.
“Yeah, that hurt, I needed someone to hold me, I felt vulnerable,” He went on, grinning, with his big eyebrows trying to look sad at the same time. Something about his smile just stunned her. She put her hand on his shoulder, jokingly consoling him, feeling her heart race when she touched him.
“Do they have alcoholic beverages at this diner?” She asked.
“No, but I did see a mini-bar in the hotel room I got next door.”

The hotel was literally a parking lot away from the diner. They walked across the lot to a small hotel, also made of brick. From the inside, the hotel was only one long hallway, dimly lit and musty smelling. Very different than the luxury hotel she had just left in SoHo. They reached the door and he held it open for her. She stepped in to the room and looked around, tossing her coat on a chair to the left. There was one queen bed in the center of the room, a mini fridge and an old false wood armoire with bronze trim along the edges. It had probably been there since the 80’s. All thoughts of the room disappeared in an instant when he put his arms around her from behind and started kissing her neck. His hands slid down her neck, stopping on her breasts momentarily before sliding down her body. She turned around and kissed him back, taking off his hat and throwing it somewhere. He pulled her shirt over her head before pulling her back to his body. With her heels on, they were almost the same height. She slipped them off and he picked her up and carried her to the bed.

They say lightning never strikes twice but Elia felt electricity run through her whenever she was with him. It was almost morning when they got around to drinking the mini Ketel One out of the mini-fridge, sitting in bed in their underwear again.

“You know, it’s okay anyways, I lied to you about my name too.” He said after a while, when they were finally starting to cool down. She looked over at him.
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah, my real name is Jason Bourne.”
“You’re the Bourne Identity, oh my god is this room being bugged right now?” She said, laughing.
“No, I’m more of the Bourne Ultimatum.”
“You’re dork ultimatum, maybe.” She said, laughing.

He leaned over to her, kissing her again, “I want to see you again. Sooner than last time,” he said in between kisses. Elia couldn’t say no, even if she wanted to.

Notes