All of the Stars

Guyssssss......I've had the WORST bout of writer's block.
Seriously. For the last three and a half weeks. Probably the worst bout I've *ever* had in writing, maybe ever?

It took me that long to get this chapter out of me.

Whew. Hopefully the mental block is gone, onto better and brighter things for these two - at least writing wise, you know! ;) Hope you enjoy...

PS - be sure to check out the band mentioned in this chapter...they're a group from Brooklyn called Small Black that are just amazing. I saw them play once for $10 and seriously - one of the best concerts ever. Lurve!
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“Need another one?” her voice called from the kitchen.

Seated on a cream, overstuffed sofa, Jamie fought off the tiny black kitten playing with his pant leg, barely hearing the question. The cat nipped at the material of his jeans, sharp teeth scratching his skin in the process. He glanced towards Veronica’s voice, a wall away.

“Uh, no,” he managed.

Fighting off the tiny terror had prevented him from consuming any of the beer she’d handed him, while getting dinner started in the adjoining room. “I’m good.”

Her head poked around the corner, a whirl of red hair coming with it as the sound of Jamie’s voice gave all away - seeing him struggle with Clarence. The kitten had by now climbed the length of Jamie’s shin, hanging from a seam to dangle two feet off the floor.

Jamie’s eyes met Veronica’s across the room - someone who battled other guys his size for the puck each night, smeared players against the glass like it was nothing - his caramel orbs pleading for help.

She giggled, bending to pick up a stuffed mouse from the hardwood. “Clarence!” she cooed, shaking the toy, its bell getting the cat’s attention.

Immediately the cat released its claws, dropping to the floor beneath and darting in the direction Veronica tossed the toy, down the hallway of the bungalow.

“Free at last,” she murmured at Jamie, her lips curving into a smirk before they met the bottle of beer in her hand. It stifled the laugh deep in her belly, as he rose to his feet.

He shook his head at the absurdity. “Didn’t know you were a cat person,” he grinned, the dimple in his cheek catching her off guard. He crossed the space between them, feet in socks shuffling along the patterned carpet - cream intermixed with rivulets of faded red, geometric shapes of celadon.

The colours of Veronica, he thought, just a foot away from her. Her emerald eyes turned to meet his; Jamie’s voice caught in his throat.

There it was again: that feeling in her stomach, the flutters, the bubbles in her bloodstream - it’d felt like an eternity since she’d had felt anything of the sort. Sweeping her gaze along the width of his shoulders, wrapped in cotton that seemed barely fit to contain its wearer, the scent of his cologne wafting in her nostrils…

Veronica’s voice caught in her throat.

“The wife of our school principal works at the animal shelter,” she managed, turning to change the record playing atop a nearby credenza.

Her fingers lifted the needle, replacing the vinyl beneath. She could feel Jamie’s gaze on her, those soft brown eyes that couldn’t tell a lie. Grabbing her beer, Veronica summoned the courage to turn and meet his face.

“She mentioned they had an influx of kittens, so I went a few weeks ago and brought him home,” her eyes slipped to the pet wrestling with a string on the carpet, oblivious to the conversation around him. “When I got back into town.”

When I got back into town.

The words hung heavily in the room, just like the other myriad of changes apparent in her life. Jamie had been holding back, tempering himself, since the moment back at the school yard.

“You left,” he’d whispered, the air rushing out of his lungs.

Like one more disappointment, another defeated expectation, Veronica’s face had crumbled, her shoulders heaved. She could run, she could hide - but it wasn’t worth the pain on Jamie’s face in avoiding why she’d skipped town, avoiding him for months.

You owe him this, her brain had told her, the words slipping from her lips - the offer of dinner, the invitation of the meal she’d suggested to Shannon. If they were going to have this conversation, there might as well be alcohol to soothe her frayed nerves.

So he’d followed Veronica’s car to her home, never expecting the journey would lead not to the house in the suburbs - but instead to a small, sage green bungalow in the nearby Oak Cliff park. A black wrought iron fence framed the home, windows flanking either side of the cedar steps that led to a red door.

Inside, the space was a typical inner-city Dallas home: wood floors original to the home had been sanded and varnished to a shine; walls were painted a soft yellow; butcher block counter tops in the kitchen were covered with cookbooks and utensils - signs that someone really lived here.

Jamie was moved by the warmth, the hominess of the space. And by the stark fact: everything about it was completely different to the home Veronica had shared with Jeremy.

Now she moved with a fluidity - pulling beers from the fridge, rolling out dough for pizza, choosing the next album they’d listen to - of someone who was truly comfortable in her surroundings. If Jamie was being honest with himself, she seemed more at peace here than she ever did in the big house, the one way out in the boonies.

Veronica closed the lid, reveling in the soothing beats that filled the room. They both watched the spinning disc - Jamie hadn’t even known she owned a record player, never mind the collection of vinyl he’d flipped through, not recognizing a single band.

Do know I loved you
Now I
Now I don't have a clue

I'll find it another one
Below me, cars go by in storms

Shook shook
By the loss of love
Shook shook
By the loss of love

“Vee--” Jamie started, taking a half step closer. He couldn’t reconcile this version with the one he knew in his mind - the one who’d evaporated from his life months earlier, only to reappear, seemingly someone he hardly knew anything about.

Her green eyes met his, fear creeping in at the edges.

“What…” he trailed off, a frown furrowing his brows, glancing towards the kitchen. “Is something burning?”

“Shit!” Veronica cried, shoving her beer into Jamie’s free hand. She spun on a heel, dashing towards the oven where she’d forgotten to set a timer on the pizza. “Dammit!”
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Good thing it didn’t burn, she thought, watching Jamie’s huge hands reach for his third piece. Otherwise we’d both starve.

It’d been an errant piece of cheese dripping onto the bottom of the oven, that’d set off the burning smell. A quick check of the baking delicacies and all was saved: pizza on the patio table in the yard out back, salad in bowls, iced tea to accompany their local beers.

As Veronica came swinging out the back door, cutlery in hand, he couldn’t help but marvel at the spread before him. She apologized for the humble meal, but between homemade pizza and cloth napkins, it was better a dinner than Jamie had seen in months.

He bit into a piece of pizza - margherita, with roasted tomatoes, fresh basil, buffalo mozzarella. The sensation was overwhelming - Jamie didn’t notice the advancing thunderclouds, that’d all but blocked out the low-hanging Texas sunset.

“Vee,” he moaned, wiping his lips with a napkin. His eyes fluttered shut as he swallowed, the dinner unlike any pizza he’d ever tasted.

She sat, mesmerized by the figure across the small wooden table. Immobile, Veronica was unable to eat the food before her, despite the knots in her stomach - whether due to hunger or nerves.

Jamie’s thick lashes lifted, wiping a bit of sauce on his white plate with a piece of crust that remained, tiny in his fingers.

“This is delicious,” he grinned, glancing up to find Veronica watching him like a hawk. “Wha--”

“I owe you an explanation,” the words slipped past her pink lips in a rush, as she tossed the cloth napkin on her plate. “You were there for me after the funeral and with my mother and giving me a place to stay and I just--”

“Veronica.”

His hand on hers, nearly swallowing her palm in size, stilled her, that spark like the crackle of a fire that shut Veronica up in a second. Green eyes met brown as her lower lip trembled, mind whirling back to the worst time, the times she promised she wouldn’t remember, that she owed it to Jamie to remember.

He cracked a grin, saving her - again. “Take a deep breath.”

That did it - relief spilling over her, like calming waters, a babbling brook that soothed her soul. Veronica’s head dropped, the sigh exhaling from her lungs. The emotions, the feelings - all conjured up everything that Jamie had done for her in the greatest time of need, the solace he’d provided when it was most essential.

When she looked up this time, the look - the one of worry, the furrow of frustration - had faded, wiped from her features. In its place was the look Jamie wasn’t quite accustomed to: the curl of her lip, the crease of her eye, tentative, hesitant - but by no doubt a smile, there on her face.

“I left,” she sighed, the words exhaling in a sharp rasp, the same ones he’d spoken not an hour earlier on the side of the curb.

Coming from Veronica, the memories of the hurt behind them - it felt like a slap. Jamie dropped his gaze, the soft cloth of his napkin rubbing against a calloused thumb as the material twisted between his fingers.

“Yeah,” he mumbled softly, unable to meet her eyes.

There it was again - that feeling, those feelings again, flooding her system, as a lock of dark hair flopped onto his forehead. The rush contrasted the surge of guilt, remembering how she’d slipped from his bed like a thief in the night.

Veronica’s hand reached to cover his, stilling the movement underneath. “I didn’t mean to, Jamie.”

His eyes flew up, as surprised by her touch as the words - what could that possibly mean? What did any of it mean - from her sudden disappearance to the way Veronica had invited him into her home, served him a meal as if she might…

Stop, he told himself. It was time to turn the page, to stop comparing himself to everything that came before him.

“Then why?”

She stared into the deep hazel eyes before her, hurt leaking in at the corners. When all her words had failed her before, now there seemed to be nothing.

“Veronica,” Jamie demanded, shaking his head in frustration. “What happened? Why’d you--”

“I couldn’t,” she blurt out, yanking back the hand that had slipped so easily over his, warmth bleeding from his skin. Fingers raked at her copper hair, the straight strands that in the evening breeze had become windswept and disheveled. “I couldn’t stay, Jamie.”

Jamie could feel his chest tighten, his throat constrict. “With….with me?”

“No!” Veronica cried, tossing her head back as tears sprung to her eyes. A hand waved as she shook furrowed her brow in anger. “This! The house, Dallas, my job, everyone who knew Jeremy - I just...I had couldn’t be here.”

He blinked at her outburst, the expression of pain palpable on her face. His fingers itched - he wanted to reach for her, for his arms to encircle Veronica in the same way they had days after Jeremy’s death.

She glanced his way, at his tepid silence. “It was everything that reminded me of him, Jamie,” Veronica sighed. “Everyone looking at me like I was this broken, wounded bird, wondering if I’d ever be fixed again.”

“Veronica,” he huffed, leaning back in his chair. Like it did out on the ice, facing down an opponent, Jamie’s mind leapt to conclusions, blaring anger. After offering her my place to stay, being there for her - this is how she shows her appreciation?

“I didn’t--” he continued, leaning back in the chair facing her. “I - the team, we didn’t think--”

“Stop,” she interrupted, a small grin on her face. “Take a deep breath.”

That earned her a laugh, the tension in his shoulders easing. They stared at each other for a second, a breeze blowing strands in her green eyes.

“We didn’t think you were broken,” Jamie said softly, finally uttering to say the words after a long moment.

Veronica bit her lip, eyes glancing downward. “Maybe you didn’t,” she offered, ignoring the feelings that rushed to the surface at the thought of the time with Jamie after Jeremy’s death, of how he’d cared for her, looked after her. “You were probably the only one who didn’t think I was going crazy.”

“But?”

“But I needed to get out,” Veronica managed, meeting his eyes as her lower lip trembled. “I couldn’t stay, not when everything here reminded me of everything that I’d lost.”

The pain on her features, the hurt that fissured across the edges of her face - Jamie felt her pain almost as his own, slumping in his seat.

He shrugged. “Where’d you go?”

It was impossible to stop: the sudden change of her lips, curling at the edges into a smile; the light in her eyes that wasn’t a result of the sun that had all but disappeared behind the clouds.

“Colorado,” she grinned, remembering the months of hiking and canoeing across clear mountain lakes, of laying in wide open fields under bright blue skies. “My grandfather owns a ranch outside of Denver - it’s where I spent my summers growing up as a kid.”

“Really?” Jamie’s smile matched hers, leaning both arms on the table. “Sounds like my parents’ place in Victoria - an acreage, lots of place to run around and get into trouble.”

Veronica giggled, mesmerized as much by the inky drawings covering his arms as by the image of a young Jamie and his brother Jordy, trying to get into whatever they constituted as trouble.

“I needed it,” she sighed, reaching for her beer, the last sips that remained in the bottle. “After everything with the house, the funeral...I needed to get out of town.”

Jamie observed the home next to them, the sage siding nearly matching the neat, green grass adjacent to the patio on which they’d ate. It too was a contrast to the previous home she’d shared with Jeremy, a yard big enough for a gaggle of kids, a deck made for neighbourhood parties, the commitments that suddenly seemed superfluous once her fiance was gone.

He waved a hand at the home. “What about this place?”

“Ah,” she swallowed around a mouthful of beer, setting the empty on the table. “A rental. Thought I’d kick the suburbs habit and move back to the city.”

“And the house?”

“Closing the deal next week,” Veronica nodded, not needing to detail which house it was they were referring to. The only house in discussion was the enormity on the way out of town, the one that’d left a hole in her chest the moment Jeremy slipped from her life.

“Wow,” Jamie murmured, silently observing the stillness, the calmness that’d come over her. Despite the upheaval of her life, of the way she’d disappeared for months without a trace - even Veronica’s unsettling confession, of the way she’d skipped town - there was a tranquility about her that he hadn’t seen in a long time.

She nodded, the tightness in her chest easing at the thought of leaving the house in the burbs for good.

“It’s done, it’s over,” Veronica mumbled. “I’ll be finished--”

Her voice was interrupted by a flash of lightning, followed by a crack of thunder that boomed overhead. Both she and Jamie tipped their faces heaven-ward, having missed the clouds that’d raced from the east as they’d dined al fresco, oblivious to the signs of the storm blowing in around them.

Black swirls painted the sky above, darkening the sky that’d illuminated the setting sun only hours earlier. They’d been so engrossed in conversation, so enthralled in the rapt words between one another, that the storm seemed to wrap around them in rapid succession, until it was too late.

“Shit,” Jamie breathed, mesmerized by the advancing clouds - only to be stirred to action a second later as fat drops fall on his bare arms. “Run!”

It threw them into movement - clamboring cutlery, stacking plates, as the rain began to fall on them in sheets. The Texas downpour was one Jamie had only begun to know in the past few seasons of his NHL career - it didn’t rain like this on the coast of Vancouver Island, the protected inlet on the Salish Sea where snow was a farce and sunny days dominated the landscape.

“Aauuuggghhh!!” Veronica cried, piling the dishes in her arms as she led the way across the interlocking stone of the patio, towards the door of her home, feet carrying her fast as they could.

Jamie grabbed at the water-logged slices of pizza remaining on the table, droplets of rain pooling on the slats of wood around the platter. Too good to go to waste, he thought sadly, seeing Veronica’s hard work ruined.

“Jamie!”

He turned, seeing her on the step as she called to him. The rain had soaked her clothing, the printed blouse and wine-coloured skirt clinging to her lithe figure. Jamie tried not to stare.

“Leave it!” Veronica called, waving a hand at the ruined dinner. His eyes followed the way her breasts moved from the motion, the pizza falling from his hands.

She watched him from the step, the rain falling harder now than it had even a few minutes earlier. Trails of drops tracked from the strands of her hair, over her face and, despite herself - into the upturned corners of her cheeks, as she watched Jamie debate leaving the soiled pizza behind.

“What are you waiting for?” she hollered at him.

He spun on a heel, his white shirt clinging to broad shoulders, rivulets of water tracing its way across the etchings of his forearms. Jamie broke out in a broad grin, crossing the patio in a few easy steps.

A hand reached past her as he stepped onto the stoop that lead to her home, for the knob of the door. Their faces were barely an inch apart, strands of hair in her face as she sucked in a breath.

You, he wanted to say.

“Nothing,” he managed instead.

Notes