Changes

Tonight I was hitting the bar with the fellas. Callee had work today and had to be back in early tomorrow so I figured I’d just spend time with my teammates. We decided to go to Atlantic City and go to a bar down there. I had never been there before and was excited.

I knew the guys were fun to hang out with. Even some of the married guys had decided to go since we were only staying one night. I ended up driving down with Danny, Andrej and Pronger. We got down there and made reservations for dinner at Old Homestead Steak House. There were fifteen of us total by the time we went into the restaurant. We were a rowdy group and I felt for the servers assigned to our table. “So wifey poo let you out Dan?” Lappy asked while shoving a huge piece of steak into his mouth.

“Umm yeah. Mine doesn’t give me a hard time. She just warned me not to get arrested.”

I laughed. “Except now you owe Raina and Dani and night out huh?” I asked and they just nodded.

After dinner we scattered about, Wayne and I hitting the craps table. We were meeting back up as a group at nine o’clock to hit the club. We threw some dice before going up and showering. We occupied ten rooms on the 15th floor of the hotel. A few of the guys were sharing rooms. By nine o’clock the music was blaring from several of the rooms and guys were strolling the hall waiting on everyone to finish up getting ready. By the time we got to the club and got our first drink it was ten o’clock.

I pulled a barstool out and sat down facing the dance floor where James was already being surrounded by girls. An older blonde was hitting on Claude and all I could do was laugh at him. She looked like she might be his mom’s age.

Pronger handed me another beer and laughed. “The young guys get hit up hard huh. They will all be down thousands of dollars by tomorrow. These women are vicious.” I laughed knowing that was me in Pittsburgh. I spent copious amounts of money on alcohol and partying with the females. It was a striking difference. Now, here I sit against the bar not even looking for attention.

Prongs and I toasted a shot of whiskey. Andrej came up and joined us. “Yo any of you notice Danny is acting weird tonight?” He was acting a little quiet, but it was nothing out of the ordinary. Pronger looked at me and shrugged.

I went over and sat next to him at the bar. “What’s up man, we ain’t stupid, we all know something is wrong.”

He looked up at me as he drained another shot glass. “She is mad at me, again. We had a really nice summer and didn’t fight much. We come back from our break and Wednesday I came home, tired and annoyed and kind of lost it with Carson. She went nuts on me. Told me she won’t go through what happened last year and I need to figure out how to deal with hockey stuff out of the house.”

I signaled the bartender for another shot. “Wow didn’t realize last year was so bad man. Maybe she is just scared of what happened then and that is why she got so upset. Was she mad you went out tonight?”

He just nodded. “Nah, she tells me all the time to go out and blow off some steam. Maybe you are right. Maybe it just reminded her of last year. I was in a bad place the end of last season.” We did a few more shots and then decided to go up to the rooms and get some sleep. I got a shower and laid in the bed. I looked at my phone and saw that Callee had sent me a message saying good night about an hour ago. I hit her contact and hit send.

“Hey, how are you. Didn’t expect you to call me tonight. I’m just getting out of the shower” she said when she answered.

“Shower, sounds like fun.” I commented and just the thought of it got me excited.

“How late are you going to be up? I can do seventy and be there in less than an hour” I asked.

She just laughed. “I’ll see you tomorrow Maxime. I have work early. I promise to make the wait worth every second.”

I just pouted. “Fine then Callee, have fun going to sleep, alone.”

She laughed. “Have fun sleeping with Wayne. Maybe he can help you out.” She hung up the phone and I had to laugh. She was definitely a breath of fresh air from the girls I was used to. She was witty as well as book smart and could definitely hold her own with me.

Wayne woke me up when he came in a few hours later and flopped on the bed. “Yo, Claude got flagged from the bar. Quiet guy himself mooned one of the bartenders who refused to serve him. Pronger and Mesz did a country line dance on the bar. Schenn and Reemer were doing body shots off some cute blonde. Lavy might kill us on Monday.” I just groaned.

What a way to start a new season. It was bad enough there were plenty of rumors circulating as to why Jeff and Mike had both been traded in the offseason. People with the team knew the night they all got arrested played a part in it, but most of the media and stuff was just speculating as to the rest of it. I had to chuckle though. Golden boy Giroux would no longer be in the good graces of the organization after this one. For once, I was not going to get into trouble. Haha, wait until I tell Sid. I closed my eyes and willed myself to go back to sleep.

We met for a breakfast at nine o'clock before leaving. Some of them could barely hold their heads off the table.

“So I guess we will be playing “Dry Island” with Lavy on Monday”, Pronger said from the head of the table. Brayden groaned and Claude’s head hit the table for the third time.

“We should all show up with beach provisions and stuff we pack for “Dry Island”. How funny would that be?” I asked and the table cracked up.

Danny just sighed. “Seriously guys, you know Monday is going to suck now. How come we always get in trouble in AC. Last time we got arrested before we even made it here.”
Pronger just laughed. “At least you went to bed. You and Max are in the clear. No bad pictures.”

I grinned. It felt good to avoid something for once. Maybe, just maybe Callee was a good influence on me behavior-wise. I knew she was good for me in other ways and my body couldn’t wait until she got home so I could thank her.

Notes

Last one for tonight. Comments make me want to post :)