Tread This Fantasy

Melanie was sitting on one of the plush benches along the back wall of the club. The low table in front of her had a silver bucket where a nearly empty bottle of champagne was chilling. There were empty or half-empty champagne glasses and cocktail glasses littering the mahogany tabletop. The club was sweltering hot with one too many bodies crammed inside on a Friday night.

Her heels were killing her feet after dancing with her best friends, and she was ready to go home. Late nights just weren’t as appealing as they had been before. Twenty-six and she was already going to bed early and getting up when the sun was rising. Her sixteen-year-old self never would have believed it.

Lisa and Kate were still dancing a few yards away, their hands in the air as their hips switched back and forth together. Sophie was at the bar trying to get another drink, but a suitor has waylaid her return. Men always loved Sophie with her blonde locks and bikini-body. Melanie looked down at herself. She was wearing a black cocktail dress with a swirling, silver embellished design up the side. Her strappy stiletto sandals were completely out-of-season in Pittsburgh’s cold winter, but she thought they looked too good with the short dress to not wear them out tonight. Unfortunately, dancing and four-inch heels didn’t go well together.

With her friends gone, she felt awkward. Sitting by herself at the reserved bottle service table made her feel like she was on stage and everyone in the club could see her. Really, everyone was more intent on dancing, or drinking, or chatting up a potential romantic interest. She bent down and massaged the back of her right foot as her eyes swept the room again, pink, blue, and yellow lights were sweeping over the dance floor.

When she glanced over at the bar to check on Sophie, she saw her friend still talking to a man in a black suit with dirty blonde hair. Melanie let her eyes slide to the right and they settled on a man with a beer in his hand. He was sitting at the bar, but facing out toward the dance floor, watching everyone. He must have felt the weight of her eyes because after only a moment, he looked her direction and caught her gaze. His brown hair fell effortlessly around he face, obscuring just the edge of his eye. He lifted a hand and pushed it away before giving her a nod.

Melanie felt drawn toward him and the intensity in his eyes even though she couldn’t make out details of his facial features in the dark club with the flashing lights. She nodded back and gave a small smile. He didn’t look away, but kept watching her as he took a slow draw off the bottle in his hand.

She lifted a glass holding the last of her french martini in the air in a silent toast to him. This earned a flash of white teeth as he smiled at her. She smiled in return and knocked the rest of the drink back. It was more than she should have had, even if she didn’t have to work tomorrow. Two bottles of champagne and multiple cocktails over the course of three hours had done a number on her brain, making it fuzzy. All she knew was that it was hot, her feet hurt, and she was sure she could curl up on the padded bench and fall asleep, even with all these moving bodies pressing against each other on a dance floor just a few feet away.

When she looked up the man at the bar was still watching her. He gave a quick wave of his hand. It broke the allure of mystery of him because the wave was such a dorky thing to do. Not that it turned her off all together; it just made him more approachable. Melanie shifted to get more comfortable and sat the glass down on the table to join all the other empties the waitress needed to collect.

She could still feel his eyes on her, but she tried not to look at him. Instead, she watched Sophie throw her head back and laugh at the man she was talking to at the bar.

“I love that song so much,” Kate said, crashing onto the bench beside Melanie. Lisa followed suit, plopping down on the end and snatching a half-empty glass of a watered down margarita.

“I don’t know how you two do it. My feet are killing me.”

Lisa chugged the drink and replied, “Lots of booze. The more alcohol I’ve got in me, the more I want to dance.”

“Stop being a stick in the mud, Mel,” Kate added, bumping her shoulder against her friend’s. “Where’s Sophie?”

“Getting hit on at the bar,” Mel replied, nodding in that direction.

“Mmm, he looks like a cutie. But not as hot as the one two stools down,” Kate said.

Mel looked up and saw that Kate was referring to the man she’d made eye contact with. He was still watching her and now it was making her paranoid. Did she have something on her face? Was her hair a disaster? Her hand went up and to touch her dark brown hair that was pulled up into a messy bun on the top of her head.

“He’s got his eye on you,” Kate whispered as she leaned into Melanie again.

“Yeah, it’s a little weird.”

“Or a little hot,” Lisa added. “Go over and talk to him.”

“No way.”

“Seriously. You should. He’s looking delicious and I think he wants to eat you for dessert,” Kate said, not taking her eyes off the man at the bar.

Mel glanced up and saw him take another drink of beer. His gaze was so intense she felt like she needed to go hide in the bathroom just so she could breathe. Before she could excuse herself and escape, Sophie popped into her line of sight and sat down beside Mel.

“You. Will. Not. Believe. This,” Sophie said, waving a napkin in the air.

Lisa rolled her eyes as she combed the tangles out of her short black hair with her fingers. “It’s a napkin, Sophie. You just totally messed up the mojo that Mel had going on with the hottie at the bar.”

“Who?” Sophie asked, looking over her shoulder. Mel’s eyes jerked over to the bar, preparing for his stare again. He was gone, the stool vacant and the bottle of beer on the bar top.

“Mr. Mysterious two stools down from you and the guy who was trying to talk his way into your pants,” Kate answered.

Sophie turned back to her three best friends. “That’s the thing! The guy talking to me was a hockey player for the Penguins. Can you believe that?”

“Who?” Mel and Lisa both said in unison. Kate and Sophie tended to pay more attention to the concession stand if they ever found themselves at a sporting event.

“Brandon something,” Sophie replied, reading the name off the napkin.

Mel snatched it out of her hand and read the scrawl across the white paper. Sure enough, the first name and a phone number were written there in ink. “Sutter?”

Sophie’s eyes lit up. “Yes! Brandon Sutter! He was so sweet.”

“Are you for real?” Lisa asked, narrowing her eyes at Sophie.

“You know I don’t know any of those guys. I don’t have a reason to lie.”

“Did he ask you out?” Mel said.

Sophie nodded. “You know I don’t give my number out to guys, so when I wouldn’t give it to him, he gave me his and asked me to call him so we could plan something.”

“You like him?” Kate asked. Mel and Lisa rolled their eyes. Leave it to Kate and Sophie to completely ignore the fact that Brandon Sutter, the new Penguins center, had just been in the same room with them.

“Oh, yeah,” Sophie replied. “He was a cutie and super sweet to me. Hey!” Sophie threw her hands in the air and looked over at Mel. “Maybe the guy giving you the longing looks was with Brandon! They all just left. Is your man still over there?”

“No, he left.” Mel felt her stomach tie up in knots. There was no way the man giving her the eye was a Penguin. Just the thought made her light-headed.

Sophie’s eyes were sparkling with excitement. “I bet it was one of them. We should do a double date.”

“Absolutely not,” Mel muttered, searching the tabletop for a glass with booze in it. Something. Anything.

*****************************************

Mel spent too many times in the past month looking at the pictures of the Penguins roster on their website. Each time she tried to imagine them in the dimly-lit club, tried to measure the weight of what their gaze would feel like, tried to envision a smile that would have probably knocked her socks off if it had been more visible. None of the pictures matched. Or maybe it was that too many of them matched the nondescript man nursing a beer at the bar while he watched her.

A month was a long time, and Mel knew she shouldn’t still be hung up on the way he looked at her or the possibility he played for the Penguins. Sophie had gone out on two dates with Brandon Sutter. They hadn’t worked out. Sophie was high-maintenance and needed a boyfriend who would run to her at the drop of a hat. Brandon was incapable of being what she needed since he traveled so often.

Mel closed her laptop and shuffled off to the bathroom of her one-bedroom apartment to finished her hair and makeup before meeting Kate for dinner and drinks. Kate’s fiance was out of town for the weekend on business, and Mel had promised to keep her company this evening.

After a light dinner at a sushi restaurant, they ended up at the same club they had been at last month. Mel had just received her production bonus for the month, so she splurged on bottle service again. They settled into an alcove with a bottle of chilled pinot grigio and two wine glasses. Kate was dancing in her seat as she sipped on the wine.

“You have to go dance with me. I can’t do it by myself and I sure as hell can’t dance with any of those guys. Tommy would kill me.”

Mel rolled her eyes. “Come on, let’s go.” She grabbed her friend’s wrist and they hurried out to the dance floor. She had worn more sensible shoes this evening--black, peep-toe wedges paired with a strapless, yellow satin dress that hit just above her knees. She switched her hips to the bass of the loud hip-hop that was blasting over the speakers. The beat was so pronounced, she could feel it inside her.

Suddenly she felt the pressure of a familiar gaze. Glancing to the right, she saw him at the bar again, facing outward with his elbows resting on the bar top behind him. His hair fell artfully over his forehead. She couldn’t make out facial features, but she could see that he was in a suit, but the tie was undone and hanging loosely from his neck. And he looked good enough to eat.

“It’s him,” Mel yelled into her friend’s ear as they continued dancing.

Kate looked over to the bar and her eyes widened. “You need to go over there and talk to him!”

“No!” Mel responded. Despite her reluctance to engage with the man, she kept looking over at him, trying to decide if his shadowy face matched any of the pictures on the Penguins roster. After going through the pictures in her mind, she shook her head and looked back at him. He nodded and waved at her again. The same short, dorky wave that made him look less intimidating and more approachable.

“Seriously!” Kate yelled over the pounding music. “Go!”

“No!” Mel answered again, pulling Kate toward the edge of the dance floor.

“Oh my god,” a blonde girl to the left of them screamed at her friend. “I swear that is Kris Letang over there. He is so dreamy.”

Mel put her head down and pulled Kate back to their table, trying to ignore the buzz around them.

“Who is Kris Letang?” Kate asked as they sat down and watched the two girls make a beeline over to the bar.

“A Penguin,” Mel answered.

“Your man?”

“I don’t have a man. And if you’re talking about the guy who has been staring at me, no. He’s four stools down from the guy those two girls are fawning over. And if that’s really Kris Letang, then we are in the strangest club ever. The Penguins actually come here to hang out?”

Kate took a sip of wine. “He’s still watching you, you know.”

Mel knew. She could feel the intensity of his gaze still. Suddenly a commotion over by the bar caused a flurry of activity and then several of the men at the bar and the tables closest to the bar left in a group. Including the man who had been watching Mel.

She swallowed and reached for her drink. No way in hell a Penguin was making eyes at her. No way.

Notes