PART FIVE: SPARKS FLY

(KANE’S P.O.V.)

I looked at the picture now on my phone. I guessed I would tweet it later. I didn’t really know why I wanted it. This girl was a little young for me, but there was something about her that I liked, probably more than I should. When Alecia had told the rest of the team and I about her friend’s sister, I guess I hadn’t expected much.

“Hey, I think we’re gonna show them around the locker room and everything in a couple minutes,” Tazer said as he walked over to me.

“Okay, cool,” I answered, trying to hide the photo. Johnny was too quick for me, though.

“Hey, what’s with this? Why’d you want one on your phone?” he asked when he snatched my phone right out of my hand.

“I don’t know, I just wanted a picture,” I lied. I was almost embarrassed to tell the truth, but it was Tazer. I’d just spill it to him later anyways, so I gave in when he gave me a look that pressured me to explain.

“What do you think of Destiny?” I asked him, not sure where to start.

“I don’t know, depends on how you mean that. I think she’s super nice, she’s a cute girl. Why?”

“So it’s not super weird if I’m like, attracted to her? I mean, I know she’s only twenty, so I feel like it’s wrong,” I admitted, taking my phone back.

“Well, I don’t know. I mean, there’s a bit of an age difference I guess, but I can see where you’re coming from,” he answered.

“Hey guys, sorry, but I was waiting to get a picture and neither of you were noticing me. Did you just say you’re attracted to Destiny?” Great, it was one of her friends. She had heard our whole conversation. I mean, her friends were super nice, and they were actually pretty fun to be around from what I had seen so far, but this was terrible timing.

“That depends, is that what you heard?”

“Yeah. I mean, that’s kind of a good thing, though. Don’t let Destiny know that I said this, but she loves you,” the girl said. Her name was Shantelle, I thought.

“She does?”

“Yeah. She has a huge crush on you! Why do you think she’s wearing your jersey?! I mean, I wouldn’t have said anything, but if you like her then I guess I don’t have any reason not to,” Shantelle replied.

“Well, that’s good to hear, I guess. Thanks for telling me,” I said.

“You’re welcome. Sorry, I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, by the way. But can I get that picture, now?” Shantelle apologized. Johnny and I took pictures with her and then it was back to our conversation.

“Well, there you go Kaner. She’s only four years younger, right? It’s not that big of a deal, just don’t get too interested. I doubt her parents would approve of you,” he smirked. Typical Tazer. I playfully shoved him away and we went over to the group of girls to show them around.



(DESTINY’S P.O.V.)

The Hawks all got together after pictures and came up to my friends and I.

“So, are you guys ready to hit the ice yet?” Hjalmarsson asked, with his fun Swedish accent. We all shouted yes in unison.

“Okay, well we have skates for you, but you’ll have to come to the locker room to get them,” Nick Leddy revealed. The party just kept getting better. We were getting a behind the scenes look, and we got to see the locker room. I felt luckier and luckier every minute.

The team led the way and my friends and I all followed. When we got into the locker room, we saw that we had our own spots. Above some of the player’s name plates were our names, and there were skates and sticks for us. Mine just happened to be at Patrick Kane’s normal spot in the locker room. My mom must have told Alecia how I felt about him.

“So this is your spot, huh?” I asked when Patrick took me over to my stick and skates.

“Yeah. All day, every day. I get the pleasure of sitting next to Shawzy here,” he joked.

“You know you love me, Kaner,” Shaw responded.

“I can’t believe Alecia did all this,” I said, talking more to myself than anybody else. “She got the right size skates and everything.”

“And if she got the correct stick, you’re a lefty like me,” Patrick said, joining in on my conversation with myself.

“Yeah, I’m a lefty. So are we playing hockey or…?” I questioned the hockey stick that I was examining.

‘If you guys want to. If you’re not afraid of losing, that is,” Kaner retorted, a devilish grin appearing on his face.

“Oh, we can definitely take you!” my friend Kristina shouted to him from across the locker room. Being the softball freak that she was, she could get pretty competitive. In my head I was telling her that she better be joking, but I realized that there was no way the Chicago Blackhawks were going to play hockey against a few inexperienced nineteen and twenty year old girls and not go easy on us.

“We’ll see about that,” Kane replied to her, and a few other players decided to argue with her about who would win if we played a game. As we put on our skates, I decided to stop joking around for a minute and be totally honest.

“I’m not going to lie Kaner, I’ve never really played ice hockey before.” I felt embarrassed. I realized how bad of a situation this unfair match up on the ice would be.

“Well, have you ever skated before?” he asked. More embarrassment.

“Do rollerblades count?” I laughed. As much as I had always wanted to go ice skating, I had never done it. I was going to be so unstable on the ice. And on the normal floor. I didn’t think I would even be able to walk in skates.

“No, not really,” he said honestly, laughing with me. “But I can help you out. I’ll stay close by so you don’t fall too much.”

“Thanks,” I told him. By then, our skates were on and we were all ready to hit he ice. I slowly stood up and I immediately grabbed Patrick’s arm.

“I honestly don’t even know if I can walk in these,” I admitted, giggling. This was a perfect time to be able to show off for him, but of course I was too inexperienced at skating to impress him. To make things even worse, I had never even shot a puck before. Who knew how gruesome that would be?

I slowly started walking and I was already almost about to topple over. Patrick stayed behind me as my protection. When we were almost out the door, however, Tazer stopped him to say something. I stopped and waited, but I didn’t catch what they were saying. They laughed and I thought I saw Toews glance my way, but I couldn’t be sure what mischief they were waist deep in this time.

By the time we got out of the locker room and to the ice, I had somewhat mastered walking in my new skates, which was more than I could say for some of my friends, who were still close to falling. However, that didn’t mean much. The real test was how we could do with skating. The Hawks began gliding out onto the smooth ice with ease, leaving us girls behind to watch in awe.

“The birthday girl gets to come out on the ice first,” Shaw announced, doing a graceful u-turn.

“Don’t embarrass me Shawzy, I don’t want to be first. You get out there, Shantelle!” I yelped, giving her a slight push to get her onto the ice. She started to lean to one side but she put her arms out in time and kept her balance, which was lucky for the both of us. If she would have fallen, she would have pushed me to get payback for sure.

“Hey! Jerk!” she shouted jokingly.

“Okay, come on. You said you didn’t want to be first, so now you’ll be second,” Kaner said. I grabbed the edge and held onto it as I made my way onto the icy surface. I cautiously looked back at him. “You’ve got this, and if not, I’m still here,” he reminded me. I made myself skate, wobbly propelling myself forward. I used the little knowledge I had from going rollerblading when I was younger and I had a tiny bit of hope. When it was clear that I thought I was going to fall, I felt a hand grab mine. I let Patrick’s fingers slip into the spaces between mine and this time, I didn’t even try to hide the grimace that I felt creeping onto my lips.

I scanned the rink to see that almost everyone had made their way onto the ice, and a lot of my friends were being accompanied by Hawks. Kara caught my eye and mouthed something to me that looked suspiciously like an ”Aw!” I mouthed the words “Shut up!” to her meanly and she just stuck her tongue out at me. Some mature girls we were.

For a while we all just skated to the music that was playing, and it was the most fun I had been able to have in a long time. We all got a chance to get used to skating until we were all comfortable enough on the ice to get away from the edges.

“Are you guys ready to play some hockey?” Bickell asked. We were, so we headed back to the Hawks bench to grab our hockey sticks.

“The birthday girl gets the first shot!” Shaw yelled.

“Okay, fine. I’ll take the first shot, but I’m letting you all know right now that it’s not going to be good,” I warned.

“Hey Crow, get in goal!” Shaw said, trying to mess with me. I glided over to him and gave him a playful shove. As I went back to where I could take my shot from, I whispered to Shantelle. “You better keep your man in check!” I told her, and I got away before she could retaliate.

I set myself up and Johnny Toews gave me a puck.

“You want help?” Kane asked.

“Is this wrong?”

“No, you’re good. I just wondered if you wanted help. You said you’d never shot a puck before.”

I let him know that I wanted to try it myself and I took my shot when he and Tazer backed up. I figured it was pure luck when it went right into the back of the net. My friends and the team cheered for me and they all spread out to take some practice shots of their own.

“You dirty little liar!” I heard. Patrick was back and accusing me of lying.

“What are you calling me a liar for?”

“You’ve played before,” he guessed.

“I swear to you, I’ve never played hockey before in my life. That shot was just lucky,” I explained.

“We’ll see about that. Try it again,” he pressured me.

“Okay, sure. I’ll probably be way off this time,” I predicted. I got set up with a puck again and Patrick came over to me.

“Here, move your hands a little bit,” he commanded, and before I even realized what was going on, his arms were around me, helping me. With his help, my shot went straight into the net again, and it felt more natural than the first shot had. Was this his way of flirting with me? This in addition to the other times he had gone out of his way to get my attention made me feel like he was interested in something more than just an acquaintanceship, or even friendship. I definitely wasn’t complaining; it was making my birthday all that much better, being that I had come to like him so much. At the same time, though, I didn’t want it to end with my birthday. I wanted an explanation and I wanted it to actually mean something.

I selfishly forgot about everyone else in the room and decided to talk to him. “Hey, can we talk for a minute? Like, over there?” I motioned towards the bench.

“Sure,” he answered, looking confused. I started making my way there and I felt him trailing behind.

(KANE'S P.O.V.)

Uh oh. Destiny wanted to talk to me, but she seemed so serious all of a sudden. Was she mad that I had been making moves on her? I wanted advice, and I was so tempted to talk to Tazer again. But when I scanned the ice for him, he was with a brunette girl, giving her tips. I was on my own, but I was afraid I was in trouble. I followed Destiny to the bench and when she sat down, I took a seat next to her.

“What did you want to talk about?” I asked.

“Well, it seems like you’re…I mean, you’ve been trying to…” She couldn’t seem to find the right words. “Do you like me or something?” I guess I was really obvious, unlike her. Her pokerface made me unsure if she was okay with it or if she was going to threaten me. “Maybe I’m taking this the wrong way, but I just feel like you’ve been trying to flirt with me and I don’t want to be led on if you don’t even actually care.” Harsh. She thought I was flirting just to flirt. How could she think that? Sure, my history was nowhere near perfect, but she was close to it in my eyes. I could never lead on a girl like her and just leave her hanging. I didn’t want to let this one go.

“I was hoping I was being smooth about it. I was flirting a little. But I promise you, I’m not just trying to lead you on. You seem like a really amazing girl, and I just want to get to know you better. I thought I would take my chances, since a little birdie told me that you’re interested too,” I said. Her cheeks seemed to get a little redder when I explained myself.

“A little birdie? What little birdie?” She wanted an answer, but I couldn’t blow her friend’s cover.

“Hey, your friends are nice, I’m not going to start a fight between you guys. I don’t think it even really matters. What matters is if it’s true or not. So, is it?” She hesitated. “You know, I told you the truth about how I feel, it’s your turn now.”

“Okay, fine. I guess I did appreciate the extra help with the skating and the shots,” she revealed, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“You appreciate the extra help? Is that your way of admitting that you’re feeling something too?” I felt a little bad, because I was making her blush more and more. It was kind of cute though, that she was getting so worked up and embarrassed. She was kind of shy, and I kind of liked that. I wanted to be able to get her to open up to me. I thought this was a good chance, but before I could say another word, our conversation was rudely interrupted by my locker room buddy, Shaw. Sometimes I wished he would just keep his mouth shut, as much as I loved him.

“What are you guys doing over here? We’re about to start a game, we’re picking teams. Come on!” I gave him a glare once Destiny was looking away.

“What’s wrong with you, Kaner? Lovestruck?” he asked.

“Shut up, Shaw,” I snapped.

“Hey, I don’t blame you buddy. She’s kinda hot. She’s closer to my age though, you know,” he continued, just trying to irk me.

“Yeah, well she wears my jersey, not yours, and besides, I saw you looking at Shantelle. Come on, man. I know the age thing is a little weird, but I like her. If I have to wait for her, I will.” Even I was surprised by the words falling out of my mouth. I realized they were all true, though.

“Hey, I was just joking around, I didn’t realize how serious you were. I’ll back off. But if I have any say in what team I’m on, I’m joining hers, just saying,” he said, and we made our way to center ice to pick teams. I felt like this was going to be my chance to seal the deal. I wanted badly to prove to Destiny that I wasn’t as immature as she seemed to take me to be, and now was the time to do it.