The Man Who Can't Be Moved

I’d seriously underestimated both monogamy and domesticity.

It’s an entirely new concept for me; a totally different playground than what I’m used to. A year ago, if someone even dared to casually mention that I’d one day meet a woman that would take my breath away and completely knock my entire world off of it’s axis, I would have laughed in their face and puffed out my chest and declared that I was going to be a bachelor for life. The Womanizer wasn’t ever going to change his ways for anyone; there’d never be a woman that would have that kind of power and control over him, who he’d be willing to alter his entire lifestyle and way of thinking for. I’d long ago relegated myself to the fact that I’d live my life as a single man; I’d never be mature and selfless enough to devote my entire existence to just one person. The thought of spending the rest of my life with someone had been a ridiculous notion; I’d get bored too easily and never be capable of holding up my end of the marriage vows and I’d be building up a string of girlfriends to keep on the side for when things at home became monotonous and routine. It simply wasn’t fair to a woman; to settle down with someone and give them false hopes that I’d forever remain solely theirs and that I’d be happy playing the role of husband and father. It was for their sake and my own that I’d decided to remain unattached forever; I’d spent my years as free and easy bachelor and I’d never burden myself with the drama and stress that came with a serious commitment.

And then one night everything changed. My entire outlook on life and love and what I wanted out of both had been dramatically altered the second I’d given in to Em; when we’d been caught up in post-orgasmic bliss, both physically and emotionally exhausted and wrapped in a twisted and tangled mess of sweaty limbs and wrinkled sheets. I had never felt so complete; so relaxed and at ease with a woman, and as we lay together -her tiny, trembling body tucked tightly into mine and the lingering scent of her shampoo clinging to her hair and the smell of sex permeating my senses- I’d been hit with the realization that it was the end of the old Max and the beginning of the new one. She’d been the first woman that I’d brought into my bed; my apartment had long been considered my sanctuary, the one ‘safe place’ I could always retreat to when there was too much craziness surrounding me. I had fallen into the habit of conducting my ‘extra curricular activities’ in hotel rooms and at the women’s respective dwellings, and in only one night Em had managed to tear down every last protective barrier I’d built around my heart and had made herself right at home. And when I’d realized how incredible it all seemed -how impossibly perfect we fit together- I knew that Em was it for me; I was going to transform myself into a better man for her. One that was fiercely loyal and devoted to her, who’d move heaven and earth for her if he could and bust his ass to make sure she was happy and healthy. And most importantly, I was going to be the type of man she needed. That she could be proud of.

It’s not going to be easy. No relationship ever is. Marriage is a whole new ball game for both of us; an ongoing learning experience that I’m sure is going to have a lot of bumps and twists and turns in the road. Co-habituating with someone is a massive adjustment; neither of us have ever lived with a member of the opposite sex (unless you count Em’s extremely short stay in the Lemieux guesthouse) and after only one night we’re beginning to get peeks at all of the little intricacies and nuances that make us who were are. And I’m sure we’re going to have a lot of ups and downs and that there’ll be times we drive one another completely insane and we get into massive, nasty fights. It’s inevitable considering our personalities and the fact that my wife is so feisty and assertive and downright stubborn as shit. No couple is ever blemish free. But I love her. An all consuming, blinding, suffocating love that I’d never even knew existed. And it’s that love and my determination to never let anyone or anything come between us, that guarantees that we’ll survive anything and everything thrown our way.

Right now, I’m relishing being a newlywed and enjoying the freedom of being able to tell the entire world that we’re married. It had been a bitch trying to keep it quiet; I’d felt like a complete asshole for removing my wedding ring every time I left the house and it had been a challenge in itself to keep the fan girls and my past conquests - I’d always kept them waiting on the sidelines for future use- away from me. Women can’t and won’t take no for answer; they’re perplexed at my sudden and drastic personality change and they refused to believe that I won’t cave under the pressure of constant emails and phone calls. Several times I’d nearly buckled and referred to Em as my wife as opposed to the more generic, less personal term of ‘girlfriend’, and I’m sure once the news of our marriage -via an announcement Mario says will be put up on the Pens’ website- shit will most likely hit the fan. Not only among the obsessive and hopeful fan girl, but the multitude of ladies that I’d once called upon to ‘keep me company’.

That life is far behind me; I have no desire to indulge myself in other women and I’ll never revert back to my old ways. I’m strictly a one woman man now; I have every intention on obeying ever single one of my wedding vows and I love being a husband. I love having someone that looks at me with complete adoration in her eyes; who accepts me as is and who so willingly and seemingly effortlessly chalks my previous behaviour and my history up to immaturity. There’s so much promise ahead of us; so much to experience and enjoy. We’re going to grow old together; she’s going to -God willing- give me children. And as I let myself through the front door of my -our- new home, I’m filled with an overwhelming sense of completion. A warm, peaceful glow that inhabits me every time I think about sharing my life with Emma-Leigh.

Coming home has never felt so incredible.

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

The delicious aroma of freshly baked cookies -Em’s a horrific cook and couldn’t make a decent meal if her life depended on it, but a regular Betty Crocker when it comes to preparing everything from simple cupcakes, cookies and muffins to more difficult fare such as butter tarts, various flavoured scones and cheesecakes- greets me the second I step into the foyer. It causes my stomach to rumble noisily -and hopefully- as I toe off my boots and place them on a rubber mat next to the door. I’m not the biggest guy in the world -five foot eleven is somewhat average by NHL standards and despite religiously working out four days a week and the strenuous, hard core pace of hockey, I’ve never managed to top two hundred pounds- but I can eat enough for three grown men; I’m constantly hungry to my wife’s dismay and she always rolls her eyes and muses about how much I can pack away at one sitting.

Shrugging out of my jacket, I toss it over the end of the banister and chuck my keys onto the marble topped antique cherry wood table next to the front door and then head through the house -once an estate home, it had been converted into a funeral home during the mid 1950’s and then made back into a house only a few years ago- past the formal living and dining rooms closed off with French doors, the main floor bathroom, den and basement stairs. My wife has her back towards me as she stands at the cluttered breakfast bar that separates the kitchen from a solarium that stretches the entire length of the back of the house, several plates of already prepared cookies cooling on the counter and more in the oven.

Her hair has been pushed back with a thick fabric headband and is secured in a sloppy bun and her petite body is clad in a pair of my Pens sweatpants -rolled at the waist a few times to make them tighter and shorter- and a simple black cotton camisole, and as she vigorously stirs batter in a large glass bowl in front of her, her eyes are riveted on Dirty Dancing as it plays on the plasma television mounted on the wall in the solarium. She’s giving running commentary; a habit of hers I’d discovered months ago and that she always launches into when she’s seen something a million times. Usually she’s reciting the script before the actors manage to get the words out of their mouths. Today she’s advising the character of Baby not to settle for the rich, geeky son of the hotel owner and instead ‘make shit happen’ with bad boy Johnny. Apparently Baby needs to pull up her big girl panties and ‘just go for it’; she won’t regret all the hard work she has to put into taming Johnny because once the bad boys are tamed and you have a firm handle on them, you can always ask them to revert back to their naughty ways when it matters most. As in when they’re throwing you up against a wall or bending you over the back of the couch to have their way with you.

“Parle d’experience, mon amour?” I inquire, as I wrap both arms around her slender body and press a kiss to the side of her neck.

“Jesus Christ!” she shrieks, and I chuckle into her shoulder as she nearly jumps clear out of her own skin and tighten my hold on her to prevent her from landing an elbow to my gut. “Tu as peur de la merde hors de moi!” she exclaims. “I didn’t hear you come in! Way to give me a heart attack!”

“Way to do something crazy to my insides,” I retort, and place a series of kisses along one shoulder and then the other and using the tip of my index finger to clear loose tendrils of hair away so I can nibble and suck at the sensitive nape of her neck. “You’re half naked and actually doing something in the kitchen? You must have known that that would do something for me. Qu’il me rendre fou.”

“If seeing me in a tank and jogging pants and baking turns you on, there’s something seriously wrong with you,” she declares, and then gives a yelp when I draw the lobe of her right ear between my teeth.

“Every man wants a woman that will get busy in the kitchen,” I reason. “In more ways than one.”

“Well don’t get too excited on either count,” she says, as she uses a forearm to wipe beads of sweat from her brow and returns to vigorously stirring the mixture of cookie batter and Smarties in front of her. “I don’t believe in desecrating the place I eat. There’s something just totally gross about expending bodily fluids where I prepare food. Anywhere else in the house and I’m game…”

“Anywhere?” I inquire hopefully.

“I’ll try anything once,” she declares, and I can’t help but both chuckle and wriggle my eyebrows suggestively at her response. “You know,” she rolls her eyes and gives an exasperated sigh. “Not everything I say is meant to be perverted. I can’t help it that you’re mind is perpetually in the gutter.”

“Come on, don’t even try and pull this innocent little girl shit with me,” I say, and run the tip of my finger across the back of her neck and along the hem of her tank top. “Je vous connaie, ma douce. I know you better than you know yourself. Inside and out,” I bite down on her shoulder and she manages to jab me in the stomach with her elbow.

“I’m busy!” she cries. “I’ve got a lot to do! Can’t you see me unleashing my inner Martha Stewart! And don’t touch those!” she slaps the top of my hand with the batter covered wooden spoon when I attempt to grab a cookie. “Those aren’t for you! And Vero will have my ass if I don’t have an exact three dozen peanut butter Smartie cookies for her! She’s already warned me not to come over unless I have treats for her and Fleur bebe.”

“Vero is already fat enough,” I retort, and snatch a cookie. “She doesn’t need all of them to herself.”

“She’s not fat,” Em scolds. “She’s pregnant. There’s a huge difference.”

“What’s the difference?”

“The difference is that being fat is of someone’s own doing,” my wife explains. “Being pregnant is caused by a man’s inability to both keep his dick in his pants and read the instructions on the back of a condom package. How in the world you ever managed to not impregnate someone is beyond me.”

“Parce que je suis un professionel,” I say. “No accidents. Ever. I can read both sets of instructions. En francais et en englais. Completely idiot proof, non? I’m also a professional in other things, so if you want to get started on a bebe de Talbot to go with the bebe de Fleury…”

“Don’t get my hopes up,” Em sighs. “We both know that it’s totally hopeless. That even if there’s a miniscule chance that I do get pregnant…”

“There’s only a ten percent chance of carrying past the first trimester,” I finish, and then press a kiss to her temple before moving away to snag a stack of mail off of the counter. “And neither of us are mentally stable enough to handle something like that happening,” I add, as I lean against the breakfast bar and flip through the envelopes in my hand.

“I love how you spare my feelings by saying we,” Em remarks, as sticks her hand into the mixing bowl and proceeds to plop chunks of dough onto a greased cookie sheet alongside of her. “How you avoid spending your night on the couch by insinuating we’re both slightly insane.”

“Personne n’est fou,” I grumble. “You’re not crazy, Emmy-Lou. You have a legit illness. No one faults you for that. It’s something you’ll have to battle all your life. If people can’t accept you for you, then…” I give a shrug and pop the remains of the cookie into my mouth. “Ils peuvent aller se foutre.”

“I need a translator sometimes with you,” she laughs. “Ils peuvent aller se foutre?”

“Then they can go fuck themselves,” I say. “After I beat the shit out of them.”

“There’s that bad boy side I was telling Baby about,” she nods in the direction of the television. “I was telling her all about how she needs to bust her ass to land him and then she has to break a serious sweat whipping him into shape. I told her it was worth it; all the fun comes when you want them to go all big and bad at the right times.”

“So Baby’s into the hard and rough stuff, huh?” I grin. “Baby likes it from behind? She likes her ass slapped and her hair pulled and…”

A glob of dough hits me square in the forehead.

“Je me dire la verite,” I defend myself. “I just tell it like it is. You’re not fooling anyone with your sweet and adorable girl next door shit.”

“And you’re not as big and bad as everyone thinks you are,” she sticks her tongue out at me. “Or as you thought you were.”

“Okay, Emmy-Lou. Whatever you say. Apparently you forget about all the times I’ve rendered you incapable of walking properly for a few days.”

“You’re lucky I love you so much,” she says, her cheeks and the tips of her ears turning a brilliant shade of red. “Otherwise I wouldn’t put up with that mouth of yours.”

“Please. You love my mouth. Especially what it does for you when you’re letting me unleash that bad boy side of me. You may have tamed me, but I am still capable of tearing shit up. At the right times, of course. And you never told me how cute I look. You never said if you liked my hair or not.”

She glances over at me and I‘m blessed with a smile that spreads from one ear to the other. “Vous avez l’air tres chaud,” she gushes. “You look much sexier when it’s all short and spiky like that.”

“The things I don’t do for you,” I sigh dramatically. “I shave, I get my hair cut, I put up with your insanely jealous ex boyfriend and his just as nutty landlord slash bodyguard…”

“You live to make me happy,” she declares, and I notice she doesn’t follow that comment up with any questions or statements regarding Sid or Mario. We avoid those two names like the plague; she rarely talks about Sid and I rarely bring him up. An arrangement that is working quite nicely and helps us avoid all arguments and sidestep confrontation all together.

I’d never tell her how threatened I feel by Sid and her history -albeit brief and disastrous- with him. She’d only tell me that I’m being irrational; that I have nothing to worry about considering she’d picked me over him. And I decide to let it slide; I’m not going to tell her about the man to man that Sid and I had had, or about the verbal ass kicking Mario had laid on me. And I’m definitely not going to bring up the fact I’d spilled her innermost secret. Let sleeping dogs lie, I figure.

*********

“And speaking of making me happy…” she adds, and I glance up from the stack of bills in my hand. “Remember last night when you asked me what I wanted for Valentines Day? And I told you I needed a couple of days to figure it out?”

I nod. “What did you come up with? Jewellery? A new car? Clothes?”

“A puppy,” she announces. “I want a puppy. Seeing as we’re a couple of years removed from the baby thing, I figured that getting a pet might be a good idea. You’re on the road a lot and this house is pretty big and the whole idea of it once being a funeral home and that people used to be embalmed in my basement…”

“I’ll get you a puppy,” I promise. “I’ll get you something soft and furry to get you company at night.”

“I already have you for that,” she teases, as she carries the tray of cookies to the stove, balancing it along a forearm as she uses her free hand to open the oven door. “Soft and furry. Maxime Talbot, hairy Frenchman. Human heating blanket.”

“All the Talbot men are hairy,” I remind her. “Just you wait until I go on my annual week long fishing excursion with my dad and my brothers and come back…”

“Looking like a Sasquatch,” she giggles, and then uses her hip to close the oven door and wipes her hands on the thighs of her sweats as she walks towards me. “Frankie warned me,” she says, as she lays her palms on my hips and hooks her fingers in my belt loops. “About how you all get stinky and gross.”

“Nothing this beautiful can ever be gross,” I retort, and she rolls her eyes. “And if a puppy will really make you happy…”

She nods enthusiastically.

“Then we’ll get you a puppy,” I promise, and press a kiss to her forehead. “And you never told me what all this is about…” I nod in the direction of her baked goods. “Why does Vero want all this? Why is she…”

“Flower didn’t tell you? He was supposed to tell you.”

“Flower can’t remember what he did five minutes ago. His mind is all messed up. Dans un endroit completement merde. I wish he’d get his shit together. I’m getting a little tired of watching the score go up and up and up…”

“He’s living proof that some men can’t play if they’ve got personal shit going on,” Em says. “Sid’s like that, you know. He’s better off when he can just concentrate on hockey and he doesn’t have to worry about…”

“He’s been playing just fine despite his girlfriend practically hanging off of him all the time,” I interject, and my stomach knots when I notice the beginnings of a frown tugging at the corners of her mouth and the way her eyes slightly widen. “You didn’t know?” I ask. “You didn’t know he had a girlfriend? I just thought that Peyton or Vero told you. Or even TK. I just thought…”

“I didn’t know,” she says, disappointment temporarily tarnishing her voice before she gives a forced smile and a disinterested shrug. “Doesn’t matter really, does it? I mean, it’s not like I care that he has a girlfriend. I didn’t expect him to pine away for me for the rest of his life. I’m just a little surprised that he got one so soon.”

“No sooner than you marrying someone,” I point out. “What’s good for the goose…”

“I’m sure she’s a very nice girl,” Em says. “I’m sure she’s very sweet and adorable and that…”

“She’s a total pain in the ass,” I declare. “Overly sweet and adorable. Annoying. At best. But she’s perfect for him. Totally meek and mild. Bows down to him and doesn’t argue about all the bullshit Troy pulls. I’m sure they consider her excellent future wife material.”

“Future wife material,” she gives a nervous laugh. “That’s a little far fetched, don’t you think? He hasn’t been dating her that long and…”

“We were only together three months,” I remind her.

“But we’re different,” she argues. “Totally different. We were ready to get married. We were ready to make that kind of commitment and we were ready to…”

“What does it matter?” I inquire. “What does it matter if it’s a serious thing for them? You sound like you’re jealous or something.”

“What?” There’s that nervous laugh again. “Me jealous? Why would I be jealous? I’ve got nothing to be jealous about. I’ve got everything I could want. I found everything in you, Max. Why would I be…”

I silence her with a kiss. “Just making an observation,” I say. “And what was Flower supposed to tell me?”

“He was supposed to…” she gives her head a shake as if clearing all thoughts of Sid and his new girlfriend clear out of her mind. “…he was supposed to tell you that we’re going over there tonight. Vero’s having some girls night out thing and Flower said that all you guys could hang out in the basement and eat and drink yourselves silly and play video games. We don’t have to go if you don’t want to. If you’d rather just stay home and…”

“We’ll go,” I say. “It’ll do you a world of good to see everyone again. It’ll be like a welcome home party. Although I’m sure Peyton will shatter every window in a three block radius ‘cause she’ll scream like a wild banshee when she sees you.”

“Yeah…” a genuine smile replaces the forced one. “I’ve missed her. I’ve missed a lot of people actually. “And…” she reaches into the envelopes in my hand and yanks one out. “…I’ve got some rather excitement news to share with you, Monsieur Talbot.”

“We won the lottery?”

“Not quite…” she says, and holds out a letter address to her from UPMC. “We may not have to wait so long to get on the baby train after all!” she cries excitedly. “They’ve bumped up my surgery date! To next month! Isn’t that exciting?”

“Exciting…” I agree.

And completely fucking terrifying.