I Couldn't Be More Afraid

“So, how was your night with Dubi?” I greeted Leah at work. She gave me a look and didn’t answer right away. I didn’t know what to take from it; normally when she told me about her night with a guy, she would spill all of the details. I wondered if it was awkward just because Dubi and I had become pretty good friends.

“We need to get the glasses set up before people get here,” she finally responded.

“Way to ignore the question…”

“Seriously Layla, there are no glasses around the bar, the kitchen staff hasn’t brought them out yet.”

I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, but it was obvious that she didn’t want to talk about whatever happened the night before. I went into the kitchen and grabbed a few things of glasses and brought them out to the bar. I started to get everything set up and could tell that there was something really bothering Leah. It was only 4:30, so there was no one in the bar. Without a word, I walked away with my cell phone and pressed send on a familiar number.

“What’s up gorgeous?”

“What have I told you about that, Brandon,” I responded with a laugh.

“You’re no fun, Layla…but seriously, what’s up?”

“I was gonna ask you the same question.”

“What do you mean?”

“Leah’s really off and if I ask her about last night, she clams up. Is there something I should know?”

He paused before saying, “no, we hung out…nothing big.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“I don’t believe you,” I responded.

“Well Layla, I’m sorry, but that’s all there is to say,” he sounded defensive.

“Is that my girl?” I heard in the background, “Give me the phone.”

“Wow Staalsy, jealous much?” Dubi responded before going back to me and saying, “your boy wants you.”

“Well I knew that, but does he want to talk to me?”

Dubi laughed before I heard him hand the phone over to Marc, “Hey babe.”

“Hey, I just talked to you an hour ago,” I laughed.

“I know…but why are you calling Dubi?”

“Something’s up to Leah so I was seeing if he knew something.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing…”

“Did he tell you anything?”

“No. Let them be, Lay. If there’s something we need to know, then they’ll tell us.”

“Fine, I have to go though, I’m at work.”

“Alright, I’ll call you after the game.”

“Sounds good…bye.”

“Bye,” Marc responded and I heard in the background, “bye Layla!”

“Tell Dubes I said goodbye,” I laughed before hanging up the phone.

I went back over to Leah and completely dropped the subject. She started to become more normal as more patrons started to show up at the bar. I figured that whatever happened with her and Dubi was nothing and she just didn’t want me to know more details of their sex lives. The night went by pretty quickly and we were incredibly busy.

After work, I couldn’t wait to get home. Although nothing came up about Leah’s behavior again, I hated that she was keeping something from me. I didn’t want to dwell too much on it. As I pulled in my driveway, I saw a car idling in front of the house and walked over to it as Marc turned off the engine and opened the door. He greeted me with a hug and kiss without a word, I then took his hand and led him inside.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Huh?” I responded.

“Something’s off…and don’t tell me you’re fine.”

“It’s Leah…I don’t know…she was just being weird. She never keeps things from me.”

“I know what you mean; Dubi was the same way tonight.”

“Maybe they like each other,” I suggested.

“Dubi’s not ready for a relationship.”

“Leah doesn’t do relationships, we’ve both been like that forever.”

“Well,” he started, stepping towards me and wrapping his arms around my waist, “I’m glad you changed your mind.” He leaned in and kissed me gently, pulling back and smiling.

“Me too,” I whispered back, leaning my head into his chest. He held me close to him and bent down to kiss my forehead. It was after two and he had to be on a plane to Montreal at 8, so we went into my bedroom. Nothing happened that night; we fell asleep in each other’s arms. When the alarm went off 4 hours later, Marc kissed me gently before he left and I fell back asleep.

---

The next night at the bar, Leah was completely normal and I started to think that I had just imagined her behavior the night before. We prepped the bar and the regulars started to pile in.

“Hey Layla,” one of the regulars yelled.

“What’s up, Todd?”

“So, I heard a rumor…”

“Okay”

“That you’re dating Marc Staal.”

“Oh yeah, where’d you hear that?” I responded nonchalantly.

“Around.”

“Well, that’s quite the rumor,” I said with a sly smile.

“So is it true?”

“How would a girl like me get a guy like Marc Staal?”

“I’ve seen him here before,” Todd responded, “we’ve all seen how he looks at you, but we also know that you don’t date.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I responded somewhat offended.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said turning back to his friends.

I walked away from Todd and his friends and couldn’t stop thinking about it. Why would Todd say that I don’t date? Of course, I never would date regulars, but none of them had ever shown interest in me anyway. Since graduating college, I had avoided dating for the most part before Marc wormed his way into my life. It was just that I never wanted to get attached like I had to Scott in college. We hadn’t spoken since, but I never really forgot all of the good times we had. The sex with Scott was always incredibly hot and angry; Marc had been such a change since it was full of passion and sexual tension.

For the rest of the night, I couldn’t really focus on anything; Scott was on my mind. It had been a while since I thought about Scott…the last time really being the night I met Marc. I had so many new memories in my Ranger jersey, that it didn’t make me think of him every time I saw it. Throughout the night, Leah would constantly ask me what was up, but I would find a way to get away from her and avoid the question. It was opposite the night before, except I was being completely avoiding her and not just one topic. Unfortunately, Leah knew me too well and went over to Todd, most likely asking about our conversation. I saw her face drop and she looked at me and I knew she was going to say that name within minutes.

When the games all ended and everyone left the bar, I started to clean up and continued to avoid Leah. She tried a few times to corner me, but I found some type of excuse to get out. I knew what was coming…she wanted to talk about what Todd said to me and she wanted to tell me to completely forget about Scott. She was going to tell me not to let anything with Scott effect my relationship with Marc and not to push Marc away. The conversation had been implied many times when I was fighting off Marc’s advances.

“Layla! Stop avoiding me.”

“I’m not avoiding you, Lee.”

“and the Oilers are going to win the 2010 Stanley Cup.”

“Crazier things have happened.”

“Seriously, Layla, listen…Todd told me what he said…”

“Okay?”

“And you’re thinking about Scott.”

“No.”

I got a shock by the way the conversation turned. Leah started with telling me that I should not think about Scott and that I have Marc and he’s so much better than that. Then she started to tell me that the reason Todd said what he did was because many of the guys in the bar had wanted to ask me out before. They had all found me standoffish about dating, but loved to me around me. I had no idea where any of that was coming from; she could have told me all of it so many times before, but never even attempted to.

“Why are you telling me all of this now?”

“I feel like you should know…Lay, you’re my best friend, so it’s my job to tell you that there are guys out there who are into you…and I don’t just mean Marc. You’ve just put up this shell that says you don’t want to date them.”

“I’ve dated since Scott…”

“You’ve had dates since Scott, there’s a difference.”

“Well, it kind of sucked being into a guy for four years only to have him hate me at the drop of a hat.”

“I’m sure Scott doesn’t hate you.”

“I haven’t heard from him in months.”

Leah dropped the subject as we locked up and went to our respective cars. I drove home that night and passed out immediately…only to be awakened by a vivid dream.

I was at Madison Square Garden and the Rangers were playing the Flyers. For some reason, I had gone to the game alone and I was sitting two rows behind the Rangers bench. Marc turned around and smiled at me before going on the ice for a shift. As Marc went down the wing to keep a play alive, he was flattened by a clean, yet unfortunate hit off the shoulder of Chris Pronger. He was slow to get up and a familiar voice behind me yelled “way to lay him out, Prongs.” I turned around and those eyes burned into me…a reunion that I didn’t want to have. Scott walked over to me and his hand caressed my left cheek; I tried to back away but my motor skills were not working. I wanted to push him away, but he pressed his mouth against mine forcing his tongue into my mouth, while my boyfriend was being taken off the ice on a stretcher. His hands ran all over my body and the next thing I knew, we were on the jumbotron and the entire team was watching from the bench. I tried to scream, but couldn’t. Nothing I did was working.

I woke up in screaming in a cold sweat. I couldn’t even put the pieces together and the dream made no sense at all. Why was Marc on a stretcher? Why was Scott sexually assaulting me in public? Why was everyone watching? I tried to go back to sleep and couldn’t; it was only 5 in the morning, but I grabbed my phone and dialed his number.

“Lay?” Marc answered, half asleep.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to wake you up, I just…” my voice was a little shaky.

“What’s wrong, babe?”

“Just a horrible dream…I wanted to hear your voice.”

“I’m here, what happened.”

“I don’t want to talk about it; I just wanted to talk to you. I’ll let you back to sleep.”

“Okay, but Lay, promise me something?”

“What’s that?”

“You’re okay.”

“I’m fine.”

“Okay, goodnight babe.”

“Goodnight.”

After hearing Marc’s voice, I fell back to sleep and didn’t wake up until after two. I checked my phone and I missed a bunch of texts from both Marc and Dubi. Dubi’s were just whining about me waking him up in the middle of the night and Marc’s were asking how I was. I responded back to Dubi to “shove it” and told Marc that I was fine and that I was fine and just needed to sleep off the bad dream. He tried to ask what it was about, but it was hard to explain how much Scott had been on my mind.

Even though there were a few hockey games on the schedule that night, it was still my night off of work. Leah was off too, but she was going out with some guy she met at the bar. I thought it would be good to take a night to myself. I brought my laptop into the living room and turned on the TV to see if there were any good movies on cable. After finding nothing, I put on reruns of That 70’s Show in the background and started to play around online.

I checked my e-mail and my heart stopped…I started to wonder why everything had to happen at the same time.

Hey Layla – It’s been a while, huh? Look, I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry about what happened at graduation, I just didn’t know how to react. I guess I always kinda knew that you felt that way and maybe I did take advantage of that. I want you to know that you’re an amazing person and I miss all of our time together and I miss us being friends. I’m going to be in NYC next weekend and wanted to see if you wanted to meet up for a drink or something. Let me know. I guess I’ll understand if you don’t want to see me. – Scott.