Deep End

They make it to the hotel in good time and thankfully (for Kris anyway, who really doesn’t want to have to make any more small talk), Adam and Bridget seem to be in particularly foul moods and head straight up to their room without saying much of anything. Skylar is apparently starving, because she asks the concierge for every takeout menu they have before she consents to follow Kris up to the room.

She’s flipping through them so intently that she bounces off a corner on the way to the room, grunting.

“Are you okay?” Kris chuckles. Skylar barely hums a response, not looking up from the menu in her hand.

“Happens all the time.” She tells him absently, walking head on into a side table with another grunt. He snorts and she looks up, smiling. “Sorry, I do that a lot.” He takes her elbow, leads her out into the middle of the hallway. She smiles.

“Chinese?” she asks, holding up a menu.

“Do they have kung pao chicken?” he slides the card key into the lock and steps into the room, holding the door open for her to follow.

“Mmmmm...yes, they do.” She’s already pulling out her cell phone to order. Kris laughs when the food arrives and she insists they spread towels out on the bed before they put the food down because she doesn’t want to spill on the bedding. When he takes control of the remote and settles on another episode of Cops, she uses a chopstick to fling noodles at his ear until he surrenders and allows her to commandeer the remote. While she browses through channels, he flicks grains of rice at the side of her head. She settles on an episode of Minute to Win It and then turns to him, stabbing a piece of sauce-loaded lemon chicken and brandishing it at him threateningly. He raises his arms in surrender and she pops the chicken in her mouth with a smile.

He’s never actually watched Minute to Win It but it looks pretty funny and Skylar is watching so intently she’s actually leaning towards the television, urging the contestant along and covering her eyes when the time starts to run down. It’s cute.

“They look ridiculous.” Kris laughs as a contestant dips his nose into a pile of petroleum jelly and then shoves his face into a bowl of cotton balls before running across the stage.

“That’s the best part!” she actually claps her hands excitedly. He shakes his head at her and she bumps her side into him, rocking him sideways. When he springs back upright, his arm is pressed up against hers. He doesn’t move. They watch a guy with a pizza box try to fan an egg across the floor and Kris tries to remember the last time he just enjoyed watching television with someone. It always felt awkward with Bridget, the silence uncomfortable.

“So, this wedding...” Skylar says during a commercial break, “-whose wedding is it, exactly? I think that might be something I should know.”

“Oh, right.” He chuckles, “Flower – er, Marc Andre, and his fiancée Veronique. They have been together practically forever and he finally asked her to marry him last year. They are a good couple, she is good for him.” He smiles, “She knows how to handle him when he gets moody.”

“Moody Frenchman, who would have thought?” she half-grins with the corner of her mouth and he pokes her thigh. “Okay, so you told Sidney the truth, are you going to tell the rest of your teammates? I assume they’ll all be there.”

“I...I haven’t really thought about it.”

“We probably should.” She turns off the television and spins to face him. “I mean, if you really want to pull this off, we’re going to have to have our stories straight.” She chuckles, “That makes it sound like we’re running from the police or something.”

“I think...I do not think we should tell the rest of the guys. I will tell Sid not to tell anyone else. They are not...the best secret keepers, someone will slip up if they all know.” He nods. The guys should not know the truth, at least not until the wedding is over and Bridget is gone – there is no way Max or TK would be able to keep their mouths shut. Skylar nods.

“We’re going to need a back story.” She says thoughtfully, “How we met, how long we’ve been dating, why none of them have met me before, why you’ve never mentioned me...” she trails off, grinning, “You know, you sound kind of like a jerk.”

“Maybe I have never mentioned you because you were afraid of all the attention you would get – dating an NHL All-Star - and you wanted to keep it a secret.” He retorts.

“Careful, your ego is showing.” She shoves his knee cap playfully. Kris on the other hand is pretty impressed that he’s managed to keep up with her.

“Okay, okay. Maybe I’ve never mentioned you because we’re new. I wanted to wait to introduce you to the guys because they can be a little overwhelming. I thought the wedding would be a good place to do it, they will all be there but without the pressure of the season. And who doesn’t want to take their girlfriend on a trip to a spa hotel with a mountain view?” It sounds like a plausible story. More than plausible in fact, because if they were really dating and he did really want to introduce her to the team, this was exactly how he would do it. And if she really was his girlfriend, he really would want to take her to a spa hotel with a mountain view. She smiles and his chest pounds a little with pride. That must have been a good answer.

“Oh, my boyfriend is just so thoughtful.” She swoons, “So how did we meet? You live at home in Montreal in the off season right? Montreal is pretty in the summer. Maybe I took a weekend trip up that way.” She has been to Montreal before, several times, most during the summer. She wonders what might have happened if just one of those times she had met Kris, if maybe they would be in this same position, without the pretending.

“I go to the same coffee house for whole wheat waffles every Saturday morning.” It’s the truth and most of the guys on the team know it, they chirp him about it all the time. Apparently whole wheat waffles are boring, and doing the same thing every weekend of your summer is pathetic. Kris is pretty sure they’d have a serious change of opinion if they knew he’d met a girl like Skylar over whole wheat waffles. Which of course, he hadn’t actually, but he’s thinking that would have been nice.

“Oh, this is fun.” She smiles, “Who made the first move? I’m thinking it would have been me.” That’s a complete lie. She would never have made a move, he was far too intimidating in his broken beauty. She’d have ordered her damn waffles and sat staring like a schoolgirl with a crush.

Kris considers the question. Along with getting chirped for his boring waffles, he often got chirped for his lack of game. It wasn’t that he didn’t get attention from girls – and he wasn’t being cocky in saying that, he was just being truthful. Girls noticed Kris. He was a big name in Pittsburgh now, and he knew that the hair and the French accent and his quiet demeanour made him an attractive catch. Most girls thought he was quiet all the time. In fact, Skylar was the first girl in a long time who might actually get to know the Kris Letang who actually could hold his own in a conversation. He’d been burned by girls before, more than he cared to think about in fact. So he let them make the first move. If they picked him out of the crowd, made a move, he felt more secure in knowing that he was the real guy they were after. He realizes she’s still waiting for a response and smirks.

“If I had seen you walk through the door, I would have made a move before you even sat down. Walked you right over to my table.” He says it with more confidence than he feels. The truth is, if Skylar had walked through the front door, he probably wouldn’t have done a thing. He probably would have spared her a glance, he couldn’t deny she was attractive. But he hadn’t seen her in the candy aisle, hadn’t really grown to see her until she’d started playing the question game in his car. She’s laughing.

“Gonna tell that story to all your boys so you look like the big man, huh?” She’s smiling as she says it, she kind of likes imagining the scenario he’s describing. “Alright, there’s our back story. Montreal, whole wheat waffles. Not quite as good as the candy aisle, but it’ll do.” Kris chuckles, wonders if it had happened that way if they would still be here, in this same position, only without the pretending.

“So,” Skylar continues, “how new are we exactly? How long have you been hiding me away from your team?” Now he has to think. How long has it been since things ended with Bridget? He can’t tell the guys that he met Skylar too soon after Bridget, they’ll think she’s a rebound. He’s not sure why it matters because it’s all a lie anyway, so he tells himself it’s because he doesn’t want to get hounded all week long about bringing a rebound girl as his date. He tells himself it has absolutely nothing to do with knowing that Skylar is most definitely not the kind of girl you would rebound with.

“We just...won’t get too specific.” He decides. “It’s been a couple of months.” A couple is a good number, he thinks. It’s good enough to be casual, so that when this thing has to end (and unfortunately, he thinks, it will end) the guys won’t wonder if he’s hurt himself all over again with another girl so soon after Bridget. It also leaves enough time after things ended with Bridget that everyone should be comfortable that he won’t be using her as a rebound.

“Should I be concerned that my boyfriend is such a good liar?” she asks jokingly. It is just a joke, she tells herself, but whenever she calls him her boyfriend, it sends a little flutter of electricity through her heart. Kris can feel his pulse jump a little when she says ‘boyfriend’. Or maybe it’s because he really doesn’t want her to think he’s a liar.

“Actually,” he tells her honestly, “Although, this situation might suggest otherwise, I am a horrible liar. Once, we tried to throw a surprise party for one of our trainers and they put me in charge of getting him to come without telling him about the party. I couldn’t do it, he figured it out before I’d even figured out what to say.”

“Well, I hate surprise parties, so we’re a perfect match.” She turns the television back on and settles in to catch the last few minutes of Minute to Win It. Kris rocks back into place beside her and watches her out of the corner of his eye.

Yes, he thinks, maybe we are.