Keep Your Girl Out of My Shoe Cabinet, Your Wife

The entire night was a plain success. I mean Sidney didn't get any awards because he hadn't recieved any nominations missing out half of the season but his head coach Dan Bylsma was awarded with the Jack Adams trophy as coach of the year. Sidney introduced me to many players we had watched on TV back in Nova Scotia when we were 14 years old. Dan Bylsma was very nice and welcoming and it gave me a good feeling about moving to Pittsburgh. If the rest of the team was just as nice as the people I had met so far it could only be a great experience.
But the things that made me the happiest about the night was that everything felt real. I sat next to my husband all the time holding his hand while he whispered some funny stories about the players on stage or made random remarks about all kinds of things. I felt good being there with him and sharing the time with him.
After the last act had played and the last award was given away the players went into the backstage area while the fans were ushered out. An aftershow party was set up in a nearby hotel but because we both had a stressy day and an early flight out we opted against attending it, bid goodbye to Dan and his wife, the Staals, Marc-André and Vero and all the others before getting into a limousine and driving back to the Bellagio.
Back upstairs I quickly changed out of the dress, the shapewear and the underwear into way more comfortable yet less seductive.
When I walked back into the bedroom I found it empty and also the light in Sidney's bathroom was switched off so I went to the living room and found him standing in the middle of the room watching out of the window.

"It looks unreal right?" I asked quitely to not scare him while approaching him. He turned about. He had taken off his tux exept for his pants, shirt and the bow hung untied around his neck. The first couple of buttons were opened and though he looked really tired and worn out his eyes were glowing.

"Yea... And it sure is. Isn't this weird you and me here together in this town. As kids all the light we needed were the stars in your backyard when we lay in the gras watching fireflies and shooting stars." He pulled me in front of him, wrapped his arms around me and placed his chin into my shoulder. "In Vegas you can't even see the stars. With you here something is missing. I'm glad you are here with me, but this is not a town I could be with you. "

I laughed silently. "I could never live here either. I'm from the mariteens you know. In Paris I had a tiny appartment in the city close to Place d'Italy so when I had a lot to do downtown I could handle it or stay out long. But to stay sane I rented a cozy house in Herblay. That's like 40 minutes away from the center but I had my nature. My stars at night, silence when you let the windows open at night and a supporting neighbour hood. It was in the backyard of an elderly man who spends most of the time in Africa building schools through his foundation. I'm glad you are still you and that you don't feel like you need to spend every free second in LA or somewhere."
I turned around to face him and wrap my arms around his neck taking in the eyes pretty much any girl older than Justin Bieber in Canada swooned about and they were just on me.
"No I could never. I'm not Sean Avery."
"Lucky you!" I answered smiling at him. "I could never be married so someone treating the greatest goalie in history like that."
"And my wife still has a crush on Marty Brodeur. You really haven't changed. Gosh good you weren't in Vancouver. I bet you would have worn a #30 jersey instead of the #87 right?"

Sidney broke the tension between us by letting his arms drop turning around and retreating the living room to get into the bathroom. I stood in front of the window a little longer, sipping on a glas of water I had gotten from the Bar and took in everything that happened on the streets.

"Won't you come to bed? We have to get up at 5 am." Sidney's voice tore me back into reality, I blinked and turned towards the bedroom.

"I'm sorry of course. I completly zoned out."
The light in the room was dimmed down, he sat in the bed leaned against the headboard with the covers pulled up to the waist of his bare torso and -believe it or not- he was reading a book. I slid under the covers and closed my eyes. Absently I heard how he closed the electric blinds and the light in the room and how he put the book away.
"I know I did a lot of mistakes... As a teen and still today but I... I'm trying to get better so I hope you can be patient and somewhat forgiving... Whatever happens you will forever be the girl that owns my heart as my best friend since I can think and you are the mother of my first born... My first wife so... I'm sorry. "
His voice broke slightly when he said it. A single tear slid down my cheek and I had to swallow hard.
After a while I opened my eyes and it just blurrted out: "I was in Vancouver but only got to see the two Canada-USA games. I wore the 30 in the first game and you lost. Then I wore the 87 for the final and you shot that goal."

Sidney moved and I felt his arms moving around me to hold me close against his warm chest and the stubbles of his beard tickled against my neck when he placed a lingering kiss onto my collar bone.

"Thank you Vivs"

The next morning we left Las Vegas early and arrived back in Pittsburgh around noon. After a quick lunch in a diner close to the airport we returned to his house. We dropped our luggage off and went for a nap right away. Though we didn’t stay up late the day before or woke up too early this morning I was really tired and stressed out. The trip had been more exhausting than I thought. It wasn’t the little fight we have had after Alexander’s party 2 night earlier it was more the flying back and forth. It felt like the hormones were finally getting the best of me and I felt like I was growing everywhere. Not only did my bras not fit anymore but also did my butt not fit in any jeans anymore that easily.
After the nap around 4 pm I left the guestroom, went back downstairs and found Sidney nowhere.
I looked in the living room, kitchen and backyard but he was nowhere to be found. Giving up I called his phone.

“Hey Viviane, enjoying my backyard?” I heard his mocking voice through the speakers.

“Sidney where the hell are you? I’ve been looking for you like everywhere.”

“I’m in my office. I just talked to the real estate agent. She said that the key for the house is in the mail and that we can go look at it. Some of the things we told them to do where done already so I was thinking what about we get some magazines and drive to the house so you can go semi crazy and we’ll think about what furniture we want to put in there. I don’t really want to keep that many things from the old house.”

“Ugh I’m dumb right? Should have thought about that one myself. Okay uhm… I’ll get changed and we’ll meet at the car in what 10 minutes? I’ll go grab my Mac and a camera okay?”

“Sure thing… and you don’t have to use your phone you can just stand somewhere in the house and yell… I’m not like that…”

I laughed. “I know Crosby but how should I know that you were home.”

We hung up and I went back inside. In the guestroom I fished my Mac Book out of my suitcase and put it along with my camera, a rule and a USB Internet stick into my handbag before changing into a somewhat comfortable outfit .

In the meantime Sidney had gotten the keys from the mailbox and changed into a more comfortable outfit aswell. On the way to the house we both sang along to Far East Movement. The same song they had performed the night before was on the radio and we totally raped it with out lack of talent. When we stopped at a red light the passengers of the car next to us looked at us weirdly with the mouth agape. The music system was turned up all the way to the right so I bet that they heard every word of the song. As soon as Sid sped away, while the old ford still needed some time to reach the speed to change into second gear and the song ended we turned the volume down again.

“Ya da pimp o da burgh” I joked at him and threw a bitch pose while he laugh.

“Sure am, bitch.” He replied, turned his cap sidewards and looked at me as if he wanted to say ‘B*tch please…’
After a second of two I couldn’t hold it anymore, broke our staring contest and broke out in laughter.

“Eyes back on the road pimp.” I said between laughters.
Sidney giggled but did as I said. “As you say bitch.”
2 minutes later we pulled into the parking lot and parked the car. I stepped over to Sidney and placed his cap back in the right position while he put on his sunglasses. After I fished mine out of my handbag and Sid put the Mac in the trunk we walked towards the stores hand-in-hand.
First we went to the paints and took some color leaflets to decide on some last colors looked at some wall papers.

“My kids will NEVER get such a wall paper ever. Really you can argue what you want but that just a no.” Sidney said holding up a wall paper with pink unicorns, purple teddy bears in dresses and tennis playing blue dogs.
I laughed. “Neither will my… not in my house… that is horrible. What about this one?” I held up some incredibly ugly 70’s wall papers in a weird orange-brown-mustard flower pattern.

“Ew no… my eyes… but I want those.” He held up s bordure with hockey playing teddy bears.

“Patrick...” I called his middle name to not have too many heads turning

“Katherine…” he used mine. I hit him in the chest softly

“I can’t believe you just went there but no not today. We just wanted to get magazines because we need furniture like in the living room or the kitchen or the bedroom because I’m not that keen on sleeping on the floor or eating on it.”

“Okay… but we’ll get back to this conversation and then I’ll get my teddy bear hockey wall paper.” He said and pouted. I laughed. “We can put it into your office if it will make you feel better.” Sidney stuck out his tongue, grabbed my hand and dragged me towards the magazines. We picked a bunch of them, paid them at the register and drove to the house quickly. After a first inspection he decided to get some essentials like cleaning stuff and some food from the store while I went from room to room and put notes on the doors what we wanted to put in them.
-Kitchen
-Office
-Living room
-Office
-Master bedroom
-Guest room Sidney
-Guest room Viviane
-Nursery
And all the others. Once I was done I took a walk through the backyard and sat down at the patio taking in the scenery and let my mind wander. The house was really perfect. I could see myself reading or doing some gardening, the kid playing in the backyard and Sidney coming home through the large doors in the backyard. It felt almost too good to be true.
We may not have had the best start but our mothers were right. We had to put ourselves into a second position now and make the best of the situation for the sake of the kid.
I closed my eyes and listened to the birds.

Suddenly I felt hands kreeping under my back and legs and being lifted up. Slowly I opened my eyes and looked at Sidney. He smiled slightly. “Hey sleepy head. Seems like you fell asleep.” Still not setting me down he carried me inside. A blanket was wrapped around me and I stared at him slightly confused. “How long was I sleeping? When did you come back?”
“You were fast when I came back like 30 minutes ago. I wrapped a blanket around you and put up an inflatable bed in the living room. Nat warned me that you preggos tend to get tired and fall asleep so I thought it would be smart to have something for you to lay down for you while we work here. I bought 2 mattress and had some pillows and blankets in the car.”
I smiled at him and was glad about how careful he was. After he sat me down on the bed I instructed him to get my handbag and we settled on the bed to talk about the house. Sidney had gotten some Ceasar’s Chicken salad so we talked some more about our ideas and ate the salad in bed.

“So you can make all the choices about how we will design the one guest room and I will get the other one and when we have no visitors those are our bedrooms?” I asked and waited for his approval.

“Right and when anyone stays over we will stay together in the master bedroom so everyone will think we are a couple.” He answered and nodded.
“Good the bedroom between the master bed room and my guest room will be the room for the kid so you can have a good nights sleep before games and the baby won’t wake you up.”

“Sound good. But any other night I’ll be on baby duty just as you are. I’m the dad I can feed and change diapers too.”

I chuckled at his response, he looked at me as if I had gone insane. Smiling I mocked: “Yeah… I want to see you breastfeed a baby.”

“VIV… you know exactly what I mean.”

“Of course I do. So nursery and bedroom will be our tag team project as will the entire house. Though the kitchen and the bathrooms are almost done.”

He looked at me with huge childish eyes: “Vivy…. Can we pleeeeeease get a round bed? I always wanted to have a round bed. Please please please. You can have the entire walk in closet for yourself and I will build you a walk in shoe cabinet.” I laughed at his eagerness. “Oh Sidney… let’s google a little okay… I mean we aren’t exactly short so let’s look for some okay?” He nodded and sent his a little too long curls flying everywhere.
We opened some online store and looked for round bed.

“Yeah we need this one… let’s just figure our how to manage all that water in the second story.”

“Ugh not so much… thank you… I’m on ice all day so I don’t need to swim on it at night. What about this one… uhm no… imagine having sex in that one I mean” Sid didn’t even finish his sentence but started one of his infamous laughing fits and rolled over the bed. I pulled the device towards me and looked at the bed. It was really something else but not really what we were looking for so I opened the next page and had to laugh again.
“I don’t think Dan would approve this one .”
Sidney stopped laughing for a second but started again after seeing the bed. “No I don’t think so. Ewww what’s that?” He questioned after opening the fourth page. I took a look at it . “Ew just like no. Never… that looks like in a brothel. Forget it.” Sid laughter at my reaction: “Uhm… let’s go for a squared bed okay? These ones are just… no…”
We both laughed a little more before Sidney went in the bathroom and I threw away our bowels and cutlery. Walking into the en-suite bathroom of the master bedroom I found a folded shirt and a toothbrush on the counter.
After brushing my teeth and taking off all my cloth except the pants I had put ton on this morning, glad that I didn’t chose thongs, I put the shirt on and walked back downstairs. Sidney lay on one of the two mattresses already, face down with his head turned to the side looking out of the window into the dark backyard.

“Hey… thanks for the shirt.” I whispered. His head shot up, he looked over and sat up.

“Looks good on you… though you’ll need some time to fill it out.” He smirked.

“Ooooh believe me. That will happen fast enough. Before you know I am a stranded whale and I won’t fit through any door and you will have to feed me in bed.”

I walked over to the other mattress and lay down facing him.
“I would even do that but I don’t think you will get that big.”

After cuddling into the pillow and blanket Sidney killed the candles we had lit to get some light since we didn’t have energy in the house yet and remained silent for a while.

“What’s with the shirt. How are you so sure I’m getting a hockey playing boy?” I asked after we remained silent for a while.

“The shirt doesn’t say anything about boys as far as I’m concerned. I’m pretty sure we are having a little boy in there. It is just daddy’s intuition and I will take my kid, no matter if it is a girl or a boy to the rink and if the kid wants to play hockey so let it be. And since the daddy is somehow playing hockey hobby-wise or so… one could say you are a hockey mom.”

“Somehow playing hockey hobby-wise? Humble much? You’re the best player in the nhl but whatever.”
We laughed a little but sleep took over us soon.

“Good night Viviane.”

“Good night Sidney.”

“Good night Baby.”

“It doesn’t kick yet or anything but good night daddy.”