Lost In Pacific Time

When you work in Hollywood everyone assumes that you have all this spare time. The truth was that I worked a normal nine-to-five job just live most people. I wasn’t an actor where you work fourteen hours day for a movie and have three weeks off after. I wasn’t a musician who got to tour the world of six months before coming home and begin working on the next album. I wasn’t even an athlete where you play a couple games a week for eight months before getting the summer months off. I was a normal adult working normal adult hours. This didn’t leave too many hours for late night partying or exotic vacations.

In summary, I had no life. I was perfectly content with that, who cared if I had only one boyfriend since I began dating and possibly ever. Elizabeth Channing, his girl my old high school, had a new boyfriend every two weeks and I’m sure she never got any satisfaction having forty different boyfriends none of whom she really cared about. I had one and at seventeen I always thought that he would be the one who set the standards for all my other boyfriends. It was only during our last months of our senior year did I realize that this relationship went beyond the depth of typical high school relationships. Only then did I realize that there could be a possibility of Ambrosia and Milan forever and always.

Unfortunately it was also during those pivotal few months I also realized what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. My interior design teacher said that I had a tremendous amount of raw talent and that I should’ve applied to the Art Institute of Vancouver to nurture it. That’s what got me started. Before I thought that I’d stay in Vancouver and follow Milan wherever he went like the typical hockey girlfriend. When I had gotten the job for Sandalwood Heights, I began to think.

I thought about my future. I trusted Milan but he could very easily leave me at any moment in time. Didn’t I want to be able to suppose myself if and when something prettier came along? But he didn’t like me because I was pretty. To be honest I wasn’t really that pretty. He liked me because he liked my wit and humour. Even then there will always be wittier and funnier girls. Before those three months I had always thought that if Milan asked me to marry him I would say yes. It was an absurd notion to even think about him asking me that but it could happen and if it did I would say yes. Despite whatever teenage Milan thought: I was a romantic at heart who dreamed about and believed in happily ever afters. After my job at Sandalwood Heights I realized that maybe the two of us needed some time apart, time to develop and grow as people. I didn’t want to get married at eighteen; I wanted to have a live.
Here I was twenty two, no life. It required so much energy to even attempt a relationship and I had wasted all that energy in my job and building my brand. These days Saturdays were just me, a bucket of Ben and Jerry’s Caramel Hat trick, and a Real Housewives of Orange County marathon.
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The day before had been my 23rd birthday. I mostly celebrated by myself since I didn’t want to make a big deal about birthdays. Amber loved birthdays, she loved making people happy and I’m sure if the interior design thing didn’t work out for her, she could probably become some sort of event planner, something that required her uncanny organization and out of the box thinking. I drove home from the game riding on the high that back to back wins in the playoffs get you. The streets were quiet as I pulled into the underground parking lot of the apartment building I lived in. As I walked into the lobby I was thinking that Amber wouldn’t like it every much. Patrice was right about Amber’s signature style, there was nothing masculine about it. My lobby was very masculine with its clean lines, monochromatic color and modern furniture. It was everything Amber wasn’t. I guess that’s why I decided to buy the place after signing my first NHL contract; nothing in here would remind me of Amber. Unlike the hotel room I stayed in during my first month with the Bruins, everyday I’d come home and see the gold framed mirror in the bathroom. The mirror looked exactly like the one Amber found at the neighbourhood Thrift store except the mirror in my hotel bathroom probably costs more than three dollars.

I rode the elevator up to my apartment and walked through the door. “You’re home,” Britney says getting up from the couch “your birthday was yesterday,” Britney puts on that fake hurt face she gets when she feels left out “I feel so bad I forgot.”

To me it sounds more like “I’m pissed at you for not reminding me”. ‘I brought you something to make up for it,” she walks to the rarely used kitchen, opens the fridge, and pulls out a white box. She carefully pulls out a cake covered in white frosting. Something tells me that I shouldn’t be eating a cake in the middle of the playoffs but it looks so delicious and Britney even pulls out a pack of two dozen candles and a set of matches.

“One for luck,” she says as she meticulously places each individual candle. “Make a wish,” she says as she lights the 24th candle.

It’s probably the same wish as every red blooded Canadian boy between the ages of five and fifteen. It’s the same wish as when I was six and every birthday between then and now. I wish to win the Stanley Cup. I blow out all the candles and Britney removes them so that she can throw them in the garbage. I cut two pieces of cake as she goes to get the plates. When the slices of cake are on the plates I see the red layers of cake sandwiched between the stripes of cream cheese frosting. It’s a red velvet cake.
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“Aren’t they beautiful” Amber says practically pressing her nose onto the display case of cupcakes. It’s a week and a half after the Giants were sent home, a week before Amber and I graduate high school, and two weeks and a half before the NHL Entry Draft. It’s a busy month for me and Amber even drew me a giant calendar for the month of June in her spare time. It takes up a whole wall in my room and has every event written in Amber’s signature loopy writing. “Cheer up Milan, you’re officially a man today,”

“For some strange reason cupcake store don’t sound very manly to me, Amber. I mean I’m the only guy inside this pink store.”

Amber laughs “Well I’m not going to be taking you to the strip club or that Madame Butterfly Massage Parlour we passed on the way here but I will buy you a red velvet cupcake.”

“Okay, well I guess a cupcake is just as good.” I say and Amber pays for her cupcakes.

“Besides isn’t this more fun than watching hours upon hours of NOVA” she says as we walk into the mid-morning sun. Almost no one bothers coming to school anymore, after they got their acceptance letters, so the teachers have just stopped teaching. Coincidentally Amber and I wound up in the same Chemistry class again. Every other day Mr. Montgomery has to monitor our lack of precision and yes the substances Amber and I were mixing in our beakers may have been bubbling when they weren’t supposed to.

“What flavour is this again?” I ask her after having my first bite of the cupcake.

“Red velvet. Do you like it?” she asks as we get into my car.

“That’s a very sexy name for a pastry. I guess, it’s just kind of strange tasting.” I tell her. I place my half eaten cupcake onto my dashboard as we begin driving. We drive for about fifteen blocks to Hadden Park. I know it’s one of Amber’s favourite places. It’s in the
Kitsilano neighbourhood of Vancouver almost on the other side of town from our school and right next to the water.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it tastes like both vanilla and chocolate but it doesn’t taste enough like either of them plus its red which just confuses me more.”

Amber looks at me like I’m an adorable puppy and decides to drop the topic. “When I grow up, I want to live here” Amber says as we get out of the car.

“Why?” I ask her as we sit on our bench. Its right next to the railing that keeps people from jumping into the ocean and we have a pretty good view of Stanley Park on the other side of English Bay.

“This neighbourhood has everything I want and I wanna live in that house over there.” She says pointing to the house adjacent to the park.

“It has a private beach and every morning I walk to yoga and Whole Foods.” She says looking at the house like it’s the best thing ever.

I look down below and see a gated yard of sharp rocks with the green-blue ocean lapping it “I’d hardly call it a beach beside you have no privacy,” I say noticing all the windows facing the park.

“Yeah but it’s so different from where we live now,” I agree with her we live in the kind of house that come in various colors around the city.

“There no yard for the kids” I point out.

“Milan, the house is next to the park I’m sure they can entertain themselves here.” I look around and there are little kids with their nannies climbing on the playground equipment.

“Fine, Amber. One day I’ll buy you that house and we can live in it during the summer” I throw away my cupcake wrapper.

“Milan, that house it like 2 million dollars soon I’ll be able to buy it myself with my Sandalwood Heights money.” She looks up at me with a dreamy expression on her face.

“Okay, Amber, whatever you want” I say leaning down to kiss her forehead.

“I love you Milan,” she says pulling my head lower so that our lips can touch.