Lost In Pacific Time

“Time to get over yourself, Amber” I said and I laughed thinking about Milan giving himself the same pep talk before heading out on the ice. I turned on the plasma TV and watched as NBC made showed some sort of montage they made and I felt slightly sad that I had missed all of that. I had never missed a Stanley Cup Finals game before this. I made sure of it by unplugging the phone lines and turning off the BlackBerry. The latter was rare and usually reserved for weddings or funerals. I didn’t even turn off that thing when I slept.
I sat my ass down on the black couch with a bowl of popcorn on the coffee table and I feel a bit uneasy when I see a shot of him from behind. I can see his jersey, the one and seven, black trimmed in white and then yellow on a white away jersey. I’m an interior designer, I notice the details. Suddenly it feels strange to be in a tank top and shorts when over in Vancouver they’re wearing full gear and shorts with thigh high socks. I used to call them stockings because that’s what they were but Milan told me that calling them stockings made him sound like a catholic school girl.

Even though its only his back, I feel strange and giddy like I used to when I’d watch number twenty seven skate down the ice at the Pacific Coliseum. The first time I felt like shouting “I know him!” which probably wasn’t proper etiquette at a hockey game and when we started dating I felt no different. I still wanted to let everyone know how happy I was for him, at least one of us was getting something done. Now I didn’t have anything to shout but now I had an adrenaline rush from seeing him like you do when you’re eight and the boy you have a crush on decided that he wants to swing on the swings with you instead of playing on the jungle gym with his friends. Or when you’re sixteen and the guy you’ve been tutoring for the past month says he’s got tickets to a hockey game and wants you to come.
______

“Aren’t we a little early?” I ask. As I get into the passenger seat of his car. Milan said to meet him right afterschool at his car in the parking lot.

“What do you mean?” he asks turning over to look at me.

“Well don’t most hockey games start at seven?”

“This one’s no exception, you arrive early to watch the warm ups”

“Okay,” I don’t know much about hockey. “Is there time to let me get dressed?”

“No, why?”

“I just don’t think I’m dressed for a hockey game”

He looks over at me “What’s wrong?”

“Aren’t I going to be cold?” I ask gesturing to my jeans and tank top.

At a red light Milan reaches behind him and into a bag in the back seat, gosh his arms are long. “Here,” he says handing me what looks to be a balled up jersey.

I shake it out and I realize that his last name is on the back with the number twenty seven “You must really like them if you bought yourself a custom made jersey.”

He chuckles “Yeah, Amber I bought it,” he says sarcastically.

“Milan are trying to do that thing guys do where they pretend to be all dangerous because I know you can’t steal one of these things”

“You’re right Amber I didn’t steal it,” he smiles like I’m missing some sort of joke.

I try to change the subject after I put on the jersey “So do you know someone on the team?” I ask.

“Yeah, I know a couple guys, why?” he asks as we turn onto Renfrew Street.

“Because Major Junior hockey isn’t something you really go to watch unless you know someone on the team or live in an area without an NHL team.”

He looks at me like he wants to say something but decides against it.

“So do you like hockey Amber?”

“I’ve never been to a game,” I say unsure whether or not I answered your questions.

“So you’re a hockey virgin?” he asks looking at me with his smirk, he’s so gorgeous. He’s surpassed the awkward yet kind of cute phase guys go through in high school and right to being gorgeous. According to the door on the second stall to the left on the second floor bathroom, he knows it too.

“Yes,” I reply, I see him open him mouth and cut him off “And you’re going to be the one who
pops my cherry, right?”

He smiles at me “Yea,” he parks his car in the mostly empty parking lot and opens my door for me. He hands me my book bag “We are early, you can do homework while you wait.”
I want to ask him why the hell are we here so early but he kind of grabs my hand and leads me to the entrance taking my words away. The arena is empty except for some janitors and security but the doors are unlocked and Milan holds it for me. I love chivalry. I know he’s just being nice because that was probably the way he was raised. I went to his house to tutor him and his family is perfect. They’re the kind of family that all sit down together for dinner and talk. He’s not flirting with me like he did with the librarian at the library when I was trying to teach him how to write out chemical compounds. He’s just being nice, the way everyone is with their friends. Neither of the two security guards we pass tries to stop us or ask what where doing and I think that it’s because Milan is so intimating so they let us do whatever we please. He’d make a good bodyguard I think to myself. He leads me to an area where a five or six pretty girls are sitting. What the hell are they doing here in an empty arena?

“You can sit here,” he says picking a spot far enough away from the girls so that they won’t think I’m some hanger on but close enough so it doesn’t look like I’m trying to avoid them.

“I don’t think these are our seats,” I tell him as I pull out the piece of paper he handed me in chemistry class. I scan it over and surely enough my ticket says my seat is in Section T Row 107 Seat 3. Then I look at the ticket a little closer and see something familiar. “Why is your face on this ticket?” I ask.

He smiles and is trying really hard not to laugh “Because I’m playing my first game,” he says.

“Oh,” I say trying my hardest not to give him the reaction he wants to see. “Well good luck, I guess.”

“Thanks, Amber” he says leaning down to kiss my scalp which is a rather odd place to kiss someone. But who the fuck cares? Within the last few minutes we’ve talked in sexual innuendos, held hands, and his lips made contact with me… sort of. I try to keep the hysteria that is talking over me at bay by trying to remember everything that was on the door of the washroom stall. But I can’t, inside I want to burst, and just become a typical teenage girl gushing about her crush.

“I gotta go down to the weight room now. I’ll meet you after the game in the locker room.” He says and it sounds something like what a mother would say to their child on the first day of kindergarten to keep them from bursting into tears.

“Okay, I’ll see you after the game.” I say sitting down in my seat with Physics textbook.

“So are you dating him?” one of the girls asks while I answer a set up a response to a Kinematics equation.

“Nope,” I reply while I bunch numbers into my calculator.

“You sound unusually happy about that,” she replies. I look over at her. She’s pretty but everyone here is. You’d think Milan placed me down in the waiting room for a modeling job or something.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” I ask moving onto the next question in my textbook.

“Because, he’s your ticket out of here.” she replied.

“What do you mean? I’m sure I could take the bus home.” I ask closing my textbook and deciding to focus on Physics later.

She rolls her bright green eyes. I always wished I had any eye color rather than brown, something exotic like violet or even yellow. No, yellow would be really creepy “Judging by that AP Statics textbook in your bag you’re either playing dumb or one of those book smart girls who would never survive in the real world. One day your guy is going to get drafted by an NHL team and then he’s going to move the two of you to whatever city it is. He’s going to make the roster and make seven figures a year and decide to marry you because “you’ve been there all along” and then when you’re married he’s going to have a different girl in every city while you’re at home with the kids.”

“You sure know a lot about this,”

“My mom went through the same thing with my dad,” she says pointing up at the boxes above us “He’s the General Manager”

“That’s interesting,” I say unsure of how to respond since she basically called her dad a cheater.

“Just keep that in mind, honey”

“Why?”

“Because even though girls like us are out of their leagues we have to think about the future and the potential they have. After watching you’re little exchange earlier if the two of you aren’t together it obviously isn’t because of him.”

“I don’t think so; he’s being a flirt besides he’s such a womanizer.” Think bathroom stall.
“Isn’t that every girl’s dream to be the one who tamed the man-whore?”

“I don’t want to change him, I think he’s fine just the way he is.” I respond “and if girls are going to stupid enough to date him I don’t think he’s going to change.”

“Is that your stance…”

“Amber”

“Amber?” she asks “I’m Penelope by the way.”

“Well no, I used to having perfectly platonic relationships with guys, it’s just that they usually look more like … well they don’t look like Milan.” I say letting my shallow side show for once.

“So you admit that he’s attractive?”

“Yeah” I sigh, “I’m just not very good with the whole wooing a guy situation.”

“Wooing?”

“Yes, I said wooing”

“Amber girls don’t woo, they get wooed. Just look pretty and I’m sure he’ll come to his senses.”

Clearly that was dating advice you should take to the heart.