Lost In Pacific Time

“These are amazing,” Greg says browsing through the pictures Maxim sent me in the mail.

“I look like a whore” I reply, I refused to look at them so I called Greg in to assess the damage. Isn't that what staff were supposed to do? Do things that you didn't want to do yourself.

“Yeah, one of those high class ones you have to make an appointment with. Not the kind on the street corners or even the kind where you go to a massage parlor and the girls march out in a line for you to choose from.” Greg replies.

“You sure know a lot about buying sex,” I say as I grab a handful of almonds.

Greg rolls his eyes at me, “Honestly Amber, these should shed your good girl image.”

“I liked being a good girl,” I reply flipping through the first few sketches Saks sent me. They’re all kind of plain and lacking the wow factor.

“But these are going to make people talk,” Greg says it like it’s a good thing. People like Greg belong here in Hollywood.

“Talk about how I should stick to my day job.” I ink my maybe stamp and stamp it onto the design for a deep purple ottoman with built in storage.

“No, they’re going to talk about how smoking hot you look, honestly if only you and I played for the same team.” He says whistling as he flips onto the next picture.

It’s been little over a month since the disastrous Ellen interview. Every other day someone’s publicist would talk to Ruby about hooking me and whoever the publicist was representing on a date at some Hollywood hotspot. Apparently any new lesbian relationships deserved an honorable mention in People Magazine. Honestly sometimes I just wanted to gather all the numbers I was told to call and set them up with each other. My staff knew the truth and it felt odd. While most people hid the fact that they were gay from the public eye, I was hiding the fact that I was straight. Well I wasn’t exactly hiding it, I constantly said things like I thought that prove that I was straight but I guess people just believed what they wanted to.

“Are you sure you don’t want to give them a look before you throw them in the shredder? I know it’ll be worth your time.” Greg asks putting the pictures back into the manila envelope.

“Fine, gimme” he hands the picture and I have to say they aren’t bad. Actually they look kind of good and kind of classy. It must be the lighting and the makeup. I was worried that they pictures would be too revealing but you didn’t see any more than you would’ve on the billboards on Sunset Boulevard. When I see myself in the lavender corset, I think about having it blown up and put into my apartment in Vancouver. Everything at that place is in different shades of purple and really feminine. Then I remembered that I rented out the place the other fifty weeks of the year and I doubted that a picture of me in the purple corset would go over too well in the master bedroom where complete strangers were sleeping in. At least I made a pretty penny on my apartment during the Olympics.

I had turned in my article to Maxim and the photographer took the pictures of my room and balcony, the couple days were going to be pretty chill. I only had a week before my trip to Vancouver and I was excited. Who didn’t love vacations? People who aren’t lazy, maybe.
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Last week on the show Amber confirmed that her show was going on a hiatus for the next few weeks because of vacations. She also said that she would be headed back to Vancouver to spend hers. “Accidentally” running into Amber may not have been as easy as I thought. Vancouver had plenty of people and I realized that I didn’t really know much about this new Amber. Where the hell would I find her? Surely she wouldn’t be staying with her parents like I was. They were one of the main reasons I speculated she left.

I’ve lived in Boston for four years and never did I once run into Gisele Bündchen. I guess she and I didn’t exactly visit the same neighbourhood sandwich shops. Britney saw her once at the Chanel boutique near the public gardens. If I wanted to find Amber I’d have to apply for a job at Louis Vuitton and I was pretty sure they didn’t want me to be representing their brand. I was walking around downtown Vancouver, this seemed like a place a girl about town like her would hang out. It was vibrant and slightly snobby and literally had a Starbucks on every street corner. She liked chain restaurants because she liked consistency that was also why she liked the Red Wings. Apparently making the twenty seasons straight earned you Amber’s admiration but I guess so did getting fighting majors and sitting in the penalty box considering the way she looked at me from her seat. The way she used to look at me.

As I walked past the Aritzia store and realized that I could wait until our high school reunion. But Amber is famous now. She probably has a whole entourage of people following her around and body guards that keep people from. Why the hell would she even show up? I honestly didn’t think she liked anyone in the whole entire class. Well she liked me but that was pretty much it. She used to like me a lot and I liked her too but rarely did I not like anyone. Even some of the guys I fought were good guys, at least off the ice, on the ice all you saw was a guy wearing the opposition’s jerseys.

I figured that Amber’s show was filmed a week or two before it aired so she could already be here. I wondered why of all places would she chose here, she could go anywhere. Places that were more glamorous filled with the young and successful such as herself, like St. Tropez or Hawaii. Or other places where it was summer and didn’t rain every other week. I walked into Holt Renfrew, the place to find hot women with money to burn. Surely Amber would be here if she was in the city. Holt Renfrew would be the perfect place to pick up women, I think to myself as I’m greeted by a pretty red headed sales assistant. I wander through every nook and cranny, even though I could’ve looked more out of place in the makeup department. I thought about the excuse I’d use if I did happen to find her there. “I’m looking for something for my mother” if this were any other girl they’d laugh but I knew Amber would find it cute.

By the time I reached the very top floor and could see the yellow cabs on the busy Vancouver streets. I was in the ready-to-wear section and Amber was still nowhere to be seen.

“I might as well buy myself a new pair of jeans while I’m here.” I said, picking myself up a pair of dark grey jeans.

“That’s kind of pathetic,” my older brother Jovan says after I explain to him what I’ve been doing all day. We’re at the house I bought but don’t live in, it’s kind of complicated. I toured it during the four days off I had in Vancouver earlier in the season when the Giants’ honored me and we played the Canucks for the first of eight times this year. The house is right across the street from the Hastings Park which is next to the Pacific Coliseum. It is easily the nicest house and kind of flashy in this neighbourhood. To be blunt, the houses around me have paint peeling off and patchy, overgrown, lawns. Certainly I’m not going to find Amber here, unless she developed a gambling addiction and goes to Hastings Racecourse daily to place bets.

“I thought you weren’t going to judge,” I reply. I walk around my house for the umpteenth time. From the outside the house is in great condition but once I got inside it was a mess. I bought the house anyway because it was a way better deal than anything in the fancier neighbourhoods and I thought it would be easy to fix it up and in the end I’d get a great deal. It didn’t exactly turn out that way, I had renovations done, the walls painted white, and the floors ripped out and spent half as much money I used buying the house to fix the house.

“Why were you trying to find her in the first place? Did you happen to have some rope and duct tape in the trunk of your car?” he asks laughing at this own joke. Jovan stops laughing when he sees my face “You didn’t did you?”

“No! I just miss her.” I say looking down at the bare floors “I miss all of my friends that have grown up and moved away”.

“We all miss Amber, Milan but it’s time to move on. You’ve just won the Stanley Cup. I don’t know about you but I can think of twenty things better to do than moping over your ex-girlfriend. You’re a Stanley Cup winner, that’s a total panty dropper.”

“I don’t want to deal with girls who are only there because of things like that.” I say sitting down on a folding chair.

“Like you’re any different,” Jovan says and I raise an eyebrow. “You only like her now because she’s rich and famous now, so how are you any different from those girls that hang around the Roxy hoping to take a hockey player home.”

“I like her because…” and my mind goes blank because I don’t know what else to say.