Lost In Pacific Time

E! Couple News: Ambrosia Li is back in her hometown of Vancouver and has been spotted all over town visiting various furniture and antique shops and restaurants in the trendy Gastown and Yaletown districts. She came out on the Ellen Show back in June but she has been spotted with a mystery man while out and about in Vancouver. Now several sources have identified him as 2011 Stanley Cup winner Milan Lucic of the Boston Bruins. Sources are also saying that Milan Lucic and Ambrosia Li have been friends since high school and the two of them are nothing more than friends at the moment. They also report that the whole Ambrosia-Milan fauxmance was nothing more than a cover up for Amber’s real relationship.

The question was: with who? It seemed that Tampa Bay Lightning’s forward Steven Stamkos was the front runner for the title of Ambrosia’s new boy toy. However yesterday Stamkos went to twitter claiming he “has never met or been in the same room as [Amber]” but says from what he’s seen she seems like a “nice girl”. On the other hand it seems that Amber has quickly learned the golden rule of Hollywood: be elusive. Since she could not be reached for comment on the rumours.
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I walk into the newly decorated house; everything is in its place, so shiny and new. I put down the box of … well Milan’s stuff on to the floor. After several days of rearranging furniture, Milan has finally deemed the house livable thus good enough for him to officially move into.

“It really looks great doesn’t it?” Milan asks dropping a much bigger box of his stuff onto the espresso colored floors. I imagine it’s full of stuff like trophies and a giant picture after winning the Stanley Cup.

“Wow, it’s really shiny and new in here” Nikola says holding a box that’s almost as large as Milan’s.

“Thanks,” I reply brushing some hair out of my eyes.

“Let’s see the rest of the house before Milan uglifies it with his stuff.” Nikola prompts.

“What do you want to see first?” I ask as Nikola admires the patterned rug I put in the foyer.

“Well.. how about here?” Nikola says as Milan takes out his phone, possibly to text Heather Ullman.

“Well this is the foyer…” I begin and there’s a reason why I’m not an interior designer on one of those home improvement shows. I have a hard time explaining certain aspects of my idea. I’ve decided to just go around the house describing what I see while we meandered around Milan’s house while taking picture of my handiwork to add to my portfolio.
“How did you feel about the color scheme?” Milan asks with a smile as we head into the formal living room.

I pause and try to answer it as if it was going to be appearing in vogue. “I tried to suppress the yellow into an accent color but there were some rooms where the yellow took over. I actually really liked working with yellow it was androgynous without being dreary.” Milan and his brother both look impressed and if I hadn’t already proved to them that I was legit, I had now.

I take Nikola and Milan onto the second floor where most of the bedrooms are. I’ve always wondered why Milan needed seven bedrooms, it wasn’t like he’d be running a bed and breakfast in here for extra income. I always wonder what I’d study if I went off to post-secondary education, hotel management was definitely in the top ten. I ponder this as we walk up the stairs to the third floor. I had several commercial projects under my interior design belt, I liked how spaces like hotel rooms and boutiques had to look good in a generic everyone-needs-to-like-it way without feeling impersonal. Who knows maybe one day I’d open up a bed and breakfast. In Vermont. On a maple syrup farm. That sounded pretty awesome, going back somewhere that had four seasons instead constant sunshine.

“The Master Suite,” I say opening the double doors at the top of the landing. The master bedroom takes up the entire third floor and basically located in the attic.

“It’s sick, it looks like one of those rooms on TV” says Nikola sitting down in one of the modern yellow chairs in the sitting area.

“I helped pick out the pillows,” Milan says proudly, sitting on the edge of his bed new bed.

“He picked out all the pillows in the house.” I say trying to help Milan’s case.

“Nice, he gets menial jobs while you do the real work.” Nikola jokes “lets hear your thesis for the room”

“I painted it white which only eventuated the simplicity of the lines in the comforter, pillows, and steel frame of the chair. Lines also tend to project a more masculine feel which we contrasted further with the curves in the lamp shade and coffee table.” In case Heather Ullman moves in. It’s been so long since I’ve done interior design project and had this much fun. Maybe I should volunteer to join the cast of Extreme Home Makeover, I’d definitely be an improvement upon Jillian Harris. If I had stayed in Vancouver to practise interior design she would basically be my biggest competition for projects. Somehow I imagine that ABC would put something about featuring me in a Tila Tequila-esque dating competition show into my contract, which of course I wouldn’t be reading.
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“I can’t believe you kept this,” Amber says holding up a framed painting. It’s her painting, it has her signage engrave with a knife in the thick oil paint on the bottom right hand corner. She painted it for me the summer I was drafted, I figured it fit the color scheme so I took it out of the box in the basement.

“Of course, you gave it to me,” I reply watching as she hammers in a nail and hangs up the painting in the long second storey hallway. It’s a pretty simple painting, it’s abstract with blobs and streaks or black, yellow, and white. She gave it to me when it was still partially wet and told me to hang it up in my apartment in Boston which I never did.

“It’s a very moody painting,” Nikola says standing back and looking at the painting.

“Yeah?” I ask, to me it just looked like a painting, a frustrated painting.
Amber glances at her silvery-aqua watch “It’s time to pick up the Chinese food we ordered from the place beside the Starbucks”

“Ask them for extra napkins, we ran out.” I tell her, Amber takes the time to roll her eyes before grabbing her structured blue bag and walking down the hallway towards the door.
It’s a minute or two of silence between Nikola and I after Amber leaves. He breaks it first. “How’d the whole reunion thing go?”

“Heather Ullman tried to convince me that I that I was the one that got away and Amber lied to everyone and said she was dating Stamkos” I say with a smile remembering the day before yesterday, I still think I’m feeling the effects of whatever it was Scott Kalvin put in the punch.

Nikola laughs “Is that the standard for high school reunions, people pretend to like each other while pretending they’re something they’re not.”

“Yup, you have that to look forward to.” I tell him.

“Milan…” Nikola says with a pensive look.

“Yeah?” I reply opening the box of trophies and medals, nothing major just some stuff from boxing, rugby, and hockey from my teenage years.

Nikola pauses for a moment “I don’t think Amber is gay,”

“What do you mean?” I ask

“You just don’t get that kind of vibe from her” Nikola tries to explain

“A vibe?” I ask with skeptism, putting down a puck from the 2007 Super Series next to the lemon scented candles on the hall table.

“You know, that you get from other gay people,” Nikola says, he’s studying marketing at Simon Fraser University where they talk about target markets the way Amber talks about color schemes. According to him they did a whole chapter on how to market products to homosexuals, apparently that makes him an expert on gays. “Well did you at least ask her?” Nikola tries.

“Look, I’m sure she didn’t want her secret to get out in the open like that. So it’s not like I’m going to interrogate her about her sexual habits.” I tell him imagining what I would do if I were in her shoes.

“Well don’t say I should’ve told you,” Nikola says as we hear the front door open below us.