Lost In Pacific Time

Game One wasn’t exactly the best start for us. Within the last twenty seconds we blew it. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough but no matter where I was on the ice I kept looking back to Section 106, at center ice. Sure in our seats were a bottle blonde and her equally orange friend but I still remembered.
_____

We were at the 2006 World Juniors for the Gold Medal Game.

“That Letang guy is so hot” Amber says as the stuffing her face with a handful of popcorn. “Do you think he heard me?” she asks as Kris Letang stop doing hamstring stretches on the ice and looks around the arena.

“I think the whole arena heard you, Amber” I say as I steal a handful of popcorn, which is really half the bag.

“You’re hands are like three times the size of mine,” she said eyes wide.

“Um, thanks?” Amber and I are just friends, at least for right now. She isn’t interested in any sort of high school relationship although she’s only said it once and that was because she was rejecting this guy in our homeroom named Scott Kalvin who only asked her out because he wanted to win some sort of bet he had with the lacrosse team. I hope I can change her mind. Unlike Amber I’ve had a steady stream of girlfriends. All of those relationships were physical and nothing more. I already had Amber to talk to and laugh with, so I certainly wasn’t looking to replace her with one of my girlfriends.

“Did he just wave at me?” she asks her gaze still focused on Letang.

“Look behind you,” I say, and sure enough there’s a hot blonde in his jersey from the QMJHL.

Amber shrugs, like she gets rejected by a hockey player on the other side of the Plexiglas every day.

I like Amber, I like her a lot. On the first day of school I was new and I noticed her. It was kind of hard not to, she was in my homeroom and the homeroom teacher made us share lockers and the teacher in our chemistry had paired us up as partners right off the bat. So at lunch I made an effort in dropping by her empty table to talk to her. That’s when she informed me that it was because our last names were right next to each other in the alphabet. Any other girl would’ve taken the chance to make me look like an idiot. Amber wasn’t like that; she introduced herself and said that she looked forward to seeing me, whatever that meant. Over the months I realized that Amber was neither the prettiest girl at our school or the smartest but she was the most sincere. She never said anything she didn’t mean and she didn’t say much to begin with.

Slowly Amber began to talk to me more and more, like when we were at our locker together or when we finished our chemistry labs early. She’d let me in on everything she noticed, like how Elizabeth Channing only ever dated guys for two weeks exactly before dumping them or how whenever she needed to find me all she’d look for was Dorothy Halls, who apparently held an unhealthy obsession with me. No one ever told Amber these things, she was just really observant, she didn’t necessarily liked people, she just liked watching them.
_____

“Greg, I need to talk to you” I say as I walked past his desk with my iced upside down skinny Caramel Macchiato in hand from my coffee break which I basically spent at the Starbucks across the street with a chocolate croissant.

“Listen Amber I know I broke those imported floor tiles from Italy but they look fine” he says as he sits across from me in one of the bright magenta club chairs. “They look even better broken” he says as I go to close the door. “It’ll give the Winthrop estate a more rustic look” he adds with a paniced look on his face.

“I’m not firing you Greg,” I say simply, “I just wanted to talk.”

“About what?” Greg asks. Greg was the first person I never hired, when I was nineteen and he was fresh out of art school, I considered him one of my best friends here in LA.

“I’ve been in a relationship for two years…”

“And you didn’t tell me?” he interrupts with a pout on his face.

“Let just say it was complicated,” I reply taking a sip of my ice cold coffee drink.

“Are you getting married?” he asks bouncing up and down in his chair. He took my silence as a yes “I’d be happy to plan it for you, Amber you only get married for the first time once.”

“Greg, no one is getting married. Actually we kind of can’t.” hoping he’ll know what I’m getting at.

Greg gasps and I finally think he knows what I’m getting at but then he says “HE’S MARRIED AMBER?!!? YOU’RE SLEEPING WITH A MARRIED MAN?!!?” and then he starts pacing back and forth on those twenty thousand dollar floors. “Who is he? I bet its that actor with the abs from GI Joe, I totally knew he had it in for you when I left you two alone and the two of you had practically undressed each other. Amber if you hadn’t made me sign that confidentiality agreement I’d be on the phone with Us Weekly in a heartbeat.”

I put my head in my hands “No Greg. One: I am not seeing a married man. Two: You left me alone, and the guy had just come straight from the shower to the kitchen and decided to pop in to see how I was doing and then you walked in like three seconds later. I’m in a relationship with Milly Roberts but I’m … you know.”

Greg sighed and rolled his eyes at me “You’re straight, I know I’ve got a pretty good gaydar. Amber.”

“How am I going to breakup with her? I’ve never broken up with anyone before.”
Greg once again looks shocked “You’ve never broken up with anyone? What about that guy you left to come here.”

“I kind of never broke up with him, I just left. For all I know he still thinks we’re together but I doubt it considering he’s off being a profession athlete in Boston and I’m here trying to figure out how to break some poor girl’s heart.”

“Maybe she never liked you” Greg tries to add helpfully.

“Thanks”

“Tons of girls experiment during their twenties. Just promise you’ll break up with her Amber.”

“Kay Greg,” I say as he leaves out the door.