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Harbour Lights and Lonely Nights

When the Lights Go Out

After that Sidney did not push Emily to give him any answers he just enjoyed the time they spent together when he got home from practices. The first game was approaching fast and his mind had to focus but Emily always offered a reprieve from the stress, however short lived it was.

Emily tried talking over her options with Mischa while she worked. Of course the redhead had been all for Emily coming to live in Pittsburgh. She knew the payoff of moving to the Pennsylvania city, having moved there herself, but she listened carefully and gave honest opinions. Time was running out before Emily would have to make up her mind but the two options were fighting a fierce battle in her thoughts. Any moment her mind wasn’t focused on a task she was weighing options, thinking about moving costs, wondering about living arrangements, imagining life in Nova Scotia without him.

A few days before the game the two had just finished dinner when they were offered an interesting release from all their stress. Suddenly, as their empty plates made their way from the table to the dishwasher, the entire house was engulfed in darkness. All the electricity had gone off.

Emily had been opening the dishwasher one moment and not been able to see anything but black the next. Her initial thought was that something had got turned on and breakers had blown.

“Sidney!” She called into the darkness, feeling along the cool edge of the counter. Her movements were slow and deliberate but she still managed to stub her toe on the corner of the cupboards. This lead to her shouting “fuck” which itself led to Sidney entering the kitchen.
“Are you okay?” The boy asked slowly, unable to see her.
From his spot he was grazed by a bit of moonlight from outside. “I’m fine. Just stubbed my toe. Did a breaker go out?”
She tried to walk closer to him so he could see her.
“I’m not sure, I was just brushing my teeth when everything went dark.”
“Should we check then? Do you have a flashlight?”
Sidney nodded and turned to walk into the living room. Emily followed him as he opened a drawer and rummaged in it before pulling out a yellow plastic flashlight. With the simple press of a button a yellow circle of light was cast onto the carpeted floor. The flashlight lit his face of from an angle that reminded Emily of sitting around campfires when they were younger.
“Where’s the box?” she asked, shaking the thought of teenage Sid by a campfire from her head.
“It’s downstairs behind the bar. I can go check, you don’t have to come with me.”
“Okay.”
Sidney disappeared downstairs and Emily stood in the dark waiting. She listened as his feet padded down the stairs. The sound of him opening the box with a squeak was faint from the basement. Then came a clicking noise repeatedly but nothing changed. Five minutes of clicking passed before the squeak of the box closing was heard and Sidney emerged from downstairs shinning the light in Emily’s direction.
“It’s not the breakers. I guess the power is just out.”
“So what do we do now?”

---

“Pou—t—i…” Sidney attempted to read the tiles upside down as Emily placed each on the board. It had been half an hour since the power went out and Sidney and Emily were lying on the living room floor with the flashlight resting beside them so it shone on the board and a couple of candles flickered about the room.
“Poutine” She smiled triumphantly as she used the last of the letters and finished the game.
“You are way too good at this game.” Sidney sighed looking at the score sheet. Emily had beaten him by an entire 50 points. With the lights off it was almost as if the conventions of normal life were taken away. Blackout rules were completely different than regular rules. With all the lights went the stress and problems that had plagued them both.
“Well I always wanted to be a journalist, so you have to have a pretty decent vocabulary.”
“Is that what you want to go back to school for?”
Emily started putting the tiles back in the maroon bag “Yeah, I mean that’s what I started. I was kind of ambivalent about it then but after travelling so much and seeing things I feel like I want to be able to be in a position to bring things to people’s attention.”
“So, not a sports journalist?”
“I don’t think so. I love hockey and it would be fun to write about but I want to do more than bring entertainment to people. I want to effect change if I can, however small.”
The passionate words reminded him of the Emily of his teenage years. The way the candlelight and flashlight caught her features reminded him of the lights in an empty parking lot.

“Emily, he was boring and you know it. You’re better off without him.” Sidney’s eyes were lit with sorrow for his best friend’s loss but he would be lying to say he wasn’t a little relieved. He liked it better when he had more of her attention and care. He knew he would always be there when she called. It was why he found himself parked in his family’s Sedan in an empty parking lot, despite the fact that he only had a learner's permit and wasn’t legally allowed to be driving. That didn’t matter as much as the girl whose dark eyes were shedding a few stray tears.

“I just—ugh. I don’t know why I care so much.”
She wiped the tears away with the back of her pale hand. He watched her take a deep breath in an attempt to excise the sadness. It wasn’t like Emily to cry. Sidney wanted to take her home but his parents were sleeping and they couldn’t go to her house because her parents were too. None of them even knew the teenagers had left the house. Emily had snuck out to see Brian and then after being heartbroken had called on her best friend. “I mean, we were only together a year and what did I expect? We’re young. I guess just didn’t see it coming so soon.”

The warm light from the streetlamp glinted on the trails of tears down her cheeks. It was a sad sight but one that gave him hope. She’d get over Brian and then he’d have his best friend back all to himself. Who needed relationships?

A silence fell over the two as Sidney remembered that night so long ago. It felt like all this history they had together blanketed every moment of their present. Every thing that happened now had some link to their past. Memories welled up at the strangest of moments and made the fondness they felt for each other multiply in moments.

“Were you ever scared—when we were kids—of what we’d grow up to be?” Sidney asked suddenly, still lying on his side on the carpet as Emily put the board into its box.
“What do you mean?”
“Like, did you ever think that we would be like most everyone else? So many people stayed in Cole Harbour and lead such normal lives.”
The question made Emily laugh, “I never thought for a moment you’d be like that. Even before we met you were appearing in newspapers, everyone knew you’d be a star.”
He looked her directly in her eyes, trying to get through to her, to read her, “I was still afraid of it. So many things could have stopped me from all of this. It still can. But, even if you weren’t afraid of it happening for me, what about you?”
In the flicker of the candle her features turned thoughtful, “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I was too determined not to. Although, I don’t know how much that worked out for me. I’m pretty ordinary.”
“How can you say that? You’ve seen so much and you’re so stubborn about wanting to actually do something with your life. I can’t see that happening to you.”
Again she laughed, the soft sound of it falling pleasantly on Sidney’s ears. “I guess we were always kind of an oddity in Cole Harbour, eh?”
He smiled too, “I guess so. So why do you want to back to Nova Scotia so badly then?”
She realized that he didn’t mean it to be pushy so she didn’t take it that way. However, she did have to think about it. How could she explain it to someone other than her own twisted self?
“I feel more grounded there. It’s where we grew up. When you were just a kid who was really good at hockey and I was just the girl you spent your summers with. Here is a whole different place. Pittsburgh doesn’t have that same air or the same smell. And when there’s a story about Sidney Crosby it’s about the helpful boy who used to live down the street or the studious teenager who used to come out and play street hockey or skate on the pond. It’s not about Sidney Crosby the Stanley Cup Champion or the hockey superstar. I don’t know how you deal with it.”
“Is it still like that up there?”
“Sometimes. I only stayed a few days when I got back.”
“So you’ve stayed her longer than you stayed there since you got back?”
Sidney was slowly starting to pull at loose threads in an attempt to untie the knot. He knew it wouldn’t all happen in one sitting but if he was slow about it, and kept at it perhaps he would manage it with enough patience.
“I guess I have.”
Swollen lips turned into a smile which meant Emily too couldn’t help but smile back. Moments later the two sets of lips met in a kiss, soft and gentle but extremely short because the lights above them came on and a collective beep, made up of quieter shorter beeps, rang out through the house as electronics turned themselves back on.

“Finally,” Emily said as she rose, eager to toss the kiss aside and let it go unmentioned. The man on the floor in front of her looked a little disappointed but he tried to conceal it.
“I should probably get going to bed, practice tomorrow.” He covered as he stood up and stretched.
“Yeah, good thinking.” Emily blew out the candles and Sidney put the game and the flashlight away.

As with their cars the other day, they met at the bottom of the stairs as they went to go up them at the same time. A moment of awkwardness passed between them before Emily went up first. The walk to their rooms was silent as was the whole house as they got changed in their separate rooms. As she looked herself over in a small mirror above the dresser Emily thought about her teenage self. What would 17-year-old Emily do? The sun ebbed in her smooth skin, the sharp line of her jaw; it still surprised her when she saw this face instead of her teenage one. 17-year-old Emily would do what she wanted. She wouldn’t worry about consequences or feel afraid.

In Sidney’s room he pulled a Reebok shirt over his head and thought about the kiss that had happened moments earlier. The softness of her lips still lingered on his own. His eyes fell on the old picture of them standing on the dock at Emily’s cottage, both wearing graduation caps. He picked the frame up and sat on the edge of his bed looking at it. Seeing the old them made him want to have that back even more. A part of him felt like she was coming around. She would stay. He knew her, despite the time apart, and he was sure she would stay. His eyes traced the line of her milky skin and the way the black of the cap made her dark brown curls look lighter. The background was filled with trees across the lake and the blue of the sky. He missed that cottage a lot.

“Whatcha got there?” Emily’s voice came as a surprise from his doorway as she slowly entered the room.
“Our picture.”
The lavender scent floated over him as she sat beside him and folder her tan leg under her. Her eyes roamed the picture in his hands. “We were a pretty fucking cool team, weren’t we?”
The comment made Sidney laugh, “We were pretty much the coolest.”
A moment passed where the two just stared at the picture and fondly remembered it.
“Hey Sidney…” Emily cautiously broke the silence. “Would you mind if I slept in here tonight?”
Honey eyes roamed her appearance. Her hair was in a hair tie, the dark brown flowing like a fountain of curls. Her make-up was removed and she was wearing a grey Cambridge University t-shirt and little black shorts. It would be hard to resist her but he could never say no.
“Of course you can.” Delicately he put the picture down on his bedside table and from separate sides of the large bed the two got under the covers, meeting in the middle. Emily’s hand found its way underneath his black shirt to feel the warmth of his flesh and Sidney’s arm found its way around her to secure her closer. His lips came dangerously close to her ear and warmth followed as he whispered, “I think we still make a pretty cool team.”
A kiss was placed on her temple and she snuggled closer to him, glad he couldn’t see the fact that she was smiling. Around them the clicks and whirs of the house invaded on the silence. Neither of them closed their eyes for a while as they enjoyed lying there. Sidney’s hand pushed the bit of hair from her bangs back behind her ear. Her leg found its way over him so her body could press closer.
“Night Sid.”
She watched his adam’s apple bob before he spoke, “night Em.”
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