Harbour Lights and Lonely Nights

As much as Sidney and Emily tried to keep it low key the relationship finally found its way beyond their inner circle. It didn’t slowly seep out but seemed to bust through the confines of their protective circle. It wasn’t one small picture in one small newspaper and then slowly a few more making the rounds over weeks. It was one picture, a stupid gesture in the heat of the moment, Emily and Sidney in the snow outside the small café where she worked, embracing in the soft flurry of white, rosy cheeks and warm toques like the Nova Scotia winters they remembered. He hadn’t thought anyone was there. Who would stay out in this cold just to picture him? Perhaps he wasn’t thinking. Or perhaps it didn’t matter what he was thinking because all he really wanted was to kiss her. And he had. He didn’t regret it but after more than a month of keeping it secret, just for it too come out over one small kiss seemed stupid. A week and a half without her seemed like an eternity and certainly, he had thought, one little kiss, just this one time, would not get caught. Oh how he had been wrong. That one picture made its debut on some Penguins blog. Within hours it had reached multiple news desks, been reblogged, re-posted, and retweeted, had been ‘liked’ and disliked and hearted and sent. Copied and pasted until most of Pittsburgh, most of Canada, and most of the NHL was aware that Sidney Crosby was a taken man.

A flurry of phone calls kept his phone ringing. His publicist and Mario and Dan. His mother with her Nova Scotia number over 10 times.

Sidney sighed, putting down his still unanswered cell phone on the kitchen table. His mind was a mess of disconnected thoughts. Softly, he could hear Emily’s background noise; the sound of her humming his favourite Christmas song as she slid one thing out of the oven and another in. It comforted the hockey player even if he was only barely conscious of it.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do about this.” His amber eyes didn’t even glimpse up, he just stared down at the phone as its screen lit up with more phone calls.

“Well you can start by turning that damn thing off if you’re not going to answer it.” She slipped off red oven mitts she had brought with her and set the timer for the second batch.
“Staring at it won’t do much good.”

She tucked the mitts away beside the oven before setting the first batch of buttertarts out on a wire rack to cool. The intoxicating scent drew Sidney’s attention, and the sight of Emily alone, dark hair in a messy bun, delicate fingers placing the tarts gently made his stress rattled nerves settle.

“You’ll have to teach me how you can be so calm about everything.” He picked up the phone and put it back down, “you know that they won’t leave us alone now, right?”

“It will be more difficult, but hey, no one’s bothering us now. At least if you wouldn’t let them.” She glided to where he was sitting, pushed his soft front curls with her thumb just to feel their familiar texture, then pulled him close. His head liked the soft curve of her waist and the warm scent of butter tarts that clung to her top.

“Tonight will be just us, living like any normal couple, then tomorrow we face everything. We’ve put them off a day already, we can put them off one more night.”

When she took away her touch he immediately reached for her hands. “how did I manage so long without you?”

“Ahhh, you barely did. At least you’re coming back around.”

He pulled her down into his lap. “How long until the butter tarts burn?”

Her blue eyes squinted at the timer across the kitchen. “about 10 minutes.”

His warm thumb grazed her cheek, amber eyes pulling her in. Their lips met with such lethargy, Sidney’s stress melted into the kiss. If she were always with him, he thought, he may never feel stressed again. Her delicate hands pulled him into a tighter embrace, where she felt so small to him. The problem would be that if she were always with him he would never get much done.

As her slender fingers groped the dark locks at the back of his neck the shrill, high sound of the timer went off and she jumped up in record time. Maybe the most sudden disappointment he had ever felt. But then after she pulled out the second batch, she returned with one of the first. Cool but still warm she split it in two, handing him half.

“Tell me what you think.”

Before he even ate it he thought of a few things. He thought of Nova Scotia and the smell of Emily’s house as her mother baked. He thought of how great they would be on Christmas which made him realize, they hadn’t figured out what they were even doing for Christmas. Then came another added stress.

“It shouldn’t be too hot anymore.”

Sidney pushed the half a tart into his mouth. The warm gooey centre melted on his tastebuds, the pastry shell just like he remembered. She ate hers upon seeing his smile.

“They are amazing.”

“Glad you like ‘em.” When she looked at him she saw the stress still eating away at him. Her goal for the night then became to get his mind off of it, “but now that there is nothing in the oven to burn…”

She smirked and pulled him up from his chair. He forgot whatever thought had been swimming around his head.

---

The dull winter light on cream walls and steady breathing falling upon her shoulder are the things Emily woke up to. She didn’t sleep over too often but news of their relationship getting out had really bothered Sidney. It was so close to the Winter Classic, and closer to Christmas. This was almost the absolute last thing he had needed. The worst part? That less than he worried about himself, he worried about how it was going to affect her. She hated how hard he tried to protect her. She didn’t need it. She had survived so much travelling, perhaps the most alone she had ever been. But it was hard not to see that a part of Sidney still saw her as the teenage girl she once was.

When she looked down at him, dark hair on pale skin she imagined that they were in Nova Scotia. That if she woke him they could be walking along the harbour in less than an hour. Pittsburgh had become a home but it still felt somewhat surreal. She felt almost completely acclimatized and yet sometimes she walked outside expecting Nova Scotia air, maritime sunlight.

Emily’s first winter upon leaving Canada was in England. Land of the strangest winters she could ever imagine.

As she lay fully clothed on floral bedsheets, staring up at the ceiling with David beside her, she tried to trace the movement of the damp feeling as it crawled under her skin and to the very core of her bones but there was no snow. Any snow that did dare to fall immediately became slush. No homemade ice rinks, or hockey on frozen ponds.

“Emmy,” David turned his head to the girl beside him, “what’s it like? Being so far from home? What do you miss?”
“Emmy?”
“Well, you won’t let me call you Em, so Emmy will have to do. Bugger that, ain’t it?”
The accent exaggerated to make her smile, and it worked. “Ok. What do I miss most about Canada?”

She swayed from side to side slightly, as if that would help her answer the question, her mind wondered to frozen ponds, to nearly skating home over all the ice, snow angels with Sidney who she hadn’t contacted in months. She thought of Tim Horton’s, of fishing in the summer, fresh caught fish for dinner, TV channels she recognized, Toaster chasing birds.

“There are lots of things I miss about home.”
“But what do you miss the most?”

Her mind went back over the list. It wasn’t the ice, it wasn’t Tim Horton’s mediocre coffee, it wasn't the fish, it was the people involved in all of those. Sidney, her mother, Toaster, all the familiar faces on the street.
“The people.”
“I’d probably miss that too if I moved to a different continent. Maybe someday I’ll see Nova Scotia and I’ll miss the people back here.”

Emily was barely listening. Her mind had stuck on the image of Sidney, she wondered what he was doing. It had been an eternity since they had updated each other, well, a few months that had felt like an eternity. She was changing and she assumed he probably was too. For all she knew they were an ocean apart, outgrowing each other.

Even here she still missed home. But there was no turning back. School started in less than a month, she had found a place here, but maybe it was time for a visit. Maybe Christmas? It hadn’t been decided yet.

Emily decided then that she wanted to spend her Christmas in Nova Scotia and hoped Sid wouldn’t object. She needed it. At the very least it would remove them from any unwanted attention while their relationship became old news.