Harbour Lights and Lonely Nights

After everything surrounding the Winter Classic had passed and life settled into routine in the following days, Emily was ready for school. Between her longer hours put in at the Café to help her pay for books and the amount of effort put in to organizing herself she felt tired most of the time. Her patience, never having been a particular strong suit, seemed even more strained and the couple of times she spoke with Sidney he hadn’t helped. Perhaps the loss had bothered him more than it should, or perhaps something else was bugging him, but all she could focus on was her own myriad of troubles.

It was her first day of classes, early afternoon, an advanced writing course. She only gave Sidney a brief thought as she settled into one of the plastic seats; she wondered how Sidney was getting ready for the game, trying to distract herself from first day jitters. The lecture was a small upper level course, less than 100 students dispersed sparsely over the large lecture hall. The closest person to her was a few seats away, a man who actually looked to be around her age, as opposed to most of the others who seemed a few years younger. Perhaps that’s why he had sat closer to her. Failures’ solidarity. That small club of people who take forever to get their shit together. But at least she was finally doing that. Which made her think of Sidney again briefly. Surely the small distance that had manifested in the last few days, since her parents left, had just been their busy schedules. She wished she had called him that morning.

“Excuse me…” The voice of the man meekly disturbed her thoughts, “this is English 320, right?” He was leaning towards her so he didn’t have to yell across the three empty seats. His hair was a sandy colour and he had a tall slender figure.
Emily looked down at the printed syllabus in front of her, “Yeah. At least I hope so.”
“You take a gap year or two and everyone suddenly looks so young.”
“Oh? Did you take time off as well?”
The man nodded, watching the front of the room for the professor. “Two years. Came back in September. Whole campus looks different.” He gazed at her a moment. “You?”
“Three years off. This is actually my first class.”
An impressed whistle left the man’s lips, “three years? That’s a long one. How’d you fill all that time?”
“Working, travelling, trying to figure stuff out.”
“Did you originally go here?”
She shook her head. The conversation had become a nice distraction from the nerves as students trickled in and waited. “No, I went to school in England originally.”
“But you’re from here I’m guessing? Can’t see why else would bring you to Pittsburgh.”
“Wrong again. I’m from Nova Scotia.”
“Come here because you got a hot boyfriend out here or something then?”
“Kinda.”
“Kinda your boyfriend or he is kinda what brought you here?”
She laughed, “bit of both. We’ve known each other forever and I originally came out here because I didn’t know where else to go and he was my closest friend. Guess we became more after I moved out here.”
As she said this, an older woman in swamp coloured slacks entered the room and proceeded towards the front. She had an ugly patterned button up top on and nearly invisible glasses with partial frames.
“Lucky guy. My name’s Barrett by the way.”
“Emily.”
“Well Emily from Nova Scotia, let’s hope this is one of those instances where you can’t judge a book by its cover,” He closed the conversation, referring to the woman who began to erase the light words written in chalk on the board. Emily laughed but it got lost when the woman’s voice raised over the chatter of the room, silencing it.

The seminar or lecture, somewhere in-between, lasted two hours. Emily had to get used to writing notes again. To concentrating on one voice, no matter how monotonous, for extended periods of time. She knew it wouldn’t take long though.

When she got back home she had a mere 20 minutes before she had to leave again for work. Nobody was home as she tried to feed herself and get ready before jumping back in her car. A feeling nagged at her to call Sidney. To tell him how her first class went, or just listen to his voice but she didn’t have time before she was rushing out the door.

At work her three hour shift seemed agonizingly long. Her eyes constantly glanced at her watch but each time only minutes had seemed to inch along. When finally it reached 7 she sighed in relief and got ready to leave. If she hurried home she could still catch some of the first period.

At least that had been her plan until Mischa had called asking for a ride and Emily was sent on a detour. She had to wait for her friend’s shift to end, so she sat in the car and thought about her day. Was this what her life would be now? School, work, sleep, exhaustion? Barely seeing Sidney. Barely speaking. Him being somewhat short with her? It felt like she was going to turn into exactly what she had always feared. Once the original excitement of watching her hockey player boyfriend and moving to a new country wore off, everything was starting to become routine, permanent. The same. Perhaps forever. But she couldn’t think like that. Not so soon.

By the time Mischa got into the car all Emily had to offer her was a nod.

“Well that was a pretty shitty day.” Her roommate began conversation as Emily watched the road. “I was only supposed to be doing a 4 hour shift but I’ve been there for 8 hours, had to cover Stephen. Andrew was going to pick me up back when I was supposed to be finished but he had work tonight. Oh and I had a customer that must have brought her drink back three or four times, always something was wrong. There were so many checkmarks and specifications written on that cup how was I supposed to get it right, especially with Clara’s shitty handwriting? Not my fault she can’t write.”

Emily only nodded sympathetically, having had her own exhausting day.

“How about you? How was your first class?” The red haired girl looked into her handbag rummaging for something.
“It was alright.”
The girl pulled out some chapstick, “I see you’re feeling talkative.”
“Honestly, I’m so tired I just want to get home and pass out.”
“Things that hectic?”
“I guess.”

The rest of the ride was quiet. No words were exchanged as the two walked into the house, Emily completely forgetting about the game she was going to watch until Mischa put it on. It was already half way through the second and the score was a surprising 5-0.

“Oh wow, our boys are kicking ass!” Mischa had grown a fondness for the local team since she had become roommates with the captain’s girlfriend.
“Our boys?” Emily laughed and Mischa appreciated the smile on her friend’s face.
The girl shrugged and watched the game intently.
“How did your Christmas trip go by the way?”
The two women sat on the couch vaguely watching the game. Emily was too tired to give it her undivided attention but the mention of Christmas had made her smile. Remembering the perfect trip made some of the unhappiness from the day fall away.
“It was perfect. Honestly, I was really surprised how well it went. We stayed at his summer house and had this make-shift tree that already had decorations on it. The house was beautiful. Right on the lake. Can’t wait to see it in the summer time.”
“If you two last that long.” Emily felt a nudge.
“Aren’t you the one always saying we are like an old married couple?”
“Got me there.”

As the game went on Mark Letestu scored the goal to make it 6-0 and it was obvious Tampa was getting frustrated. Towards the end of the period Sidney skated towards the puck, passing it along the boards before being hit awkwardly from behind. Emily nearly jumped out of her seat, the last week a bizarre reminder of how scary Sidney’s job actually was.

The young teenager’s fingers prodded his sore shoulder, bare and bruised in the sunlight “It’s not that bad. I just went into the boards funny.”
“It looks so scary though!” Brittany’s voice was adorned with admiration.
Emily and Sidney had plans to go to the mall so she could pick up the new Foo Fighters CD but Sidney had insisted they stop to visit Brittany.
The two lovebirds were on her porch while Emily sat on the curb listening.
“You must be pretty tough,” Her manicured finger applied pressure to it, “you don’t even flinch.”
The boy smiled, loving how much the blond seemed to like his battle wound.
When he finally slid on his shirt and said goodbye he returned to Emily she did not look happy.
“Does she not realise you could have seriously been hurt?”
Sidney shook his head, “I’m fine. Only missed one game. It was no big deal.”

It took him a bit to get up and Emily hated that he looked shaken up but he continued to play the rest of the game to a final score of 8-1.

The first thing she did when the game finished was to send Sidney a text message to call her when he could. She was in bed with her cell phone in her hand, nearly asleep when it finally began to ring.

“Hello?”
“Emily. Why’d you want me to call?”
“Where are you?”
“Leaving the arena.” He sounded tired.
She turned onto her back focussing on the ceiling but trying to picture his features. “We haven’t had a chance to speak today. Or yesterday really.”
“You’re the one who was working.”
“And you had practice.”
“That’s the regular season, Emily, you know that.”
She hated that he kept calling her Emily, that he sounded so short. “I didn’t mean to bug you, if you’re tired you should concentrate on getting some rest.”
He sighed, guilt slowly falling over him. He didn’t mean to be so short with her but he was tired and something felt just the slightest bit off from all the exhaustion. “I’m sorry. How was your first day? Is that what you called me for?”
“I was actually concerned about you. I saw the game… well half of it.”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? I know you said the same thing at the Classic but—”
“I’m fine. I’m heading to Montreal tonight.”
“So I guess I’ll see you when you get back then?”
“I guess so.”
There was the slightest pause on both ends, a hesitation. Emily felt a little crushed at the way everything had been turning out that day. She knew it would be hard but perhaps she hadn’t actually been prepared. On the other end Sidney gazed over at his teammates joking around, more than anything he wanted to turn around and go to Emily’s, to climb up the staircase to her messy room and climb under the sheets. Waking up with her always felt more refreshing than alone in his large bed or on a bus, but he couldn’t. He had work to think about.
“I love you Cros.”
A sigh left the hockey player’s lips on the other end, “Yeah. Love you too, Em.”

When Emily hung up the exhaustion that had accumulated all day was barely enough to push her asleep through all the thoughts swimming through her mind. They were just having an off couple of days, every relationship had that, she was sure of it. But that didn’t make it any easier.

---

“How’re things with Emily?” Max asked as the bus drove through the darkness. Sidney had tired to sleep but he hadn’t felt well enough. He rested his head against the soothing coolness of the glass window and thought about the woman he had just been on the phone with.
“They’ve been great. It’s going to be different now that she’s started school, I guess.”
“Well,” The Frenchman turned his head, rested on the top of his seat, “at least she is at school in Pittsburgh and not Dalhousie, no?”
“If she’d gone to Dal, we’d probably already have stopped talking.”
Max shook his head, “I don’t think you give her enough credit.”
“You weren’t there 5 years ago.”
“Ah well, all that matters is she stayed.”
“Yeah.” The captain grumbled his response. It was very unlike him, and his teammate took immediate notice.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Tired.”
“Sorry. Get some sleep.”

And Sidney agreed only to end the conversation. He closed his eyes but he knew sleep wouldn’t come.