The Light That Wraps You

My fondest memories of you involve laughter.

That will always be the one thing that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Yes, the ink on my arm is permanent, but ink can fade. The memories that I hold in my mind will never dim, no matter what happens.

We met when we were mere children, barely teenagers awkwardly navigating life. I remember you were so strange. You were shy, yes, but not in the way that I was. I was very nearly mute, refusing to speak unless I absolutely had to. But you, you talked endlessly with me, about anything and everything in the world. You were odd, but so funny, and the very first day we met, I laughed more than I had about anything.

We became roommates when the two of us went on to play for Val-d’Or Foreurs in the QMJHL. Those times were some of the best of my life. We would stay up late, probably later than we should have, talking about our futures, about the sport, about our families and God and girls. There was nothing I didn’t tell you. Alone, the two of us across the room from each other, laying on our backs in the dark, it felt safe to tell you things. It felt safe for me to speak.

After playing so many games together and going through so much of what we knew as life, we eventually went our separate ways. I was drafted by the Penguins, you were drafted by the Canucks. Our time together was over, with the two of us being sent to what felt like opposite ends of the earth. We knew it wasn’t really over, though. If there was one miracle I was certainly grateful for, it was modern technology in the form of cell phones and e-mail. We would stay in touch and see each other over the summers. We made a plan, said goodbye, and that was that.

I was one of the ones who knew you best. You were fun and full of life and always pushing me to be a better person.

Lux reminded me of you.

But what did I know of her? Bare whispers that I caught from the other guys, the others who were so determined to get to know her. I knew that I wasn’t like them--I was quieter, my accent harder to decipher, my hair serving more as a curtain from the rest of the world than a sex symbol. I spent more time alone, more time lost in my thoughts, and she remained a cipher.

Until the flight to DC. Everyone was freshly charged, despite having just played a game. Benny had done an amazing job, we had won, and everyone was wired on adrenaline, their batteries refusing to sputter out. It didn’t help that Flower and Johnny were caught in some ridiculous bet, and everyone was laughing at them. Even the cameramen from HBO who had come along for the ride were chuckling, their cameras on Flower in his awful turtleneck and Johnny in his red Christmas top that exposed his arms and midriff. Some chronicle this was turning out to be. Rather than focusing on the prelude to the Winter Classic that would happen the next night, they were filming our goaltenders’ shenanigans.

I heard your laugh in my head, and I couldn’t help smiling.

Lux was walking down the aisle, returning from borrowing a book from Craig Adams. She stopped to talk to Johnny, presumably to lecture him about the lower body injury he might have sustained in the game. I couldn’t hear the exacts words she said, but Johnny smiled and nodded a lot. Sid and Flower were laughing at Lovejoy’s severely swollen face, and she quietly scolded the both of them in French before she finally resumed her place at my left.

“If there is one thing I can count on you for, it’s making me laugh,” She gestured around at the other guys. “I have never had this much fun before.”

“Tell me something,” I begged, the words out before I had any chance to stop them. It was like sneezing; even if you tried, you couldn’t possibly keep it from happening without causing yourself some sort of pain. “Something no one else knows about you.”

She just blinked once, not even caught off guard by my arbitrary demand. “When I was fourteen, I was suspended from school for fighting.”

I laughed out loud, another instance where I was unable to help myself. “You?”

“Why is that so unbelievable?

“Because you… you’re just so nice.”

“Well, at the time, I was trying to be nice. But this boy would not leave my friend alone, and so I hit him.” She shrugged. “I am an only child, so my friends are always incredibly dear to me. I think of them as siblings.”

Ah, here we were getting somewhere. “I’m an only child, too. It can be lonely sometimes.”

She nodded. “I felt the same growing up, but as I grew older, I was almost thankful. I would not want to have a brother or sister that would have to deal with me.”

“You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

She frowned delicately. “No, it’s true. I was… a handful for my parents. It is still unfathomable to me, how they managed so well.” She shook her head, and a stray strand of her luminous blonde hair fell from her bun. I was overcome with the urge to tuck it back behind her ear, and stroke my thumb lightly across her jaw. I didn’t. I just stared at the soft strands and imagined what they sound feel like between my calloused fingers.

“Anyway,” She said softly, deftly changing the subject. “What about you?”

“I had many friends growing up and I understand how you feel about them being siblings.” I shrugged. “That’s one reason hockey is so important to me.”

And just like that, we were talking. The entire flight to Washington D.C., which truthfully wasn’t a long flight at all, we spoke about our families and what we had been like growing up. It was strange for me to talk so much, and I was so excited to learn about her, that my words mixed and jumbled. She didn’t mind; in fact, she just smiled softly and listened patiently as I tried to get my mind back on the right track. I slipped into French half the time, but even then my tongue tripped up. I decided to listen instead. Her talking was music to my ears, and I was content sitting there, letting her stories wash over me and sweep me out to sea.

She was twenty-four, approaching twenty-five. She had been born in Saint John to her grateful parents. They had been trying for six years to have a child, to no success. Finally, after extensive fertility treatments, their wish came true. She confessed she was spoiled rotten, given everything her girlish heart desired. She learned ballet, how to play the piano, and read by the age of four. She was intelligent, sweet, thoughtful, and compassionate. She used to play veterinarian with her stuffed animals, she admitted with a shy smile. She was home schooled until middle school, during which time she attended private school. Desiring a change, she went to a public high school, and graduated two years early. She went to university in Montreal, before earning her medical school degree. She was hired by the hospital she currently worked at in Boston, and then--

“Oh!” Lux cried, her mouth forming the shape of her exclamation. “We’re landing!”

She was right. The wheels had gone down and we were touching ground in Virginia. My heart sank, as I realized what this meant. It was late, everyone was exhausted, myself included, and all I wanted was for that plane ride to go on forever, just so she could keep talking and I could keep listening, but it was over. I knew I would see her, that day before and after the game, and even the next day, but--I wanted her with me now.

She laid a hand on my arm. “I have never enjoyed talking to someone as much as you.”

“Vous être trop sucrés.” I almost blushed, but I had to be honest with her.

She laughed. I had never heard another sound, apart from the cheering when I made a goal, that I loved more. “No, Kris, you’re too sweet. I love that I can talk to you.” The plane slid to a halt and the guys slowly woke, shuffling sleepily and reaching for the overheard compartments. She stood as well, sliding a bookmark into the novel that Adams had lent her, though she hadn’t opened it once. “When we get back to Pittsburgh, can you do something for me?”

“What?”

Her cheeks turned pink. “Go Christmas shopping with me?”

In that moment, I swore she had a mind-reading ability. Not that she needed to read my mind to tell that I wanted to spend more time with her; I was sure she could feel it rolling off me in waves.

“Of course. I would love to.”

“Wonderful!” She grabbed her purse from the overhead compartment, giving me a little wave before skipping to the front to talk to Dan. Her exuberance pulled Tony into it, and the three of them left the plane together.

I just sat there, stunned. I was going to go Christmas shopping with her the next day. I was going to see her away from the rink, with snowflakes melting in that beautiful blonde hair. I was going to see her hands shoved deep in the pockets of her coat, her cheeks flush from the cold, and her smile shy and sweet and hesitant as she asked me what my teammates might like. Maybe if I was lucky, I could use handholding as an excuse to warm her icy fingers.

My heart leapt at the thought, and it must have been obvious.

A hand clapped me on the shoulder, and I looked up to see Talbot standing there, a lewd smile on his face. “Getting lucky in DC, eh Tanger?”

I flushed, letting my hair fall into my face as I unbuckled my seatbelt and stood. “Don’t talk about her like that, Max. You can speak that way about any other girl but not her.”

He held up his hands defensively. “Hey, simmer down. You know how I am. Forty percent hockey, forty percent dashing rogue, and twenty percent bullshit!”

“Dashing rogue?”

“Lux’s words, not mine.” He grinned good-naturedly. “So, what is it about her that has you so enflamed?”

Enflamed. What a perfect word. She had set me on fire in a way that nobody ever had, in a way that nothing ever had, except hockey, and even that seemed dim compared to her.

“She asked me to come Christmas shopping with her. I think she needs help buying gifts.”

“How could you help her? You don't know her friends or family.”

“Gifts for us.” I grabbed my things from the overhead compartment and followed Max down the aisle.

“Gifts for all of us? How will ever accomplish that?”

“With my help.”

The icy wind buffeted us the second we stepped out into the night air, and I shoved my free hand into the pocket of my wool coat. I wished more than anything that I could keep some of Lux’s heat always with me, like a star that burned bright enough to stave away the cold. I longed to ask her to sleep with me--not have sex, but just sleep, wrapped up in each other, dreaming wintry dreams and keeping ourselves warm. I could picture it in my mind; she smelled of vanilla, and by morning, the entire bed would. It would be heaven.

The thought warmed my heart, at least, even if the rest of me shivered. For a moment on the plane, I had despaired. We had landed and I had assumed our time together was at an end, for the most part, but she had drawn it out, pushing the finish line further away. She wanted to spend time with me. To me, it didn’t make sense; why me, over sweet and boyish Sidney, or charismatic, cheerful Flower? Why did she ask me?

Max seemed to read my mind as well, answering for me. “She likes you, mon ami. She likes you a lot.” She nudged me playfully with his shoulder. “It’s about time, too. You mope too often!”

“I don’t mope,” I said. As if to prove it, I smiled at his words.

“Yes, you do. She will be good for you, Kris, I can tell. Perhaps she is the one?”

I shrugged. “Who knows?”

I honestly didn’t know that. It was impossible not to love Lux, but I had tried and failed many times with matters of the heart, and I had kept my distance in the past year to focus instead on my career. I hadn’t given up on love, per se, but I had wanted to take some time away from what Max referred to as “the dating game”. Maybe it was naïve or overly romantic--surely Sidney’s game rather than mine--but I had decided to stop forcing the issue and instead let it come to me. I had wanted to be surprised. I had wanted to stumble upon her when I least expected it. Like in the movie I had watched once at Sidney’s, the old movie with the singing. “Mine will come as a surprise to me,” the man sang of his love, “mine I lead to chance and chemistry.” So why shouldn’t I do the same?

Yes, she had come along. She had surprised us all, with her round, beautiful eyes and the way she shone out the dark places in our lives. But was she the one?

I didn’t know. For just one moment, a brief, glimmering shard of time, I wished you were there. If you had been, I would have immediately gone up to the hotel room I was sharing with Orpik and dialed your number, regardless of where you might have been in the world and what time it was, whether you had a game the next day or if you were just sleeping. I would have called you and asked for your advice.

“Luc,” I would have said, my voice ringing with confusion and hope and all of those other emotions that I was feeling but could not name because they had blended into one. “I think I have found the one.”

Miles and miles away, different time zones apart, still blurry from sleep or lack thereof, indifferent to the fact that I had called you out of the blue in the middle of the night, I would have heard it. I had finally begun to know someone, a girl even, as well as I had known you and your reaction would have been clear on the other end of the phone. Ever the optimist, ever the one who had known me better than myself, you would have done as you had when I complained I would never meet such a girl.

You would have laughed.