"You Can't Stay a Saint in This City"

Milan had gone out with the guys after their win over the Toronto Maple Leafs but crawled into my suite at the Mandarin Oriental somewhere around midnight.

“Givenchy…” I call and a little grey pompom scurries over. “Let’s go for a walk.” I tell her while leashing her up.

It’s still pretty early in Boston so the streets aren’t that bad. “I don’t know, Giv, I just feel like he doesn’t want me around.” I mean it wasn’t like Milan and I had any real time together. I wasn’t expecting to have Milan drop everything to hang out with me. I just thought he and I would have a little more time to do stuff. But I guess Milan’s working. The Back Bay was a pretty touristy place like Robson Street in Vancouver or Rodeo Drive in LA which basically meant there were lots of hotels and stuff. Overall Boston doesn’t seem that bad.

I made it all the way to the harbour where the sun was just beginning to rise over the water. “Don’t get used to the sun rising over the ocean.” I tell Givenchy “I have a feeling we won’t be seeing much more of them.”

My thoughts are interrupted by the loud ringing of my BlackBerry. “Hello?” I say into the phone.

“Amber where’d you go?” asks Milan, he seems sleepy.

“I just took Givenchy for a walk.” I say, running a hand through my hair.

“Well come back to the hotel, we have a busy day today.” Milan says. I wonder what he has planned, maybe we can take a walk to the harbor or go to a Red Sox game at Fenway. Wait I don’t think they’re playing anymore. It was a huge thing on SportsCenter.

“Okay,” I say as I retrace my steps back to the hotel.
_______

Imagine my confusion as I woke up to an empty bed in a strange room. Then I saw the Louis Vuitton duffle bag with ACL monogramed onto it, which basically gave everything away.

“Hi, Milan” Amber says as she walks through the door. She looks less ‘Ambrosia Li’ and more Amber in her faded skinny jeans, black tank top, and a makeup free face. I like it, she looks…real.

“I’m glad you’re all right” When I realized Amber wasn’t here I thought she had been kidnapped and held for ransom.

“Okay…so anyway what are we doing today?” Amber asks ditching her jeans and pulling on some vertically stripped black and white capris. I’m not sure of those pants; they look like they should belong to the Norwegian Curling Team.

“We’re going to the Children’s Hospital so we can pay an early Halloween visit to the kids.”

“That sounds…great.” Amber says buttoning up a silk fuchsia shirt.

“Great, Brittany will be here in twenty minutes”

“Brittany?” Amber doesn’t sound too happy. I thought the two of them were… I don’t know…friends.

“Yeah, some of the kids there have been in the hospital for a while so they’re used to seeing her at events like this.”

Amber shrugs and picks up Givenchy. “Okay,”
______

Brittany and Milan went off somewhere, leaving me to fend for myself in a room full of kids.

“Hi,” I say to a little boy who is playing with some Lego.

The boy looks up at me with his pale blue eyes “Hi, I’m Asher”

“Well hello Asher, my name is Amber.” I tell him sitting down on the rug next to him. “What are you trying to build?”

“I’m building a spaceship”

“Oh” I say wondering how this pile of blocks is going to transform into a spaceship. The wonders of being a kid.

“Do those shoes hurt?” asks Asher taking my studded Louboutins in his small hands.

“Things only hurt when you let them to” I tell Asher with a glance at what Milan and Brittany are doing: laughing on some sort of inside joke while helping a little girl dress her baby.

“Can I see them?” Asher asks. I take off my left shoe and hand it to him. “They’re heavy”

“Yeah they are” These shoes are probably the reason I have such developed calf muscles.

“Where’s your boyfriend?” Asher asks, we’ve been getting along all right but I know what he really wanted to do was meet a Boston Bruin who would help him build a spaceship.

“He’s around here somewhere.” I say trying to avoid looking in the general direction of Milan and Brittany.

“Amber?” Asher says and I’ve realized that he’s disassembled his ‘spaceship’.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t actually like Lego.”

I laugh “I don’t either Asher, lets do something else.” I say trying to find something fun for us to do. I lead Asher to the understandably abandoned book corner “Lets read.”
______

“I will eat them anywhere. I do so like green eggs and ham. Thank you. Thank you! Sam-I-am.” I hear Amber read to the large group of children surrounding her.

“So he likes greens eggs and ham now?” asks a red headed girl sitting next to Amber.

“Yeah, he likes green eggs and ham but he wouldn’t have known that if he hadn’t tried them.” All the children stare at her as if she’s just said the most profound thing they’ve ever heard.

“Did you know that Dr. Seuss is the official children’s author of Massachusetts? The official state book is Make Way for the Ducks. I went to see the statue the other day in the Public Gardens.” The children understandably say nothing “Oh let’s read that next.” Amber says as she grabs the book off the shelf “It’s also one of my favorites from when I was a child.”

“She’s really good with children.” Tatiana Chara says to me as Amber shows the kids the pictures in the book.

“When they got to Boston, they felt too tired to fly any further. There was a nice little pond in the Public Garden with a little island in it” Amber continues reading.

“Yeah she is.” I rack my mind to figure out if we’ve ever talked about kids. I guess not. Is it too early to talk about kids? Probably, considering that at the moment the child would have to shuttled back and forth between Boston and LA. If we got married I wouldn’t want us to be one of those couples with a long distance marriage. I think we’re going to need to talk.