Illusions

“What’s your problem?”

Rhea had been perched on the couch, a nearly empty bottle of Corona dangling carelessly from her fingertips. Her perfectly manicured toes were resting on the coffee table in front of her, her Macbook spread across her lap, unaware of the dangers looming a few inches above in the form of lime-tainted beer. She had been halfway through the latest update on her favorite Penguins blog when her roommate stormed through the door, looking like she was about to embark on World War III. In that moment, Loren Hamilton was a woman on a mission.

If Rhea had thought Loren acted weird a few weeks earlier, the day Sidney had been cleared for contact solely in a practice setting, that was nothing compared to the woman standing in front of her now. Loren’s dark hair was tied to the top of her head carelessly, her clothes wrinkled and sporting what looked like dust – an appearance Rhea had never seen her sport before. This was unlike her. She never went out in public looking like such a mess – that was one thing Lo was particular about. But now, all of that was tossed out the window. Something had happened to make her that way and she was clearly infuriated by it. Rhea didn’t have to ask twice what the source was.

“Unless you can find me a new job, I don’t want to fucking talk about it.”

Rhea rolled her eyes, sick and tired of the brunette’s incessant griping. She’d been handed a job with one of the most prestigious hockey organizations on a silver platter and didn’t appreciate it in the least. Rhea was forced to watch with a gag in her mouth: Loren’s job was none of her business except when she was put in the middle of a one-sided bitchfest about Crosby. It aggravated her to see someone so indifferent about the world of professional hockey while the business was so impossible for her brothers to navigate.

“Oh please,” Rhea dismissed, pushing her computer off her lap and setting her beer on the table, “that’s all you talk about.”

The fire behind Loren’s eyes – whether it was caused by Rhea’s comment or something that had happened earlier in the day – was enough to void any response Rhea could’ve delivered. Working with professional athletes and various upstanding Pittsburgh citizens molded Loren into a spitfire, unable to see beyond her professional vision. Everything revolved around her career. In the beginning, when the two girls first moved in together, they were best friends. They went out together, studied together, had slumber parties in the living room and joked about which boys were courting them (or attempting to) and how they’d never have a chance. Things were different now. Their title of ‘best friends’ cracked and fell off a long time ago, around the time Loren started working for Sidney, and they hadn’t had a proper conversation that didn’t revolve around him in months.

“Let me guess: he’s unbearable, the world’s biggest douchebag, a grade-A narcissist with a God complex and, unfortunately for his ego, the credentials to back it up–”

“Shut up, Rhea.”

“No, Loren,” the girl snapped, finally digging up the courage to tell her roommate how she felt. Growing up with two brothers and countless male cousins, Rhea learned from a very young age that respect came about when you didn’t let people take advantage of you. Loren had been using her as a sponge for her overdramatic and repetitive rants for months. “If you hate your job so much then quit, but leave that shit at the office–”

“Don’t act like you know anything about what I do. You don’t even have the slightest clue how difficult it is to work with such a–”

“Oh, fuck off,” Rhea growled. “I’ve been listening to your stupid rants about Crosby for months now and they’re always the same.” She stood from the couch, the anger boiling in her making her anxious for a confrontation. “Tell me, Loren: why are you the only one who seems to have a problem with him?”

“Are you serious right now?” Loren shrieked, storming into the living room like a woman possessed. “Are you there when it’s just me and him? Do you know how he acts out of the public eye? Do you even have a fucking clue who he really is or do you just swallow the Boy Wonder bullshit like every other imbecile in this city?”

Rhea adopted a look of shock. She’d had spats with Loren before – usually over minor things like borrowed clothes she’d never returned or the results of their headstrong personalities clashing against one another like two rams – but she’d never gone as far as insulting her. Loren’s words could’ve been dismissed (“I wasn’t calling you an imbecile, Rhea. It was just a figure of speech.”) but Rhea wouldn’t let them go. She’d done that for far too long. Punching bags came in the form of synthetic leather and webbed vinyl, not a 5’5” blonde who only weighed 115 pounds soaking wet. Her brothers may have gotten away with talking to her like that but Loren wasn’t going to. Not anymore.

“Do you have any idea how stupid you make yourself sound when you come home every night bitching up a storm about how much you hate your job? Do you have any fucking idea how many people would kill to be in your place? You whine mercilessly about how spoiled and bratty Sidney is but you’re no better–”

“Oh, I’m no better?”

“No, you’re not. You make more money than any other twenty-four year old I know. You work with Pittsburgh’s most beloved athlete. You know damn well that if you do decide to finally quit doing so you’ll have a line of offers a mile long to sift through, yet you do nothing but complain about how awful your life is like some little bitch with a silver spoon stuck in her mouth.”

Rhea didn’t give her roommate – who was currently gawking at her with both eyes and mouth wide open – a chance to retaliate before she grabbed her things from the coffee table and stormed toward her bedroom, slamming the door behind her for the full effect. Things between them would surely be awkward now. How she could’ve expected them not to be baffled her. Whatever boundaries had been between them before were now erased; everything was out in the open. Rhea thought Loren was a spoiled bitch who couldn’t separate herself from her job; Loren thought Rhea was a mindless goon who gobbled up whatever the media fed her, trying to numb the fact that they were talking about people who weren’t her brothers.

It was nearing ten-o’clock on a Friday night. Whatever buzz she’d acquired from drinking alone on the couch was long gone but the urge to get knackered still remained. It nagged at her now, begging her to indulge. Drinking wasn’t Rhea’s way of dealing with problems – that was Loren’s forte – but tonight she was changing her modus operandi.

Loren was out of sight by the time she reentered the living room. Thirty minutes had passed and the apartment was quiet, save for the sound of the heater kicking into gear and the refrigerator muttering the same noises it’d been making since the pair moved in. Rhea felt all right now – maybe not normal, but certainly better than she felt half an hour ago – and she certainly felt attractive as she slipped out the door, not bothering to leave a note. Things between her and Loren were too awkward for notes.

Diesel had first made an appearance in Rhea’s life when she was only seventeen. There had been a time in her life she craved attention. All of her parents’ attention went to her brothers and their hockey and she was left with their sloppy seconds. Even at such a naive age, Rhea wasn’t going to settle for sloppy seconds when she knew she deserved better. She found the attention she so badly desired in clubs: the way random men looked at her when she walked in drove her crazy, made her head spin, made her wonder how she’d gone so long without it. A brother of one of her friends bought her a fake ID in exchange for a date with her and it all went downhill from there. Rhea Campbell was long gone, leaving Natalie Monahan to take her place. Diesel had been her favorite since the first night she got plastered there, winding up in the women’s washroom with her underwear around her ankles as some random took her virginity in the handicap stall.

Clubs had always made Loren uneasy. The noise level made her uncomfortable; the way the bass of the music pounded through her gave her a headache. Too many people doing too many things at once – that’s all a club was to Loren. But Rhea saw things differently. Clubs, to her, were a perfect way to relieve stress without someone judging you. There was no trained professional sitting across from you in a stuffy office asking how certain things made you feel. Long gone were the days of squeezing those ridiculous stress balls and hoping you’d stop wanting to kill the bitch who accidentally rubbed her shoulder against you in the elevator. Rhea had better ideas, albeit they weren’t always the most intelligent. Therapists were replaced with horny men; stress balls were replaced by vodka tonics. Add in the way dancing cleared her mind and there was no way she’d deal with stress any differently.

“How does a beautiful girl like you wind up in a club all alone?”

Rhea turned around and smirked. They may have been horny, some of them even rich and powerful, but they rarely had game. Foolishly, they expected her clothes to fall off the second they flashed their pearly whites or baby blues. Sometimes that happened…but tonight wasn’t going to be one of them. Her argument with Loren had robbed her of the excess energy she could’ve put into grinding some guy’s dick into the middle of next week. She was resentful towards Loren for that, but the guy standing next to her at the bar, eagerly anticipating an answer to his lame question, didn’t know any of that.

“How does an ugly douchebag like you expect to get women with a line like that?”

She heard a chorus of cheers and snickers from behind the man. It didn’t take her long to realize her mistake: insulting a professional hockey player. His career didn’t mean anything to her but her lack of manners toward a man who could one day be her brother’s teammate did. In her defense, the club was uncharacteristically dark and smoky and her eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the new setting when the man popped the proverbial question.

“Ouch, Nealer,” another voice razzed as they slid next to the man. “You need some ice for that burn?”

“Fuck off,” the original voice snapped before retreating to the group of guys a few feet away.

Rhea took advantage of the silence and ordered herself a drink. When the bartender returned with it, expecting five dollars and thirty-seven cents in return, her money was shoved back in her bra by the second man who’d approached her.

“What kind of gentleman would I be if I let you pay for your own drink?”

Rhea shrugged and stuck the tiny straw between her lips. She knew the man was watching her, whoever it may have been, and she knew exactly what she was doing. She’d done it countless times before. Get them worked up and it wouldn’t be long before they were eating shit out of the palm of your hand. Rhea was ruthless that way. Men meant nothing to her; if she didn’t enjoy having sex as much as she did she’d find no use for them at all.

“How about being a real gentleman and refilling this for me?” Rhea smirked, slamming her now-empty glass on the bar. This was too easy for her. Men were helpless around her. Their usual charms didn’t work and they were forced to play her game if they wanted to play at all.

But Rhea unknowingly met her match and he stood at a confident 6’4”, putting her much more petite frame to shame. She wasn’t intimidated by him in the slightest and he knew it. This wasn’t his first rodeo. She wasn’t the first thing in his life he’d have to work for. Jordan Staal had his eyes on the prize, planning his assault from the second he saw her walk through the door. Neal had merely been a coy – Jordan bribing him with $20 and a free beer to go up to her and say something stupid – to show her how he, a real man, compared to someone with lousy pickup lines. Nealer hadn’t even offered to buy her a drink.

“I wouldn’t take you as a whiskey type of girl.”

Rhea smirked. “I wouldn’t let you take me at all.”

Jordan’s face faltered, unsure of what to say. His mouth was dry and he’d been reduced to coughing to save face. No girl had ever denied him before. He was a Staal, for fuck’s sake. But there he was, coughing like a life-long smoker because he couldn’t think up a snappy comeback that’d land him balls-deep in her in the back of his car.

“You think I don’t know who you are?” Rhea pressed, wondering just how far she could get without him pulling away. “You think I’m some innocent little girl who doesn’t know the likes of the men who come here on Friday nights?”

For added measure, she pressed against him, smirking when she felt her breasts crush against his chest. Hockey players had never been her thing. They reminded her too much of her father and brothers and thinking of them when some guy was pulling her hair and slapping thighs with her wasn’t high on her bucket list. Diesel wasn’t her club of choice because of who she could possibly go home with. Rhea was no puck bunny. However, if she just so happened to be in the mood to wind up in a stranger’s bed and he just so happened to be on the Penguins roster, who was she to fight what was obviously meant to be?

“Do you…uh…come here often?” Jordan was stumbling over his words like someone tied his shoelaces together. Never in his life had he asked a girl if she frequented a club; he couldn’t have cared less where they spent their time as long as they spent the night in his hotel room.

Rhea ignored his question. “Doesn’t fucking easy pussy get old?”

Her question sent him over the edge, filling his brain with black smoke instead of coherent thoughts. The way she was dragging her finger up and down the front of his chest wasn’t helping, either. He wanted to tell her nothing about fucking pussy got old, throw a crude joke in there to let her know he intended on doing the same to her, but the words weren’t coming.

And, by the looks of it, he wouldn’t be either.

&&

Loren had been in the middle of a fantastic dream when she was abruptly woken up by the sounds of someone banging around in the kitchen. Ignoring it, she tried to get back to sleep, to fall back into the dream she was so disappointed in abandoning. She’d been on a beach – just her, no one else for miles. The Penguins didn’t exist. Hell, hockey didn’t exist, only white sand, clear water, and lots and lots of beer. Her cell phone wasn’t ringing every five minutes and no one paid her to babysit a grown man. In fact, she got paid to do absolutely nothing. Whoever was lining her pockets was content with shoveling her money to sit on the beach and drink all day long. It was the perfect life.

But the noises from the kitchen didn’t stop. They grew louder and more exasperating the longer she laid there. It took her a second to realize a burglar could’ve broken in and was now rummaging through the drawers, looking for a knife to stab her to death with.

Like an idiot, Loren clambered out of bed, pulling on the robe she hung from the knob of her closet door. Her breath was shaky and painful; she’d never been so terrified in her life. She unlocked and opened her door as quietly as she could. The sound never let up and it overpowered any noises she was trying to avoid making.

She navigated the dark halls like an expert, having done so many times when snowstorms would knock out the power. The apartment had been her residence for the last three years; if she didn’t know how to get around it by now, it was hopeless. She never would.

Once she reached the end of the hallway, she peeked around the corner, trying to get a glimpse of who was in her kitchen at two-o’clock in the morning. It was no use. Whoever was in there had been smart enough to leave the lights off. At least if she was getting robbed she could admit it with her head held high: a downright genius had broken into her apartment and stole whatever items they felt necessary. She wouldn’t be like those women in the commercials for home alarm systems, all frightened and traumatized.

She finally grew the nerve to come around the corner. She immediately wished she hadn’t done that.

“For fuck’s sake, Rhea!”

The girl in question was bent over the counter, ass as bare as the day she entered the world and up in the air for anyone to see. Her hair was wrapped around a man’s hand as he took her from behind, grunting and moaning his way to the finish line. It’d been Rhea’s uncontrollable arms that had been making all the noise, banging into pots and pans and making them fall all over the room like the guy behind her was banging into her.

“Loren? I didn’t even know you were here!”

Rhea was terrified. This wasn’t her first one night stand and it certainly wasn’t the first one she’d brought back to her apartment. Of all the times she’d had sex she’d never been caught. It had definitely never happened in such an embarrassing way, either. She knew having sex in her kitchen was a bad idea, but after her night at the club she wasn’t in the mood to play any more games. She needed to get off as fast as possible and waiting around for some pansy to light candles and scatter rose pedals all over her bed was not acceptable.

“Loren?”

Loren’s eyes darted to the man with his dick inside her best friend. Her stomach sank instantly and her face drained of all color. Of course this would happen; why wouldn’t it? After all, hadn’t she been dealt the worst luck in the world?

“Jordan? Jesus Christ, have some more class, would you?”

As if her job wasn’t already hard enough to deal with, she now had to look Sidney in the face having seen his teammate stark naked. The sight wasn’t bad, maybe it wasn’t even unwanted, but Loren wasn’t Rhea. She still had some innocence left…and definitely a lot more class. But seeing Jordan Staal balls-deep in her roommate scarred her. She’d never live it down. The pair of them would be locker room talk for weeks, months even, and she already dreaded hearing which adjectives were paired with her name as it was.

“You two know each other?”

Loren gaped at his stupidity, wishing he’d put his goddamn pants back on. They hadn’t moved since she’d busted them, probably hoping she’d turn around and go back to bed so they could finish what they’d started. But they’d interrupted her dream so she was going to interrupt theirs.

“No, you stupid fuck, you just happened to stumble into my apartment by chance,” Loren snapped.

He immediately turned his attention to Rhea. “Do you know Sid?”

She tried to shrug but it was hard for her to do so with her head cocked back like a loaded gun, her hair still wrapped around Jordan’s monstrous hand. “I met him once or twice.”

“What the fuck,” he groaned.

“Maybe this will teach you to stop picking up random girls in clubs,” Loren scolded, never missing an opportunity to act professional. “If your agent knew about this–”

“Don’t tell him!” Jordan rushed. The last thing he needed was the press to find out he’d been caught butt-naked in the apartment of Sidney Crosby’s publicist. There were already rumors going around about the two – they’d make him out to be the bad guy, sleeping with his captain’s girl behind his back.

“God, I’m not going to. Just…clean up…when you’re…done. I’m going back to bed.”

The atmosphere shifted then. Loren Hamilton was no longer on Jordan’s shit list. He knew she wasn’t going to squeal on him and he knew he’d been wrong about her all along. Their relationship – or whatever you could call your relationship with the person who caught you screwing their best friend ten ways to Sunday – was going to be a bit strained for a while but eventually they’d share a look in passing and laugh about the time she thought he was a burglar. Loren and Rhea had silently forgiven one another, both knowing Jordan wouldn’t have wound up in their kitchen if it hadn’t been for their argument.

Jordan and Rhea were just happy Loren hadn’t sent him heading for the hills.