Stage Five

“Alright,” Carole-Lyne said, hands on her hips, looking very much like she had two nights ago in the very same situation. “I trust you know the drill by now?”

Joanna nodded and glanced to the living room, where the Dupuis kids were playing on the floor. It looked like a Fisher-Price commercial moment. “Kody’s medicine is in the cabinet, two teaspoons before bed. Frozen foods in the freezer. Numbers on the fridge.” She paused to think if she forgot anything.

“Their bedtimes can be later tonight, since it’s Friday,” Carole-Lyne noted, followed by an excited “Whoop!” from Maeva in the living room. The mother-of-four chuckled.

“Not too late, though,” Pascal advised, entering from the hallway. The hockey player looked very handsome in a slouchy button-down and dark jeans; Joanna got a whiff of his cologne as he walked past. “Don’t need them snoring until noon tomorrow,” he chuckled as he slipped a thick arm around his wife’s slim waist.

“I’ll make sure they’re in bed at a decent time,” Joanna assured them. A very audible “Aww” could be heard from the living room.

Pascal shook his head and kissed Carole-Lyne on the cheek. “I’ll be out in the car.”

Carole-Lyne pulled out a compact from the side pocket of her purse as Pascal slipped through the garage door. “How do I look?” she asked Joanna, sweeping a stray lock of hair from her face.

“You look great,” Joanna assured her, hearing the Dupuis’ Mercedes purr to life from the garage. “Promise.”

The older woman smiled down at her babysitter. “I really appreciate you helping out,” Carole-Lyne told Joanna, “It’s been so long since Pascal and I have been able to go out - just the two of us - with the baby and all-”

“I’m happy to help out,” Joanna told her employer honestly.

“Thanks, Joanna,” Carole-Lyne said gratefully as she slipped the compact back into her purse and took a step towards the door. Her fashionable heel clicked immodestly against the hardwood floor. Joanna glanced down at her own beat-up converse all-stars and frowned. “Call if you need anything!” Carole-Lyne advised Joanna as she stepped out the door.

Joanna waited until she saw the Dupuis’ sleek car leave the driveway before stepping into the living room. The kids’ eyes were all glued to the television - some show on the Disney Channel. “Your brains are going to rot,” she jokingly warned the kids as she pulled Zoe - the second youngest - into her lap.

No one heard her.

Wanting to establish herself as the one in charge, Joanna reached for the remote and promptly shut off the TV. Disgusted cries rang out, followed by a few failed attempts at grabbing the remote from the babysitter.

“Hear me out,” Joanna plead over the commotion, “If we play a game for at least an hour, I’ll let you stay up an hour later than I would have originally.”

The kids blinked at her.

“Well?” she pressed.

Maeva was the first to speak. “Hide-and-go-seek?”

Joanna nodded - anything that could tire them out faster.

---

The kids had all passed out by ten, which had been a lot sooner than Joanna had expected. One-by-one, she loaded the kids into their own beds, minus Lola, who stayed fast asleep in the playpen behind the couch in the living room.

With the kids in bed, the house turned eerily quiet. The living room was lit only by the flashing glow of the television, accompanied by the low hum of the voices floating out of it. In an attempt to make it look less like a set of a horror film, Joanna switched on a lamp and drew the drapes before settling down onto the couch herself and finding a rerun of Friends. The one where Ross sees Rachel naked from his apartment. Joanna silently hoped one of the kids didn’t walk down during an inappropriate scene.

Not fifteen minutes had passed before Joanna saw headlights flick across the curtains, like a car had turned into the driveway. Her eyebrows crinkled - Carole-Lyne had told her not to expect them home anytime before midnight. It was only 10:15.

With a little stiffness, Joanna stood from the couch and stepped into the kitchen, glancing through the front window to get a look at the vehicle that had pulled into the driveway. It wasn’t a car, like the Dupuis’ had driven. It was larger, taking the shape of a heavy SUV. Joanna frowned and waited.

As if on cue, three knocks came to the front door. But just as Joanna went to meet those knocks, she heard the handle jiggle and the low whoosh of the door breaking its seal. She froze in the doorway to the kitchen, squinting into the dark foyer to make out the visitor.

“Hey, it’s just me-” The visitor hesitated, too, when they realized who they were looking had been replaced by a seventeen-year-old babysitter. The lamp in the living room provided just enough light to define the visitor’s face. “You again?” Sidney Crosby asked as he twirled his vehicle’s keys around his thick finger.

Joanna shrugged. “Can I help you?”

Sid held up his phone; the screen was black from lack of battery power. “I left my battery charger in Duper’s car again last night at the game,” he explained before tucking it back into his pocket.

She remembered Carole-Lyne once saying how Sidney usually carpooled with Pascal since their houses were so close distance-wise. But she didn’t remember her saying about Sidney dropping by to pick up his phone charger. Again.

“I don’t think they said anything about it,” Joanna said as she walked across the foyer into the living room, “but I’ll text Carole-Lyne quick and see if she knows where it is.”

The text took only a few seconds to compose, but it was how long it took Carole-Lyne t respond that worried her. While they waited, Joanna sat back on the couch; Sidney took the chair close to the window.

“Friends?” he questioned, gesturing to the TV.

“I never get sick of the reruns,” Joanna explained, watching as Ross stared glassy-eyed at Rachel as she slipped out of her robe to bare it all. Not every day you get to watch Jennifer Anniston strip in the presence of Sidney Crosby. Joanna tried not to laugh.

“This is probably one of my favorite shows,” he commented, laughing at the scene splayed across the 42-inch flat screen. “I think I have every season on DVD.”

Just as Joanna tried to picture all ten seasons of the show lined up neatly on a shelf in that house of his. For some reason, she couldn’t. Before she could dwell on it much longer, her phone buzzed on the side table next to the couch. The screen flashed a message from Carole-Lyne. It’s on the microwave. Sorry I forgot to mention that earlier!

Joanna huffed out a breath she felt liked she’d been holding since he’d gotten there. If she were about to make a habit of spontaneously running into Sidney this way, she was going to have to better prepare herself for it.

Sidney was standing by the time she returned from the kitchen with his charger. “Should I plan on you dropping by for this every time I babysit?” she joked, holding the charger out to him as she approached. She was surprised her voice sounded as steady as it did.

“If I can start remembering to take it with me, no,” he answered as he reached forward to grab it. His hand brushed against hers as she wrapped his fingers around the charger’s coils. “Fortunately, I’m a forgetful person though.”

Her hand froze against his; she had to double check to make sure her jaw hadn’t dropped open. “Fortunately?” she asked, unsure if she’d heard him correctly.

He froze, too, mouth agape as he tried to think of an available excuse for his choice of words. If this were a movie, this would be the part where he leaned down and kissed her for lack of any words. And the fantasizing-teenager region of her brain half expected it to really happen. But that was the same region that told her Jacob Black would really imprint when he first saw her or that her letter from Hogwarts had just been lost in mail-service. But still - she prepared herself.

Thank God the blinds are shut.

Instead, Sidney tugged the charger from her grasp and took an unsteady step back. Through whatever just happened in that multi-second pause, she could tell he felt it, too. “Thanks,” he mumbled, completely disregarding his mess-up in words and her question that followed it. “I’ll see you around.”

She watched him go, anchored to her spot on the living room floor as he hastily made his escape. She waited for the front door to close before averting her gaze, and still waited to hear his SUV pull from the driveway before shakily taking her seat on the couch.

Had she really thought he was going to kiss her? Even as a silly teenage-fantasy way? She shook her head and picked apart the situation until there was nothing left. She was sure there was more to the hesitation that she was letting herself believe. The look that had been on his face had told her so. She was so sure that if she would have waited a second longer, he would have leaned down and laid his lips right on hers. Fuck teenage fantasies. A second longer, and it would have happened.

She kind of wished it had.