Over Christmas Break

Slowly, I had gotten up from where I had collapsed from weak knees and made my way to the suitcases I had left sitting on the living room floor and unzipped the bag. Silently, I pulled clean shorts, a t-shirt, a sports bra, and underwear from the bag to stick in my oversized purse. Once those were neatly tucked away, I zipped up that suitcase and opened the other one I had also brought with that held my black and green gym shoes and unpacked those too along with a clean pair of neon green ankle socks. I zipped up the bag and laid it on its side as I went to take off my UGG boots and dirty neon pink socks to replace with the socks and tennis shoes from my bag.

David met me back in the kitchen about a minute after I had gotten back into the room from preparing my stuff.

“Are you ready?” he asked with that raised eyebrow again as he saw I didn’t have a bag, just a purse sitting near the kitchen table.

“You betcha. Let’s get the show on the road, shall we?” he chuckled and led me to his car in the garage where he politely opened my door for me. I smiled and got in to buckle as he ran around to get in on the driver’s side.

“So, where do you go to school?” he asked me after he backed out of our driveway.

“Ashford University, it’s in Clinton, Iowa. It’s a small town that is basically all the U and right over the border and the river. It’s cute.” I smiled when describing my school because I really was happy there. I had never liked any other school as much as that school and living there was amazing.

“It’s probably a lot bigger than University of North Dakota. That was a small town and even smaller university.” He chuckled with a smile. His smile reached all the way up to his eyes, which I found intriguing.

“Why’d you choose UND?” was my quizzical response.

“Why’d you choose UA?” he quickly attacked back.

“I asked first, Mr. Hockey Player.” That also got a smile, one that showed his dimples that I had never noticed before.

“I choose North Dakota because they not only offered me a scholarship, but they had the educational program I wanted as well. And I needed to get out of Canada for a while, get away from my folks for a bit. It also didn’t hurt that Jon went there,” he smirked when he brought up his older brother.

“You guys were never there at the same time though, right?”

“Nope, he got drafted before I started there. Now, why did you choose your school?”

“It was the first school I went on a college visit too and I compared everything to my experience at the school that one day. That day, I just felt like it would be a lot like home. Where you can walk down a hall or around campus and know almost everyone you see and I wanted that. The school is just about as big as my high school was.”

“I heard they are practically giving you free tuition.”

“They are. My GPA is high enough where they cover all of my tuition and I applied for the room and board scholarship and got that too. So this year, all I have to pay for it my food, its great thinking about how much money I’ll be saving in the long run.”

“No student loans then?” he chuckled.

“Nope, not this year and hopefully not ever,” I made sure to add. He pulled up to a busy intersection in Rockford that I knew. “Think on the way back we can stop at the store?”

“Which one, there are plenty to choose from,” he smiled looking in my direction.

“Gordman’s, I know my friends are going to want to take me out for a night and I left all my good clothes at school thinking that I’d be in Hawaii and in warmer weather.”

“Sure thing,” he turned back to face the road and kept the smile until we got to the facility that the Ice Hogs called home.

He led me into the facility and signed us in before showing me the way to the locker room. He said to change and meet him on the other side in ten minutes. I took my time knowing it wouldn’t take me ten minutes, and after getting completely changed, I sat and admired the beautiful locker room. The lockers were nice keypad locks, where you could type in your own password. The floor was an amazing tile, and the walls were a light beige color. I then took a minute to look around the rest of the room to find there was bathroom stalls, showers, and a sauna. I decided my ten minutes was just about up, so I headed towards the opposite door I entered. David was already waiting on the other side, leaned against the wall.

“Find your way around in there?”

“Yep, not a problem!” I sent him a smirk. He reciprocated the emotion and showed me to a treadmill.

“Obviously, we have treadmills, elliptical, bike, and weights. Oh, and the stairs, which I think majorly suck. I’d rather do bleachers any day.”

“Me too,” I commented as another player exited the men’s locker room into the training room.

“Davey, how’s it going?” I recognized the Hogs forward, Jeremy Morin.

“Good, how about you, Morin?” was Mr. Toews’ response.

“It’s been a good day. Who’s your friend?”

“Harper Jennings, I’m his host family’s daughter.”

“How old are you, Harper?”

“Jeremy, really, didn’t your mother teach you manners?”

“How about I answer with my level in school? I’m a college freshman,” I leveled with both the guys.

“Not bad, Tazer Jr. Well, I’m going to hit the weights and get out of here, so I’ll try and stay out of your way,” he waved us off and plugged his headphones into his ears. He picked up a few weights and then David started talking to me again.

“Sorry, Jeremy’s a pain in the ass sometimes.”

“There’s at least one on every team, am I right?”

“Of course, what did you want to start with?”

“What about the treadmill? I will warn you though; I run five miles at a time.”

“I’m game.”

“Good,” I smirked and hopped on the first one I came too. I started it up and got to a comfortable walking speed so I could throw my hair into a pony tail than plug in my head phones. I also turned on the TV screen so I could read the subtitles to the random show I found that was mildly entertaining.
I looked over before starting up my jog and saw that David was already running and at a pace that was quite too fast. I knew that as a hockey player, he would never come close to jogging five miles at that speed. I didn’t stop him though because it was one, not my job, and two, I knew he was trying to show off so I couldn’t ruin his moment. So when I got to my comfortable speed, he was so winded, he had to slow down to a speed of one flat to catch his breath. I chuckled and started the five mile trek on the treadmill using the hill setting to make it more difficult.