Spades

How do you fill a void?

Some people drank. Each mint julep helped to take away the memories, the pain. I can’t say I wasn’t guilty of doing the same on occasion, although most of my sorrows were drowned in screwdrivers or gin and tonics. Some people indulged in promiscuity. Something about filling the void left by a person with another, different person seemed appealing. Of all the vices in the world, that was the one I couldn’t understand. And perhaps that was my first problem. I tried so hard to stick my head in the sand instead of understanding that eventually I buried myself alive. But if I was trying to forget her, trying to forget the gaping hole she’d left in my chest, why would I want to replace her? How could I look at another woman — kiss, touch, and go beyond every imaginable limit with another woman that wasn’t her — and try to pretend it was who I really wanted her to be?

Las Vegas, Nevada: home of the world’s guiltiest saints and holiest sinners. It seemed an ironic place for the NHL to host their award ceremony year after year but that was an unpopular opinion amongst the guys I talked to. It was the off-season, they’d say. A drink or two and some gambling wouldn’t hurt them. I wasn’t one to preach; most of the time I just wanted to understand. The off-season it was, but for someone in a situation such as mine, Las Vegas was hell on earth.

“Carey Price,” a voice said from behind me. Inwardly I groaned; outwardly I flashed a smile and turned around to face my accuser.

“Hey, Max.”

“Didn’t expect to see you hangin’ around here.” There was a hint of humor in his voice, like he wasn’t sure if he should crack a joke or get as far away from me as humanly possible. “You know, since…”

Since your girlfriend dumped you like a year’s worth of garbage a week before the season ended. You know, the season where the Bruins whooped our asses in the first round of the playoffs?

“Just needed a vacation,” I reasoned. Most people didn’t vacation to Las Vegas. They’d pick a place like the Caribbean — somewhere with miles of white sand and crystal clear water, somewhere no one would recognize you.

“Oh,” he replied, his eyebrows and mouth formation giving away his surprise even though his words didn’t. “You meeting up with someone then?”

“No.”

“Where are you staying?” he tried again. It was like trying to pull teeth from someone whose mouth was sewn shut, him talking to me. I didn’t want to speak to anyone, teammates included.

“At the Palms.”

He grinned. “Checking out the Playboy Club, eh?”

“No,” I replied dryly.

“Oh.” He coughed. “Do much gambling?”

To anyone watching Max and I speak, it must’ve looked like something out of an old Abbott and Costello skit. Or, more to Vegas’s tune, something extremely common: Person A trying desperately to make conversation with Person B who was completely uninterested. Person A was usually a creepy old man with more money than brains and Person B was a long-legged, blonde bombshell who ate desperate men for breakfast. However, Max and I were neither Person A or B.

“Had a few drinks,” I replied. “Not really in the right mindset to lose all my money.”

Max laughed and clapped me on the back. I sputtered before managing a glare he didn’t catch and gripped the drink I’d been holding a few notches tighter in case he decided to do it again.

“Let’s go get into trouble.”



Gambling was not something I excelled at. I didn’t know the ins and outs of Texas Hold’em and I was too paranoid for Blackjack. Max, on the other hand, had turned a mere fifty dollars into a small fortune after a quick stop at an overpopulated craps table. There we had the misfortune of being recognized by an out-of-town Habs fan which only boosted Max’s ego and made him bet more and more money. Luckily for him it worked out and he walked away almost a thousand dollars richer. Not that he needed it.

“Now what?” I asked, slowing my pace so my teammate could shove the wad of hundreds into his pocket.

Max shrugged, stopping to gaze around the casino. There were people everywhere — people of all walks of life with one common goal: try to go home rich. For some it’d be easy. They’d been spending their lives in casinos since they were old enough to step foot on the floor. For others, like myself, it was a challenge almost too intimidating to accept. I liked to think I worked hard for my money. Some would say professional athletes made too much money and I didn’t do a damn thing to justify my millions, but those people didn’t willingly block 100mph slapshots with their body.

“The Blackjack table isn’t too crowded.”

I shrugged and followed behind Max like a lost puppy. Truthfully I felt out of place; I was no angel back in Montreal but Vegas was much too big and too intimidating for me. The blatant truth that absolutely anything could happen scared me. I’d always kept my life very controlled and in no way did I want that to change.

“Why do you think people do this?” I asked Max as he sat down on an empty stool.

“Do what?” he replied, half of his attention on me and the other half on the dealer who’d just handed him his cards: an ace and a ten.

“Unbelievable,” I muttered. “I swear to God, you have the luck of—”

Max elbowed me hard in the ribs and looked around, hoping no one heard. He’d been lecturing me all night on how awful my casino etiquette was and threatened that if I cost him even a penny because of my loud mouth he was going to score on his own goal in the season opener. Though the threat was empty his point was driven home and I tried to keep on my best (and quietest) behavior for the rest of the night.

“What were you saying?”

“I was saying — why do you think people spend day and night in a place that’s designed to steal their money?”

“It’s not stealing if they willingly give it up.” I sent him a look and he sighed. “No idea, man. I guess because this is the only hope some people have. They have families they can’t take care of so they come here with the hopes that they’ll win at least enough money to put dinner on the table.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re depressing as hell.”

“Fine,” he scoffed. “People come here because they know handsome and rich young bachelors such as ourselves are lurking about and they all want a piece of us.”

I shrugged, already regretting having asked him, and waited for him to either lose all his money or get bored and move on to the next activity. A cocktail waitress had come by a few times and offered to refill my drink; I was too bored to decline. Max was four hands in — having won half of them — when the table began filling up. Apparently word traveled fast in casinos and everyone wanted to see who was winning so much money.

“You look horribly bored.”

My back was turned to the voice and I got the surprise of my life when I turned around: a brunette who was, surprisingly, mostly clothed and still managed to look stunning. There was a humored smile on her face and it was clear she hadn’t a clue who I was. She was carrying two drinks and offered me the one in her left hand.

“It was for my friend, but you know…”

“She ditch you for a guy?”

She nodded. “Some ogre who claimed to play for the Lakers.”

“Ah. I’ve heard those professional athletes are nothing but trouble.”

Isn’t that what she said to you right before she walked out the door? That people like you were nothing but a waste of time? I bit my tongue. I’d had one too many drinks and wasn’t thinking straight. Normally I succeeded at keeping my thoughts of her at bay. She’d been gone for months now and I was starting to believe I’d never get over it. But I was making progress, although it felt painstakingly slow.

However, the brunette didn’t catch on to my change in demeanor. She offered her hand. “Elaina Paulsson.”

“Carey—” I stopped and looked at Max, who was too caught up in his cards to notice. “Carey Pacioretty.”

She smiled. “What an unfortunate name.”

I forced a smile and made a mental note to tell Max never to name any of his future children after me because somewhere, a gorgeous brunette I’d met in Vegas thought their name was unfortunate.

“Gamble much, Elaina?”

“Oh no,” she dismissed. “Never had the luck.”

“Same.”

She laughed. It was airy, friendly. “Why don’t we make a bet then?”

“I only have about twenty bucks in cash on me.”

She laughed again. “Not that kind of bet, Carey.”

“Then what?”

“If I win,” she began as she took a seat next to Max on the empty stool, “you have to take me out to dinner. If you win…”

You decide. And I know that’s where it was going. It’s where she’d been wanting it to go since she offered me the drink her friend had never taken. Bedding a random girl wasn’t out of the norm for people like me — some of my teammates had a nasty habit of doing it more often than they should’ve — and it wasn’t even that I didn’t want to. Anyone would want to. If they didn’t they were blind or asexual. I just couldn’t.

I thought having my heart broken was to be expected. Eventually a woman would come along and play me for a fool and take my heart with her when she walked out the door. That’s exactly what happened. I guess I’d watched one too many romantic comedies because I expected the pain to go away after a few frames. I expected her to call me out of the blue and tell me she was sorry, that she’d do anything to have me back. Each day that it never happened I felt worse. My hopes were so high that the smallest setback tore me apart, reopening a wound that never had a chance to heal.

Being there, in Vegas, I realized a lot of things. The first was that I’d never be good at forgetting. No number of drinks could keep her off my mind; no hangover was ever going to be a strong enough distraction. My second lesson was I wanted more than anything to just go back, wherever that was. Four months, two weeks, on the redeye back to Montreal — I didn’t care, I just wanted to be anywhere else. Reality sobered me up so fast I wondered if I was still myself, still stuck in the same pathetic body I’d been stuck in since the day she left.

I took one last look at Elaina and knew exactly where I needed to be: home.



Montreal wasn’t as welcoming as I hoped it’d be.

I spent the flight listening to depressing music and wishing my life away. I wished she’d come back. I wished I wasn’t such a wreck. I wished September would hurry up because spending my days cooped up in my apartment wasn’t doing me any favors. I wished a lot of things that would never come true and, frankly, I was suffocating.

What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t stand being in my apartment and I couldn’t stomach being away. Everything smelled like her, everyone looked like her. I’d stumble into the bathroom the morning after a long night of drinking alone and I’d find one of her hair ties discarded on the floor before having to shove my face into the toilet. I’d let one of my teammates drag me to a restaurant and I’d see her favorite wine on the menu. Memories were a tricky thing, usually adhering to the notion that they could either be good or bad, black or white. Everything was black.

Max had called three times before I told him to fuck off. He said the girl from the casino had been asking about me, that she wondered why I lied about who I was. I actually laughed out loud at that one.

Why wouldn’t I lie? I couldn’t go two minutes without thinking about my ex-girlfriend. My life was in shambles and I hadn’t the desire nor the energy to put it back together. I was nothing to write home about. I wasn’t even good enough for a one-night-stand in the world’s most vile place. Wasn’t that hypocritical? I’d gone there. I thought vile was what I wanted, what I deserved, and yet I still thought I was in a position to judge.

Well, fuck. No wonder she left.

An exhausted sigh spewed from my lips as I tossed my keys onto the counter. Now that I was home I wanted to book the next flight out of there. Jamaica, St. Thomas, Aruba—anywhere I could be a nameless face on a stretch of white sand because she’d always hated the beach. But those thoughts were fleeting. I just kicked off my shoes and laid on the bed that now felt foreignly large. Eventually the emptiness would turn into acceptance and I’d be able to move on, but that day wasn’t today.



I was never good at romance. I’d always lie and say it had something to do with how my mind worked but no one bought it. Hockey had made me literal and mechanical—the left part of my brain had taken over and I’d all but beaten creativity to a bloody pulp. Not that I had no use for it. You didn’t become a professional goalie by pulling the same old tricks.

Every time Valentine’s Day rolled around on the calendar I’d always have a good chuckle to myself. It never meant much to me, just a box of paper cards addressed to my classmates during elementary school. Being in a relationship had made quick work of that, though. Now I was responsible for flowers and chocolates and sometimes the occasional piece of overpriced jewelry. But it was all worth it at the end of the day. Victoria’s Secret made sure to throw in something for the men, too.

I’d had girlfriends in high school that made me buy them things: a grocery store box of chocolate, a Wal-Mart stuffed animal, a god-awful card that’d put Hallmark to shame. Everything changed when I met Grace. All of those horrendous gifts weren’t good enough to be within a fifty-mile radius of her and I knew that if I wanted to keep her around I’d have to pull out all the stops. Not because she wanted me to but because she deserved it.

“Grace?” I called out as I stepped into the apartment we shared in downtown Montreal. I shook the snow from my coat and wrapped it around the back of a chair in the dining room.

“Be out in a minute!”

I smiled. I could imagine her in the middle of our bedroom, surrounded by discarded dresses she deemed weren’t good enough. Her dark brown hair would be in loose curls and her hazel eyes would be framed by a dark liner. She’d smell of the Chanel perfume I’d bought her for Christmas and the bracelet I’d given her for her birthday would be fastened around her tiny wrist. If it were up to her we’d order Chinese takeout and watch reruns of The Sopranos instead of going out. My desire to show her off wouldn’t let me give in.

“Jeez, babe, are you trying on every dress you own?”

“Shut up,” she called. “I said I’d be out in a minute.”

I shrugged, even though she couldn’t see me, and sat on the couch. “We don’t have to go out if you don’t want.”

Loud footsteps came prodding down the hallway. She appeared in the doorway, dress unzipped and hanging awkwardly on her thin frame, as she glared at me. “What?”

“We can stay in.”

“Carey Price, I’m going to beat you to death with your goddamn—”

“Shh,” I laughed. I made my way over to her and wrapped my arms around her. She didn’t hug me back, feigning anger, so I kissed the top of her head. “I bought you something.”

“What is it?”

“Something you’ve been wanting for a long time.”

Her eyes lit up like fireworks. “Carey, you didn’t.”

“I did.”

“Are you shitting me?”

“Not even a little.”

“Where—”

“In the kitchen.”

I followed behind her, enjoying the view, until she stopped dead in her tracks. Buying a puppy showed some amount of commitment, something I’d never really known whether or not I was ready for, but I couldn’t deny that it just felt right. Being with Grace felt right, being in love and being committed to her felt right, being absolutely positive she was the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with felt right. There was no use in trying to weasel my way out of feeling those things.

“Oh my god!” she squealed. “Carey, she’s perfect!”

The girl at the shelter (Grace wouldn’t let me buy anything except food and a collar from the pet store) had guided me in the right direction when it came to picking out Grace’s new companion. I always felt guilty leaving her alone in Montreal when the team was on the road and a puppy seemed innocent enough…so long as she promised to walk it hourly.

“I’m glad you think so. This is a stupid holiday anyway.”

She scooped the furball into her arms and ran over to me, kissing me hard on the lips. “I love you.”

“And I love you, ma cherie.”

We spent the rest of our Valentine’s Day on the couch. When Grace wasn’t playing with the puppy (whom she named Ambrose in honor of the founder of the Canadiens) and trying to figure out the chopsticks that went along with her takeout, we watched reruns of The Sopranos. We watched the snow fall from the large, open window and Grace insisted we take the puppy outside and have a snowball fight.

For the life of me I couldn’t think of a year I’d had a better Valentine’s Day, and I couldn’t help but smile knowing this was the way things would be for the rest of my life.