Retrouvailles

Loren had learned very quickly that dating Sidney Crosby was no simple task.

He’d taken the earliest flight back to Pittsburgh the morning after their ‘morning after’ some six weeks ago. They made a point to exchange something at least once a day, whether it be text messages, e-mails, brief phone calls or the occasional photo Sarah would snap of Loren’s backside when she wasn’t looking. It wasn’t easy. Sidney was taking the brunt of it, having fallen faster and harder than Loren had. He spent every second of every day wanting to be with her, knowing he couldn’t, but they were doing all right. They were surviving.

In fact, life was being kinder than usual to Loren. Going to work was no longer a chore. After Sidney had sent a bouquet of roses to her office just because, her coworkers backed off a bit, figuring she was dating someone outside the realm of professional hockey. It was obvious no one from the team had sent them—Sidney had signed the card knowing the women she worked with would probably read it: a simple xo SC. Sean Couturier was immediately out of the question. He was too young and came to Philadelphia already in a relationship with a girl from back home. Just like that Loren had fourteen new girlfriends and years of office gossip to catch up on.

The men who made up the Flyers roster had taken a liking to her, too. Those who hadn’t gone to Ottawa were still a bit wary of her but that was easily solved with strong personal recommendations from Max Talbot and Scott Hartnell. They invited her to dinner with them, made sure the WAGs were civil when she sat with them at games (which she finally started going to, but only if Arthur and Nan agreed to go in her place at least once a week), and no one batted an eye when Sarah would pull up the rear, usually covered in paint with a drink already in hand.

To put it simply, Loren was happy—happier than she’d been in years. Her and Max had bonded over leaving behind everything they’d ever known to start over and both came to the same conclusion: it was worth every second. He was winding down on the best year of his career and Loren wasn’t far behind. She’d even taken up a second job as Danny Briere’s emergency babysitter. Philadelphia, so far, had been nothing short of incredible.

“What the fuck,” Sarah began, pointing at the television with her fork, “is going on?”

Loren, too, stared in horror. A rivalry was a rivalry, she’d been made fully aware of that when she took the job, but she hadn’t expected this. “I…have no idea.”

“Is that even legal?”

Loren watched Peter Laviolette stretch across the glass, yelling furiously at Dan Byslma, and wondered the same thing. Since only one member of the Flyers knew of her relationship with the Penguins captain, she opted to stay in Philadelphia to watch the game. She’d made a promise to herself to never go to Penguins/Flyers games, not wanting to mix loyalties, and this was why. Sarah had leapt off the couch when Sullivan delivered the hit on Briere; everyone from Philadelphia to San Jose knew where her loyalties lied. But Loren wasn’t as eager to choose sides, deciding early on to keep her amusement at Brayden Schenn’s cross-check on her boyfriend a secret.

“I don’t think so.”

Sarah chuckled, returning her fork to her carton of take-out. “It’s gonna be a busy day at the office tomorrow.”

Loren groaned, knowing her friend was right. “They play next weekend, too.”

“And then it’s playoffs.”

Before meeting Loren, Sarah couldn’t have cared less about hockey. The most she knew about Philly sports was that the local baseball team won a championship back in 2008 during her freshman year at the University of the Arts. The stupid parade made her late for mid-terms. However, things were different now. After meeting the team and watching a game or two with Loren, she developed an understanding. Ilya Bryzgalov had even hired her to redecorate his daughter’s bedroom.

“Don’t remind me.”

Sarah grinned. “Is Sidney gonna dump you if the Flyers knock ‘em out?”

“Probably.”

“Do you want them to win?” Loren stared at her. “The Penguins, I mean.”

Loren thought about the few friends she’d acquired in Pittsburgh: Kris, Jordan, Geno. Hell, her boyfriend was the captain of the team. But take Sidney out of the equation and she had the same thing in Philadelphia, only it was different here because everyone loved her, not just a select few. Truth be told she was still kind of bitter over being fired, though she knew now that it’d been for the best.

“I honestly don’t know.”

“Yikes,” Sarah replied, pulling a face. “Do you get a summer vacation or anything? Like once the playoffs are over?”

“No, not really. I still have vacation time, but Melissa says summer’s the busiest time of the year.” Sarah pulled another face. “Y’know, with trades, injury reports, re-signings…”

“Right. Are you going to Pittsburgh?”

Loren sighed. She hadn’t talked to Sidney about summer plans because it all depended on how the playoffs went. Since Pittsburgh’s surge in the standings everyone in both camps had assumed they’d be playing one another. The media was already hyping up the series: The Battle for Pennsylvania, as they liked to call it. If it was going to be anything like what she was seeing from a simple regular season game, it was going to be a bloodbath.

Still, she’d made a deal with Sidney that they weren’t going to talk about playoffs, regardless of the outcome. They both knew how much of an effect it could have on their relationship. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, Sidney had a tendency to get jealous; Loren had always said jealousy was a one-way ticket to Single Town.

“I don’t know. We haven’t really talked about it.”

“You should go somewhere with a beach.”

“Everyone goes to the beach, Sarah.”

“At least it’s warm there,” she fired back. As the horn sounded the end of the game, she got up to put her fork and plate in the dishwasher. “Anyway. When’s the wedding?”

“In July, I think. I’ll have to ask Sidney.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. Loren had made mention of some wedding she was being dragged to—someone on Sidney’s team was finally tying the knot with his long-time girlfriend and, since Sidney was going, so was Loren. It was going to be one of their first couple outings. July was three months away and Loren was already worrying about it.

“I meant yours.”

“I’m not getting married,” Loren said, almost exasperated that Sarah would make such an accusation.

“Do you get randomly drug tested? Because you could really use some we—”

“Shut up. We just started dating, Sarah.”

That much was true. It’d taken Loren almost a month to take Sidney up on his offer. She put herself through four weeks of pure torture to ultimately come to the decision that seemed absolutely obvious to everyone else. Sleepless nights, stress breakouts, panicked 3AM calls to Max—only to have everyone tell her it was about time. She couldn’t help but agree with that.

Their relationship was too fresh for Loren to start worrying about much else. She knew the media would eventually find out and she set up a post office box in anticipation of death threats and hate mail. One of the tech guys at the office, Russell, reworked her email accounts to automatically delete anything that fell into either category. She knew she wouldn’t always be able to stick her head in the sand, but she also knew that the pressure of dating someone so high-profile would make quick work of her relationship if she wasn’t able to ignore a majority of the hate.

Sidney hadn’t brought it up, too excited to just have her as his girlfriend to think about the impending doom. He didn’t want to keep her a secret (and she deserved to be shown off) but he did want to protect her. People would find out eventually—he wasn’t naive to think they wouldn’t—so he wanted to enjoy being with her before things started spiraling out of control.

The only problem was that he hadn’t been able to be with her. With their schedules pulling them in opposite directions, he planned on only being able to see her during the summer and that was if he stayed with her in Philadelphia. She’d mentioned having vacation time—a whopping seven days of it—but that wasn’t enough. Seeing his teammates with their wives and girlfriends after games and at events was pure agony, but he knew this was the way things had to be.

For now, at least.



Once the press shuffled out of the locker room, Sidney threw his gear into his bag with such force he was sure it’d come out the other side. He didn’t like to lose. Even worse, he didn’t like to lose to the Flyers, especially on home ice. It was nice to see Max but that was it. He wanted them out of his city.

He didn’t bother to check his phone in case of a message from his girlfriend. Loren had made it clear that she wanted no parts of his whining or his gloating when it came to playing Philadelphia. It was understandable. He knew she had a job to do and harping on her over her employer—and now her friends—was only going to make her resent him, but he needed to talk to someone. His teammates had already left, women on their arm, and he was alone.

Sighing, he pulled on his suit jacket and grabbed his bag. All he wanted to do was go home and sleep. Their next game was Tuesday in Boston—that’d give him 48 hours to stay in bed and turn off his brain.

His body went into autopilot as he drove the familiar route back to Sewickley. The volume of the radio was low, allowing him to ignore the depressing love songs the deejays insisted on playing. He missed his girlfriend. He missed waking up in her bed and seeing her lazy smile. He missed the scent of her perfume and he missed kissing her. Most of all, he missed knowing she was there, just in the other room or out to the store. When she was hundreds of miles away…well, he tried not to think about that.

He thought back to six weeks ago when Loren brought light to the obvious: he was trying to date a woman he knew nothing about. If hockey had taught him anything it was how to communicate, and all the hockey camps he’d attended as a kid weren’t for naught. His coaches had always told him that if his squad was going to be able to function as a team, they’d have to trust one another. In order to trust one another, they had to know one another. Sidney used those same games with Loren: twenty questions, would you rather, never have I ever.

Loren was born on October 19th. She hated the color green. She would rather have no one show up to her wedding rather than no one show up to her funeral and she had never skipped a day of school. She wanted to adopt a kitten from the shelter to name Rigby and she wanted to travel to Japan. She’d rather be the Queen of England than the President of the United States and she had never gotten in a car accident.

As he pulled into his driveway, he wondered what she was doing. He always wondered what she was doing. Undoubtedly she was with Sarah, doing whatever two twenty-somethings do in a big city when they’re left to their own devices. He hadn’t met Sarah during his short stay in Philadelphia but she seemed to be on his side even though she, too, rooted for the enemy team. Still, she promised to keep his girlfriend out of trouble so that was good enough for him.

He’d just tossed his keys onto the kitchen counter when his phone began vibrating in his pocket. Grinning, he connected the call without bothering to look at the caller ID.

“Hello, beautiful.”

The voice on the other end coughed awkwardly. “Uh…Sidney?”

“Martin,” Sidney choked. Leave it to him to call his new (although after three months he wasn’t really new) publicist beautiful. “Shit. Sorry. Hi. I thought you were someone else—”

“It’s…” He coughed again. “Someone else. Right. That’s why I’m calling, actually.”

Sidney didn’t have to look in a mirror to know all the color had drained from his face. This couldn’t happen; not now. “What?”

“I caught wind of—” Martin paused, trying to decide how to word his thoughts. “It was a rumor, really, but—”

“Are you trying to ask if I’m dating someone?”

Martin squeaked. “I guess so.”

Sidney couldn’t help but smirk. This was Martin’s worst nightmare. His job had been relatively easy thus far: deliver injury reports, come up with fancy ways to tell the media there was no update on his condition, put together press releases—things Loren could do in her sleep. Now the real fun began. Martin was good at his job but things were about to be taken to a whole new level.

“Her name is Loren.”

“Don’t tell me it’s Hamilton.”

“Okay.”

“It’s Hamilton?” Sidney confirmed his question. “Jesus, Sidney! Do you know how bad this looks? My God, if the media get a hold of this before we get it under control—”

“I have it under control, Martin.”

“Like hell you do! Trust me, Sidney, you do not want this floating around. Either let me deny it or—”

“Don’t deny it,” Sidney ordered. “I don’t care what you have to do to get around it, but don’t deny it.”

“They’ll eat her alive,” Martin replied. He almost sounded sympathetic.

“I know. So does she.”

Martin sighed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

As soon as the call disconnected, Sidney slammed his phone onto the counter and let out a furious groan. He played it cool with Martin but, inside, he was anything but. He didn’t expect this to happen for weeks, maybe even months. It definitely wasn’t what he needed going into playoffs. He couldn’t afford to lose focus, couldn’t afford to gamble both on and off the ice.

No, he didn’t need this at all.