Ours

There was only so much that Rory could lie to herself before she had to face the music.

The bedroom was cold when she managed to roll out of bed, stomach twisting with nausea. It was mid-afternoon, sleet falling outside and covering the windows with a grey haze; she could just barely make out the buildings of downtown Pittsburgh beyond. Shivering, she walked into the living room, and turned up the thermostat. The heater kicked on with a subtle click, warm air flooding from above. It didn't help; her teeth were still chattering. She rubbed her forearms fervently, trying to suppress the goosebumps, as her abdomen ached, reminding her what she needed to do. She let out a breath, stomach swooping with anxiety. Gritting her teeth, suppressing the urge to be sick, she slumped back to the bathroom on numb, bare feet.

It was waiting for her on the bathroom counter. She couldn’t have looked at it with more apprehension if it was a spider, floating on the surface of the water in her glass by the sink. She reached for the box with trembling hands, tearing it open. A foil test packet fell out onto the counter, along with the folded instructions. She knew the drill. It was essentially common knowledge how a pregnancy test was conducted, but she unfolded the paper anyway, stalling just a little bit longer.

She blew out a breath, nudging one pesky curl aside with one hand. “Okay,” she muttered. “Wait two minutes to read the result. Be sure to read the result before ten minutes have passed. A blue line will appear in the square window as a control to show that the test has worked. If no blue line appears…”

She reached for the test stick, ripping the foil off. There was a round window and a square window, side by side. Okay. She sucked in a shaky breath, but taking a million deep breaths would never prepare her. She thought of Lamaze and her blood curdled.

Two minutes. One hundred and twenty seconds. One hundred and twenty thousand milliseconds. Roughly the time it took to empty the dishwasher, to listen to “She’s A Rebel” by Green Day, how long it took her to remember what she was doing when that two o’clock feeling hit in the afternoons. To anyone else, it was nothing. One to one hundred, plus twenty. Gone in sixty seconds, times two.

It would be the longest fragment of time that Rory would ever be forced to endure.

She left the test sitting on the counter, before going to the kitchen. She did every little thing that she could to think of something else, yet she was all too aware of it at the back of her mind. The ticking of the clock was so loud that each second felt like a hammer blow to the inside of her skull.

She poured herself a glass of orange juice. It burned her stomach, and she set it down. Her palms were sweaty. She had never been much of a coward, only when it came to matters of love; it was no wonder she felt so out of touch. But this? This was different. This kind of fear was different from the kind you got on rollercoasters, or after waking from a nightmare in the middle of the night. This type of fear was private, all-encompassing every facet of her life, gnawing at every piece of her. This could be the prelude to the biggest mistake of her life.

Suddenly, without warning, she was angry. Her hand twitched, and she knocked the glass aside, spilling juice all over the counter top. Cursing herself quietly, she reached for the paper towels, managing to catch the tide as it cascaded over the edge of the island. She soaked it up with one hand, the other hand clenching into a fist.

She had no right to be afraid. Wasn’t this what she deserved? Wasn’t this what relatives from the more traditional side of life had been preaching at her since she was fifteen, since her father had elected to pull her out of school and tutor her in foreign countries? Wasn’t this what she had been asking for, kissing boys in dark alleys and following them up to their rooms in villas, in chateaus, in pagodas, in wats, in apartments, huts, cabins, houses overlooking the Rhine, the Seine, Red Square, Mount Fuji, the Outback? Wasn’t this where her destiny was determined to go, from the moment she had been conceived on a sticky afternoon in the Kalahari?

I’ve done it, she thought, throwing the paper towels into the trashcan so hard it wobbled, threatening to fall over. I’ve proved them all right.

The ticking in her head suddenly seemed to stop. She looked up at the clock. Two minutes had passed. Her pulse quickened, and she stalked out of the kitchen, back to the bathroom upstairs. She snapped up the instructions so hard, she almost ripped them in half.

“Okay, okay, so a plus sign in the round window indicates a pregnant result, yadda yadda, and a minus result means not pregnant.” Throwing the paper aside, she lowered her eyes to the test.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Huh.” Matt looked down at his phone, rereading the text for the second time. He hadn’t even realized he’d spoken aloud until Brooks Orpik nudged him.

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh.” He reached over, flashing the screen of his phone at his fellow defenseman. “Read that.”

“‘Okay love you.’” Orpik glanced at him. “So?”

“I know you don’t know her very well, but Rory is never that…quiet. She never sends me texts of just a few words. Normally, it would be ‘Okay, love you! Don’t get killed on the way back. By the way, did I tell you I saw this Taboo episode about facial piercing with tusks and porcupine quills? It was really cool. I think you would’ve liked it, anyway, miss you, good night.’”

Orpik’s wide blue eyes surveyed him unsurely. “Porcupine…quills?”

Matt shook his head. “Never mind.” He replied to her message, telling her that he loved her too. Normally, they would’ve talked on the phone, but since he was about five minutes from boarding a flight, he didn’t see the point.

They were all on the bus to the airport, on their way home. It was their last game before the All-Star Break, and all the guys were heading in different directions. Geno, Neal, and Tanger were all off to Ottawa for the game itself, but for everyone else on the team, it was a mid-season mini-vacation that everyone appreciated.

Matt bit his lip. He thought he was going to appreciate it, anyway.

By the time they boarded their flight, everybody had the same topic on the brain, and they were talking when Matt took a seat in front of Deryk Engelland, across the aisle from Matt Cooke. Marc-André Fleury was nearby, playing his PSP with Kris Letang.

“…it’ll be nice to get away, you know? The wife and I have been talking about it for a while, and the kids are really excited,” Cooke was saying, shuffling a deck of cards.

“Where?” Matt asked, shoving his phone in his pocket.

“Jamaica. We’re tired of the snow.” Cookie glanced at Engelland. “What about you?”

“Home, man. To Vegas! We’re renovating the house we just bought out there.” He shrugged, grinning. “It’ll be warmer than here, at least.”

Some of the other guys joined in the conversation. Flower glanced back and told them about how he was taking his fiancée to Mexico. The guys made their usual comments about him being whipped, before he ducked back down, cursing in French as Letang sniped him from behind. Lovejoy was staying; his wife couldn’t get off work. Jeffrey was going to Jamaica, too; he and Cookie compared hotels.

“What about you, Nisky?”

“Oh.” Matt didn’t know what to say. Everyone else seemed to be going the tropical route, tired of the winter. He wouldn’t mind catching some sun on a beach somewhere, but he had something else planned. “Rory and I are going to Minnesota.”

Cookie paused in his dealing of the cards. “Why?”

“I promised my parents.”

Cookie laughed. “I’ll ask again: Why?”

Matt had only gone home once during his pro hockey career, and at that time, Rory had been in Bali. The time his parents came to see him, during the Christmas of 2010 when he was still in Dallas, she and her dad had gone on a cruise to Alaska. She had never met his parents before in person, only talking to them via webcam or the phone, and never for more than a few minutes at a time. Matt figured now was as good a time as any, since he was planning on asking her to marry him.

“She’s never met my parents before.”

The guys chuckled amongst themselves and made faces, trying to cover their actions up with coughs, but failing.

Matt frowned. “What?”

“Well…” Engel shrugged. “Let’s just say your parents are in for an interesting experience.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Well, remember that pumpkin decorating thing the girls did back in October?”

Matt nodded. She’d been saying for weeks that she was busy setting up her photography studio in the city, and that she didn’t have time to go. At the last possible minute, she had changed her mind, and hitched a ride with Vero, Marc-André Fleury’s fiancée, the only one of the Wives Association she had really met.

“Well, Melissa told me later that when she was decorating the pumpkins with this one little boy, and she was telling him about the cannibalistic tendencies of tribes in Papua New Guinea.” Engel’s eyebrows were raised high.

“She’s not weird.”

“Nobody said she was, Nisky."

“She’s worldly.”

Letang leaned over the seat in front of them, tossing his hair out of the way. “What about this year at Pens and Paws?”

“What about it?”

Cookie started laughing. “When she took some of the dogs for frozen yogurt?”

“None of it was chocolate,” Matt protested. “And they liked it!”

“Yeah, but the people in charge panicked when they realized like, five or six dogs were gone. It's just--who does that?” The guys started laughing some more.

When Engelland saw the look on Matt’s face, though, he sobered up. “Aw, come on, man. You know we love you guys! Rory’s a great girl. I just think she’s going to be an adjustment for your parents.”

Matt scowled. “Well, they’re going to have to deal with it."

"Oh yeah? And what makes you say that?"

"Because I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

Nearly the entire plane went silent, as all the guys in a five foot radius turned to stare.

Matt suddenly felt like the deer in the headlights. Well, that got them to shut up.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rory didn’t remember moving, but suddenly she was sitting on the couch, wrapped up in a blanket. She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there, but the movie she had put on had long since ended, going back to the title screen, the music playing over and over.

She thought she would be prepared. She’d flirted with danger for the entirety of her sexually-active life, and this was just the consequence. One day, it had to happen. Technology and medicines failed every day; why shouldn’t birth control be the same? It wasn’t like she was the pinnacle of caution. Seeing that little plus sign, however, had only made her realize she was not ready at all.

Her legs went numb from being in the same position for so long, but she couldn’t make herself get up and turn the movie off. Her thoughts were whirring so fast that the rest of her was left behind, mired in a fog. Even though she had always prided herself on being a rational person (usually), she couldn’t even imagine what she might do next. The first impulse that came to mind hit her so swiftly, she didn’t even have time to consider that it was childish, that it was pointless.

I want my mom.

Rory was twenty-four, going on twenty-five. She was fiercely independent, usually annoyed by those who attempted to mother her or otherwise take care of her. Matt had seen that firsthand, having dealt with it for the five years they'd been together. He knew exactly how snarly she could get when pushed, so the desire to be scooped up and held was foreign at best. She hadn’t seen the woman in ten years, but the longing was so sudden, the pain so acute, that her eyes instantly filled with tears. Rory loved her dad to death, but some things just required a mother’s arms.

There were a handful of girls she could call, girlfriends of the players like herself that she had befriended in the year she’d lived in Pittsburgh. Even there, though, her options were limited. Lux was working, Izzy was in Ottawa, and Molly was playing a gig in New York. Rory craved family, but Terry was a blabbermouth, and for the moment, she just needed a woman.

So she dialed the one person she knew would understand.

“Hi, Rory,” Vero answered, sounding bubbly as always. “What’s up?”

“Can you come over?”

Vero’s tone immediately became serious when she heard the sound of Rory’s voice. “Are you all right?”

“Not really.”

Barely ten minutes later, the doorbell rang. Rory shuffled over in her blanket, letting the energetic Frenchwoman inside. Vero’s dark hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail. She wore a pair of loose-fitting jeans and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up that looked as if it belonged to her fiancé, Marc-André Fleury.

She shucked her sleet-spattered coat and immediately dropped her purse. She grabbed Rory by the arms and scrutinized her face intently.

“Someone died, didn’t they?”

Rory shook her head.

“Matt’s hurt.”

Again, she shook her head.

“You’re pregnant.”

Rory paused, before nodding slowly.

Vero’s hands slid from Rory’s arms, and she clapped them over her mouth. “Mon dieu,” she whispered. “Are you really? I just said that, I didn’t think--you--really?”

Rory nodded again.

“You’re sure?”

“About ninety-eight percent sure, yeah.”

It was hard not to be. She had tried every excuse she could think of, but when the numbers just didn’t add up, it wasn’t hard to guess what was left.

First, it was just that she was staying up too late editing photos and managing her website. She was exhausted constantly, sleeping in until the afternoons and putting off meetings with clients to get in more sleep. Matt accused her of being a workaholic, so she started eating healthier and going for runs. She took a week off from work, leaving her assistant, Nina, in charge. That helped her out a little, but not when the nausea started.

Then she told herself it was the Japanese place they’d gone to, the one that had been on the news the next morning for health-code violations. She told herself it was the pancakes she made that were still slightly raw; Matt had been too nice to say anything, but she knew she was a terrible cook. She told herself maybe she was coming down with the stomach flu, or that she was allergic to something. When none of those were true, she had to turn to the other side of the spectrum, considering what she might not want to see. It only took one quick count of how long it had been since she’d had her last period to convince her to buy the test.

“Did you take a test?”

“Yeah. I’ve been feeling sick for a while now, and I guess…” Rory shrugged, the blanket slipping from her shoulders slightly. “I forgot to take two of my pills around Christmas, but I… I never thought that it would immediately have an effect. I mean, I’ve been taking birth control since I was eighteen. I just did something stupid, that's all."

Vero reached out, laying one hand on Rory’s shoulder. She squeezed reassuringly. “Hey. Sometimes, these things happen.” She took a deep breath. “Come on.”

She led Rory back to the couch, propping her up among throw pillows and putting Rory's feet up on the coffee table. Vero fetched her a water from the kitchen, before plopping down beside her. “Okay. So let’s think about this. What are you going to do?”

Rory shrugged. “I have no idea. It still hasn’t really hit me yet. I mean…” She dropped the blanket, pulling up her tank top to expose her stomach. She looked down at the expanse of skin, flat and unmarred by anything, save for the small scar by her left hip. “It’s just so hard to believe that there’s a baby in there.”

“Well, it’s not going to look like that soon. How far along are you?”

“Um. If my math is correct, a month.”

One month down, eight months to go. The thought was horrifying and unbelievable all at once. She ran a hand over her stomach, tears pricking at the back of her eyes. Who are you?

Vero touched her knee, reading the look on her face. “What are you thinking?”

Rory cleared her throat. “I’m thinking how I never wanted kids. I was raised all over the place, and just don’t know if I have the patience to be a mother. At least, not now. I’m only twenty-four. I just keep thinking of all the things I’ll never be able to do with a baby on my hip. And…”

A memory came, unbidden: a summer day in Canada, the sun sparkling off the water, the bright smile on her mother’s mouth. Her lips were red, and there was a flower in her dark hair, the same hair that flowed from Rory’s head in curls.

“And what?”

“And I don’t know what to do,” she finished lamely. “I mean, how do I tell Matt? This is a life-ruining piece of information.”

“Come on,” Vero said, glancing at Rory knowingly. “Matt isn’t the type to react like that. Besides, he’s twenty-five, you’re twenty-four. Plenty of people have babies at that age.”

“Like who?”

“Jordan’s older brother. Eric.”

“He doesn’t count.”

“Why not?”

“Because the Staals are all…home-spun good ol’ boys. They grew up on a farm, for Christ’s sake. Of course they’re going to get married and have kids early.”

“Jordan’s not, at the rate he’s going.” When Rory managed to crack a smile, Vero did, too. “See? Eric counts. And Matt is home-spun, too, as you put it. He grew up in a small town, didn’t he?”

Rory nodded. “Yeah. But he’s an only child.” Suddenly, she put her head in her hands. “Oh my god, he’s an only child! His parents are going to hate me."

There was a brief pause, before Vero cleared her throat. “You know, if you don’t want the baby, you…you don’t have to keep it.”

If Rory said the idea didn’t have some appeal, she’d be lying. She was still within the timeframe to take the pill. It would just feel like a particularly nasty period, and then it would be gone, over. She wouldn’t have to deal with an aching back, labor, changing diapers, teething rings, teaching it to talk, walk, be a person. Then she could still learn Mandarin Chinese. She could hike up Mount Kilimanjaro, she could skydive in New Zealand, she could stand in the crowd at one of Molly’s concerts or play tennis with Lux. She could go out drinking with the guys and to the games in the playoffs, and just have fun. It would be like it never happened.

And yet…she found herself thinking: What if we did this, what if we made it work, what if I kept it, what if what if what if. That was the worst part--the ideas of what could be, that idea that she might actually want to keep it, raise it, love it.

She sat up. “I don’t know. I can’t make any decisions until I tell Matt. I didn’t just do this by myself, you know.”

“You’re right.” Vero sounded relieved. “That’s the smart thing. Just hold off until they get back from St. Louis, and then you can... Yeah." She paused. "When are you going to tell him? When he gets home?"

Rory blew out a breath. "No, I don't want to dump that on him immediately. Besides, we have a flight tomorrow morning." She shrugged. "I guess when we’re in Minnesota. If there’s any right time to drop something like that on him, it would be in his home town. When we’re alone.” Mostly alone, anyway.

While Vero stepped into the kitchen to call Marc and let him know she was at Matt's house, Rory stewed. It wasn’t what she had pictured for their vacation, but there was no taking it back now. She was pregnant, and they were going to have to deal with it however they could. She just didn’t know how she was going to tell him. It wasn’t exactly dinner-table conversation, and it certainly wouldn’t do for her to just blurt it out. Matt might have a heart attack, and then her baby-daddy would be dead, leaving her still pregnant and confused.

Maybe I’ll bake him a cake. It’ll say, “Happy All-Star Break, I’m Pregnant!” Rory snickered mirthlessly for a second, before dropping her head back in her hands.

Hopeless.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Matt arrived home, it was just after midnight. The light in the hall was on when he rolled his suitcase inside, and locked the door behind him. He took a deep breath, leaning his head against the wood, smiling slightly. The house smelled of some kind of Italian food and Rory. He stood there for a moment, listen to the whooshing of the dishwasher in the kitchen and the floors creaking, and somewhere, faintly, the tinny sound of someone laughing on television. Rolling his shoulders, he grabbed his suitcase and rolled it to the laundry room.

After he had dumped all of his clothes in the washing machine and set it to run, he left his suitcase in the laundry room, and walked quietly to the kitchen. There was a note taped to the microwave, imprinted with Rory’s looping script.

I’m no cook, so it’s from a box. It was still pretty good anyway, though. Clean up when you’re done? xo

It was a piece of lasagna, a slice of garlic bread, and a salad with no dressing. He heated the lasagna and the bread, scarfed everything down, and washed the plate and fork. Once they were dried and put away, he washed his hands, and kicked his shoes off at the base of the stairs. There was another note on the banister.

I wanted to stay up, but I got sleepy. Can’t wait to go to Minnesota tomorrow! Love you.

Matt read it twice. He then folded it carefully and held tight to it all the way up the stairs, running his thumb over the creases and the soft edges of the paper. He laid it on his dresser when he entered their shared bedroom after brushing his teeth, glancing over at the bed as he undid his watch.

Rory was asleep, but the TV was still on, playing an episode of Friends. She was wrapped in a throw blanket, dark curls spread out behind her on the pillow. She wore one of his Penguins hoodies, the fabric swallowing her smaller frame.

“Rory?” His voice came out as a whisper.

She mumbled something and stirred, facing the TV. The light flickered across her face, and he could see she was frowning.

Matt turned off the TV and undressed as quietly as he could, until he was just in a plain white t-shirt and boxers. He crawled beneath her blanket, inching closer to her, lightly touching her back. She rolled over to face him, right into his arms.

Her eyes fluttered open. She frowned, still half-asleep. “When did you get home?”

“Just now.” He kissed her forehead. “Go back to sleep. We have to be up in five hours.”

She groaned, burying her face against his chest. “Don’t remind me.”

"Hey." He placed one finger beneath her chin, tilting her face up until she met his gaze. "We don't have to go if you don't want to. Just say the word and we'll stay home." But I want you to.

She seemed to think about it for a moment, before sighing and nodding. "No, we're going. It's already been decided. Besides, it's your home."

He kissed her softly on the lips. "Go back to sleep," he murmured, tracing his thumbs over her jaw.

"Make me," she whispered, but she was already drifting off.

Matt lay there for a while, rubbing one hand idly across her back. He listened as her breathing slowed and evened out, listened as she mumbled his name in her sleep. He pulled her in close, running his hands through her curls, brushing them out with his fingers and breathing the tangy citrus scent of her shampoo deep into his lungs. Try as he might, he didn’t think he’d be able to sleep, no matter what. All he could think of was Minnesota, the place he was born, and how much he couldn’t wait for their life together to begin.

It'll be perfect.