Shut Your Eyes

Max POV

Maggie snuck out a lot in high school.

She was always back before morning, tucked tightly under her covers like she’d been resting peacefully all night long and curls splayed out over her pillow still reaching for the world outside her windowsill. None of us were ever quite sure what she was up to while the rest of the world was sound asleep. Frank claimed that she was probably off spending time with some boy. Will had many theories, from vigilante crime fighting to smoking on the roof – neither of which were ever proved true or false.

This morning, however, was different.

I knew exactly where Maggie had been before she gingerly unlocked the front door at three in the morning. The contagious grin on her face was hard to miss, and not even spotting me watching her from the living room could wipe it off of her face.

“What are you still doing up? You have a game tomorrow, or more accurately, tonight.”

“Couldn’t sleep.” I answered quietly.

She twirled a curl between her fingers and looked at me from her spot in the foyer before slipping her heels off and joining me on the couch. Tiny feet curled up under her body as she watched me carefully through her dark lashes. I knew what she was waiting for. I wouldn’t lecture her, though.

“So,” I started with a grin, “how was your night?”

She smiled back at me and rolled her eyes slightly. “It was nice. Really nice.”

“You’re out until almost four in the morning and all I get is a ‘nice’?” I laughed.

She flushed slightly and played with her hair some more. “Yes, that’s all you get.”

“Just promise me that you two used protection.”

Maggie’s face burned bright red as she grabbed the nearest couch cushion and swung it at my face. “Max!”

“I’m kidding!” I barked out between blows of the pillow.

“I’m going to bed.” Maggie declared as she dropped the couch cushion on my lap and stood up, heading for her bedroom.

I stopped her with a quick grip on her hand. “I’m glad you had fun tonight, all jokes aside. You deserve to have a little fun. Not too much, though.”

The workings of a smile ghosted onto her lips and she squeezed my hand slightly. “Thank you, Maxime.”

“And I think you’re forgetting something.”

She looked confused. “Hmm?”

I tapped the side of my face with one finger, pursing my lips slightly. Maggie smiled and leaned in to give me a kiss on the cheek.

“Thank you.”

“Go to bed, Max. You have a game tonight.”

And we did have a game that night, against the Flyers. A game that we won 5-2, with Sid scoring a hat trick. At the end of the night, though, we weren’t congratulating him on the game – we were ribbing him mercilessly about the familiar brunette that had been watching from the box, wearing a black and gold jersey that for the first time bore Crosby’s name and number instead of my own. Geno went so far as to call Maggie Sid’s “Lucky Charm.”

And Sid had never looked prouder.



Sid POV

“Mags, just pick one.”

Maggie gave me an incredulous look. “We’ve been here twenty minutes, and you’re already complaining?”

“I gave you plenty of warning that I didn’t like furniture shopping and even suggested that you bring Vero along instead of me.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not helping Vero decorate her house, I’m helping you decorate yours. Now help me pick out a couch.”

“Why are we even looking at couches? I already have a couch.”

“That thing in your living room isn’t a couch for an adult. It’s a couch fraternity boys leave in their hallways so their friends have something to pass out on when they’re too drunk to move.”

She had a point. I sighed and fell down into the couch directly in front of us.

“I like this one, let’s buy it.”

Maggie was silent for a moment, watching me through squinted eyes. “Are you just saying that so we’ll leave faster?”

“Yes.”

“Sidney Patrick Crosby!” She hit me with the furniture order form in her hand. “We have to buy furniture for practically every room in your house before you leave tomorrow, and it’s going to take all day if you don’t stop messing around.”

“I’m not good at this! You said it yourself, you’ve seen my furniture. Interior decorating is somewhat outside my circle of knowledge. Can’t you and Vero do it while we’re on the road?”

“How about a compromise?” She suggested softly after a minute of thought, clearly growing weary of my stubbornness.

“I’m listening.”

Maggie moved forward and sat herself down in my lap, clearly trying to win my good favor for her suggestion. “What if I pick out three pieces that I think would look nice in the house and that would match the paint colors, and all you have to do is pick from the three I suggest to you. That way it moves along faster, but you’re still the one making the final decision.”

“You’re so smart.”

She smiled and hopped off of my lap, holding out a hand for me to grab onto. “I’m glad you think so, let’s get to work.”

“Can’t we just sit here for a little while longer?” I stalled.

“We can sit on the couch that you end up picking, but that means you have to get up and look at them.” She said with a satisfied grin.

I stood up and pulled her hand into mine. “Fine, fine, fine. Have it your way. Max warned me that you’d be like this, you know.”

She chuckled and leaned into me a bit. “Figures. Who did you think helped him decorate the condo?”

“I figured he hired someone else to do it.”

“Nope, Max wanted to do it all by himself. He also wanted to put a foosball table in his living room. When I heard that, I hopped in my car and drove over here to save him from turning his entire house into a man-cave.”

“That’s right, I keep forgetting that you lived in Philly. Is that where you went to university?”

She was quiet for a minute. “Um, no. I actually went to university here in Pittsburgh.”

“I didn’t know that.” I looked down at her. The smile had vanished from her face, and she was staring straight ahead at a cluster of couches.

“Yep. Double majored in photography and business management.”

“And then you moved after you graduated.” I was trying to piece together the snippets of information I knew about her life before we met without drilling her. No one liked to be interrogated.

She was quiet with her answer. “Mhmm.”

“Why’d you move to Philadelphia?” She unlaced her fingers from mine and walked forward to run her fingers across the couch in front of us.

“Work.”

Maggie looked up at me and gave me a small smile before changing the topic completely. “I think this would look nice in the living room. What do you think?”



After our very short conversation about Philadelphia was over, Maggie’s mood bounced right back up to where it usually was. She poured herself into picking out furniture. Surprisingly enough, her enthusiasm for the task was contagious.

Part of the fun for me was simply being able to watch Maggie in what Max would probably call her ‘natural habitat.’ She had an eye for color - that much was certain - and whether it was photography, or painting, or even picking out furniture, she had a knack for making things look nice. Following anyone else around a furniture store for almost three hours would have been a nightmare, but I would have followed Maggie around for another three hours if she had asked me to.

Thankfully, though, our furniture shopping didn’t take six hours, and eventually we found ourselves at the counter checking out and debating delivery dates.

“If we have it delivered while you’re on the road, it would be one less thing for you to worry about when you come back. And Vero and I wouldn’t even have to move any furniture, we’ll just be pointing and telling the delivery men where to put it all. Simple.” Maggie reasoned.

I wasn’t so sure I liked the idea of Maggie and Vero spending the day with a bunch of delivery men while the rest of us were hours away and possibly unreachable. “I don’t know, Mags.”

“Oh come on, I’m dying to unpack the rest of your house. You’ve been living around cardboard boxes for an unacceptable amount of time. Just think, you leave tomorrow and spend the week doing what you do best, and then by the time you’re back in Pittsburgh you’ll have an actual home to come back to instead of a mansion full of boxes. Everything will be unpacked and organized, you’ll have real furniture, and if you’re good I’ll even buy you a candle to make everything smell like musk or mahogany. Manly things.”

She looked so hopeful about the prospects of putting together my house that I couldn’t say no. “Alright, have it your way.”

Maggie’s grin lit up the room as she turned to the saleswoman. “We’ll have it delivered on the fourth.”

I leaned down to press a kiss into her hair. She laced her fingers into my free hand and leaned into me. “You’re going to love it, I just know you will.”

“If you like it, then I know it’ll look great.” She beamed from the compliment, but said nothing, instead choosing to rest her head against my arm.

It didn’t take long to get the rest of the delivery paperwork signed. Once we’d agreed on a delivery date and time as well as handed over gate codes and an address, Maggie and I were both ready to get out of there and back into fresh air that didn’t smell like leather.

Hand in hand we walked outside and headed towards where the car was parked. “Where to, pretty girl?”

She squinted up at me, with the sun in her eyes, and shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me. It’s your day off, what do you want to do?”

“I want to eat food and hang out with you. And I should probably pack for the trip.”

“You haven’t packed yet?” She asked with a shocked look on her face. “You’re usually packed a few days in advance.”

“I got lazy this time around.” I admitted with a chuckle.

“Well I suppose I can help you pack. In exchange for a glass of wine, of course.” Maggie bargained, grin clear on her face.

“I think that can be arranged.”

I walked Maggie to her side of the car and opened her door for her. She leaned against the side of the car for a moment.

“What do you think about running by Whole Foods really quickly? We can get food to make dinner tonight, and then we can go back to your place and watch a movie or something while I help you pack.”

I smiled and leaned in for a kiss, lingering to enjoy the constant taste of peppermint on her lips. “Sounds perfect, as long as you’re cooking.”

She smiled and stole a kiss of her own before climbing into the car. “Don’t worry, I’ll cook.”



Later that night I stood behind Maggie as she poured a mystery sauce over a pan of chicken. In all honesty, the sauce wasn’t mysterious. She had explained it to me in full detail but I had already forgotten half of the ingredients she mentioned. All I knew was that it smelled amazing, and that was all I really cared about.

“Okay, so it has to bake for forty-five minutes, but then we can eat.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Maggie turned around from the oven and leaned against the counter before taking a sip of her wine. She looked so cute with her hair messily tied back into a braid, wearing my apron that she’d tied up to be her size. “What should we do while we wait?”

“Actually, I’ve wanted to ask you something all day.” Maggie’s attitude about Philadelphia, even the mere mention of it, confused me. It was strange.

She cocked an eyebrow and took another sip of wine before nodding at me. “Shoot.”

“Earlier, when I asked you about Philadelphia, it was like you completely shut down. Even now, I can tell how tense you are when I bring it up. You’re practically white-knuckling that wine glass.”

Like a practiced effort, she relaxed her grip.

“It’s this huge chunk of your life that I don’t know about. We’ve talked about everything else. I know what you wanted to be when you were little, I’ve seen pictures from your high-school dances, all of it. Then you left Pittsburgh and it’s like you dropped off of the planet.”

When Maggie looks back up at me, it’s like she’s looking at me with eyes that seem to belong to someone three times her age. It's something beyond wisdom, all the way to insanity and back. It's like her eyes are scarred from all the things she's seen.

“Philadelphia isn’t exactly a chapter of my life I like to revisit with most people.” She admitted quietly.

Suddenly I understood that I’d stumbled onto something much deeper than I originally anticipated. “You don’t have to talk about it, I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“No, it’s something we should’ve talked about a long time ago.” Maggie sighed. “Before we start, you should know something. I've never been completely honest with another person in my whole life. I've never told one person everything. The truth would kill my mother. My friends would look at me differently. Max would probably kill someone. So if I'm going to be completely honest with you and tell you everything you can't criticize me, or even give me that look that you think I'm exaggerating. Because that's the problem- I wish every day that I had to exaggerate.”

I furrowed my brow, but nodded, slightly worried about what she was about to tell me.

“I moved to Philadelphia because of Gavin.”



Over the next hour Maggie horrified me with the details about the past few years of her life. After hearing the extent to which Gavin had torn her apart, I was shocked that she was standing in front of me. He’d beaten her, he’d raped her, and he’d isolated her from everyone. He could have killed her. Would have killed her.

“When I showed up on Max’s doorstep that night, I was covered head to toe in bruises. Broken ribs, busted lip. That’s why I wore that scarf all the time when I first got there. I didn’t want anyone to see the handprint covering my throat. And even though I left, it’s like I’m still haunted by him. Sometimes I’m afraid to go to sleep, because I think I’m going to wake up to find him standing over me. When my phone rings, I’m scared to pick up because I think he’s going to be on the other end of the line. I have nightmares. I can still feel his hands burning into my skin all the way to the bone.”

Maggie’s bright blue eyes had welled up with tears and her voice was breaking.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, I know I should have. I just couldn’t bear for you to look at me the way I looked at myself for so long. I could take it from anyone but you.”

I didn’t know what to say to her. Any of the words coming to mind just didn’t seem to fit. So I did the only thing that felt right, the only thing I knew to do. I walked over to her and wrapped both arms around her as tight as I could, and I let her cry.