A Night to Last a Lifetime

“Sis, I really fucked up. Call me back, okay? Soon. This one’s really bad.”

I threw my phone back down on my bed, frustrated, and started crying again. “Jesus! How much can one person fucking cry?!” I yelled, exhausted. I wandered back into the bathroom and looked down at the three pregnancy tests on the counter for the millionth time – yup, still positive. “What the hell am I going to do?” I whispered.

I heard my phone start ringing and ran to answer it. “Sophie?!” I yelled into it.

“What the fuck is going on? You better be in the fucking hospital – you scared the shit outta me!”

“Soph you can’t get mad. I really fucked up.”

“Well? Spit it out Tori. I’m on my way to bed! I’ve got school in the morning.”

“I’m pregnant.”

Silence. That’s all I could hear. It sounded louder to me than anything she could have screamed.

“Oh my God…”

“I know! You need to come here. I need you to come here.”

“Tori! Who’s the father?”

“I think you know the answer to that question…”

“I’ll be on the next flight. Oh my God. Gabriel is going to flip out. He has a game tomorrow! He’s gonna lose it. Oh, man.”

“Don’t tell him yet. Please. Just tell him I need you and you don’t know what’s going on with me. He’ll tell Jeff before I get a chance to. This is something that I need to tell him myself! Please just come here.”

“I’m packing now. Try and get some sleep. I’ll get a cab from the airport.”

“Okay. And Sophie?”

“What?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, sis. We’ll figure this out.”
-
I guess you could say this all started about 3 years ago, when Gabriel Landeskog started playing for the Kitchener Rangers. My twin sister and I, who lived in Kitchener, never missed a game and she had her sights set on him from the moment she laid eyes on him. He was immediately attracted to her too and, although we were all only 16 and 17 years old, that was it for them. Through all these years they’ve managed to make it work and stay faithful to each other. Now, she actually goes to university in Colorado so they can live together and not have to deal with the long distance thing.

I, on the other hand, have never had a long term relationship. I slept around a lot through high school, and I own up to that. When I graduated though, I decided I was done with that life. I picked up and moved to Florida. I had always loved the weather and atmosphere there and had no immediate plans of going to university. I convinced my parents to let me take one year off and go down to work. If I liked it there and did well, I would enroll for classes either in a university there or online. And, so far, it’s been going really well. I’ve been living here now for about 5 months and I’ve made some friends. I’ve never missed a rent payment and as a reward for doing so well in my first 3 months, my parents paid for a trip for me to go visit Sophie in Colorado for a week.

The trip was a while before the season started, so Gabe was around and had a few of his friends visiting from around the States. He decided he wanted to do a “last hurrah” type of thing before they got heavy into the season and only saw each other on the ice. He decided to centre it around my visit because he really wanted me to meet all of his friends. I had never been into hockey players – they simply weren’t my type – but he was hell bent on hooking me up with one of his friends so we could do cute double date stuff. It was nauseating actually, and kind of annoying, but I went along with it because my sister loved him and us getting along made her happy.

There were at least 8 guys in town, solely to visit Gabe and party. We had to stay at the apartment to drink because we were all underage so we set up Sophie’s music system and she invited some of her friends from school. I was sipping on a cooler and sitting mostly by myself, except when Sophie would come over and try to get me to dance. I kept telling her no, I wasn’t drunk enough. All I could focus on was how annoying the boys were when they were drunk. I decided that, to enjoy the night, I was going to have to get plastered so I headed to the kitchen to pour myself some shots. When I walked in I noticed someone sitting at the table by themselves, playing games on Gabriel’s computer.

“Oh, man,” I thought to myself, “What’s his name again… Josh… Jason… Jeff? Jeff. That’s it.”

“Hey, Jeff! What’s up?” I said, trying to sound cheerful.

“Hey! Wait, which one are you? Sophie or Tori?”

“I’m Tori,” I said, laughing. We weren’t even identical twins but people insisted on getting us mixed up.

“Oh thank God. I thought I was going to have to be polite. I’m bored out of my mind. I don’t understand why they act so ridiculous when they’re wasted! Who dances? In an apartment, at that!”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking!” I exclaimed, pouring up a shot of vodka. “I came in here to get wasted. That’s the only way to enjoy this thing. Want one?” I asked before downing it.

“Actually, why not?” he said, standing up and walking over to me. “It’s a party right? Might as well try to have fun.” I grabbed another shot glass from the cupboard and poured up one each.

“Amen to that!” I said as we clinked the glasses together and then drank them. “Another?”

“Ugh. Sure,” he spat out. “Man, that’s disgusting.”

“Hey, gets the job done!” I said, smiling at him. It was only now that I was realizing how adorable he was. Even to this day, I couldn’t tell you if that was me talking or the vodka. All I knew was I was doing vodka shots with Jeff Skinner in my sister’s kitchen and I planned on getting him hammered.

It wasn’t long until we were both feeling good enough to hit the “dance floor” (aka, the living room) and the minute we got out there the boys started cheering. “Skinner! What the fuck are ya doin man? Actually joining a party for once? Awww yeah!”

They all gave him high fives and we started dancing. Pretty soon, it was obvious that our main focus was each other – we were both pretty drunk and all I could think about was that it had been a number of months since I had gotten laid. I figured, what the hell right? He’s cute, I’m drunk, we’ll probably never see each other again until like, Sophie and Gabriel’s wedding which would be years down the road (God, we’re only 18). I turned around and started making out with him. He was really hesitant at first and my immediate thought was, “Oh, man. We got a good boy here. Grreaaatt…” but it was only a few seconds before he started easing up and getting into it too. After a song or two of making out things started getting a little heated so I broke it off and took his hand. I started dragging him towards my room, looking around and noticing that most of the guys were passed out around the living room and the few that were still conscious had sat down and were watching us.

“Come on,” I said. “I feel like I’m in a fucking porno.”

He followed me to my room and I shut my door behind him. “Oh man. I don’t know Tori. You sure about this?”

“Are you kidding? We’re drunk. It’s a one night stand, bud. It’s fun. Trust me,” I walked up to him and tried to pick up where we had left off. But, he was super tense and wasn’t responding at all. “Listen, it’s fine. You’ll never hear from me again. We’ll have our fun tonight – and trust me, it’ll be fun – and then tomorrow you leave. I’ve done this before. Come on.”

“I didn’t even bring any – you know, protection. I wasn’t really planning on this happening…”

“That’s fine. I gotcha covered. I’m on the pill.”

“I guess…” he said, and I could feel him starting to give in. So, I leaned up and started kissing him again while I started running my hand down his body. I could tell he was starting to break down so I pushed him towards the bed. The moment he gave in and lid down I knew I had him. I climbed on top of him, deciding I would have to take the reins on this one and started to take his shirt off.

When we were done, I quickly fell asleep. By the time I woke up the next morning the bed was empty so I hauled on some clothes and headed out to see where Jeff had gone. I couldn’t find him anywhere in the apartment.

“Impressive,” I said, thinking out loud. “He really understands the concept!”

“Who are you talking to?” Gabriel asked as he came out of his room.

“Oh, no one,” I said, smiling. I turned, went back into my room and fell back to sleep.
-
This was all two months ago. I haven’t seen or heard from Jeff Skinner since. In fact, we hadn’t even exchanged numbers so I couldn’t call him even if I needed to. He would have been the perfect one night stand, if I wasn’t standing in my bathroom two months later looking at positive pregnancy tests.