The Next Year

Who the hell was calling me at 5 am? That was my first though as I grabbed my phone, then it hit me Sid’s was also blowing up. Looking at the caller ID I saw it was Mario calling. “Hello?” I said sleepily as Sid was doing the same.

“So, do you think you are ready to be _our_ favorite rookie?” Talk about coming out of nowhere… “Because I truly hope you are ready, we have an agreement. The lockout is over.” I was stunned. The last nearly year had been horrible for Sidney and I, at least professionally. Personally it had been incredible.

As things began to sink in, I found my voice. “You aren’t pulling my leg are you?” Normally that wasn’t Mario’s style, but I had to check.

I heard him chuckle. “No Aleks, I’m not. It truly is over. Craig and I decided to wake the Captain and our favorite rookie with the news first. I expect you will get call from everyone today, but I wanted to be the person to give you the good news.” Sid began laughing next to me, Craig must have told him.

“This is unbelievable. I was thinking that I might not get to actually play. Thank you Mario.” I felt a huge weight lift off my shoulders as I spoke. “You could have had someone else make this call, it means a lot that you would do it yourself.” I was now sitting up, there would be no more sleeping for us. Sid squeezed my thigh and grinned at me. “We’ll take care of notifying everyone else. Then we should find time to celebrate, maybe all together.” Mario just laughed and let me go.

I looked over at Sid and laughed. “It’s over. I have to call Evgeni.” I slid out of bed and texted Mari. Mar, how about lunch? Then I called her husband. It was 1 pm for him so I knew he would be awake. After he picked up, I dropped the bomb. “Get your Russian ass back to Pittsburgh!” Of course I said it in English which took him a moment to translate.

“It over?” He asked in well-rusted English. I heard a few others in the background who were being loud. “Заткнись! Am по телефону с государствами! (Shut up! Am on the phone with the States!)” The background went deathly silent. “Ты на громкой связи, сказать им, что вы сказали мне. (You're on speakerphone, tell them what you told me.)”

Sid had come up behind me with his phone attached to his ear as I said it again. “I said, get your Russian ass back to Pittsburgh, it’s over!“ That was met with many boisterous and loud cheers. They didn’t bother asking too many questions, one of them must have done the math. “Geno! Mar and Anna leave at the end of next week for her folks place for a couple weeks, you should surprise them.”

He quickly came back to the phone. “She say she go. We have Gagarin Cup celebration before I can go. We have plans, I come spend Summer in Pittsburgh this year. Mama and Papa come too. Maybe have you pick us up, not Misa. When school out?” Oh he was on his toes…

“Uh, I’m pretty sure next week. Let me guess you want to surprise Anna and Mari by coming home and picking Anna up from school?” I heard him start to laugh and knew I had gotten it right. “Tell you what send me your pick up information and I’ll do what’s needed on this end to make it happen.” By now the doorbell was ringing and I had to let him go so I could answer it.

It was 5:30 in the morning by now, I opened the door to an excited Lemieux family. I let them all in and hugs were hard and many. Yeah, we’d found some loopholes to the no contact but we still missed a lot in each other’s lives. Now, with the agreement, we didn’t have to work around anything or anyone again. “I know we could not wait to come over, we had to share the joy we feel.” Nathalie said very happily as I started coffee.

Sid chuckled as he came into the kitchen. “Well my phone is completely blowing up. We still have to ratify it but from what I hear it’s a solid deal. Good Morning Nathalie.” He cuddled up behind me and dropped a kiss on my shoulder. That was one aspect that had improved, he was better at giving little bits of affection. While Nathalie and the girls tried to not over-react to what he had just done, I got out mugs and such for coffee.

“Sid, what do you think of us hosting dinner for the family? By that I mean you, me, Mar, Anna, my folks, my aunt and grandfather and these guys.” I set mugs on our kitchen island and waited for him to process this. Alexa had that hopeful, happy look in her eyes, but that meant little when we were looking at maybe having the entire team over.

He got the creamer out of the fridge and leaned against the wall. “What you mean like the last dinner we had all together before this mess started? It would be our first party in the new house… We might need to have the team over too at some point, would that bother you?” He set it on the island and grabbed his mug. As much as we got teased about our Hockey Bride and Groom mugs, they were our go to mugs in the mornings.

Nathalie just laughed. “Non, you two don’t have to do that. We can host it. You can do dessert and a tour of the house. How is that for a compromise?” Sid and I looked at each other. It was a fair thing. Nathalie was a good hostess and it would give us a chance to ease into having people at the house. So far only we had seen every room.

We looked at each other and kind of shrugged, dessert would be easier on us and yet I wanted to have the family over. Sid must have seen that in my face as he put down his mug and sighed. “Nat, we love that you want to take this off of us but it’s something we’ve been looking forward to for this entire year. We’ll host the family gathering to celebrate the end of the lockout. We’ll have it tomorrow night so Mario has time to get back here and sleep. It will also give us a chance to really put this kitchen to use, something Aleks has been dying to do.”

Nathalie looked at us skeptically. “Do you have room for that many people?” I held up a hand and beckoned her through the butler’s pantry into our dining room. “Oh… This is lovely.” My grandmother’s table was of course the highlight of the space. We’d found nice chairs to go with it as well as a sideboard.

“It’s my grandmother's table. It’s not even fully open, all told it can seat 14. We love how it fits into the space and flows with the more formal sitting area next to it.” Nathalie explored a little bit, looking at the more formal part of the room. It had been something we wanted, a space that we could be a bit more formal than the rest of the house. It wasn’t very large overall but it was perfect for what we wanted.

After a bit of finagling Nathalie and the kids went home and we went back upstairs to try and get some more rest. Of course his idea of rest and mine were two different things…

At 1:30 I strode into the CEC on a mission. Mari had indeed texted me back earlier saying she was dying to go to lunch with me. We agreed on a time and both did our best to not squeal in each other’s ears. I was now about to walk into her domain. Seated at his desk was Stefan Holmstrom. “I’ve come to kidnap your boss lady.” I said with a cheerful voice.

“Thank the makers! It’s true then, it’s finally over?” He asked as he picked up the phone. The grin that lit up his face when I nodded made my day. Hockey was back! “Hey boss lady, I got someone out here that says she’s here to kidnap you.” You didn’t need the phone to hear her happy squeal. He hung up laughing. “Brace yourself.”

I laughed, knowing she would be as happy as I was to be able to freely talk to one another. “Trust me, there’s no bracing for what’s coming.” Mari came out nearly skipping with joy. I hadn’t seen that look on her face in years. When she got in front of me, she nearly launched herself at me with a huge hug.

“God I’ve missed you. I’m glad this is done before I left for my folks place. Iller, we may not be back. We’re celebrating.” I couldn’t help but laugh. “What? This isn’t something to celebrate?” She was concerned that I was upset.

“Mar, this is an _awesome thing to celebrate but well Sid and I are having a dinner party tomorrow to truly celebrate this. Just about the whole family should be there.” What she didn’t know was that Geno would be coming in earlier in the day so, yes the entire family _would_ be there. “So while we’re celebrating now, the real party will be later.”

We had decided that something within walking distance of the CEC would be best. That left us with only a few choices but Mari wanted to celebrate so that meant we were going to The Steelhead. Getting there and seated we perused the lunch menu with barely stifled giggles. Drinks were in order which meant the wine list came out. Looking it over I sighed and compared the menu to the wine list. I decided that a salad was the best thing for me and the only one that appealed was the Caesar. After some debate between us we both were “good” and got salads. Then we decided to have the Chardonnay with our meal.

At 4 pm we finally got back to her office. Alexa had called just before we got in to let Mari know that they were home safe and were about to do homework. We said a happy goodbye and I made my way home. I got into the house and heard the phone ringing loudly. Sid was home but I didn’t yet know where. I picked up the phone and found my boss on the other end again. “Aleks! Nathalie tells me you two want to host the welcome back dinner for the family. Are you sure you can do that?”

I sighed and laughed, yeah I had a few glasses of wine. “Mario relax it’s the family. We already have a plan for dinner and enough space for everyone who will be there. Dinner’s at 6 although you’re always welcome earlier. It’s also so everyone can get the grand tour of our new place before the team really gets back into everything. All you guys have to do is show up and help us all celebrate.”

I heard the dry chuckle before he spoke. “You may have been away from hockey for a year, but you have done wonders with your wife voice. I can not wait to see how you look, something tells me the League is in trouble. We shall see you tomorrow.” He hung up and my heart felt light. Now all we needed to do was pull this off. If this worked we’d host the team, at least those who were in town.