The Next Year

On the 1st of August I got a phone call from Faith, an old friend of Sid’s. He was in the home gym so I was able to talk to her. “So what’s up?”

“Well I was calling to see if we could put together an impromptu party for the Golden Boy.” I just had to chuckle. Faith was a nice person and had been one of the few to give me a chance from the get go. “I’m hoping maybe for this Saturday so we don’t interfere with already made plans.”

I looked over at the calendar. “This Saturday. Well our calendar is empty. If you’re willing to take point on it, I can guarantee a place to hold it in private. I’m not sure if anyone else is going to be in town, with him leaving so soon and all.” I noticed that even Marchy might be busy.

“I can easily take point on this if you can keep a lid on it on your end. We may need the kitchen though.” I just smiled into the phone.

“I’ll be glad to keep a lid on it on my end. As for the kitchen, figure out what you want me to make and email me.” I heard the back door open and changed the topic. “I’d love to spend next weekend with you Faith but I’ve already promised Taylor we’d go up and see Brette.”

Faith was great and rolled with it. “Are you sure? I mean you guys aren’t going to be here for much longer.” Of course I held the phone a little away from my ear so Sid could overhear.

He barked out a laugh and he kissed my shoulder and passed to the fridge. “She won’t budge Faith! She and Tay have this in the planning stage already for the weekend!” He opened the water bottle and began drinking. He then wandered into the bedroom and out of earshot.

“Great job.” I whispered. “Email me when you need or want to get into the house and I’ll make sure it happens.” I said a quick goodbye and called mom and dad. “Mom!”

“Hi honey, do you need to talk to Taylor?” She asked. I heard her scrape a chair on the floor and sit down.

“No actually, I need to talk to you, about next Tuesday in specific. He leaves Wednesday for Ottawa. I was thinking that you guys could come over here for dinner for his birthday.” I heard him whistling in the bedroom. “You’re even welcome to come early if you wanted to make something special for him.”

I heard stunned silence on the other end. She recovered and sounded happy. “You’d really have us all over to celebrate his birthday? I wouldn’t have to do anything if I didn’t want to?”

I sighed, she didn’t sound convinced. “Mom, you have done _so_ much already for him. Is there something wrong with me wanting to give you that day off? I _do_ know how to cook and can even make sure he doesn’t.” Sid balked at this idea. “Oh hush you. You know you aren’t as challenged as Nealer.” I turned back to mom who was chuckling. “So what do you think mom?”

I could see her wiping her eyes. “Oh Aleks, I would _love_ a chance to just be a guest and _not have to cook anything. I know you can cook and do so well too. You figure out a time for dinner and we’ll be there.” We said goodbye and hung up.

That left me with Sid, with an interesting looks on his face. “So _you’re_ going to cook for the entire family huh?” I nodded. “Can I set the menu and cake?”

“Do you think you can make it something I know I can make?” He laughed until I pulled up the All Recipes website. “I’m not kidding. You search for every recipe and put it in my recipe box. Once you have everything you could possible want for every meal for that day, I’ll go through and change what I think needs to be changed.” He looked at me like I had kicked Sam. “Oh come on, we _do have diet plans to _try_ and stay close to.”

Then Sid tried something he knew never worked on me, puppy dog eyes. “But it’s my birthday. Shouldn’t that be a cheat day?” I looked at me blandly. He sighed and turned my laptop around. “Fine, but I reserve the right to veto your vetos.”

I smiled and walked out of the room. It was safer to leave him alone while he did this search, besides it was my turn in the gym. When I came out an hour later I heard him laughing like a madman at something. I came into the kitchen and saw that he was playing a game I had. “You find everything you want?” I asked, making him jump.

“Yeah! When did you get this game? It’s so much fun!” He was playing my relatively new copy of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. He paused the game and looked at me. “I made a new guy, your game is fine.” I kissed his forehead and walked out to take a shower.

Coming back out later I found Sid had moved from my laptop to the Xbox. I left him to his game and checked out what he’d marked in my recipe box. I found 12 new recipes. I began sorting them into meals and found that they were all easily doable. I then began looking closer at what he wanted. Breakfast was fried mostly; Egg Sandwiches, Scotch Eggs and Cinnamon Rolls. I let that slide when I looked at lunch. French Dip, Oven Fries and a Strawberry Romaine Salad. Looking at the dinner we would be having with the family I was even happier with his choices. Pot Roast, Garlic Mashed Potatoes, and the Fruit Salad that Maureen made and Sid loved, even Buttered Carrots. Then I looked at what cake he wanted. Chocolate of course but then I noticed that he’d chosen a different frosting recipe than the one that came with it.

I walked into the living room with the computer. He was now on Xbox Live and playing a first person shooter. I watched for a while, waiting for a chance to ask him something. He finally died and before he re-spawned, he paused the game. “What’s up?”

“Got a question. Could I use a box mix for your cake if I use a Devil’s Food one?” He shrugged his shoulders.

“As long as it’s chocolate, I don’t care how you do it really. What do you think of the _rest_ of what I marked?” He turned to face me, hope on his face.

“I think we’re going shopping on Saturday after our workouts so we can make sure we have everything for Tuesday. I also think you are going to help me make sure things are chopped and ready so that I’m not doing it all.” I smiled, this would get us out of the house Saturday so that Faith and the gang could come in and get their party ready.

“You’re gonna make me cook on my birthday?” He tried with a faux whine.

I closed the computer and set it on the floor. I leaned forward and kissed him. “No, we’re going to get things ready on Monday silly.” I turned off his Xbox and, before he could complain, I ramped up the kiss to something much more sexual.

I got pulled onto his lap and as I settled myself just right, he broke the kiss and looked at me quizzically. “What’s bringing this on?” It was easy to tell he wasn’t thinking this was a _bad_ idea.

I rocked a little bit, getting some friction and grinned at him. “Does there have to be a reason or can we just remember that we’re married, no one is around but us and maybe best yet, this couch hasn’t been broken in yet?” That must have been the magic words as I suddenly found myself alone on the couch with my husband undressing me.

At the end of our romp, the living room was well and truly broken in. We lay on the floor panting in the after glow and cuddling. He nuzzled my neck and sighed. “You’re going to be the death of me.” I snorted in disbelief. “I just remembered how many _other_ rooms need to be broken in.”

I lay there and though about it. “Six.” He looked at me. “What? 3 bedrooms upstairs not to mention the dining room, kitchen and sunroom.”

“Aren’t you forgetting the room just off the kitchen behind us?” He asked starting to lever himself up off the floor.

I sat up with a wicked grin on my face. “There’s still time today to knock it out.” He sighed and pulled us both up. “I need to call the renovation company and find out what is going on with that and what they might need from us.”

While Sid went out to talk to some of his friends, I called Burkett Building and Design. When they answered I put some joy into my voice. “Good afternoon. I’m Aleks Malakhov and I’m calling about the house your company is remodeling for myself and my significant other.”

“Oh yes, let me pull up your account and find out what the progress is as of last night.” I heard some keys clicking and then the secretary was back. “Ms. Malakhov, it looks like they are about to retile the bathrooms downstairs and the Master as well.” I heard my line beep indicating I had an incoming phone call. “Can I put you on hold for just a minute? My other line is beeping.” Of course I got told yes and I clicked over. “Hello?”

“Ah, Ms. Malakhov I’m glad I caught you. Do you have time to go over what we’ve gotten done so far on the remodel?” It was the foreman of our job.

I snorted as I held back a laugh. “I was just calling the company to find out where we were. Hold on I’ll get rid of them and get my other half on the phone too.” He chuckled and held on. I hollered for Sid and told him to get back in here. I then clicked over to the company and made my apologies. “Sorry about that, the foreman of our job is on my other line. I’ll ask him the questions I have and get a better estimate if they’re on time from him.” She completely understood and I was able to get off the phone with her and back on with the foreman before Sid came in. “You should know you’re on speaker now so we don’t double up on questions.” I said as Sid sat down next to me.

“That sounds perfect to me. Ok, we had the tile setters in today and they got all of the tile put down. They should grout it tomorrow, meaning that by Monday it will be cured and we can install the fixtures. The floors will be finished early next week which means late next week we will have the painters in to get their part done. Right this moment it looks like, for once, we will be done with a job on time.” Sid and I grinned at each other. Our home should be ready for us to move in completely when we were back in Pittsburgh.

“Does this mean that the special project I had is done already?” He asked. I had no clue what he was talking about.

The foreman chuckled. “Oh yes sir, that project is complete. I’m talking about the _rest_ of it though.” I looked at Sid oddly; he had a special project done in the house? Why didn’t I know about this?

Sid breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s great. So from what I’m hearing everything is on schedule and us being out of the way is a good thing?” The foreman laughed. “Seriously though we will be back in Pittsburgh in 3 weeks, last week of August.”

“We’ll be ready on our end. This project should be buttoned up before then and the other one, right about the same time you get back into town.” Now I wanted to know what the hell was going on.

We got off the phone shortly after that. Afterwards I tried to get what the secret project was out of Sidney but he wasn’t budging about it. “You’ll have to wait and see.”

Friday night I got an email from Faith. ‘Tomorrow is a go, take your time shopping!’ I had to grin. I sent her a text asking when the party was ‘scheduled’ to start so we could be back. She sent me back a time, 3 pm. I could work with that. It meant I’d bug him to go into Halifax for our training and get some ice time in too. We could easily be out of the house until 2 or 3 pm.

I brought the idea of making a half-day of it in Halifax and such to Sid before bed. “Yeah that sounds good, we can hit the ice at the University and work out before we hit the store for the stuff we’ll need for Tuesday. Good thing I thought of it yesterday.” I smacked him with my pillow for being such a smart ass.

The next morning we got out of the house at 8 am and got going on our workouts with Andy and Gaetan. On the drive I had texted Faith letting her know where the spare key was and a temp alarm code for her. She texted back not too long after telling me they were in and setting to work.

As usual both of us focused on our individual needs as well as overall conditioning once we were into the routines. Being around the rest of the guys helped push me a bit more, not that I wasn’t already pushing hard. When guys have you spotted by both height and weight you need to be incredible at throwing yourself into any situation and making sure you can dominate if need be. In fact I was currently taking some advice from Tanger and jumping hurdles instead of doing traditional box jumps. It took a lot more effort the first few times I did them but now I was wearing a maxed out weight vest and having no real problems. I added then the heaviest wrist and ankle weights that we had on hand and began again. Now _those_ made me work again.

After the off ice workout, we all moved to the on ice workout. I kept the weight vest on to help me power through everything. Turns out we were doing a scrimmage game, which was fine with me. We made sure that Sid and I were on opposing teams, mostly to make it more fun for us. The game was a hell of a lot of fun, even making Sid laugh several times. I gotta be honest, it felt good to be able to drill him into the boards the two times I was able to as well.

The fun and light mood continued into the locker room after. Yep, there was only 1 locker room that we used. I looked at it this way, if they wanted to look fine but don’t _dare_ try and touch. No one did or said anything against me being in the locker room or wanted to try and exclude me from any part of training. In fact I had been asked several times what was the best way to prank Sid. I handled that in an easy way, by telling them that I didn’t want my new husband pissed off at me. Oh boy were they all shocked, well besides Marchy who faked it.

After we got out of the madhouse that after training turned into, we went to get some food. It was important to refuel properly after workouts and such. We took a few of the guys and hit our favorite spot for a post-workout bite. While they wanted to hang out with us after lunch, I had to tell them no because of the plans Sid had no clue about. I used shopping as my excuse. “Going with him will be bad enough. Adding others who could make it worse is _not_ a good idea.”

That left me with a now pouty Sid shopping for his birthday meals. Once we were in the store he was better but I could see that he wasn’t really happy with me. When he stopped to sign some autographs I covertly texted Faith letting her know that we were close to on the way home. She asked who else she should invite, which made me grin and tell her that I’d handle it as long as more hockey players were welcome. I then texted a few of the guys we were training with and let them in on what was going on. I mostly tagged the guys who had asked to hang out some more. Those being Matt Duchene, Nathan MacKinnon, Andrew Gordon, Sam Gagner, Andrew Bodnarchuk, James Sheppard, Alex Grant and of course Marchy. When they had all responded in the positive I warned Faith, she sent back a grinning smilie.

We finally got done with all the autographs and headed back to the house. I warned Faith with how far out we were. Which prompted Sid to snap at me. “Who are you texting?”

“You tell me what your surprise in Pittsburgh is and I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing all day.” That shut him up, no way of getting out of him what was going on. We rode only listening to the radio until we turned on to the road home. Yep he was mad at me, I was getting the silent treatment. Hopefully that would end once he realized that I was in on this party.

We turned into the driveway and the garage door went up. So far I saw no signs of a party; this was good. We put our gear on the racks to let them dry overnight and then went inside. Only to be met by one word. “SURPRISE!”

Sid gasped. I just smiled and stepped up behind him. “Faith and I have been working on this for the last week.” I kissed his cheek and whispered in his ear. “Happy Birthday.” Maybe not surprisingly from there, he not only showed his appreciation in front of everyone he seemed to forget that he was unhappy with me.

After several hours of having friends over and fun being had by all, they had begun to leave for the rest of their Saturday nights. The guys ducked out after telling us both that they’d see us tomorrow morning. Finally it was Faith’s turn. She hugged me tightly. “Don’t be a stranger. I made sure all the girls had your email so we can all talk during the year.”

I grinned as we parted. “I’ll try not to be. I’m hoping this year will be at least _as good as the last one. You might need to give me a few days between sending stuff and prodding me as a reminder. It’ll depend on where we all are and how busy life is.”

She laughed. “Oh I know how that goes. Just keep GB smiling and you can take all the time you need.”

“Hey!” Sid protested, which made both of us laugh.

Faith looked at him and wiped tears away from her eyes. “Face it Golden Boy, you need her. She makes you loosen up and remember how to have fun.” He couldn’t deny that, even the guys said that. “Besides I think a few more years and the boys might even warm up to her.” She was kidding, mostly, most of his friends had warmed to me after Max’s story. They worked on getting to know me this summer instead of listening to rumors.

We helped her load up and she got into her car. “Thank you. It’s nice to know my friends can still surprise me.” He glanced at me. “Even if they do make me pissed off at my lady in the process.”

Faith laughed at him. “Well at least now you know to what lengths she will go to, to make you feel wonderful and loved. Take care of each other, at least until you can come back.” She turned the car over and drove off.

Walking back into the house Sid took my hand in his. “I’m sorry I was such an ass earlier. I didn’t realize what was going on. You were a lot smarter than I was about today.”

I pulled him into the house and closer the door. “Sometimes I _do_ know what’s best for you, you have to trust me. I haven’t cheated on you and I never will.” I then proceeded to show him _just how much I truly loved him.