Let 'Em In

To be honest, I was surprised when she said that she did trust my judgment on what to do. Since this lockout seemed nearly over, I decided that I would find out everything about this girl and learn how the hell she's gotten under my skin with a single conversation, while I still could. With no games I had a lot of time off, so I decided to see the city, do things I've wanted to do for a while; and how much better can it get when you do it all with a beautiful girl by your side? Since I currently don't have a schedule, we only had to fit the days around her college schedule, which in all honesty was not that bad at all. As we walked through Love Park, talking about everything and nothing, I decided that I would try to hold her hand; I thought we were getting along just fine and, hell I felt something there so why not go for it. When I gently took her hand, I let out a breath that I didn’t realize that I had been holding when she didn’t pull away, and I began to smile even more now that the most basic level of contact had been established, which in all honesty shouldn’t have been that big of a deal, but to me it mattered a lot. Throughout the walk I learned the most basic things about Riley, from her favorite color: red and favorite song: My Oh My by Macklemore, to crazy stories from her childhood, like how when she was 5, while on a trip in Cape Cod, she was walking around the house and stepped on a mop, that came up and cracked her eyebrow open, and how her first words were ‘uh oh’. I told her about how the majority of my childhood was spent on frozen water than solid land, and that I couldn’t remember how many times I’d needed stitches, and that my favorite color was green and favorite song was Bleeding Out by Imagine Dragons. We went back and forth just like that, a game of 20 questions almost, learning about each other. I was in the middle of telling her a story about how some of the team and I had gone down south for a road trip, with no other reason other than we could, and tried to go hand fishing when a fish swam by one of the Luke Schenn’s leg that made him screech like a girl, when my phone rang, interrupting the story. I excused myself, saying that I needed to take the call, a call from Scott Hartnell; “What’s up, Hartsy?” I answered the call, completely befuddled as to why he was calling me. “Come on G, who is she?” “Who is who?” “THE GIRL YOU’RE IN MULTIPLE PICTURES WITH THAT’S WHO!” Shit, we’ve only been on one date and the media is already here. Lovely. “Look, Scott, I will explain everything later, OK? I need to go explain this to Riley; I’ll talk to you later.” And with that I hung up the phone, not giving him the chance to respond.
I walked back to her, where she asked if everything was okay, and I said that I wanted to talk to her about something, and she seemed very unsure of what was about to happen. “I promise, it’s nothing horrible, I just need to talk to you about something.” I could tell she was still unsure of what I was going to tell her, so I took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze as we continued to walk. After a few moments of thinking over what I was going to tell her and how I was going to word it, I looked over at her, and she was looking at me with eyes that screamed how nervous she was, Damn, this girl is going to kill me with a look. I took a deep breath to calm my nerves and then let my thoughts flow, “Riley, I promise this is nothing horrible, I really like you and I want you to know that with what I do for my job, comes with a lot of drawbacks.” Okay, you’re making progress now don’t trip over your own tongue, G, and maybe she’ll stay. I thought to myself as I considered my next few words, “I’m going to be traveling a lot, and being in a different city nearly every other day can be really rough, and then there’s the press that comes with it. One of the guys, Scott Hartnell, just called and told me that some people have already taken pictures of us tonight, and the media is all over it.”

Riley’s POV:

I honestly didn’t know what to think when Claude told me that the press had already found us, let alone taken pictures of us. My first thought was that people were going to hate me, even though I hadn’t done anything wrong, because I was dating Claude Giroux. My second thought was that he told me that he really likes me; I know that I have feelings for him, but I haven’t exactly sorted through them yet, all I knew was that I liked him, and I liked being with him. Then I realized, that I still hadn’t responded to him, but unsure of what to say I looked up at him, and then I just went with my gut, and then I stood up on my tiptoes and kissed him softly. When I pulled back, I thought I had done something wrong, because he just stood there; I sighed and looked up at him to gauge his reaction. As I looked up, I felt his hand cup my cheek and pull me in for another kiss, one that we both had to pull apart from to catch our breaths. He then rested his forehead against mine, still short of breath, then looked me in the eyes and said “Riley Sanders, you don’t know what you do to me. Will you be my girlfriend?”