Big Girl Panties

“A trade?!” Julia Bolland stuck the spoon back into her frozen yogurt and sat back in her chair. She couldn’t believe the bomb Trixie had just dropped on her and she wanted to make sure she had heard correctly. “He asked for a trade?”

Trixie nodded, suddenly losing interest in her peanut butter frozen yogurt. “Yep; he dropped the bomb on me this morning.”

She had left out the part about his drug use as that was an issue she had promised to keep quiet. Julia had always been one of the wives she was rather close to. Someone who she could go to in confidence when she needed to get something off her chest and not worry about the rest of the other WAG’s gossiping about her lifestyle over Starbucks and fresh French croissants.

Julia could see the stress just oozing from Trixie as she too sat back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “What are you going to do?”

There was no real way Trixie could answer that question as she hadn’t given it much thought. After Dan had locked himself their bedroom with the bottle of Jack, she knew she took that as her hint to leave. She had expected to get some thinking done as she took the blue line downtown. A walk along the beach was probably exactly what she needed. Instead, she decided to meet Julia for yogurt instead.

“I’m heading over to my mom’s after this to talk to her. She went through the exact the same thing with my dad.”

When Trixie had been just a year old, her father had been claimed off waivers by the Devils and moved to Newark without his wife and daughter. The strain of being away from his girls (and her mother’s stubbornness not to leave Chicago) was what drove Jack to retirement after two seasons in Jersey.

Julia could see it in Trixie’s eyes that she had already made her decision and there was no one who was going to talk her out of it. “Trixie, you already know what you want to do and you know exactly what your mother is going to tell you.”

Trixie tilted her head to the side as she stirred the melting yogurt. “I know; I just need to hear it from her, that everything will be okay.”

Julia placed a hand on her down budding belly and smiled. “Everything will be okay.”



Trixie’s mother lived in a modest townhome in Lincoln Park several blocks west of DePaul University. During her younger single days, her mom’s house had been a placed where she frequently crashed on Friday night’s after partying it up at the college student occupied bars. She had picked up food for a late lunch early dinner although the topic of conversation she wanted to bring up would certainly ruin her appetite but she knew she had to get some food in her.

Jogging up the wooden steps, Trixie knocked on the door and it didn’t take long for Debra to open the door. Taking the bags from Trixie’s hands, as they kissed cheeks after Trixie walked in. The scents of blueberries swirled under Trixie’s nostrils from the several burning blueberry Yankee Candles her mother had burning throughout the house. Her love of candles was something she had inherited from her mother. Dan thought they were a waste of money but once he noticed how much they masked the smell of hockey gear, he had begun to buy his own before he and Trixie moved in together.

“You look exhausted. Why are you not sleeping? I thought you’re on leave now.” It didn’t take long before Debra started firing question and Trixie knew they would be never ending. As much as she rolled her eyes at most of what came out of her mother’s mouth, Trixie knew it all came from a good place.

Walking from the living room to the kitchen, Trixie took a seat at the kitchen table and dug into the bags of food. She knew Debra didn’t eat much fast food but all Trixie was craving was a double cheeseburger and fries.

“I’m less than three weeks away from being six months pregnant, that’s why I’m exhausted. I am on leave and I hate it.”

“Quit being a baby.” Debra said in a serious tone as she dipped her own fries into Trixie’s cup of cheese sauce.

For several minutes, the mother-daughter pair sat in silence as they focused on eating. The entire time, however, Trixie was trying to figure out how exactly to bring up a painful time in her mother’s history during her marriage to her father. While she remembers none of what happened during her father’s hockey career, the one thing (other than motherhood) that would bring Trixie closer to her mother would be Debra being her go-to-person when she needed advice on being married to a hockey player.

Trixie took a gulp from her vanilla shake. “I have something to tell you.”

Debra, being the person to always assume the worst possible, abruptly stopped eating and almost sent herself into a panic attack. “Everything okay with the baby?”

“Everything is fine.” Trixie assured. “This morning, I was talking to Dan and he told me he asked to be traded when their season ends.”

Trixie couldn’t read the look that Debra’s face currently held. Maybe what she been expecting her mom to say wasn’t what she was going to say after all. “You’re going with him.”

It sounded more like a statement than a question to Trixie, because it was. Debra would be damned if she was going to sit back and watch her only daughter make the same exact same mistakes she had made while she was a hockey wife. It had been exactly what Trixie expected to hear.

“I know I am.” Trixie twisted the ring around her finger with her thumb. “I can’t imagine doing this without him…I can’t do it alone.”

For Trixie to realize she wouldn’t be able to handle motherhood on her own didn’t take long, but it did take a lot for her to admit. “I love him too much not to go with him and I could never forgive myself if I’m the reason Dan can’t be there full time. I guess I should probably tell him that…he thinks I’ll be staying here.”

Debra pushed her fries to the side. “Did you two have a fight?”

Furrowing her eyebrows, Trixie nodded as she started to cry. “Yeah. I think we got married way too quick and earlier I thought we shouldn’t even have gotten married in the first place.”

When she said ‘I do’ Trixie hadn’t realized there were more skeletons in Dan’s closet then she had thought. Sure, she had her fair share of skeletons but it was nothing Dan wouldn’t be able to handle…besides Biz.
Debra could understand where her daughter was coming from as she felt the same way when she had married Jack. “Do you feel like it’s over with you two?”

Trixie shook her head. They were far from being over; Dan was the one Trixie really could see herself being with for a long run. Flaws and all, they could work through them. Trixie realized they meant to several days after they had gotten married. Dan and Trixie had walked down to a small ice cream parlor where they had each gotten a chocolate cone. As they sat on a bench, Trixie had gotten a spot of ice cream on her white v-neck tee. After laughing at her clumsiness, Dan purposely stained his white Iron Maiden shirt with black quarter sleeves. He couldn’t let his girl be the only one with chocolate on the front of her shirt.

There was no stopping the smile that spread across her lips just at the memory of him doing that.



When Trixie arrived home, she found Dan sitting on the sofa in jeans and an undershirt. While the remote was firmly in his hand, she guessed by the expression on his face that he really wasn’t paying much attention to what was on the screen. Taking off her zip-up hoodie and toeing off her sneakers, Trixie strode over to the sofa. Taking the remote from his hand, Trixie muted the television and surprised him next by straddling his lap.

“Are you mad at me?” She asked while looking directly into his eyes.

Trixie could tell he had showered. His hair was damp and he smelled of Old Spice.

Dan was certain it was a trick question. No matter what answer he gave it would lead to another fight and he had no energy left for another argument. Trixie saw it on his face that that was what he was thinking and assured him that it was not a trick question.

“I’m not mad…just frustrated.”

Wrapping her arms around him, Trixie rested her head in the nook of his neck and shoulder. She could feel Dan begin to rub her back and it was the most relaxing thing she had ever felt in her life. If it were up to her, she and Dan would stay in that position for a long as time would allow them. There was no other place than in his arms would she rather be.

“I’m sorry for being a pain the ass.” Trixie mumbled. Picking her head up, Trixie ran the fingers on both of her hands through his damp locks. “And, I’ve decided that when you leave Chicago, I leave Chicago. Do you still want me to come with?”

Those were the words Dan wanted to hear. If he would have had to move to a different city without his wife and son, he wasn’t sure how well he’d play considering the only thing he’d be able to think about would be convincing Trixie to leave her hometown. It had taken him nearly two years to make her his, and he wasn’t about to let her go that easy.

Stealing a kiss, Dan laced their fingers. “Abso-fucking-lutely.”