Je t'aime, tu sais?

Emily sighed some 300 miles away but Jamie witnessed it on the computer screen in front of her.
"Don't sigh at meee," Jamie whined to her younger sister as they shared a laugh.
"You always just monitor yourself so much!" Emily said exasperatedly. "He wants you to come see him, to come watch him play; there's probably a little part of him that wants to show off to you."
"Patrice isn't like that, though," Jamie sighed. Her beautiful sister sat in Quebec in a loft very similar to Jamie's in Boston, yet a bit smaller. Although she was still living in the city where their parents had a beautiful apartment, she had subletted a one bedroom apartment to finish out her schooling and begin her own independence. Although Jamie and Emily were very different in a lot of ways, they were both diligent girls raised by respectable parents.
Jamie shrugged, jokingly looking defeated at her sister. The two shared the same paleish complexion and dark brown curls. Emily's face was slightly smaller and rounder, and if you asked either, they would say the other was the more beautiful.
"He's not a show off."
"I'm not saying he is, I'm just saying that he wants you to be a part of what he does, what he's good at. He wants you to see it--"
"--But I saw the Winter Classic!"
"James," her sister said, reproachfully. "You're over thinking everything again."
Jamie heaved a sigh. After a moment of silence, she confessed: "I kinda miss him, Em." Patrice was gone on a road trip for five days, playing games out in the Western Conference. Jamie had one more night to endure without any hope of seeing him physically. They texted throughout the day, he had even called her twice, but it bothered her more than she would've liked to admit it that she was craving his physical presence, his smell, his smile, more and more by the hour.
Emily's face broke into a smile, "I knew it! I knew you did; aren't you just like dying he's not around? Isn't it the worst, best feeling?"
"The worst, best?" Jamie laughed at her younger sister. Emily had always been more passionate than Jamie; but that was not to say Jamie wasn't passionate; she was, just about different things. Emily was at school studying dance, and with her craft came a more passionate, creative and compulsive lifestyle. Jamie, who was earning her PhD in mathematics, was a much more calculated, cautious individual.
"Yes! It's the worst that you miss them, because they're not around, and--at least I know for you--that you have to admit to yourself that you miss something that's not a MATH textbook," Emily teased, quickly sticking her tongue out at her older sister, "and it's the best because whenever you do think about them, or they do go out of their way to contact you, or when they get BACK, it feels amazing, and you're like, super confirmed that you're crazy about them."
"I am crazy about Patrice," Jamie said, sticking up for herself yet feeling silly. She laughed bashfully.
"Well, it only took me an hour and a half to freaking get you to say it!" Emily burst, jokingly giving her sister a frustrated look. "Look, James," She said, getting a bit more serious with her sister. "You're a calculator, seriously, and relationships don't always compute--"
"--I'm digging the metaphor," Jamie laughed, interrupting. Emily laughed a bit too, but maintained her seriousness.
"Really Jamie though; this guy likes you, I really think he does, and I think you should let him. AND I think you like him, and I think you should let you."

Patrice's phone buzzed alive next to him in the dark hotel room. He groaned as it shook the wooden bedside table again and he was forced to lift his head up to find the light emitting from his recently beloved device. His strong fingers wrapped around the instrument and pulled it into the bed with him as he mentally prepared himself for the bright light of receiving a text message.
"I really miss you, Patrice."
He felt his tired face pull into a smile, his dry skin hard and prickly with sleep and time. He stared at the text for so long smiling that the screen went blank and he scrambled to revive his phone again. Again, the phone faded with time to conserve battery and he left his head fall back on the pillow and his hand find a way to his hair. He felt his chest rise and fall as his hand that held the phone rode his ribs up and down, slowly, contently. He had been missing her since the morning he left for Boston Logan International Airport, all throughout the two hours of Modern Family he watched with Daniel Paille on the plane, and throughout both his games, the team dinners, the team breakfasts; he had missed her all the time.
He jerked out of his happy state of mind when the phone rumbled on his chest to notify him of another message. Short of breath, he lifted the phone above his resting head and opened the new text.
"I'm really sorry if that was too forward..." He immediately sat up, the sheets rippling down his chest and the hair on his arms and shoulders prickling up from the cold air in his hotel room somewhere in the Arizona desert.
"No no don't be sorry," he began to type. "Fucking commas," he muttered to himself. Do they go in between the no's? he wondered. He felt like such an idiot texting her sometimes. She knew the proper way to do everything. "I've been thinking the same," he finished typing, jabbing the send button before he could over think anything. He tossed an arm behind his head and waited with the other hand holding his phone on his chest. He could feel himself start to sweat, but his skin was still cold from the AC unit blowing strongly above him. He kicked a foot out from under the comforter and dragged the sheets up his chest.
"I REALLY miss you, mon ami," he said out loud, in the solitude of his hotel room.