All That Matters

The first round of the playoffs went well.

Trina and Troy came into town for the first two games just as they’d planned. It wasn’t the average visit. We didn’t go out for dinner and Troy spent his time either at the house or at the games. Trina, as I had suspected, took me shopping twice during her visit.

She went a little crazy shopping for things for the baby, but I couldn’t fault her for her excitement. It wasn’t like we needed other people to buy things for her, but she enjoyed having a hand in it. I certainly couldn’t hold that against her. I appreciated her enthusiasm, though the shopping was exhausting at best.

“I should have brought Sidney’s box,” she said as she shuffled through a rack of colorful bibs during a trip to the mall.

“His box?”

“His baby box. It’s strange to think that some of his things are in a museum, but most of them are still in the box. Just a few little things. There’s a blanket my mom made for him. I don’t think you’ll want to use it for a girl. But the two of you should have it.”

I joined in her browsing.

“That would be nice, Trina. I’m sure Sid would like to see that stuff. And who knows, we might have boys down the line.”

She eyed me for a moment.

“You’re feeling better about everything?”

“I’m feeling more confident,” I said quietly. “It’s still a lot to take on but I’m looking forward to it. We’re both doing better.”

“Good enough to be considering more?” she said with a smirk.

“In the future. We never planned to have just one. We just planned on planning them.”

“Plans change, right?”

“They certainly do.”

I’d learned that plans weren’t always worth making.

They lost their third game on the road, but it was different than it had been the year before. They weren’t getting caught up in their losses and Marc was keeping his composure in situations that he would have struggled with just a year earlier. They won a tight fourth game before returning home.

Sidney was at ease for the fifth game and I was almost certain that if they lost it wouldn’t shake him. I kept my distance on game days through the first round, letting him focus whenever I could. But he was not the same man he had been the previous year. Neither of us were the same.

He doted when he could. On the nights he was home I fell asleep with him rubbing my back slowly, soothing my nerves and loosening the muscles that seemed to be locked up all the time as my hips shifted and the baby moved and grew. He was quietly focused, but not concerned and it was nice to see.

He was still a man who wanted to win but he had other things on his mind as well. It cut through his intensity a bit. He still smiled willingly the way he did in the regular season. He didn’t scowl or drift off thinking about the game when he was away from the rink.

Game five was another tight contest that I watched from the family suite with some of the other wives. The Adams and Kunitz kids kept me distracted, talking about school and their friends, always chatting and keeping my mind off of the cheap shots and heavy hits being thrown down on the ice. I tried to pay more attention to the kids around me than anything else.

I could feel the energy of the rink. I didn’t even have to look and see how things were going. The crowd was electric enough that I knew what was happening and how things were going. There were a few close calls and a late goal from James kept them in the game.

But after sixty minutes of play, they came away with the victory and were moving on to the second round.

The rest of the league wasn’t so lucky. Games were going into overtime and series were going to seven games. It gave the boys a few extra days to recover and practice. I wasn’t sure that they needed it, but they weren’t going to take it for granted.

Sidney and I went out on the day after their win. He was tired but he’d crawled out of bed, turned down the name that I’d scrawled on the shower wall, again in lipstick, and we were almost ready to head out before most of the rest of the team was probably out of bed.

“Aurora? Like the Disney princess?”

I pushed a coffee mug towards him as he wandered into the kitchen still trying to tame his curls. He’d give up and strap on a hat just like any other day, but he was trying.

“Am I supposed to ignore the fact that you know there was a Disney princess by that name?”

“Preferably. But I have a little sister. She made me watch those stupid movies all the time. Also, it’s technically a place name. There’s one in Ontario and one in Colorado.”

“Why did I ever think it was a good idea to get you a smart phone?”

He chuckled. “I say no.”

“But it’s pretty and it’s a little different.”

“Not naming our daughter after Sleeping Beauty or the Northern Lights. No.”

“Come on, Sidney. The best you could come up with yesterday was Delilah and we agreed that we weren’t doing biblical names days ago.”

“What if I was thinking of the song?”

“What if I was thinking the same thing? There’s a song called ‘Aurora.’”

He sighed and took a sip of his coffee before snapping the lid into place and grabbing his car keys. I watched as he pulled his cap down over his eyes and waited for me to gather my things and join him.

“You look nice today,” he said as I slipped into the garage in front of him.

I’d given in and bought a couple of maternity tops, but I refused to switch to maternity pants. But no one would know that I was using a rubber band to keep my pants secure. Sidney though had watched as I looped a hair tie through my buttonhole. He’d seemed fascinated though I wasn’t sure if he was admiring the mechanics of it or the fact that at times when she kicked, it would appear as a visible motion under my skin.

Her kicks had kept him up at night on more than one occasion, but he never let me roll away from him. He held me close to him, telling me that he loved the feeling. His fascination with her movements and her growth made me love him just a little more each time.

He wasn’t being flippant when he said I looked nice, he was actually drawn to the way my figure had changed and refused to let me forget how beautiful he thought it was.

“Flattery or not, you’re still not going to win. I will be the one to pick her name.”

“I disagree.”

Sidney had wanted to special order all of the furniture but I had no interest in putting a baby into a thousand dollar crib. But that meant that we’d be shopping in a department store and that had given Sid some concerns. So I’d agreed that we wouldn’t risk going to a busier mall in the middle of the city and we would instead go a little out of our way. It was only a forty minute drive to the large mall we’d selected but it was enough time to attempt to compromise on what it was we were looking for when it came to nursery furnishings.

We knew which pieces we needed, but we weren’t sure if we were looking for dark stains or white furniture. All we could agree on was the fact that visually we wanted something modern and sleek. It didn’t need to be bulky or ornate and that was a good place to start.

We just weren’t sure if we would be facing another crisis when it came to compromise.

It wasn’t long before Sidney was bored of my going over the specs of each of the pieces we both seemed to like and every few minutes he would start to move away from me and towards the door. He’d spotted the sporting goods store when we arrived and I’d seen him looking in that direction. But every time he tried to scoot away I pulled him back in with a question or concern.

He would toss his head back and sigh before moving back towards me.

He knew I was onto him, but it didn’t stop him from trying. I had to give him credit for that.

“Babe, we’ll stop at Dick’s before we leave, I promise. But I need you to focus. She’s going to spend a good stretch with this furniture. It has to be right.”

“I think you should have brought Sebastian.”

“It was your bright idea to do this Sidney. Remember? You were the one who wanted me to bring you along for this part of it? If I picked the design for the mural without your help then we had to pick the furniture together.”

“I’ve decided that I made a bad deal.”

“Sidney,” I warned. “This is a big decision and I need your help.”

“Fine. But you’re really going to let me stop and browse?”

“Until my back hurts. Then you’re taking me to lunch.”

“Your back always hurts.”

“Blame your daughter. The faster we get this figured out the sooner you can go make yourself feel like a man again.”

He did what he could to focus and join me in the search and it was less than an hour before we had made our final decisions on each piece for the room. We had the crib and a bassinette for our room. We managed to find everything that we needed as far as storage was concerned, and they were more than willing to deliver it all the next day saving at least a little hard labor for Sidney.

I chose not to remind him that he would have to be the one to put it all together.

I let him wander the sporting goods store for a while before eventually dragging him away from a rack of moisture wicking shirts he already had a dozen of. I was hungry and I could feel my ankles beginning to disappear. I needed to get off my feet and have an early lunch with Sidney while we had the time for it.

“I saw a Subway on the way in. We’ve still got that gift card left over from Christmas.”

I sighed. “When I said you were taking me out for lunch, I meant it.”

We decided to simply go where we didn’t draw attention, a place where people almost expected us to be and never really took notice. The Café was easiest for us and close to home to boot. We didn’t have to hide there and he never hesitated in taking his hat off before we ate. There was a comfort there that we didn’t really have anywhere else, especially not in the city. It was why we tended to wander away rather than move into the city when we had things to accomplish. It was just a slight adjustment that others wouldn’t have to worry about, but I’d grown so used to it, I never thought anything of it.

We didn’t talk names over lunch, though I knew we each still had ideas of our own developing in our heads. I wondered if we’d ever find that happy medium we needed, the place between his need for a kid who could blend in and my want for our child to have something unique to them.

But lunch in a public venue wasn’t the time to discuss it.

We didn’t try to figure out who their next opponent would be but we’d watch the next two games play out in order to find out where things would wind up when the second round kicked off the next week. Sidney didn’t seem to want to talk much about it. He’d played well in the first round and he didn’t make a big deal about the points he’d put up or managing to do the same in the next round. He just wanted to keep his head down and barrel through it.

He didn’t want to think about it until they got to the finals because ultimately, the cup was all that mattered.

“I’m gonna see if I can’t get one of the guys to come over tomorrow after practice and help put together some of the furniture for the nursery,” he said as he picked at the appetizer platter between us.

“I can help.”

“No.”

“Why not? I’m perfectly capable of reading directions and handing you tools.”

“Because I’ll swear and you’ll yell and tell me I’m doing it wrong—“

“Only if you’re actually doing it wrong.”

He rolled his eyes. But stayed quiet as the waitress, one who’d waited on us dozens of times, returned to the table with our food and refills of our drinks. She smiled as he thanked her and I waited for him to continue.

“It doesn’t bode well for keeping your stress levels down. I don’t want you getting stressed over it.”

“You worry too much.”

“I worry the right amount, Wyn.”

“It’s just baby furniture.”

“Yes it is; which is why you don’t need to get stressed about it.”

“What if I promise not to get my blood pressure up? Will you let me help you then?”

He shook his head slowly and bit into his meal. Suddenly his food looked much better than my own.

“I’m going to get one of the guys to help.”

“Why? Because it’s a man’s work?”

“I wouldn’t have ever said that. It’s because my teammates can’t divorce me if and when things go south in this process.”

“Just get one who knows what he’s doing.”

“Like I don’t?”

“You don’t. You wouldn’t know a monkey wrench from an actual monkey.”

He looked appalled as if I had questioned his masculinity on some deep level. But we both knew it was true. His skills on the ice were a marvel. His skills with power tools were more along the lines of terrifying. Keeping him away from most construction projects was a must. It was actually lucky we had the funds to hire things done or we’d live in hut with no running water. He was inept as a handyman. It was that simple.

“Come on, Canada. You’ve got zero skills in that department. You aren’t a plumber or a carpenter.”

“Maybe not, but I can follow the directions to put together a crib.”

“Really? Like you put together the shelves in your den?”

“That’s different. All of the directions were in French or Spanish.”

“You speak French.”

He folded his arms. “Only one of the shelves fell out.”

“Well our child wasn’t on that shelf. If the crib falls apart with her in it, I will murder you.”

“Did your maternal instinct just kick in?” he kidded.

“Stop it.”

“It will be fine. We’ll test it out before we finish. It’s gonna be fine.”

“Test it out? Are you going to climb into it?”

“I figured we’d put Sam in it. If it can hold a ninety pound dog it should be able to hold a baby.”

“Sometimes I’m convinced that you’re an idiot but I know you aren’t. It’s really confusing.”

I picked one of the fries from his plate. The salad I’d ordered just wasn’t hitting the spot. But the appetizers and the greasy potatoes on his plate were doing a better job of satisfying me. I was hungry; I just didn’t know what I was hungry for.

I’d known a few nights before and had made him leave the house in the rain to help me fulfill the craving that I was having. He hadn’t been happy about the fact that I pushed him out the door in his pajamas and made him go across the Ohio River just to get me a Reese’s Blizzard from the nearest Dairy Queen. He also wasn’t happy when I wouldn’t give him more than a couple of bites of the thousand calorie treat. But he’d done my bidding without complaint.

He took a quick bite of his lunch. “On some level, all men are idiots.”

“I won’t argue.”

“Figured you wouldn’t.” He watched as my hand crept across the table towards his fries once again. “Is there a reason you didn’t get your own?” he asked as he pushed the plate towards me.

“Because I thought I wanted a salad and it turns out that I didn’t want a salad.”

He shook his head and reached for my plate.

“What are you doing?”

“If you aren’t going to eat it, I will.”

“You don’t have to eat my salad.”

“You’re about to polish off my fries and I do need some calories when I can get them. Can’t be losing weight during the playoffs like I did last year.”

“You mean when you couldn’t eat solid food?”

“Ding, ding. We have a winner. I’ll eat the salad, you finish the fries.”

“I am eating for two.”

He chuckled. “Eat for however many you need but the next time you send me out for ice cream I’m going to do the smart thing and get my own.”

The next day after practice he got home alone and headed off to get changed. I didn’t ask who would be coming to help and let him go on his way.

Sebastian was already there helping me with some of the smaller details of the room. We were trying to find a way to best organize the closet and place all of the items that friends and family had already sent our way. There was a laundry basket full of clothing and Sebastian and I had spent the morning picking linens for the bed. The only thing we hadn’t decided on was which curtains I wanted to buy, but I had several ideas. It was a start and once the furniture was together, having arrived just before Sid got home, the room would start to feel more put together. We had time to make sure it was ready for her. After all, it was most likely we would be back in Nova Scotia when she was born. Still, it would be nice to accomplish something in the room that had been sitting empty since we’d moved into the house the previous spring.

It would be especially nice to have it waiting for her when the next season started and we returned to Pittsburgh.

It wasn’t much later, as Sidney attempted to make sense of the directions for the crib, the doorbell rang.

Sam skittered across the floor downstairs, barking all the way. She’d clearly been sleeping and the sound had likely startled her awake. It was astoundingly rare that we had guests that weren’t Sidney’s father so the sound of the doorbell always took her by surprise. And with the delivery men we’d already seen, she didn’t even know what to do with herself as the sound chimed through the house. I followed the path Sam had taken through the house and pulled the door open, feeling a bit winded from the quick jaunt down the stairs.

The form of the man standing in the doorway pulled my eyes upwards until they landed on the smiling face of the Russian who was leaned against the doorframe.

“Geno.”

“Wyn,” he replied.

“What’s up?”

“I come help Sid.”

I sighed. “You volunteered to help put together baby furniture?”

“No one else want to do it. Sid too hard to work for. Sid say he pay me with dinner.”

“Of course he did.” I pulled the door open completely and let him in. “Come on, G. He’s upstairs waiting.”

Geno gestured for me to lead the way.

“I’m starting to move a little slower now, maybe you should go first.”

He shook his head. “I follow. Or I can carry.” He raised an eyebrow playfully and again urged me forward.

I laughed as Sam bounced cheerfully around Evgeni’s feet as he followed me up the stairs. Sid was looking through the directions as Sebastian sat quietly on the other side of the room sorting onesies and arranging them by size and then by color.

“Of all of the guys on the team, you choose a bachelor to come help. Why not Beau and Bortz? They have always proved helpful.” I said sarcastically as I led Geno into the room.

He chuckled. “Everybody is enjoying time with their families before the next round starts. Can’t blame them for that. Geno had a free day and I offered him dinner.”

“Dinner that I will no doubt have to cook.”

“We’ll have something delivered.”

“He knows about as much about putting furniture together as you do.”

“And put together we should be able to figure it out.”

Sebastian snickered from the other side of the room.

“You could help,” Sidney commented. “But you might break a nail.”

“I’m not big on splinters,” Sebastian retorted. “But I will gladly supervise. I have experience with blueprints and understand structure.” He looked Geno up and down and I slapped his arm.

“No flirting with the Russian. You have a boyfriend and he has a girlfriend.”

“No girlfriend,” Evgeni replied before glancing at Sebastian. “But not really interested.”

Sidney laughed as he tossed the directions towards Geno. I wandered back over to Sebastian as the boys dug into the projects at hand, pulling items from boxes as I stacked the onesies on one of the shelves.

“How was the rest of Logan’s trip?” I asked.

Sebastian smiled broadly. “Great.”

“Great? That’s all I get?”

“I will remind you that I didn’t meet Sid or even know his real name until the two of you had been together for like nine months. I think I have earned every right to be a little withholding about this whole thing.”

“He has a point, honey.”

“Stay out of it, Sidney. Focus on your job.”

“Bossy,” he muttered.

Sebastian was still smiling. “New York is pretty much a definite thing. He’ll be moving in the fall and I’m pretty sure I’m going to follow him.”

“Good, I’m happy for you.”

“So am I,” Sidney piped up.

“Me too,” Geno added. He leaned towards Sid and lowered his voice. “Why happy for him?”

“He’s moving to New York with the guy who DJ’ed our wedding.”

Evgeni nodded but looked more than a little confused by what was happening before he turned the directions in his hands and tried to regain his focus. Sebastian and I began pulling sheets and blankets out of the packaging so I could wash them all before we placed them in the room. They’d need to be washed again before the baby slept in the bed the boys were putting together, but I wanted to make sure everything was just right.

“So,” Sidney said, directing his words at his teammate. “You and Oksana are off again, eh?”

“She not worth it.”

“Wondered when you’d figure that out. But what happened, man? She was all over you the last time I saw you guys.”

The words he’d used in the car on the way home were “Jesus Christ, she was on him like stink on shit.” He may have also said that if she was giving him a lapdance he should have at least been giving her some singles, but it was okay that he hadn’t been so explicit in his conversation with Evgeni. After all, we never knew how long a breakup would last with the two of them. There was a chance they’d be back together before the boys played their next game.

“I dump her this time.”

That, as far as I was aware, was different. From the stories I’d heard, Oksana was generally the one who broke up with him for one reason or another. Once it was because he didn’t spend enough time with her, once he was being clingy, and another he had gone out with the boys without consulting her first even though she wasn’t in town.

She seemed to enjoy playing with his feelings and as much as he tried not to let it affect him, it did. She had the ability to throw him off his game and mess with his confidence. And she liked doing it. She liked to flex her muscle in their relationship, to control everything and keep Geno bending to her will. She was skilled at it but that wasn’t anything to be proud of.

I was amazed he’d put up with it.

Perhaps it was because he was comfortable with her in the way he wasn’t with American girls. She was Russian and she could communicate with him in a language that he was fluent in. He got frustrated with English because he didn’t feel like he said the things he wanted to in the way that he wanted to.

“Why? Not that I’m complaining.”

“She say Wyn start to look like cow.”

“You dumped your girlfriend because she said my wife looked like a cow?”

Sid’s eyes flashed to me and I could tell that he was trying not to laugh. I looked away, trying not to start laughing myself. The grave tone that Geno was using made it sound so serious. It wasn’t even a terrible accusation. I felt like a whale and I wasn’t even close to the end of my pregnancy. I was getting bigger by the day, trying to hide the extra girth under baggy clothes so the press wouldn’t jump on the story. But he made it seem like her words had been a horrible assassination of my character.

“She make cow noise, I get tired of it. Got angry and say enough. Wyn not deserve.”

“I like that you like Bronwyn, but it’s a little weird that she’s the deciding factor in your relationship.”

“Wyn be here a long time. Oksana can’t get along with Captain’s wife, goodbye.”

“Whatever it takes, man,” Sidney murmured, shaking his head.

They finally started to focus as I pulled Sebastian away to help with laundry.

“So he broke up with the hell beast for you?”

“When have I ever called her that?” I asked as I dropped the sheets into the washer.

“You haven’t. I came up with that one on my own.”

“You should be so proud.”

“She told the other wives you were pregnant before you and Sid were ready to announce it for Christ’s sake. She’s a special kind of crazy.”

“Maybe that’s true. But I just want Geno to be happy. He’s a good guy and he and Sid are pretty close. If Oksana had made him truly happy, I’d be willing to put up with it for the rest of Sidney’s career. But I don’t think she ever did so I’m certainly not going to be sad about it.”

“So he just needs to find that special someone?”

“I think so,” I replied, tossing the detergent into the machine and closing the lid. “It’s a pretty great thing when you do, wouldn’t you say?”

“Trying to change the subject back to me?”

I leaned against the washer, the vibration of the machine soothing against the ache in my lower back. “I won’t deny it. I just wasn’t sure you’d find that person.”

“I was looking in the wrong places. I was too locked up in worrying about looks and status.”

“So you don’t think Logan is attractive?”

He chuckled. “I think he’s incredibly attractive, but a year ago I wouldn’t have seen through the tattoos and the lip ring. I would have let it distract me from a great guy. It’s kind of like you before you met Sid.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You were convinced that you would end up with a guy with a college education, someone brilliantly creative and trailblazing. You were going for the guy that would buy an art gallery with you and take you to Italy to elope. You were not after a hockey player from Atlantic Canada just like I wasn’t after a DJ who was two years younger than me.”

“I guess we both got lucky and figured it out at the right time.”

“Maybe the Jolly Russian Giant will too.”

“I hope so. He deserves someone who really loves him.”

It was true. I’d never imagined myself with a guy like Sid. I always assumed it was because I grew up with parents who were in the same industry and worked so well together. I must have thought that another artist would suit me better than anyone, someone who lived in their head as much as I did and was creative in the way I was. But that wasn’t the case. I dated a couple of artists and they drove me crazy with their self-loathing and cynicism. I had plenty of that for two people.

That wasn’t to say that Sidney didn’t drive me batty, he was perfectly capable of making me insane, but it was different. That came from his competitiveness and his difficulty in compromising. It came from his need to be right and in control. It came from the fact that I was willing to challenge him and frankly that was the greatest part about us. We complimented each other. He had confidence where I lacked it and I was willing to put up a fight to break through his habits and obsessions.

We returned to the nursery at a slow pace. Our work was done, the closet ready for whatever the grandparents could throw at it by fall. My appliances had to do the rest of the work.

“That piece does not go there,” Sidney was explaining.

“Look at directions. I’m right.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Sid, it go there.”

Sebastian looked towards me and I sighed.

“Aren’t you two supposed to be working with each other and not against each other?”

“It would be easier if he would actually let me read the directions.”

“I read them fine.”

“You don’t read them fine,” Sidney retorted.

Geno narrowed his eyes at Sidney and insisted that he was right.

They were both wrong, they were dealing with an extra screw for another part of the project. Technically it didn’t go anywhere. But it took me looking at the directions and Sebastian actually knowing how structures worked to figure it out.

The dresser and bookshelves came together more quickly and Sebastian and I vacated the room as they moved the pieces where they belonged. It gave me time to switch the wash into the dryer and retrieve a few takeout menus to choose from for dinner. If I’d been willing to cook earlier, I had changed my mind. We were ordering in and Geno would have to let that be his payment for helping out and somehow swearing with less frequency than my husband had during construction.

“Wyn!” Sidney hollered down the stairs. “Come make sure everything is right before we call it a day!”

I heard laughter from upstairs as I hustled back up the stairs to meet the boys in the nursery. Sebastian followed, texting his boyfriend as he walked.

“If you fall down these stairs and break your neck, you can’t sue me.”

“You have insurance,” he said with a shrug, his eyes on the screen of his phone.

I stopped outside the door, taken aback by the way it actually looked like a place that our daughter could comfortably spend the first few years of her life. The white furniture and the clean lines stood out against the cool neutral of the walls. The pieces were perfectly framed by the tree that grew out of the corner. I spotted a few places that I wanted to place a few blossoms floating on the wind, but once the linens were in place and the shelves were full of books and toys, it would be perfect.

Sebastian stood next to me laughing. I heard the click of the camera on his phone and took a good hard look at the crib.

“Babe,” I muttered. “Sammy looks like she’s in dog jail.”

The lab looked displeased with her place behind the bars, but I was nice to see that even with a large dog in it, the crib was solid. Sidney shook the rail just to hammer the point home. Sam looked at him as if to ask what she’d done wrong.

“She’s fine.”

“Sidney, she’s your dog, not a crash test dummy.”

Geno laughed. “She make herself useful.”

“The big Russian has a solid point there.”

I rolled my eyes. “Would the big Russian like to decide on dinner since he volunteered for this crap?”

He nodded.

“Menus are in the kitchen. You decide I’ll order it.”

The men filed out of the room in a single file line. Sidney pulled up the rear and I grabbed him by the belt loop. He could have easily continued on, but he allowed me to hold him back. He stepped in front of me, looking down with a grin on his lips.

“Yes?”

“Thank you, Sidney.”

“It’s my job.”

“Hockey is your job.”

“Hockey is my profession. For the next eighteen plus years, she’s my job.”

His hand fell to my abdomen where it so often wound up in the quiet moments that we shared. He leaned down to kiss me then took a step back.

“Are you hungry? I’m hungry?”

He wandered back towards the door.

“Sidney Patrick,” I warned.

“What?”

“Get the dog out of the crib.”

“She can take a nap in there. She’s nice and relaxed.”

She was lying on the mattress, he muzzle on her paws. But I wasn’t about to leave her captive.

“If you don’t get her out of the crib it’s going to be tested to two-hundred-ten pounds when you sleep in it tonight.”

“You would never.”

“Never test a pregnant woman, Canada.”