Portraits of Ice Men

He unraveled the knot in his drawstring and his wet athletic shorts tumbled to the ground in a light flutter of mesh, slipping over his bony knees and angular calves.
Standing in his spandex, he lifted his heavy eyes to look out the bedroom window, facing into their backyard, long and crisply green, furnished with a deck, a hot tub, and some new landscaping.
He heaved a sigh, pulling at his damp hair.
Turning on his heal, he made his way away from the window and toward their walk-in closet, looking for his biking outfit.

He stood in the kitchen, sucked into his short-length biking tights and a Black Dog biking top. His shoes sat on the counter--a habit Jamie always scolded him for--next to his helmet. He leaned against the light granite countertop with a carton of organic chocolate milk, his thumb rustling the plastic wrapper that once held his straw.
Despite it being a beautiful day out, Patrice felt rather cloudy. He had trudged to the gym this morning hoping to drip away his foul mood--which he had begrudgingly stomped through their house the past couple of days, like leaving tracks of mud in his wake on the polished kitchen floor--but again, found himself unable to rid himself of his rainy personality as of late.
He had come to hate his birthday, this year.
He closed his eyes, steadying himself.
It had once been easy to forget about in the spring, with the post-season they steamrolled like a bunch of Canadiens in the 1950s. They were an unstoppable force even though some of his best friends had since been moved to other franchises. His day with the cup was fast approaching but he found that he was less enthused given he and Jamie's current situation.
He expelled a breath, disappointed in himself. For not eagerly awaiting Stanley; for not being able to produce.
In the beginning of the summer, Jamie had done her best to console him.
"It's almost been a year," he had whispered, turned to face her in the dark of their bedroom in the quiet outskirts of Québec City. "Almost a whole year..."
"Mon amour," she had purred, cupping his cheek and then stroking his short hair back behind his ear, where it neglected to stay, straight and stubborn. She didn't mind though; she repeated the motion an infinite amount of times. It calmed her. It calmed him.
"Don't you worry, my love," she whispered back, scooting even closer to him in the dark. She pushed her knee between his bony ones and their waists touched softly as her bare thigh pushed between his hairy ones. She traced the back of his calves with the heal of her foot, knowing they were tender from his explosive summer workouts.
Their window was open, the sheer white under curtain blowing from their picture window that featured the backyard toward his side of the bed, lifting and twisting gently in the cool suburban air. She rested her forehead to his, nuzzling their noses side by side.
"It's gotta be me," he said softly, his hand gripping the waistband of her soft boxer shorts pajamas. They were tied round her waist with a silk, light pink ribbon. He fingered it nervously. "It's gotta be... It's me."
"Hush, mon amour. That's enough," she scolded quietly in the dark, lifting her chin and tucking his strong head beneath it. She pressed her lips into his hair and closed her eyes, breathing in his scent.
She fingered the silver chain around his neck, hooked to his Saint Joseph pendant, nervously.
In all honesty, she didn't know what it was.

Patrice didn't listen to music when he biked. Biking was a new thing for him--at least biking outside--and he enjoyed it mostly because that's what it was: outside.
He worked out every morning in a gym for upwards of two hours, and three days a week he followed his morning session with a mid-morning skate. The other two days he joined Jamie for a yoga class, something they had been doing together since she helped him rehab from his first concussion over three years ago.
Today was Friday, so he was supposed to skate, but since today was his birthday, he was let off the hook. Personally, he would've rather skated than come home and back to the real world, so he opted for biking instead, knowing not to expect Jamie to be home.
Neither of them spent too much time in the house as of late; they were too busy trying to pretend to be happy elsewhere.
He didn't know where Jamie had been off to, but she had taken Hudson, their Maltipoo, which they had originally adopted in a couple's preparation for having a baby.
He shook his head, scrambling his mind as the helmet knocked from side to side along his thick skull. He made a mental note to tighten it the next time he stopped.
He pushed through the stiff build up of lactic acid in his calves, pushing the sad memory of their happiness away as well, now knowing in retrospect that they had been so naive when embarking on this journey together almost a year ago.
It wasn't unusual that Jamie was away with Hudson when he came home from the gym or a conditioning skate. Most of the time she was down the road with Gretta, sitting on their porch in the sun with Hudson asleep at her feet and Joanie asleep at her breast, Gretta and Guill's third and youngest. That or she was running errands or taking Hudson for a very, very long walk; her own version of stress relief.
Today he had stopped by his brother's place on the way home and Gretta had promised she hadn't seen her sister-in-law all morning, and Guill had the kids out on the boat with their grandfather.
"Oh, Gerard's in town, eh?" Patrice laughed, speaking of he and Guill's father.
"Oh like he had far to travel from," Gretta humored him, nodding up the road to where the two brothers had built their parents a summer cottage. "Plus we're celebrating your birthday tonight, right?"
"Oh, yeah," Patrice said, trailing off awkwardly. He pulled his black Reebok shirt away from his wet stomach. Even though he had changed shirts after his workout, he had still managed to soak this one.
"Well, thanks; I'm gonna hit the bike path, maybe I'll find Jamie out there," he said recovering, giving Gretta a fake smile, the kind of smile he had been giving everyone this summer.
Gretta smiled back politely and then nodded.
Patrice backed away from the door, spinning on his heel to head down their front steps before he heard his name again. He curiously turned back to his brother's wife.
"These things take time, Love," she told him, kindly, seriously.
Patrice sucked in his lips, keeping them firmly pressed between his front teeth. He dipped his head and shifted his gaze to the left, up the front lawn of their house. Their day lilies were beautiful and they had a hockey net and some plywood laid to rest on the green grass, plastic hockey sticks fitted for five and seven year olds and Guill's favorite trusty CCM stacked up against a bird bath.
He wanted it.
He wanted all of it.
"It will be worth the wait," she promised him.
He nodded and turned, making his way back down to his car.

He caught Jamie in the act.
He pulled up silently behind her, steadying himself on the bike trail with one foot on the ground.
She sang softly, cradling Hudson in her lean arms, donned in a white long sleeved cotton shirt and a tan, sheepskin Patagonia vest. Her tan, lean legs descended from black nike shorts, and her feet were rounded in grey nike sneakers with a hot purple trim. He'd tried countless numbers of times to get her to order free custom Reebok's through him but she insisted she'd only ever wear Nikes and continued to keep it that way.
Stubborn, just the way he loved her.
Watching her baby their dog, he found himself smiling for the first time all day.
She quietly hummed, swaying back and forth and holding Hudson in her arms. His tail peeked out from underneath her elbow and curled lovingly up her arm.
She stood, as tall as she could, facing the fence that separated the bike trail from the surrounding woods.
"What'd'ya see, Hudson?" She asked the dog, excitedly, as they peered through the dark woods together. "What'd'you see, baby?"
Patrice's heart wheezed, and it wasn't from the cardio.
The birds moved to and fro all around them in the trees, rustling the leaves and chirping at one another. Patrice watched Hudson's head tilt as he followed their dancing through the forestry.
"I see a beautiful girl and nothing but a rascal," Patrice chuckled, forcing his smile as he kicked himself forward towards his small family.
"Patrice!" Jamie cried, both startled and excited, whirling around and bumping into his handlebars. She flashed him her beautiful white teeth, straight and unabused, unlike his.
"What did I tell you about spoiling Hudson like that? He's going to forget he's a dog," he laughed, letting the eager dog lick his knuckles as he wrapped his other hand around the back of Jamie's neck and pulled her forward for a kiss.
Their was a quick spark between them for a heartbeat of a second and then they pulled away. Jamie looked stupefied, then quickly shook her head.
When was the last time they had kissed on the lips, anyway?
Jamie knew exactly. It was two days ago. They had had a fight late in the night and she had left him in their house all alone to sleep it off. She drove the few houses down the road to Gretta and Guill's to sleep in their guest room and at the crack of dawn he had come knocking. She remembered the moment exactly. She and Gretta were in the formal living room, right by the entranceway into the house with cups of coffee, still in their pajamas, discussing Patrice's breakdown. Gretta's boys still slept in their bedrooms above them but Joanie was up with Guill in the family room attached to the kitchen. Patrice had knocked--he knew not to ring, not to wake the kids--and Gretta opened the door. Jamie knew it was him, he didn't even have to speak. She bowed her head to hide her crying face and before she could look up he was on his knees in front of her, still in his clothes from last night, spewing out apologies in French and English and a few tears of which he hid from his sister-in-law by wrapping his arms around Jamie's waist and burying his face into her robe.
"How was the gym? You're home early," she noted presently, looking at her athletic watch after she placed Hudson back on the path and took hold of his leash. He trotted over to Patrice and lifted himself to his hind legs, stretching up Patrice's spandex clad thigh for attention.
"Got let off the hook early," he said, not needing to mention the fact that it was for his birthday. Jamie knew, and as of two nights ago they weren't speaking of it.
Their was an awkwardness that filled the space between them, one that Patrice desperately wanted to break and was desperately trying to. He felt like he was drowning without her.
"Say something," she giggled, pointing toward their dog with the toe of her Nike as he whined, waiting for his affection. As much as Patrice liked that they had returned to being pleasant, he couldn't help but feel his dip in attitude had changed them, for the time being.
Patrice bumped the dog off of his knee so he could dismount his bike. He leaned it toward Jamie, as if asking her to hold it, which she did, giving him a small smile. With his new found freedom, he bent forward and picked up Hudson, who wriggled happily, no doubt eager to be closer to the birds in the trees than his Alpha Dog.
"That's better," Jamie laughed, raking her fingers through the hair on Hudson's back as he tried to jump from Patrice's arms to lick the dried sweat from his face.
Patrice gently tugged on Hudson's hair across his chest and tucked curls behind his collar around his neck, just like he liked, but his eyes never left Jamie, who smiled as they both fawned over their dog.
"I love you," he told her.
She didn't need to look up to know that Patrice wasn't talking to Hudson.
After a few seconds she responded. "I know," she said, softly, looking up at him slowly. "And I love you."
"I'm sorry," he told her, without letting silence dilute his confidence.
She lifted her eyes from Hudson, over the great expanse of Patrice's chest kept within the confines of his Black Dog biking shirt, gold and blood orange, up his neck, dotted with five o'clock shadow and inner grief, to his eyes, tired and lonely.
"It's okay," she began.
"It's not," he said, insistently. In a few seconds of silence they each privately replayed his tantrum from two nights ago. How she had crossed the length of their backyard in her pajamas and her robe at two in the morning to try and coax him into leaving the backyard hockey rink and coming to bed, to coo to him and plead with him that everything was alright because they still loved one another and they would find a way to make this happen; how he had defiantly told her no, and that he needed time, and that he just wanted to have a baby so goddamn badly and he had never failed so miserably before at anything in his life and in his blaze of a broken stick, a hurl of a bag of pucks, and an overturned net, she had furiously left him to sob it out at the only place he apparently found peace anymore.
On the rink.
"I've just been... impatient," he said, dropping his gaze to Hudson who panted, looking around innocently. "These things take time..." He repeated Gretta's words, still sinking in. "I just didn't know how much; I've been impatient, and uncooperative, and a brute--"
"No, mon amour," Jamie whispered, shocked. She took Hudson from him and set the dog on the sidewalk. He shook and took a seat, sniffing at an inch worm, oblivious to the heavy problems of being human and in love. "Not a brute; Patrice, you're frustrated. You're allowed to be," she told him, taking his hand. "I am, too."
"Fine. But I've been rude, unhelpful, mopey--"
"Hurt, sad, scared, alone," she helped, bringing his knuckles to her lips. She looked up at him. "I know because I feel those things too. Inadequate, defunct," she suggested, to name a few more.
Patrice sighed, bringing the butts of his palms to his eyes, pressing into them painfully.
How could he be so stupid? So selfish?
He inhaled, frustratedly. Not only had his depression over the matter ruined his own sense of self, but it had inflicted Jamie, too.
How could he let the anticipation of something ruin the most beautiful thing he already had?
Why did he have to be so selfish?
Slowly, a man in his fifties made his way across the bike path with a toddler strapped to the back of his bike who was babbling happily.
Jamie and Patrice watched them pass with heavy hearts, as the little boy giggled and bopped up and down in the backseat, playing with the oversized sunglasses the grandfather had tied around his neck with a shoelace.
Together, they watched them disappear round the corner.
Hudson whined, wanting to follow, his adoptive parents boring him.
Patrice's face burned as his heart swelled, but when he felt the warm tips of Jamie's fingers crowd the spaces between his, he let out an exhausted breath.
"It's easier if we feel them together, mon amour," she told him, softly. "No one knows what we're feeling more than the other, okay?" She asked, pulling him toward her, unclicking his helmet under his chin and pushing it up along his head until his hair flicked out from underneath.
He raised his eyes to meet hers.
"Okay," he promised, as the birds continued to chirp all around them. "You're right."
"It's not about being right," she told him.
"Well... you're right about that, too..." Patrice said, his lips slowly twisting into a cocky smile, clearly pleased with his cleverness.
"Oh, aren't we quick today," Jamie teased, pushing a finger into his sore chest and pushing away from him as she giggled.
Beneath their feet, Hudson clicked his jaws at a bumble bee.

Patrice sat on the edge of the bed, his waist wrapped in a towel, his elbows bent on his knees, a book held between his hands. The paperbacked "A Clash of Kings", the second book in the A Song of Fire and Ice series sat dog eared and well-traveled between the pads of his fingers as he read, freshly showered and feeling slightly revived.
Jamie had hated the Game of Thrones TV series he had become obsessed with three years ago at the encouragement of Johnny Boychuk, and could hardly stand to watch it so, naturally, she bought him the series of books instead for Christmas two years ago.
Patrice wasn't the fastest reader in the world, but, he had been chugging along.
His stomach growled and as he scanned the pages about the House of Lannister he wondered when Jamie would emerge from the shower so they could depart for Whole Foods and he could ravage the free samples as they bickered over the better side dish to bring to his birthday party tonight at Guill and Gretta's: mashed sweet potatoes with a cheat-day worthy marshmallow topping or fire-roasted sweet corn. She'd win, even if it was his birthday (he would let her), and they'd come home and shuck corn on the back deck and he would be as happy as he could be drinking lemonade with her and throwing raspberries at her whenever she wasn't looking and pretending to look innocent when she was.
Without a word she stepped into his view wearing her bathrobe. He was intrigued, because his side of the bed was furthest from their bathroom, so she had gone out of her way to come see him as opposed to slip off to their walk-in closet to get ready for their shopping trip.
He curiously looked up at her, a crooked smile that depicted a pleasant surprise on his face.
She studied the face of the man she had loved and would love forever, despite moments when he may falter in character, like everyone; the hard line across his nose that reappeared in the same plane on his cheek from where his helmet sliced him from his first concussion, before they had even married. The hunk of skin and eyebrow missing from the top of his left brow from before they had met. The white flick of where Guill split his lip open with a puck on the frozen pond when they were in grade school.
None of it marred his face the way the sorrow deep inside him did. Like the loneliness of not being a father did.
"How was your...?" but before he could think of the word that described the peculiar little glass room in their house in which they bathed, his breath slipped from between his lips as the terry cloth robe slid from around her shoulders and fell into a heap on the floor before him.
"Jamie..." he sighed, letting his book slip through his fingers and onto the floor beside his feet as he made his way to stand and meet her.
His stomach tumbled now, but this time, with a different sense of hunger.
"Patrice," she whispered, allowing him to envelope her, falling with him, kneeling over his thighs as he sat back on the edge of the bed.
Their lips met in a heated embrace, immediately parting for their tongues to battle and their chests to heave sighs as she eased him back until his shoulder blades touched down on their cool, moss green quilt. He wrapped his arms around her bare back, hugging her close to him until they needed to breathe, then letting them travel to hold her face in place as he tilted his to gain more access to her mouth.
"Oh God, I've missed you," he whispered, rubbing his nose along the side of her face, breathing into her ear as she nibbled on his bottom lip, dragging it away from his teeth.
"I love you," she growled, knotting her fingers in his hair tightly, causing him to sharply inhale, the intimate pain one surely he deserved. "So much..."
Their lips met again and as she pressed her hips into his lap he noticed the throb of his cock, ready, having been ignored for over three and a half weeks.
He sat up, one hand wrapped around her waist, the other providing him support outstretched and locked at the elbow behind him. They both exhaled heavily as Jamie pawed at the towel twisted around Patrice's waist and grabbed at him through the damp material much to his carnal delight, despite the roughness.
"Oh, mon amour," she panted, straddling him, her knees on either side of his thighs folded as they continued to kiss and nip at one another, each fumbling with the wad of heavy towel that kept his secrets locked beneath the cloth, the barrier that kept them from their ultimate union.
He kneaded her breast eagerly, too high off of her body for his fine motor skills to expertly twist her pink nipple between the pads of his fingers. He opted for sucking it, breaking from her kiss and lifting her to kneel on her knees, standing over him. She clutched his face, pressing it to her chest with a moan. Her soft, flat, barren belly pressed up along his voice box, his throat scratchy with a day's worth of a beard as his chin was forced up and he tugged lovingly at her breast.
"Patrice," she breathed, knotting her fingers in his hair again, prying him away from her chest. She eased him back onto the bed and pulled the half of his soft Salmon colored towel away from his waist. Before he could lift his hips and shimmy the damp material from under his backside she had sunk onto him, her eyes delicately closed and her mouth hung open, as if frozen in shock and pleasure.
"Patrice" She breathed as he cursed in French, rising at the waist as if something that ran from head to toe inside him had snapped, pulling him together, meeting her above the bed, his arms around her.
She moved again, this time her body pressed up against him, allowing him to slide deeper inside her, rubbing alongside her front inside of her, her arms taking hold around his thick neck as his eyes twisted shut and his hands grabbed her ass, holding tight.
"Jaime!" He groaned, high in the back of his throat, overwhelmed by her warmth, her tightness, her vibrating energy, her want.
Another rise and fall of her body over his left his mouth hung open too, but this time with no cry, instead, desperate to remember how to breathe and even more desperate to find hers.
They pressed their foreheads together and each moaned as she moved again, Patrice burying his face in the side of her neck, taking the soft skin of her nape between his teeth to keep from crying out.
"Patrice," she whispered, pulling up, away from him, looking down to his face as she took hold of his cheeks, ready to move their rocking to a more intimate level. He knew which move she would pull next; the one that made him see stars, the one where she led with her hips and bottomed herself out, the one that would surely finish him off for good, now that he was three weeks out of practice and practically bursting at the seams.
"Don't!" He cried, wrapping his arms around her slim waist, holding her down onto him, full of him to the hilt. "I need a... I need a minute..." he breathed, sweating already and laughing, embarrassed. "You do crazy things to me, mon amour," he assured her, tilting his head up to kiss her. "Crazy things..."
After giving him some space at the beginning of summer, when his mood started to falter as the one year mark approached, Jamie wanted him. Badly. She didn't care how long he lasted. And quite honestly, at this point in time, the more he could spill into her the better.
She knew she had been caught, her next move anticipated, so with a coy smile, she tensed around him, as if pulling him in even further, knowing he could keep hold with such a gentle move, and he inhaled in a hiss, his eyes clamping shut again as he was sure he had gone cross-eyed, his hands clutching to her like he never wanted to let her go and his chest swelling with deep breathing exercises.
His head rested against her collar bone and he kissed her clavicle, pronounced and heaving over her tan skin.
"Oh, it's been so long," he groaned, feeling her tingle with anticipation around him. "I've missed you so much," he whispered.
They hadn't made love in over three weeks, and the few times they had after winning the Cup had been almost dutiful between them besides the first couple of celebratory times. Now that the season had ended, there was less to take Patrice's mind off of the fact that they had been trying to conceive for almost a year, and the benchmark seemed to cause within him a deep, disturbing worry.
Before his breakdown the other night, there had been a quiet and undisturbed tension between the two of them as his birthday approached, and to drown his anxiety and sorrow, Patrice had put countless hours into the gym and skating and running Station Blu, the Nordic Spa he shared ownership in, and Jamie had grown detached at her husband's loss of his sense of self. They still slept curled together every night, but they hadn't so much as kissed, emotionally and physically frustrated as they were as the one year mark approached.
Her heart hammered as she gently pushed him back onto the bed and he loosened his grip around her. She smiled down at him as his hands found her waist and rounded her hips and her backside adoringly. His toothy grin smiled up at her, and she bit her lip, smitten with finally seeing the man she loved so much return.
"Okay," he told her, softly, having regained his composure.
She pulled herself tightly around him and watched his belly sink and his face twist, his ribs rising in a fit for air at the sudden pressure around his cock. With a long, deep exhale, his eyelashes fluttered apart and he gently released his grip on her ass. He looked up at her again, his lips pulled to one side in a smile.
"Crazy things, mon amour!" He chuckled, returning to his last refrain as he gently lifted his hips underneath her and she gasped, excitedly.
Smiling now, too, she stretched herself over him, tightening her grip on him between their legs as he inhaled and grumbled, happily, running his hands up and down her back, the pads of his fingers tracing her spine. Her nipples, hard with anticipation, tickled his chest until she lay on him fully, covering his body with hers.
Their faces met in a heated embrace and Patrice couldn't help but lift his hips again, as if at the gym, testing his athleticism, feeling himself move through her wetness in a very, very patient wait.
They parted for her to give him a knowing smirk, but instead of being met with boyish eyes that wanted a good romp, she was met with his mahogany eyes full of a warm kindness and pooled with adoration. She faced not a boy but a man, a man who very much rose everyday to please those around him...
He took a deep breath, allowing himself to slip out of her just an inch, only to reunite with her to his hilt with a satisfied sigh.
... But perhaps he rose to please her the most.
She smiled fully, showing him her perfect teeth and her dimples and mashed her lips to his, their noses pushing and shoving and their breathing exchanging, giving the other the very purpose of life with a great urgency. His hands netted into her hair and one came to rest on the back of her neck, his tongue searching deep within her soul for as much affection for him as she could muster.
She whimpered in an effort to slow their intimacy. Like everything Jamie did, her actions had a purpose, and Patrice knew that, so he willingly obliged, no matter how hungry for her he was.
"Patrice, I love you," she told him, caressing his cheek as he looked up at her, his eyes brighter than they had been in weeks.
"And I love you," he told her in a whisper, tracing her triceps.
"I want us to share something we can't share with anyone else," she whispered, her voice tight.
"Jamie," he breathed, deep and low, tensing his hips to feel himself inside her again, bringing a hand to push back a few of her loose kinks of hair, having prison broke from her bun.
"I meant it, and I mean it. I want this with you more than anything..." her voice cracked.
"Jamie..." he cooed, bringing both hands to her cheek.
"I want a baby with you, Patrice. I always have," a tear slipped down her dark cheek. "And I don't care how long it takes," she whispered, planting a heavy kiss on his face, right where his nose met his cheek, repeating the same words she had first revealed to him exactly a year ago, on this day, his birthday, with him inside her, in this very room. He took a shaky breath, realizing the anniversary and her choice of words.
He closed his eyes and felt his lashes grace her face.
"I don't care, as long as it's with you," she promised.

Like a lion empowered Patrice kissed her ferociously, causing her to lift herself off of him. He wrapped an arm around the lean expanse of her back and rolled her across the bed, underneath him.
He dove on top of her and pushed deep inside her, moaning something that sounded like her name as he endured a feeling he could only describe as drunkenness as she wrapped her legs around him and lavishly kissed him whenever his face was near hers.
In a tangle of limbs and love, they sighed as they rocked, Jamie's palms pressed flat against their headboard.
Patrice panted, his jaw slack, unable to notice the damp towel still wrapped around his ankle as he held her beneath him and loved her with great purpose.
Jamie clutched him to her, a strong lean elbow locked around the back of his neck, halting his upper body's movement away from her, over his shoulder. Patrice knew the drill and rocked only with his hips. For whatever reason, Jamie always liked to climax with him close to her, at times even holding his face before hers as they battled to breathe. Although it inhibited some of his movement, he didn't care. In fact, he found it really romantic, especially when they were making love to create life. What other way was there to be close to somebody?
Feeling her tighten around both his cock and his neck, he knew she was almost ready.
"I'm close, Patrice, I'm close," she gasped into the space of the room above them, her eyes screwed shut and her mouth open in ecstasy. She leaned her head into the side of his, his chin hooked over the shoulder, his face buried in their pillows.
"I know," he grumbled back happily, turning his nose into her hair just above her ear. He licked the stretch of her neck behind her jaw and bit her ear lobe, making her cry out.
Her arm tightened around his neck, her fingers pulling painfully in his hair. He knew she was there, all he had to do was think of spilling inside her to trigger his own release.
"Come with me," he mumbled, his lips pressed to her temple as his breathing began to hitch and his lower back began to ache and he found himself unable to kiss her because his mouth had to hang open for him to breathe and she writhed beneath him and cried his name and lifted her hips and he exploded from the inside out in a fit of warmth and love and hope that coated the walls within her in a thick embrace, a promise to never have to be apart.
And then there was the quiet of heavy breathing and the pulsation of love as they road out their highs.
And then Patrice laughed.
After their heart rates fell out of synch, his falling faster than hers, he told her he loved her again.
He leaned over her, stilled himself on his bent elbows and holding her cheeks with his hands as they panted into one another's faces.
He roughly planted a kiss beside her nose as he felt her ripple over his cock, enjoy the fleeting moments of their love.
"Oh mon amour," Jamie moaned, her hands finding his and her fingers wrapping around his lean wrists. She released them and pressed her hands to his face, whipping one over his brow, feeling the strength of his skull beneath his skin. She pulled it down the side of his face and underneath his chin, feeling the power of his jaw.
"My love," she whispered, hooking her finger around the tip of his nose and pulling him forward for another kiss as he grumbled, happily.

"Mama?" Andre asked, the top of his blonde head just visible along the top of the glass patio table. He stood on his tip toes to peer along its surface, making coy eye contact with his Aunt Jamie as she winked at him, sipping from her glass of water.
"Yes, Love," Gretta cooed, leaning to her left from where she sat across from Jamie and extending her arms to welcome her little boy into a hug. The five year old obliged, giggling as he stepped toward his mother and revealed he had smuggled another crab cake from the kitchen.
"Oh Bubba, you can't eat that if you want to go jump!" She said, cautiously, reaching for the little boy's snack.
"Why not?!" He cried, lifting his hand from hers and dropping out of her lap to avoid losing his prize.
"You'll get sick if you jump after you eat. Go jump now and I'll save it for you," she explained, holding her hand out. The little boy, whose face was round for being an offspring of the Bergeron-Cleary boys, narrowed his eyes, thinking of his options.
Jamie watched the little cogs turn in his head, adorned with bleach blonde hair from so many days spent in the Quebec summer sun. His skin was slightly tanned and freckles breached across the bridge of his nose. His eyes darted between the crispy snack in his hands and the trampoline in the backyard, currently occupied by his uncle and older brother, who were doing tricks he could only dream of at a mere five years of age.
Jamie watched him bite his lip, and wondered where he had picked up on the habit.
A shrill shriek was heard from across the backyard as the boy's eyes widened and the three of them directed their attention to the grass from the patio.
The sliding glass door to the back of Guill and Gretta's house opened, and Guill emerged with cleaning supplies for the grill.
"Crack his head open yet?" He asked the women with a smug smile.
"Again! Again!" Called Andre's older brother, Gerard.
They watched Patrice bend at the knee, take a massive jump, and propel the seven year old boy into a shrieking back flip with the physics of the black trampoline skin. As they both crashed back to its surface, they rolled in laughter and panted from all their hard work.
"No Uncle Pat, me! Me! I wanna go! I wanna go, Gee!" Andre cried, and without thinking, the little boy crushed his crab cake onto the glass patio table and bolted down the patio steps, running full down the flagstone path, rimmed in day lilies, speeding to the trampoline currently occupied by Patrice and his older nephew.
They watched the eldest of children climb down from the trampoline, Patrice standing over him holding the net open, and bound up towards the patio. Andre grabbed onto Patrice's arm and the uncle lifted him onto the bouncing surface as he little boy wriggled and giggled, happily.
"Dad how come you don't bounce us like that?" Gee asked, making his way up the patio steps. He was in a black Bruins shirt with Patrice's 37 on the back, a terribly un-matching pair of red mesh athletic shorts stopping short of his knees, cut up and held together with bandaids much like any other eight year old boys'.
"Did you dress yourself?" Gretta asked in shock.
"Mom," Gee responded, turning around and batting at her hand as she tugged on his shorts. "Dad?" He asked persistently as Guill scraped across the grill, ignoring his son, one of the joker's favorite past times.
"Did you even say hello to your Auntie Jamie?" Gretta asked, giving her eldest's hip a little push to further frustrate him. Like Patrice, Gretta and Guill's oldest had been born a very serious boy, and his lax, loving parents couldn't help but razz him every once and a while.
Gee, named after his grandfather, Gerard, had meant business when he saw his Uncle Patrice climbing the front stairs of his house, he and Auntie Jamie having walked the suburban road from a block over to celebrate Patrice's birthday. He had burst through the front door and grabbed his uncle's hand, guiding around to the back of the house to jump on the trampoline together, and Jamie hadn't seen her husband since.
"Mo-om!" The eight year old complained, whirling around with his hands outstretched.
"Rude!" She scolded, half kidding, as he turned back to face his dad, still ignoring him. She gave his little butt a kick and he "humphed!" holding his backside but continuing to ignore his mother.
"Such a ruffian," Gretta sighed, exasperatedly, rolling her eyes at Jamie. Jamie laughed, shrugging. They looked over their shoulders to see Patrice spinning wildly in a circle on the trampoline with Andre's legs wrapped around his neck. The two screamed as if out of control.
"Boys..." Gretta laughed.
"Men!" Jamie corrected.
"DAD" Gee cried, annoyed now. "Why don't you bounce us like Uncle Pat on he trampoline?" He demanded to know, pushing on his father's lower back to elicit a response.
"Gerard! Stop begging, sheesh," Guill laughed, hip checking him gently away from the grill.
"Ohp, full name's out! You're in trouble now, sucker!" Gerard, Guill and Patrice's father chuckled, making his way onto the patio, having just arrived.
"Grandpa!" Gee cried, abandoning annoying his father and flinging his arms up into the air for a hug.
"Gramma!" He cheered after letting him go and wiggling around him to receive kisses from Sylvie.

"Aw no way, this is great," Patrice laughed, pulling the framed photograph from its light blue colored wrapping.
"What is it? What is it?" Andre asked, climbing into Patrice's lap.
"Andre," Guill sighed, making to collect his son from his brother.
"It's fine, Guill. It's fine," Patrice told him sincerely over the blonde boy's head. Guill shook his head and reclined back in his chair on the patio. He spilled a swig of beer into his mouth and crossed his ankles as his brother opened his present. The sky had darkened now, and they had had dinner and Sylvie's vanilla cake with strawberries and now it was time for presents. Patrice usually wasn't one for presents, but since Guill had had kids and his birthday was in the summer, when they lived so close to one anohter, the present unwrapping ceremony had been one he had warmed up to, mostly because the boys unwrapped everything for him.
"It's a picture, bud, see?" Patrice asked, showing him the sturdy black frame with the black and white photograph set in it, behind white cardstock. He fastened his hand around the young boy's stomach, holding him nestled into the bend in Patrice's waist as he sat, his bare feet pressed into Patrice's distressed navy Chino shorts, toes wriggling, playing with the thick fabric beneath them. Andre molded into him willingly, biting on his thumb nail.
"That's you and Hudson," he said.
"Lemme see!" Gee asked, rising from his own seat between his grandparents, his hands on the patio table.
Patrice smiled as he turned the frame for the rest of his family to see. It was a photograph of Patrice sitting on he and Jamie's velvet green sofa in their mudroom in their apartment in Boston, holding Hudson. Hudson had just been neutered and had a cone around his head, and was standing on his hind legs on Patrice's bent knee, his front paws pulled up to his chest, looking up toward the ceiling as if trying to dance out of his owner's strong grasp in his daze of puppy painkillers. Patrice gripped him with his left hand across the canine's chest and leaned back, also looking at the ceiling with his bottom lip pouting, as if mimicking the dog.
"Hah!" Jamie laughed, bringing her hand up to cover her laugh. "I love it!"
"Oh, so sweet!" Sylvie laughed as well, her hand over her heart.
"Grandpa's boat is cooler!" Andre announced, wiggling off of Patrice's lap and running over to the model boat Patrice had unwrapped first from Guill and his dad. He lay down on his stomach to peer through the plastic packaging and traced the bow with his finger.
"Oh, very nice Andre," Gretta feigned a compliment, rolling her eyes as her and Guill rose to collect their used dessert plates.
"Bring it here," Patrice laughed, waving his sister-in-law off. These kids could do or say anything and he'd still think they were the best thing in the world. Andre struggled to lift the boat from the deck and enlisted the help of his grandfather as they slid it across the deck to Patrice, who also fell to his knees so the three generations could examine the machine together.
"What did you get Uncle Pat?" Andre asked Jamie over his shoulder as Patrice and his father discussed the functions of the model boat behind him.
"I booked him his dentist appointment," Jamie said simply, shrugging.
"Aw, really?" Patrice asked, sitting up, a disgruntled look on his face.
"If you don't get that chipped tooth filled in I'll never kiss you again," Jamie warned in a devilish grin.
"Oh, well, laying down the law, I see," Gerard teased his son. Patrice gave her a wink, being sure to flash her a smile that displayed his half of a tooth, mostly hidden behind his K9 with a slight twist.
Jamie returned her attention to Joanie, who sat happily in her lap behind Patrice, playing with the hem of her bright orange skirt and repeating "Da!" over and over, to which Jamie would lean forward, tickling her sides and whisper back excitedly "Wha?!" and Joanie would giggle.
For some reason this cycle excited Gee, her eldest brother, who flopped out of patio chair and onto his knees on the deck and went "Ba!" and Joanie shrieked with a fit of laughter, batting his freckled face with her pudgy baby hands as he dramatically went "Oof!"
"We don't hit!" Jamie laughed, trying to save her nephew's adorable face from the baby's barrage, gently wrapping Joanie's hands in her own as she laughed, proud of herself.
"Yes we do!" Andre cheered, leaping up from between Patrice and his grandfather and attacking Gee, who had dramatically flopped onto his back from his little sister's fists of fury.
"Yeah right," Patrice laughed grabbing his bare feet and lifting him up as the boys cried in laughter. Patrice stood to his full, holding his nephew upside down in front of him as he twisted and turned and shouted in delight.

"No, I mean, he's been... he's been very emotional about it, really," Jamie said sincerely, nodding. "More so than me, even, I think," she laughed, blushing.
"Patrice is a dreamer," Gretta said, rolling her eyes. She dunked a dish in the collected water in the kitchen sink to rid it of soap and hung it in the dish rack. "Even though he pretends not to be." The women stood in the kitchen, cleaning a few remaining dishes of the party as the boys laid in the adjoining family room, piled on the couches, watching TSN.
The last time the two checked on them, Andre was out like a light, his head in his father's lap, and Gee's eyes were heavy, leaning back onto Patrice's dark green, white and plaid linen shirt, Patrice's hand wrapped around his front and holding onto the top of his head.
"I hope that if we have boys they're as affectionate as yours," Jamie thought aloud, stacking the plate she had just dried for Gretta on a pile of clean ones.
"I doubt it'll last, haha. Teenage boys are not cuddly," she laughed. "Fact."
The two shared a laugh.
"I'll admit I'm happy we had boys first. I think it helped ease some of Guill's nerves. Men are clueless as to how women think. Even when they're married to them, and I think that makes the prospect of having a girl nerve-wracking."
Jamie laughed, remembering the first time she and Patrice babysat Joanie over Christmas so Gretta and Guill could take the boys to their first hockey tournament.
"It's everywhere," he had said it awe as they had to diaper her for the first time.
"At least she can't pee on her face, eh?" Jamie teased, elbowing him in the side as she began to clean the little baby girl up.
Jamie shook her head, returning to the present to see Gretta moving back towards her from checking on the boys once more.
"How are they?" Jamie asked, finishing drying the last of the silverware.
"I think it's safe to say that boys grow back into coddling after they're teenagers. Go take a look at your husband," she giggled, pointing over her shoulder.
Jamie took the few steps so that she could see over the breakfast bar and into the carpeted living room. All four boys were conked out in a disarray of bare feet and slackened jaws, but her favorite pair were Patrice and Gee. Patrice had since pushed a pillow between the back of Andre and Guill's hip, sinking between the back of his nephew and the back of the couch. Twisted the fit between his uncle and the back of Andre's legs was Gee, also using one of the couch's pillows, spooned into Patrice's lower torso. Patrice' legs hung crossed over the arm of the sectional, and one twitched in his sleep, like it always did. His hand rested underneath Gee's shirt, and moved gently in soothing back rub, which told Jamie everything she needed to know.
He wasn't asleep. He was savoring the moment.

"That outfit, though," he grumbled happily as they unlocked their own front door after their short walk home in the dark. "You had me going all night, babe."
"Oh, this old thing?" She asked mischievously, turning around to face him in the lobby of their own home, big and tall with floor to ceiling sliding glass doors everywhere. She glowed in the soft yellow light.
She danced under her orange pleated skirt, the one that cinched in a high waist, higher than her belly button. She wore a white, crop top tank that ended where her ribs did, and whenever she moved Patrice could catch a sliver of her tantalizing tan skin. Paired with her brown and gold leather sandals, she looked like a present for him herself.
"Yes" he groaned, lunging toward her as she squealed. Hudson barked somewhere upstairs, probably being startled awake after thinking he was still alone. He trotted down the stairs happily, wagging his tail as Jamie twirled away from Patrice' grasp, the rough slide of his five o'clock shadow across her jaw line, and dropped to her knees in a flutter of orange to greet the dog. Patrice bent over her, not having finished his romancing over her. He wrapped her into his chest and kissed her hair, then locked his chin over her shoulder to make noises at Hudson as he danced with glee that his adoptive parents were back.
"You should go open up the hot tub," Jamie suggested, turning to him over her shoulder and kissing his cheek.
"I ain't gettin' in there," he announced, pressing his hips into her backside as he was folded over her, squatting behind her, as if reminding her that he had more important things on his mind than frying his manhood in almost-boiling water.
Patrice hadn't been in a hot or cold tub all season, and Jamie could guess he wasn't about to start now. The varying degrees of startling temperatures weren't good for a man's sperm count. At the Bruins' end of the year party, she remembered hugging a distressed looking team physician goodbye. The hockey season might be over, but certainly not his work with all the injuries compiled in their run for the Cup.
"Please make your baby over the summer. I refuse to wrap his entire lower body but his groin in ice packs one more time" Babs had half-joked. Jamie had blushed, laughing, and apologized profusely on her husband's behalf. Only a few choice teammates had known they were trying to conceive all season, including Ferry and Krista, even though they were far away now in Edmonton. There was no hiding their attempts from Babs though, and Patrice ended up confiding in him a lot over the season.
"You can sit with me on the side and dip your legs, mon amour," she purred, rubbing her nose into his cheek.
"I can," he murmured, turning his had to face hers, rubbing their cheeks together as his lips kissed the sensitive skin before her ear.
Jamie's head was spinning. If he hadn't been sitting behind her, providing her a strong structure on which to lean upon, she might've melted.
"Let's do that," she whispered, as his hand traveled up her chest, tracing her collar bone, revealed between the straps of her tank top. He wrapped his fingers around her thin shoulder and gave her a squeeze.
"Okay," he whispered, tilting his head forward and placing a kiss on the soft skin of her neck as his big fingers slid down the round of her shoulder and over her bicep, steadying her as she swooned.
Hudson whined, now being ignored, and Jamie gave a soft squeal and a jump, being shaken back into the present moment.
Patrice laughed, letting his forehead rest on Jamie's shoulder.
"Ugh, you're killin' me, Hudson!" He announced, sinking to his knees and planting a kiss on Jamie's bare shoulder. He pulled her strap back up, resetting it, and stood behind her. Hudson danced before him, proud of himself. Patrice rolled his eyes and bent in half, giving him a solid pat as he stood on his owner's leather boat shoes.
Jamie stood and hugged him from behind, a good, sturdy hug. Patrice stood at full length and turned around to face her, bringing his arms around her shoulders.
"I'll go get your present," she smiled up at him, her chin on his chest.
"I'll go turn on the tub," he confirmed, his fingers already playing with the hem of her crop top, finding the smooth skin of her back. "And don't you dare change."

They sat side by side on the rim of the hot tub, their legs pink in the hot, bubbling water below them. They had given Hudson a new chew toy, so he sat in his outdoor bed happily gnawing a few feet away from them. They shared a green bottle of Pellegrino sparkling water since Jamie wasn't drinking pre-conception, and Patrice fumbled with an envelope.
"You know you don't need to get me stuff," he told her, his eyebrows raised.
"And you know I always do anyways," she sang back, kissing his strong shoulder, hidden under his collared shirt.
"Very true," he said, tucking the empty envelope under his glass of water so it wouldn't blow away in the humid Québec summer air. "Let's see..." he said, reading the front of the card. It was one of those half cards that was wide enough for a gift certificate to sit in little slits in the material on the inside.
Sure enough, when he opened the card, there was another, much smaller card niched inside, but it wasn't a gift certificate.
"You're cruel," Patrice laughed, freeing his appointment card from the dentist's office in Québec City and flipping it over to confirm his appointment next week.
"Well I'm not a liar," Jamie said, provocatively pronouncing liar, visibly lifting her tongue to the roof of her mouth to form the word as she looked up at him, teasingly.
"No, this is true," he smirked, playing along with her. He leaned over to her and gave her a kiss.
"There's more, you know," she giggled as he pulled away, smelling of everything she loved. His Acqua Di Gio, his indescribable pheromones, the little sheen of sweat on his brow, a little dash of her own perfume, the taste of his mouth that always stayed the same, no matter what he had eaten or imbibed...
"Yeah?" He asked, an eyebrow raised.
"Mm hm," she hummed, excitedly, nodding toward the card. He examined it again, and where the dentist's card had been fitted into it's slits there was a space between the inside of the card and the back of the card. He pulled it open with a soft pop and turned his head, narrowing his eyes.
"Pull them out," Jamie encouraged, kicking her legs in the bubbling water excitedly as she helped him free his present.
"Tickets?" He asked, dislodging a few, slim documents and handing her the empty birthday card.
"For?" She asked, eagerly.
"...Tuscany?" He asked in disbelief, his eyes growing wide.
"And?" She asked again, excited still.
He fumbled past the Air Canada tickets to a brochure. "It's a biking tour?!" He asked, his voice high.
"We're going to bike and eat our way through Italy. It comes with cooking lessons and wine pairing classes and we'll have days off to ourselves in the city."
"Woah," he whispered, thumbing through the documents again.
"And we bike ourselves, we're not in a group. And people at the cottages and hotels give us maps and make sure we check in and everything," she explained.
"Just you and me?" He asked, letting his hands and the tickets and the brochure fall into his navy clad lap and twisting his neck to look at her.
"Just you and me," she confirmed, giving him a smile.
She watched as he face slowly pulled into his lopsided grin.
"Yeah?" He asked, just to be sure.
"Yes," she giggled, blushing.
"Really?"
"Really, Patrice!" She laughed, smiling harder than she had all summer.
He moved, quickly fastening the tickets back into the card and placing them securing under their bottle of Pellegrino. Then, in one swoop, he leaned over and collected her, sliding her onto his lap, making her straddle him. They laughed and blushed and she wished him a happy birthday, lacing her arms around his neck and bending forward to kiss him.
His hand fastened around her waist but soon one traveled up the back of her orange skirt and disappeared up the back of her crop top.
"You'll have to let me know how all the wines are, though," she told him, smiling.
They shared a kiss.
"We can skip the wine stuff. We'll make up for the loss of calories in extra helpings of pasta," he told her, sharing her smile.
"We are not going to travel the country of Italy and not have at least one of us indulge in their world renown wine, Patrice!" She laughed, mock-scolding him.
"But that's not fair," he moaned, both of his hands falling to cup her backside and hold it close to his hips.
"Think about what we'll be doing every night," she said, giving him a knowing look as she held his chin and tilted it up so their eyes could meet. She searched through his warm brown orbs, wide and innocently open for her, allowing her to do so.
"Making a baby," he told her, his voice soft with a hint of a smile. She felt his legs tense with anticipation and excitement below her as he curled his toes and flexed his calves, like he always did.
"Making a baby," she told him, her face glowing and her lips curving into a smile. He pulled her to him and their chests met with the help of their arms, eager to hold the other tight. Their faces turned heatedly as Jamie's hands cupped his cheeks and she ground her hips to his. He groaned, his fingers balling the material of her skirt, trying to find their way under its many pleats.
"Jamie," he breathed as he found her smooth backside, discovering she was wearing that silky boy-cut underwear that drove him mad inside.
"I love you," she whispered, lip locking him again. She felt his lips grow tight under hers as he smiled into their kiss, and soon she had caught his happy sickness and had to pull away, her smile too big to maul his lips with, too.
"That's what I was gonna say," he chuckled, running his fingers up along her hips and making her cry in laughter and dance over his lap.