I Was Hoping You'd Ask

I don’t remember much after lying down in Gibby’s arms. I woke up on the couch though, alone. I was a little upset and shocked. I sat up and looked around. His shoes were gone so I was pretty sure that shot down the hopes of him being in the bathroom or something. I made my way into the kitchen to get a glass of water. I looked over at the microwave to see what time it was and noticed a white paper taped to the front of the microwave. I walked over and ripped it off, “Hey beautiful, I had to get ready for morning skate. See ya later? –Brian” I could immediately feel the smile on my face form. “At least he didn’t sneak out on me,” I thought aloud.

When I read his note, it reminded me that today is game day. I quickly ran to my phone that I left in my room. I had a couple text messages from Dan. They were telling me that my game day report was good and it should be posted in the morning. He told me to not worry about coming into the office and that I should just show up to CEC before the game. This made me pretty happy considering how tired I was and I could just stay home for a couple more hours. I wanted to actually get some sleep in my own bed. I was also really happy about not having to run into Rebecca, the more I could avoid her, the more I didn’t have to worry about not telling her about Gibby and I.

After a couple hours of sleeping and cleaning up around the apartment, I decided to go downtown to get some food before having to show up to the arena. I went to my favorite place, Primati Bros. I had my normal sandwich and my cherry coke. I enjoyed the time alone for awhile. I sat there and checked my emails, and texted my dad for a little bit. It was 5:30 and I knew I better get going to the arena. I wasn’t sure what Dan would want me to do but I loved getting there early. Being there before everyone else was such a great feeling, I loved going to CEC as a fan, but being there in silence is something else. It’s almost magical.

I arrived in no time and met up with Dan. “Hey, Ali. Nice to see you here early.” He was always so sweet. I loved watching him talk on TV and getting messed with. He was even more fun in person. “Yeah, being here before everyone else is pretty cool.” I replied to him. “Yeah, I agree with that. I thought maybe you could do the pre game interview with Sid tonight, if you were interested?” I was so enthusiastic with my reply and I think he noticed because he laughed at me afterwards. “I would love to!” I told him. I couldn’t believe he wanted me to do the pre game interview. I couldn’t wait. There were only a couple more hours until the game was scheduled to start. They were taking on Toronto, which is always a fun, physical game. Last time we played them Kadri and Sid had a couple words for each other so I knew I was going to ask about that.

I was standing in the bright light, waiting for Sid to join me. I just finished the opening part of the show by telling everyone who I was and that I was waiting for Sid to join me before the game. I turned around, partly because the camera lights were annoying me and I just wanted to enjoy the view of the ROOT sports back drop that was behind me, it was so exciting to be in front of it. “Back in 5…4…3…2…” my thoughts were interrupted and I quickly turned back around. Sid was next to me; I don’t know how long he had been there. The words came out of my mouth before I could even think, which was a good thing considering we were live. “Hey Sid…” I was going to continue by asking my first question because I didn’t want to keep him there long and they don’t usually answer to the “hey” part, but surprisingly, Sid did. “Hey Ali, how’s it going?” I was so shocked, especially coming from Sid who wasn’t always this friendly with the media. “Uh I’m doing well Sid, how about yourself?” I replied to him. “I’m feeling pretty good.” I just smiled and continued with the question knowing the game was going to start in 15 minutes with or without their captain. “Last game, you and Kadri had a little fun on the ice, so to speak, what do you think the attitude is going to be like out there on the ice tonight from puck drop?” I asked him; proud of the question I had come up with. “I think it’s going to be pretty interesting, Kadri is a great player and he was just trying to get his team fired up, I respect that. I think it’s going to be a really fun game though and we’re excited and ready to bring energy out there.” He replied to my question. He always knew exactly what to say to these dumb questions. I would never be able to do it. “You guys handed it to them pretty badly last time you played them, are you guys going to change anything or should we expect to see a lot of the same stuff we saw last time?” he looked like he was actually interested in the questions I was asking, I mean he usually looks really interested but I was happy with how he looked. I didn’t want it to show how nervous I was, but I’m sure he knew. “Uhh, yeah I don’t think we want to change much of our game, it seems to be working well right now. I think we are going to keep things the way they are, we had a lot of younger guys in that game so that’s really gonna be the big difference here. I don’t think it should change how we play just the players that are out on the ice. The younger guys played great for us and at times I forgot we were playing with WBS boys but that’s a good thing, it gives us some hope of what to expect from our farm team.” His answer was prefect; he was calm and cool the whole time. I wish I could say the same. “Alright, well thank you for joining us Sid and good luck tonight.” I smiled and put the mic back in front of him. “Yeah, thanks Ali. See ya.” I smiled as he walked away and looked back at the camera “Back to you guys.” The lights went off and I took a big sigh of relief. “Hey Ali…” I heard and turned around to see Sid standing right before the locker room doors looking back at me. I guess he was waiting for me to finish up. He just smiled at me and said probably the nicest thing I heard the captain say. I think the smile on my face spoke for itself. “You’re a natural.” He said to me before walking through the doors. “Good luck!” I screamed back at him before the doors shut, hoping he heard me.