Sky Full of Stars

Tyler doesn't bring it up again for a couple of days, probably because he has more pressing issues to worry about, like how Jamie still won't talk to him outside of hockey. The season resumes after the Olympic break and the boys really need to be on the best of terms so that they can focus on pushing through to playoffs, but Jamie is being incredibly stubborn and Tyler just has no idea how to handle it. The first game back goes fine, each of them getting on the score sheet, but the second is the complete opposite. Then they win the third game over Buffalo and drop the fourth against Columbus.

Now it's game day again and Calista is beginning to worry that Jamie may possibly hang on to this forever and never forgive his teammate and then she will have made the team dysfunctional after all. He won't talk to her about it though. If she tries to bring it up, he gets all huffy and either ignores her or changes the subject. She briefly considers going to ask Jordie for advice but then decides that would probably be more trouble than it's worth because he doesn't know anything about her and Tyler and Boston and she's not willing to tell him. She's definitely worried about it but still not as much as Tyler is. Plus, on top of all her personal life drama, she has a project that she's working on at work and she's having to devote a lot of her time to doing that so she doesn't spend as much time mediating for the guys.

The knock on the front door breaks her concentration from her laptop and she cracks her knuckles, leaning back against the the sofa as she shouts for them to come in. Tyler slips in the door and makes his way over to the living room, flopping down in the space next to her with a sigh and she eyes him suspiciously before sliding her laptop off of her lap and onto the coffee table in front of them. "Shouldn't you be taking your pre-game nap right about now?"

"Yeah, I am in a minute. I just had to come see you first."

She turns, pulling her left leg up under her body so that she can be face to face with him. "Something wrong?"

"No, I-....I think Jamie forgave me."

"Really?"

"I cornered him in the locker room before skate this morning so he couldn't walk out on me while I was trying to talk and then I told him everything."

"Everything?" she repeats nervously.

"Well, I didn't tell him about our date the other night. But I did tell him that I like you and that I wanna date you."

Even though it's been a week and a half since their date and Tyler's either been at her apartment or inviting her up to his nearly every day except for the brief span of time while they were gone to play Columbus, she still has trouble believing it. It still feels like some kind of weird dream that she's going to wake up from any second and feel stupid about. Every time he says something like that, she wants to roll her eyes and call him a liar but that's just her own insecurity nagging at her. Instead, she takes a moment to swallow those feelings down and then sidesteps the topic altogether. "What did he say?" she asks him instead.

Tyler shrugs. "He didn't say anything. But then he came up to me when I was on the bike after and asked if I wanted to get lunch so I said yeah and it was like he was completely back to normal. Like the last week never even happened."

"Then you guys are fine again," she says with a smile. "That's his way of letting you know that he's over it. A peace offering of sorts."

"Are you sure? Calista, he was really fucking pissed at me for over a week. He can't just suddenly be over it."

"Maybe-.....Maybe it was what you said. Jamie knows you well enough to be able to tell whether or not you're being sincere. If he knows that you were, then he's much more likely to forgive you and let it go. He didn't want to be mad at you, Tyler. I think it was just a lot for him to process. But hearing your side of things probably helped."

"I don't know," he sighs, scrubbing a hand along the scruff on his face. "I hope so."

"Trust me, if he were still angry at you, you'd know." Tyler nods and starts chewing on his bottom lip but he doesn't respond verbally. She glances over at the clock and then back to him. "You do know what time it is, don't you?"

"I'm going," he says petulantly, but then a grin slowly stretches across his face. "Come with me."

"Come with you where?"

"To take my pre-game nap."

The thought of being anywhere near his bedroom, his bed, makes her so nervous that she feels like she could throw up. She's pretty sure he knows better than to think anything would actually happen between them for a long time, but that doesn't make her heart beat any less erratically. Simply lying next to him while sleeping is still absolutely too much and she actually feels panicked just thinking about it.

"I can't."

"Why noooot?" he whines, grabbing both her arms and pulls her in a little closer to him. He brushes his thumbs back and forth across the insides of her wrists and she rolls her eyes, letting out a chuckle at his childish behavior.

"I have work to do," she says, nodding her head toward her laptop.

"Can't you do it later?"

"Not if I wanna go to the game tonight."

He looks ready to challenge that but she raises her brows at him and he exhales heavily, pouting. "Fine, I guess. Next time."

"We'll see."

"We will see," he insists, and then he leans in to kiss her, letting go of her arms to cradle her face in his large hands. She relaxes into it, lets herself enjoy it for a few moments, before she reluctantly presses a hand against his chest, pushing him away from her.

"I'm not taking the blame if you play like shit for missing your nap."

He laughs and leans in again to press one last quick kiss to her cheek. "Okay, I'm going."

"Good luck tonight," she calls out to him just as he's opening the door. "Score some goals."

Tyler turns back to her, grinning. "Anything for you, babe," he says, giving her a wink before he closes the door behind him.

-

It's hard not to be crazy excited with what's happening out on the ice. The boys are fucking lighting it up out there against the Canucks. Jamie scores with an assist from Tyler and then Tyler scores with an assist from Jamie and it's so awesome to see them back to themselves, playing their best hockey and having no more tension between them. Jordie gets an assist on Tyler's second of the night and by the time they head to the locker rooms at the end of the first period, they're up 3-0. Even Felicity notices the difference in the boys on tv because she texts Calista about it during the intermission.

The second period goes by in much the same way, giving Dallas two more goals and Vancouver one, but the last goal of the game in the third period is Tyler with Jamie's assist, giving Tyler the hat trick and making the whole arena go crazy. He's got a big grin on his face when he looks up at her in her usual spot in the stands and winks and all the people in her section look around in confusion while she tries not to blush or otherwise make herself too obvious. The rest of the game, the guys are all smiles and when she makes it down to the locker room after, she can hear them shouting and laughing over the loud music coming from inside.

Calista instantly recognizes the woman who comes down the hall not long after her, stopping a few feet away and pulling her phone out of her purse to type out a message to someone. Before, Calista would have groaned inwardly and very possibly made a break for it before the guys joined them in the hall, but now, strangely, she just gets the urge to go over and say hi. Bethany's blonde hair is longer now and she seems taller than Calista remembered but other than that, she looks exactly the same as the last time they saw each other. She isn't really sure how to do it without being super awkward aboout it, but she eventually just bites the proverbial bullet and says the older girl's name, causing her head to pop up from where she was looking down at her phone.

"Calista?! Oh my God, hi!" Much to her surprise, Bethany breaks out into a huge grin and surges forward to close the four foot gap between them and pull Calista into a hug. "How are you?!"

Somehow, they fall into conversation easily just like they used to, except for the first time, Calista isn't preoccupied with swallowing down her feelings of sadness and jealousy. She can actually look at Bethany without wanting to burst into tears and when Jordie emerges from the locker room to find them having a conversation, the small smile she offers him is genuine. Jamie and Tyler are right behind him and they look about as surprised as he had to see her standing there with Bethany, but luckily no one says anything about it. Jamie throws his arm around her shoulders and she gives him a little squeeze, congratulating him on his goal, two assists, and second star of the night. He makes the executive decision that they're going out after such an ass-kicking game and no one really has a reason to argue.

Since Calista drove to the arena, she goes to head toward her car, not wanting to leave it there, but Tyler offers to go with her so that she's not alone. Jamie and Jordie both eye him suspiciously but they don't call him out on it and they all go their separate ways, Calista and Tyler to her car and the others toward the direction of Jordie's truck. Tyler turns the radio off as soon as they pull out of the parking lot and Calista's trying to focus on driving but it's difficult to ignore the way his eyes are studying the side of her face.

"Can I help you?" she finally asks, chancing a glance over at him and finding him smiling in amusement.

He reaches over to pinch the green fabric hanging off her arm, pulling it down to see the #14 sewn onto the sleeve. "You still won't wear my jersey?"

"Do you want people to find out right now? I mean, what about Jamie? The other boys?"

"I don't care if they know," he shrugs simply. "I want them to know. I want everyone to know."

"Tyler, we don't even know what we are and you want to tell other people about us?"

"What do you mean, 'we don't know what we are'? Calista, I thought I made it pretty clear what I wanted."

"But-"

"Are we dating?" he asks, thankfully interrupting her because she has no idea where she was about to go with that. He sticks his hand out between them, waiting for her to take it. "Do you wanna date me?"

They come to a stop at a red light and she finally looks over at him, a careful, guarded expression on his face, before dropping her gaze to his open hand. She sighs heavily before reaching over to slip her hand into his much larger one and he squeezes it, grinning. "Good choice."

"Shut up," she scoffs, rolling her eyes, and when the car behind them honks their horn, she realizes the light has turned green so she lets go of him to take hold of the steering wheel again. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I still don't want the guys to know. Not yet anyway. I just-....Jamie. I want to make sure everything else is okay first."

"Okay," he agrees with no resistance at all.

"Okay?"

"I'm not gonna make you tell people if you don't want to. But you better believe I'll be ready to announce it to the locker room as soon as you give me the go-ahead." He grins and shakes his head. "Man, Dilly's gonna kick my ass. And Eaks will want to, but let's face it, he wouldn't be able to."

She chuckles. "I'm pretty sure they'll be fine."

"I think you underestimate how much they like you."

"Or you overestimate."

Tyler only shrugs. "Think what you want, but I'm the one who's with them in the locker room every day and on buses and planes and in hotels on roadies. We're teammates, Calista and we spend a looot of time together. We talk about everything."

"That's highly unsettling, considering I just agreed to date you."

"Okay, maybe not everything. Not that stuff. I mean, we've talked about, like, hook ups and old relationships and stuff, but nobody's in there sharing private details about their serious girlfriends or wives or whatever. There's a line."

While it does comfort her a little to know that they have a line of conversation that isn't to be crossed, it's still pretty scary to her that they tell each other so much. It's not even that she didn't already know that hockey teams do that because, hello, she's been around Jamie and hockey forever, but it's just that she's personally never been a part of it. At least she's pretty sure she hasn't. She and Jordie were a secret so she feels confident saying that he didn't tell the boys about their relationship. She certainly hopes not anyway.

"That's good to know, I guess."

"Seriously, Calista. I'm not gonna do anything that makes you uncomfortable. Believe me, I'm gonna do whatever I can to not fuck this up. You know that, right?"

She blushes furiously but nods anyway as she slows down to make the turn into the parking lot of the bar. She spots Jordie's truck almost immediately and pulls into the empty spot next to it, all of them climbing out of their vehicles at the same time. Jamie leads the way in and he, Jordie, and Tyler head over to the bar while Calista leads Bethany back to their usual booth. They both slide into the middle to give the boys room and pick right up where they left off with their conversation but Calista notices as soon as Bethany's eyes flicker over to the bar and she gets a thoughtful look on her face.

"So how long have you two been together?"

"What?"

"You and Tyler," she clarifies with a little laugh. "You guys are such a cute couple. How long have you been together?"

Calista feels warm all over from embarrassment and also nervousness but she shakes her head, chancing a glance over her shoulder to the boys where they're standing at the bar. "No, um-...We're not-...."

"Oh." Bethany frowns a little, brushing her fingers through her silky dark blonde hair. "Well you should be. I think you guys would be really cute together. You know, Jordie could probably talk to him if-"

"No!" she interrupts immediately. "No, that's-....that's okay. Really."

And thank God for Jamie's impeccable timing because he's arriving at the table, handing her a whiskey sour before sliding into the booth next to her. Tyler's right behind him and he looks a little put off that Jamie took what should obviously be his seat, but he sits down on the end next to Jamie as Jordie slides into the space on Bethany's other side.

All Jamie wants to talk about is the game and how incredible all the guys were. He's so proud of his team and it's hard not to share his excitement when he talks about it. Jordie just watches his little brother in amusement and Tyler is definitely looking at her instead of Jamie, which he needs to cut the fuck out if he doesn't want the others to get suspicious. They only stay for two drinks before they're heading out to go home and Tyler offers to drive since it's late and Calista can't stop yawning. They say goodbye to the others even though it's kind of pointless because they're all going to the same place and then they separate to get back into their respective vehicles.

Things are quiet on the ride home and luckily they arrive before Jordie, Jamie, and Bethany so they can take the elevator up by themselves instead of sharing it. Tyler steps off on the sixth floor with Calista to walk her to her door and once she unlocks it, she looks back up at him with a small smile.

"Come in for a minute. I have something to show you."

He smirks. "Oh yeah?"

"Don't get too excited," she says, pushing the door open and walking inside with him following right on her heels. She puts her purse and keys down on the kitchen counter and turns to face him before reaching for the bottom hem of her jersey. His dark eyes get so wide that they look like they might pop out of his head and she laughs. "Calm down, it's not what you think."

She quickly pulls the jersey off over her head, leaving her in the equally green tee shirt with the stars logo across the chest and he frowns, brows furrowing. "Gotta say, that's a bit of a letdown."

"Shut up," she scolds, and then she turns her back to him, pulling her long hair over one shoulder so that he can see the name and number printed on the back of her shirt.

He's quiet for a moment but then she hears him move up behind her and suddenly his hands are on her hips and he's leaning down to press kisses to the exposed side of her neck. She laughs and scrunches up her shoulders because the scruff on his face tickles her skin and he turns her around to face him, keeping his hands on her hips and looking down at her with a huge grin on his face.

"So I turned you into a Seguin fan after all."

"Violet's gonna be so disappointed."

He scoffs like he's offended but the grin doesn't leave his face. "You're wearing my number."

"Mm, looks like it."

"I like it."

"Me too," she confesses.

"We'll just have to work up to that jersey."

"Eventually."

"Alright, kiss me now."

"Okay."

She reaches up to wrap her arms around her neck so that she can pull him down to her level and kiss him. She can feel him still grinning as he wraps an arm around her back and tug her closer into his body and even when he eventually mumbles against her lips that he should probably go, she just agrees and keeps on kissing him. Five more minutes won't hurt.