Start Me Up

“I got traded.”

For a minute she thought she had misheard him, or maybe he was joking, although that would be a pretty awful joke the more she thought about it. Tessa simply stood where she was, in front of the counters, staring at him from where he stood barely inside the patio doors. It took her a second to snap out of whatever trance his words had put her in, but when she did she gave her head a little shake and then asked him, “What?”

He nodded his head slowly, almost mechanically and said, equally as blown away by the news, “Yeah…”

“What do you mean you got traded? They just… what?” She was having trouble wrapping her head around it, and without meaning to she asked him, “Why are you so calm right now?”

He shrugged his shoulders and told her, “It hasn’t exactly sunk in yet.”

“How did this even happen?” She asked him, and again he shrugged in response.

How did a team just trade away their captain? How did they trade away a franchise player? Someone who had been there for over a decade, who had, arguably, done more for that team than any other player that had ever put that jersey on? How did a team just trade away a guy who for ten and a half seasons had given almost everything he had to make that team better without, as it seemed, so much as a second thought? Tessa knew it was a business, she understood that, but if she were Shea it would sure as hell feel like a slap to the face.

He cleared his throat and then he sat down on the couch by the window and as Tessa made her way over to sit beside him Shea told her softly, “You know… even when my agent called me I didn’t think anything of it. Honestly for a second I thought he was joking, like it really never even occurred to me for half of the phone call that he might be telling the truth. I didn’t even really believe him even when I hung up… and then Poile called me and it kind of hit me then.”

“Are you okay?” Tessa asked him warily, she didn’t know how to react to this and she didn’t want to say the wrong thing. The last thing she wanted was to upset Shea more than he already was.

He sat there with his elbows on his knees and his head in his palms for a long time in silence. Neither one of them knew what to say, they were both at a complete loss for words. This was the last thing either one of them had ever expected.

Finally, Shea told Tessa, “I uh… I don’t know how to answer that question right now.”

So they sat together in silence; Shea still with his head in his hands and Tessa with one hand on his back while her chin rested on his shoulder.

It occurred to Tessa, nearly fifteen minutes later, that she hadn’t asked him the most basic and probably the most important question of all. So she asked him now, “Where?”

Shea told her, “Montreal.”

Tessa let out a breath of air but she didn’t respond with words. What words were there to say, anyway?

Shea pulled his phone from his pocket as it vibrated, and he set it on the coffee table across from them and they both watched as it continued to vibrate with each incoming text message he received. Most were from his now former teammates, there was two from his new teammates, and a handful from friends and family.

His phone just kept buzzing, and buzzing. It seemed as if it were never ending until Shea got sick of it and reached over to turn it off.

That was when Tessa’s phone started on the counter by the stove.

So to save Shea the sound of it beeping away she got up and went to get it, and as she sat down she glanced at it quickly to see who was texting her. Not surprising she had a voicemail from Pekka, as well as a text from both he and Tara and one from Craig.

As Shea put his head back into his hands Tessa sent the same response to all three of the people who had text her. Shea glanced over slightly to read it as she typed, and he found he was grateful for her response.

‘He’s okay, thanks for thinking of us, we’ll give you a call later tonight.’

“Guess it’s out now.” Shea stated, and Tessa reached out to take his hand, giving it a squeeze before she too turned her phone off.

She then told him, “Alright, we can have lunch or I can let you mope for a little while longer. Your choice.”

He thought about it for a moment before he told her, “Lunch.”

So she nodded and got up from the couch, leading him to the chair at the peninsula counter in the kitchen when she waited until he sat down before she went around to the stove and finished fixing their lunch. They ate in complete silence, and Shea cleaned the kitchen despite Tessa telling him that he didn’t have to. He needed something to think about for five minutes that wasn’t hockey related.

With the kitchen clean Shea disappeared out to the end of the dock to call his dad and Tessa gave him some privacy by going upstairs and into the bedroom where she paced the floor chewing on her thumb nail. She really, really didn’t know what to do.

So she called Pekka, who answered on the first ring, as if he had been waiting by the phone to hear from one of them.

“How is everything?” He asked her softly, and the sound of his gentle voice made Tessa’s eyes well up with tears.

She told him honestly, “I don’t know. I mean… it’s not something we can pretend didn’t happen, but… I don’t know how to deal with this for him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like what I do. What do I say to him? How do I help him deal with this? I know how much Nashville means to him and I don’t want to say the wrong thing, or do the wrong thing. I don’t want to hurt him more than he already is. He can deny it all he wants, he can say he’s okay but he’s not.” Tessa told him, she walked over to the French doors that lead to the balcony off of the bedroom and she leaned against the frame as she watched Shea out on the dock.

He was sitting down with his feet in the water and his sandals on the wood next to him, phone held to his ear while he stared at the water. Tessa was in way over her head.

Pekka told her gently, “I wish I knew what to tell you. I don’t know how I would feel if I were in his shoes, which is saying something because usually I know these things. He’s upset, no one can fault him for that but-”

“If you say this is a business and it happens so help me God goalie boy I’m going to fly back to Nashville and dunk your head in a toilet.” Tessa told him, a little sharper than she had intended. She let out a sigh and immediately said, “Sorry.”

Pekka let out a small laugh and he assured her, “It’s okay, and no that’s not where I was going with that. I was gonna say that Shea’s a tough guy, give him a couple of days and he’ll be back to normal. This is a big change, it’s gonna take a while to get used to. I think, at least this is how I think I would feel, that it’s gonna be tough for him to balance the good and the bad; the ‘I’m upset because Nashville was my home and I’m gonna miss it’ with the ‘Montreal is a new opportunity’ part of it. So I think the best thing that you can do is make sure that he knows both of those feelings are okay and that it's okay, right now, to not be so jazzed about this whole thing.”

“I know… God I just never would have seen this coming in a million years.” Tessa stated softly.

“I think this was a big shock for everyone, the media’s going absolutely crazy right now.” Pekka informed her, the last thing she wanted to do was go anywhere near the TV or the internet right now. She heard a muffled voice on the other end of the line before Pekka told her, “Tara says hi and that she’s around if you need anything.”

Tessa smiled gently, “Thanks.”

“So… he really had no idea?” Pekka asked her curiously after a few seconds of silence.

Shaking her head even though he couldn’t see her Tessa told him, “Not that I know of. Honestly, we haven’t really had the chance to talk about anything. He’s quiet right now, not that I can blame him, and I don’t want to push him.”

“Shea’s not really a talker.” Pekka mused out loud.

“Yeah, tell me about it.” Tessa stated with the nod of her head. She watched Shea at the end of the dock as he hung up the phone and got up, leaving his sandals at the end of the dock as he headed back for the house. So Tessa told Pekka, “I should go, Shea’s coming back inside. I’ll try to get him to at least text you tonight.”

“Thanks. Good luck.”

She was surprised when she turned to find Shea standing in the doorway of the bedroom. She told him softly, “I didn’t even hear you come up.”

There was a gentle smile on his face as he told her, “And you call me a bull moose in a China factory.”

Tessa took the lead this time as she sat down cross legged on the bed and Shea followed her to sit next to her. After she couldn’t take any more silence between the two of them she asked him, “So… what now? What do we do now? Where do we go from here?”

“I guess… we’re going to Montreal in August.” Shea stated so casually, Tessa thought she may have misheard him for a second time that day.

She asked him, “What?”

He watched her for a moment before he asked her, “Well… you’re coming with me… aren’t you?”

She was torn between lying to him to save his feelings and telling him the truth which would likely hurt his feelings. Tessa went with the truth, because it seemed like the best option. She told him honestly, “I don’t know… I guess… I hadn’t really thought about it yet.”

Shea turned to look at her and it appeared to Tessa that maybe the truth hadn’t been the best option after all. His eyes were soft but they held a sort of surprise in them that she hadn’t ever seen before and his voice was a little gruffer than she was used to when he asked her in surprise, “You need to think about it?”

To Shea it had been a no brainer. Shea hadn't even thought about it, because in his mind Tessa was going with him. He hadn’t even known that it was an option that she wasn’t going with him.

She simply told him, “My whole life is in the States Shea.”

“And mine is in Montreal now.” He told her, watching as she closed her eyes and sighed softly. That was when he got up and left.

When Shea arrived back at the house at nearly midnight the only light that was on was the kitchen. He tied the boat back up to the dock and then headed inside, being sure to be quiet so that he didn’t wake Tessa in the event that she was sleeping. He had gone out for what was supposed to have been time to clear his head, he thought maybe an hour or two but it had turned into several. He had missed dinner, he had made no effort to communicate with anyone, least of all Tessa, aside from answering her singular text to say that he was alive.

The house was quiet, he waited by the kitchen counter to see if he could hear footsteps upstairs at all and when he didn’t he pulled the fridge door open and closed them again with the mental note that they really needed to go grocery shopping. He wondered if there was anywhere that delivered pizza at this hour. That was when he noticed the neon green post it on the microwave door with Tessa’s writing on it, and when he opened the microwave to find a plate of food waiting for him he smiled.

God, he loved that woman.

He ate silently at the table, and then he sat where he was, arms crossed over his shoulders and finally, after all day of putting it off, he was faced with having no option but to think about the trade and how he felt about it. There was no escape now, it was just him, the dark house and his feelings.

The first thing he thought of was how much he was going to miss the city of Nashville, the people in it, and the guys he spent almost every day with there. It would be weird going into a different locker room now, though he supposed that was something he would get used to eventually.

Shea had never dealt with this before, he had been fortunate enough to have spent his entire career with the team that drafted him up until now. He had never had to pack up and move and be the new guy, he had never had to deal with the bittersweet, though at this point mostly bitter, feelings that went with being told you had been traded. He knew there was likely a silver lining of this all, one he would see sometime in the future but right now he couldn’t see it. Right now all he could see was the negative.

He wondered how players did this. He thought about some of his teammates, guys like James who had been traded twice in his career and he wondered how he had made it seem so easy.

He wasn’t angry, not even close, he was just shocked, he felt like he had the rug ripped out from under him. He was upset, Nashville was his home and it had, until now, been the only team he could have ever imagined himself playing for. Even when he had decided to leave and go to Philly he had been so relieved when Nashville had come back with an offer that matched because leaving that team had been the most difficult decision he had ever had to make.

He wasn’t angry, no he was just disappointed.

It was hard for Shea, no matter how many times he reminded himself that the NHL was a business first and foremost and it that wasn’t personal, for him not to go there. It was hard because for him, right now, it was personal. He was level headed enough to know deep down that it really wasn’t, and that he would realize that and move on in a few days but here and now while he was still waiting for the idea to sink in it was personal to him.

Was there something he could have changed about his game that would have changed their minds? Was there something he was doing, or maybe something he wasn’t doing, in the locker room? Was it something off the ice? There was something about him that wasn’t quite a 100% fit for the team for them to trade him, he knew that and he thought he might drive himself crazy trying to figure it out so he had to think about something else.

That something else happened to be the blonde asleep upstairs.

Had he overreacted earlier when she had told him she hadn’t thought about the idea of going with him yet? Probably, but hearing that had hurt him. Once again he felt like stupid Shea thought he had everything figured out only to find out that he and Tessa, yet again, weren’t on the same page about where their relationship was and where it was going.

How had so much changed in barely twelve hours? He had gone out on the boat to try to draft up a speech to ask Tessa to marry him and somehow he had come back a Montreal Canadien and now the one thing he thought he had to lean on apparently wasn’t going with him to start a new life. Honestly, if he felt better, he would have laughed.

Instead of dwelling on how things would change over the next month and a half Shea got up from the table and cleaned up after himself. When he had went to put his cup in the dishwasher and it slipped out of his hand and shattered against the hardwood Shea muttered, “Fuck sakes.”

He knelt down to pick up the broken glass, tossing it into the garbage, and that was when Tessa asked quietly, “Shea?”

He turned to find her standing in the entrance of the kitchen in pyjamas and a soft smile appeared on his face as he told her, “I’m sorry I woke you.”

“I’m just glad you’re not a murderer.” She told him, and when his brow raised she explained, “The glass. I thought someone broke in.”

His cheeks flushed, “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” She told him, tucking her blonde hair behind her ears. She asked him, “Are you feeling any better?”

He shrugged his shoulders and told her, “Working on it.”

Nodding her head she asked him, “Did you eat?”

“Yeah, thanks for doing that.” She nodded her head again and they fell into silence. Finally, Shea asked her, “Will you sit with me for a few minutes? I just don’t think I’ll be able to sleep yet.”

“Of course.” So she let him lead her out to the patio, where they curled up on one of the couches out there and Shea spread a blanket over their legs and then wrapped a second one around them as Tessa leaned into his side.

She surprised him by leaning up and kissing his lips quickly and softly, and when she pulled back and got comfortable next to him again he asked her, “What was that for?”

“I just wanted you to know that I love you, and that I’m sorry.” She told him.

His brow raised, “You’re sorry? What for?”

“For this. I wasn’t sure how to say it before, because I didn’t want to say the wrong thing and hurt you any more than you already are but I’m really sorry Shea. I know how much this must suck, because I know how much you loved being a Pred. I’m just… sorry.” She told him quietly, and Shea surprised her by kissing her head and pulling her even closer to him.

They were quiet for a minute before he told her, “I thought I was gonna retire there, that’s where I wanted to retire.”

“I know.” Was all she said in response.

He wanted to try to lighten the mood but it didn’t really work for himself when he said, “Hell of a twelve hours though, huh?”

It really was true though. In twelve hours he had been traded and his relationship had come to a screeching halt. Welcome to your life Shea Weber.