Chapter 5

“So what happened!? Tell me everything!” Melissa screamed as soon as I was inside the doorway of our room. “Don’t leave anything out!” She smiled at this trying to be sweet and it always worked at me. I just couldn’t say no to her. I proceeded to tell her about the drive, the bistro, and the crazy fans in the lobby. “Aw this is just what you need Jess! You’re always mopey about your knee and you never want to do anything with me. You need this; you need him.” Honestly, that was the most sincere thing I had ever heard come out of her mouth. “Thanks Mel!” I gave her a huge bear hug in return. “You’re welcome! I want you to be OK! I know this whole knee thing is hard on you and I feel like this will help you.” I could still tell she was jealous, but like I said before, she’s happy for me. I was bubbling over with the happiness that I felt at this moment. My life really seemed to be turning around for the better. So what if I had a torn ACL. I was so extremely cheerful that I couldn’t get myself to sleep until about 2 in the morning. I knew I’d pay for it tomorrow, but right now that wasn’t even a concern.
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I had a little more than a week to wait until the Penguin’s next home game against the Sabres on December 8th, and to me, that seemed like an eternity. I rushed through my classes and homework. I barely spoke to anyone but Melissa, and I absentmindedly did my knee exercises with my trainer Todd at the Student Gym. Todd knew about what had happened with me and Sid. I told Todd everything. He was like my, older, balding, married best friend. He was probably one of the chillest people I have ever met in my life and I felt like I could trust him with anything. “What happens if everything between me and Sid doesn’t go like I think it will?” “Dude, nothing’s going to go the way you think it will. Did you think you’d tear your ACL?” he replied. Todd always told me the truth; he’d never steer me wrong. “No…” “Exactly. So just let everything happen. It’ll all work out. So when’s your surgery scheduled for?” “Uhh, December 23rd. This is pretty intense man.” “What? You could be referring to a lot of things right now, like your wimpy exercises or Sid, or your surgery.” I shot him a look and he laughed. He had one of the weirdest laughs I had ever heard, kind of like a chuckle and a snort put together, and it was almost like, he was actually saying hahaha every time he laughed. “My surgery!” “Oh, you’ll be OK”, he replied smoothly. “How do you know Todd?! Have you had ACL surgery before?!” “Nah dude, but if I had to pick any surgeon around here to do what you’re having done, I’d pick Dan.” Dan was my doctor; Dr. Daniel E. Carr to be exact. He was extremely laid back for a doctor. You always picture those stuck up, up tight guys who are anal about everything you do as doctors, but Dr. Carr didn’t care what I did as long as I didn’t run or jump. “Whatever Todd. That doesn’t make me feel any better!” “It should, and really, don’t worry! You’ll be fine. You gotta do this if you want to play next year.” I just grumbled to myself and said, “Alright then Todd. I’m done with my exercises. I’ll see you tomorrow.” “Alright dude. See you later.” I picked up my bags and books and left for my dorm room.
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December 8th finally arrived and during every single class I day-dreamed and doodled on my papers. As soon as my final class was over, I grabbed my books and my bag and bolted out the door, checking my phone as I went; 4:30. ‘OK you have an hour or so to get ready and then leave by 5:45.’ I talked myself through what I had to do, because otherwise I knew I’d forget at least one thing. I rushed home, threw my things onto the floor and hopped into the shower. I made sure to shave my legs, just in case. I towel-dried my hair and fixed it so the curls fell just right around my face. By this time it was 5:30 and I was crunched for time. I was still going for comfort, so I threw on a pair of jeans and a cute top, and ran outside to catch the bus to downtown. I power-walked to the bus stop as quickly as my knee would carry me and I got there just as the 5:45 bus was pulling up. I got on and flopped myself down onto a seat and waited impatiently for my stop, tapping my foot up and down on the gum-stained floor of the bus. There was an old woman sitting across from me and she asked, “Honey, are you alright?” It seemed like everyone was asking me that lately! “Yeah, thanks for asking. I’m just excited.” “Oh, really?” “Yeah, I’m going to a Penguins game.” “Oh, those penguins and Sidney Crosby. He’s handsome isn’t he?” I nodded my head and smiled absent-mindedly to myself, thinking she had no clue just how sexy he really is as my stop approached and I jumped out the door down onto the sidewalk outside the Mellon. I took a deep breath, made sure I looked presentable, and then made my way to the box office. “Hey, can I help you?” The clerk behind the glass said. She looked extremely bored like she wanted to shoot herself, and was chewing her gum loudly. “Uh, yeah hi, I’m Jess Spade and Sid said–. “ Before I could finish my sentence she was shoving an envelope with my name scrawled on it at me. “Here. Enjoy.” I took the envelope and ambled off to the side to open the envelope. There was a note, a ticket and another one of those all access passes inside. I grabbed the note and read in Sid’s messy scrawl: “Jess, I hope you like the seat I got you. Have fun and wait for me by the locker room again after the game. We’ll go somewhere even better than last time. –Sid” I ripped out the ticket and looked to see where I was sitting, and to my pleasure, it was right behind the bench. I let out a little squeal like a school girl and jumped in the air before hobbling over to the entrance. By the time I made a restroom stop and got myself a soda, the game was about to start and I had to hurry to my seat before the announcer called out the names of the players and they skated onto the ice. He rambled through about four names before saying, “And your captain! SIDNEY CROSBY!” The crowd went wild as he came skating out onto the ice with those long smooth strides of his. He skated around the ice once before looking in the direction of the bench, and where I was sitting. A huge smile appeared on his face and then he turned around to finish his warm-ups. The people around me slowly began to trickle in and I introduced myself to them. The older man on my left introduced himself and his wife as David and Janice Goldstrum and the younger guy, about my age, on my right introduced himself as Thomas Dulinger as he oogled my boobs. ‘Not in your lifetime’, I thought to myself as I turned away from his wandering eyes. Although he was gross, I was impressed that he knew who I was. Practically no one knew unless they read the tiny little articles at the bottom of the sports page titled with things like, ‘Who’s Next?’ or ‘What Happened Last Night’. They were usually little recaps about every game in the division and often mentioned me in the Pitt recap as the, and I quote, “monster inside”. I liked the comparison even though Mel thought it was vulgar. The only real article I got was when I tore my ACL, and everyone was finally starting to see what I could do. Whatever. That was before. He talked to me about all that stuff for awhile and even managed to keep his eyes on mine for more that 5 seconds at a time. I was un-impressed with his minimal self-control. A few times when Sid was coming back to the bench, he’d look up and smile at me. One time back he saw the creeper that was hitting on me and an angry scowl crossed his face. The next shift out, he played like a mad-man and set up Kris Letang on the power-play for a goal. Despite his best tries, the Penguins still lost 3-4 to the Sabres. When the final buzzer rang, I stood up and so did Thomas next to me. “So I was wondering if you-“ he started before I cut him off. “Well, it’s been nice talking to you, but I have to go down to the locker room and meet Sid.” I said this as bubbly and cheerfully as I possibly could. “Sid? Sidney Crosby?” “Yupp, I’ll see you later.” He looked like a deflated balloon as I turned and walked down to the door to the runway.
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I took my seat outside the locker room and waited for about 20 minutes. I was going through my purse, so I wasn’t too bored, and had so far found a lot of odd things. There was a resuscitation mask from a CPR class I took months ago, a cord of some sort for a phone I was guessing, a Tide-to-Go pen, and 4 pairs of sunglasses. I had been wondering where those sunglasses had run off to. After I went through every compartment in my purse, I started to get impatient so I got up and peeked into the locker room. I spotted Sid right away; he had the largest group of reporters crowded around him. A piece of my heart broke off at the sight of him sitting there, sweaty and exhausted, answering every question that was thrown at him. He looked so weary and for a minute, I forgot he was only 21. Then he saw me peering around the door and he looked up, smiled, and instantly, his face lit up to where I could tell he was 21 instead of 41. He said something to the reporters and they immediately dispersed out of a side door. “Hi there”, he said coming towards me as I inched my way around the door. “It’s ok, you can come in here now. Everyone else has gone.” “You’re the last?” He shrugged and said, “Always am. I’ve just gotten used to it.” “Oh, ok.” I took a step closer to him as he did the same thing and pulled me into him. Even though he was sweaty and I usually hated people touching me, this felt so good; his body on mine. It made me feel like I was wanted. His voice broke the moment. “I’m sorry. I just got you all gross.” He backed away and I looked down at myself to see sweat stains all over the front of my shirt. For some reason, I found this funny and started laughing. “It’ll dry. It’s ok”, I said between giggles. “Are you sure? I’m sure I can find a clean new shirt around here that’ll fit you.” I thought about this for a minute and decided that when this did dry, it would leave white marks where the sweat was, and that was gross, so I agreed to a new shirt. “Ok sure. A new shirt sounds nice.” He grabbed my hand and led me down a hall-way into a room filled with boxes. “There should be a decent one in here somewhere. Start opening the boxes that have ‘Shirts’ printed on the side. Oh, and what size do you wear?” I thought about it for a second, and replied, “If it’s an adult guy’s shirt, a medium, and if it’s specifically for women, a large.” “Alright, here are your choices”, he said with a sly grin. He laid out four shirts all with a Penguin’s logo and Crosby written on them somewhere. “What are you, marking me as your territory?” I laughed as I chose the mustard yellow vintage series shirt. “Possibly. I saw that guy hitting on you today, so from now on you need to wear a shirt that says Crosby on it somewhere”, he joked as I pulled off my dirty shirt without even thinking about it. About half-way through getting the shirt over my head, I realized that he was still standing there and that he could in fact see me and my brightly colored polka-dotted bra. Instead of stopping, something told me to just keep going, even though I heard him stop mid-sentence. I got the shirt over my head and looked at him. It seemed as though he wanted to keep looking, but his better side told him to look away. The better side lost, and I said, “What?” “I just thought you’d want some privacy, that’s all.” He started to back towards the door, but I was feeling very flirty and before I could stop myself I said, “You don’t like the view?” with a smile. He stopped his backwards movements, and hesitantly started towards me. I just stood there in my bra and jeans, my new shirt in one and hand and my dirty shirt in the other. He put one hand on the small of my back and pulled me to him. His other hand was in my hair as he kissed me. The shirts dropped to the floor as my hands found his hair. That moment felt like that was where I was supposed to be. It just felt so right to be doing that at that time. His hand that was on my back was slowly moving around to my stomach and down to the button on my jeans. My hands that were just in his hair were now under his shirt, searching over his abs, and then I was trying to pull his shirt over his head. He stopped his own searching to help me, and once we got his shirt off, I couldn’t keep my hands off him. His fingers had undone the button on my jeans, and he had moved on to my bra. Just as he got the clasp undone, and things could have gotten out of hand, we heard a door bang open somewhere. We jumped apart and I hastily redid my bra and re-buttoned my jeans. I wasn’t quick enough with the shirt because the next thing I knew, Max was walking down the hall yelling, “Hey Sid, have you seen my…” He trailed off as he rounded the corner to the storage room. I hadn’t even put my shirt on yet, and I’m sure my mascara was messy. The back of Sid’s hair was sticking straight out from where my hands had been, and he hadn’t put his shirt back on yet either. “…wallet”, he finished. “Nope, I don’t know where it is.” Sid tried to play it off like everything was cool. “Obviously not in the storage closet is it?” My cheeks burned and Sid grabbed my hand as if to comfort me. “Come on man, get out of here.” “Alright alright. Don’t get into any trouble”, Max warned as he backed toward the door. I found it ironic that Max Talbot was telling Sidney Crosby to stay out of trouble. Sid turned toward me, his face flushed, and with a smile said, “We’ll have to do that again, but now, I have to take a shower before we go”, and kissed me on the forehead before turning around to walk into the showers, and leaving me to burn every detail of what had just happened into my brain.