Chapter 6

So, I think I'm going to try out this whole, 'different point of views' thing. Let me know what you think, because I don't have to keep doing it. Enjoy! :)

Jess's Point of View
I walked around the locker room waiting for Sid to finish his shower, burning every single image of what just happened into my memory. I made my way over to Sid’s locker and looked inside to see dirty old equipment that looked like he had never replaced it. Everything was held together by zip-ties or tape and I was wondering how it didn’t just disintegrate on him every time he put it on. It was pretty gross so I just turned around and kept walking circles past all the other lockers. ‘That really happened’, my brain kept telling me. My mind was doing overtime thinking about how all that just felt so right; my half-naked body pressed against his muscular chest. Despite all the happiness and euphoria I was feeling, the same question kept coming back into my head: ‘Where do we go from here?’
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Sidney’s Point of View
‘She looks so good without a shirt on’, was my first thought when she started to change in the back room, but now, my thought was, ‘I like this girl, a lot, and what just happened was amazing.’ I finished up my shower, still thinking about Jess, grabbed a towel, and dried myself off before wrapping the towel around my waist and walking back out to the main locker room for a change of clothes. I had forgotten to bring them into the shower room with me because Max got me all flustered, which reminded me I’d have to deal with him and his smart remarks tomorrow at practice. I walked out to see Jess inspecting all the lockers and their contents. “Everything meet your standards?” I asked as I walked over to my own locker. She turned around and seemed a bit flustered before asking, “Have you ever gotten new equipment? I mean, ever?!” I laughed at that because I knew my stuff was pretty gross. “Not completely new. I always have to put something from my old gear on my new stuff. See this tie?” I asked as I reached behind me for my chest pads and pointed at a blue zip­­-tie holding part of my pads together. She nodded. “That’s from when I played in Rimouski.” “Oh Sid that’s so gross!” She laughed, and while doing so, scrunched up her nose to make the cutest face I had ever seen. I wanted her. Now. “Let me go change into normal clothes and then we’ll get going”, I said, eager to get out of this locker room and on our way somewhere with about that only person I wanted to be with at the moment.
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Jess’s Point of View
Sid came back out of the locker room after changing into a decent outfit I picked out for him from the clothes he had in his bag. “Am I suitable to be seen with you in public now?” he asked playfully. I hit his arm because, if anything it was the other way around; a college girl tromping around Pittsburgh with Sidney Crosby. I could see the headlines now. “Shut up”, I said and smiled as he kissed me softly. “Ready to go?” “Yeah. Where are we going anyway?” “You’ll find out in a little”, he said with a sly smile. We walked out to his Range Rover which took almost 15 minutes because he kept kissing me, and of course we had to stop and address each kiss with more kisses. We were so new to each other; we had to explore, and now I knew where we were going from here. We were going to make this little flicker of a relationship into something big; something real. Just wait. We made sure that once we got out to where all the fans waited by the service gate, we walked normally; side by side with no hand holding or mini-make out sessions. I was surprised people were still waiting outside and even more surprised at how bold some of the girls were when he walked out. Cries of “I LOVE YOU SIDNEY!” filled the air and I really wanted to just grab his hand and kiss him right there, but he had said that if we were too openly public, he could get in trouble with his coach and other people of that nature. Even though when we walked out I could hear murmurs of “Who’s that?” and “What’s she doing with him?”, I didn’t feel like that was enough. I wanted to make people jealous; jealousy, the emotion I had been feeling my whole life. I let it go; for now. We managed to get to the Range Rover without me attacking him first from sheer desire, but once we got in the Range Rover and behind the tinted glass, he grabbed my face and kissed me deeply. “That walk was hard”, he said and grinned into my mouth. I smiled back into his as we parted and he started the car. He backed out with his hand on my knee and pulled up towards the gate. I was still surprised at how many people, especially girls, were waiting there for him. “Do you mind if I get out to sign some autographs?” “No, just don’t get killed by the mob.” “I’ll try not to”, he said and with that he got out and walked over to the people. The girls were seriously crazy. It must have been 30 degrees out and here they were standing in nothing but a jersey and glitter eye shadow. Sid signed a few autographs, waved, and started to walk back to the car, but before he could, a “true fan” of a girl ran up to him and hugged him, hard. That made me mad, but I was determined to not let my jealousy get the best of me like it had so many times before. Sid was with me; not this puck bunny, and I wanted to prove it. After he peeled the girl off and got back in the car, I grabbed him and kissed him, long and hard, as if to say to all the girls out there, hands off, he’s mine. I think the effect was pretty nice. I had a happy and content boy sitting next to me and about 20 stunned girls standing outside. “What was that for?” he asked smiling after I let go. “Oh, nothing. I don’t know.” He looked skeptical but let it go. I knew we’d have to have this talk later on. I had so many things I needed to tell him. A hush fell over the girls outside, as they now saw me as their enemy, and that was OK with me. We drove off and started down the highway. “So, Sid, guess what.” “What?” I hesitated, knowing he wouldn’t like what I had to say. “I uh, I’m, I scheduled my…” I wasn’t quite sure how to put what I had to say into words. It seemed so easy in my head, but once I tried to tell him, it became extremely hard and I felt like I wanted to cry. Just talking about what I wanted to say made me tear up. He turned his gaze towards me and off the road. “You can tell me. Whatever it is.” I took a deep breath and said, “My surgery is December 23rd.”
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Sidney’s Point of View
My head was reeling from the information Jess just gave me. She was having surgery, and in 2 weeks. I had to pull over. I hit the brakes, and pulled off on the side of the road. “I shouldn’t have told you. I’m sorry. It doesn’t even concern you.” She looked like she was going to cry. This was probably really hard on her and here I was being a wimp about it. She was the strong one in this situation when I should be. She was the one having surgery, I was just the guy she met last week. There was a battle going on inside my head. ‘You shouldn’t care this much’, my head told me. ‘You barely know this girl.’ But I did. I cared, I wanted to be there, and I wanted to help her. “What can I do?” She looked up from the fingernail she was picking at, tear tracks staining her face. “Be there for me?” She sounded like a little kid; like she needed someone. I wanted to be that someone. “Done.” I leaned over and wiped the tears from her face with my thumb as my hand cupped her face and she leaned into my hand. “I’ll do whatever you want me to do. I want to help you in any way possible.” “I’m so scared”, she whispered. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.” “Let’s go back to my place. We can go out another time.” Jess nodded and I wiped the rest of the tears off her face, and pulled back onto the road. I held her hand the whole ride home, stroking the back of her hand with my thumb while silent tears rolled down her face. Every once in a while I reached up to wipe them away, and she would force a smile. We finally pulled up to my house and got out, I waited for her to get out and I put my arm around her waist. She leaned into me, tears still running down her face. We walked up the walk and into the house. I silently led her down the hall to the living room where I turned on the fire and made her sit down. I sat next to her and she snuggled up under my arm, searching for comfort. “Tell me everything”, I said.
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Jess’s Point of View
It was like all the emotions I had been feeling since this whole knee thing happened just exploded; like a dam broke. “Why’d this happen to me?!” I wailed as Sid sat there and listened to me cry and hiccup. “This surgery is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life. I’ve never ever had my wisdom teeth out. I can’t do it. I can’t do this.” Sid stroked my hair and I felt so much better just from that. “The first day of practice! On the first drill!” “Listen to me. You’re going to be OK. I’ll be there for you. Anything you need. I promise.” Last time we discussed my knee, he seemed more scared than me. I’m not quite sure what happened between then and now, but I liked the change. I liked feeling safe and protected. “I’m so scared”, I repeated. “I’m so worried that something will go wrong and, and I just want to play basketball!” I was sobbing by this point. This was so hard to confront, I just wanted to crawl under a rock and hope that it all went away. “I’ve been holding all this in, trying to be strong, but I can’t do it anymore. I can’t pretend like I know what’s going to happen because I don’t! I can’t keep this mask intact forever.” I felt so horrible, I couldn’t even articulate the feelings into words. I just wanted to cry, and that’s what I did; I cried. I cried about my knee, I cried about my surgery, I cried because I couldn’t play basketball, and I cried because I couldn’t believe that any of this even happened to me to begin with.
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Sidney’s Point of View
I let her cry. I felt so much stronger than I did an hour ago. I felt like I could take this on for the both of us. Her sobs slowly faded away to a soft breathing and I could tell she had fallen asleep. I gingerly got up off the couch and laid her down where I had been sitting. I couldn’t believe everything she had to go through. All to play college ball. I knew that I shouldn’t feel this attached to someone I barely knew but I felt so oddly protective of her and what happened to her that I couldn’t just let her go through this alone. I grabbed a blanket off the back of the couch and threw it over her, then went to the kitchen to wet a tissue and clean the mascara off of her face. I sighed and ran a hand through my hair, then made my way upstairs to my room where I laid in my bed staring at the ceiling thinking, and eventually drifting off the sleep. I woke up the next morning at 7. Practice was at 9:30, so I figured I could make Jess some breakfast before dropping her off and heading to practice. I crawled out of bed and took a quick shower before going downstairs to see Jess still asleep on the couch. Trying to be as quiet as possible, I shuffled over to the kitchen, got out a frying pan and tried to decide what to make; French toast or omelets. I decided on French toast and began to get out the ingredients, eggs, toast, butter, when I saw Jess’s head pop up over the back of the couch and look around before seeing me in the kitchen. A smile crossed her puffy face and she got up off the couch to come sit at the bar across from where I was preparing our breakfast. “Hey“, she said as she sat down. “How are you today?” I asked concerned. “Better. I feel better now that I finally told someone about all that.” “Good.” I smiled at her and I felt that it really did help her to have all that happen last night. I finished making our breakfast: French toast with syrup and strawberries on the side, sat down and said, “I want to know you. I want to know everything about you.” “OK”, she replied like she knew it was coming.
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Jess’s Point of View
I actually really wanted to have this conversation with him. I wanted to tell him everything about myself and I wanted to know everything about him after everything that happened last night. I felt so much better now that all my emotions were pretty much wrung dry. “You know where I’m from and all that stuff, so what exactly do you want to know?” “Let’s start with your family.” “Ok. My mom’s name is Jill, and my dad’s name is Tom. They went to Carnegie Mellon, down the street, together and that’s how they met. My dad’s 6’4”, and I have an uncle who’s 6’7”.” He looked so shocked at hearing that. I loved telling all the guys I dated that I had big scary relatives because then they took me seriously. I never thought Sid didn’t take me seriously, but if anything, the facial expressions were always worth it. “He actually lives right outside Pittsburgh; just a phone call away.” I smirked at that one. “I was actually born in Long Beach, California and we moved down to Yorktown when I was five and my brother, Matt, was two. I can still remember things from out there, like our old house, and what color carpeting we had.” He just nodded, encouraging me to go on. “Now, let’s skip to high school. Nothing important happened in middle school. My freshman year I made varsity basketball and I was the only freshman. That was hard, and I feel like that helped me be a stronger person. I’m sure you know what it’s like to play with people so much bigger and better than you. For me it was scary. That year was when I met Melissa, and here we are today, 6 years later, still best friends. Once I met her though, she always had all these guys everywhere, and I was just, there. I was never the girl the guy actually wanted to hook up with. I was almost an obligation. That wasn’t the best for my self-esteem, so I got jealous easily as a result.” “Oh, is that what that kiss was about in the car earlier?” I felt my face turn red. “Yeah. I didn’t really like that that girl threw herself on you.” “You have nothing to worry about”, he said as he leaned over the counter between us and kissed me. “Continue”, he said when we parted. “Well, I graduated with honors, earned a four-year letter for basketball, went off to college, and here I am today, at Pitt, studying graphic design and business marketing. That pretty much sums up me.” I finished with a smile. “Ok, now tell me your favorites”, he encouraged. “Alright, favorite color yellow, favorite animal cat, favorite food fish, favorite desert tiramisu, favorite...” I went on and on with the favorites and he just soaked them all up, like he remembered every single one of them “…and my favorite smell? You.” He grinned from ear to ear and this time walked around the counter to me and took me in his arms. His mouth was so close to mine as he said, “You are so perfect”, and then we were off, but this time our little session was cut short by Father Time. We had made our way to the couch and he had his shirt off, but all of my clothes were still on. His lips were on my neck when he suddenly asked, “What time is it?” “I don’t know Sid, come on”, I fake whined to get him to come back to me, but he sat back on his knees over me and looked around. “8:30? Jess we have to go. I have practice in an hour!” I grumbled a little about this, but I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the couch to fix my shirt and hair. Sid was running around the house like a maniac getting his bag together, so I figured it’d be best to wait on the couch until he said it was time to go. About 10 minutes later he was running down the stairs yelling, “Come on, let’s go!” I got up off the couch and shuffled out the door behind him, still mad that we couldn’t finish what we started.
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I sulked in the car as Sid checked his watch every five minutes and made sure to alert me of the time every moment he did so. “8:45!” Five minutes later: “8:50!” We pulled up outside my dorm at around 8:55, and by now, Sid had calmed down a bit by now knowing he’d be there on time, so he leaned over to kiss me quickly, but I wanted more. I really didn’t care if he was late for practice right then. I felt his tense body loosen under my touch, and slowly begin leaning towards me over the arm rest. The hand that was on the steering wheel was now tangled in my hair, but only for a moment before he pulled away and said, “9:00.” I pouted a little at how sudden everything stopped before grabbing my bag and jumping down out of the car. I shut the door and said through the window he just rolled down, “You’re such a tease” with a smirk on my face, leaving him with his mouth open yet smiling as I turned for my dorm.