fourteen

Erin opened her door a crack, slipped out and padded on quiet feet into the living room.  For all she knew she was walking in on whatever Darcy and Ryan had gotten into in the middle of the night.  Just because they were passed when last night didn’t mean they’d stayed that way.  But they were still asleep, stretched out together on the couch.  Darcy wore Jordan’s sweater over her costume and her cowboy boots were still on.  Ryan was down to his t-shirt, missing one bushy eyebrow.  Erin crept toward the kitchen, where she picked her way around the mess to a case of bottled water.  Like the waitress she was, she left two on the table for her sleeping friends and took two more back to her room.  Jordan opened one eye.

“See anything good?”  he asked.  He already had - Erin in little pajama shorts and a thin t-shirt, which he knew had nothing underneath.  Just the idea was enough to start him sweating, and here she was climbing back into bed.  It was even better than that skimpy Mountie costume.

“Just you, hot shot.  Ryan’s still got all his clothes on, and Darcy’s actually more dressed than before.”

Jordan gratefully drained half the water in one swig.  “Oh well, guess no one who looked like me got lucky last night.”

Erin pinched him, which turned quickly into a tickle fight.  She was losing, trying to flip Jordan off the top using one leg around his waist without screaming.  He blew a loud raspberry on her neck just as she managed to slip free and roll him over.  Jordan’s leg shot out and kicked her nightstand over.

Crash.  They both burst out laughing.  Erin was smooshed against the wall, feet tangled in the blanket and Jordan crushing one of her hands.  He quickly freed himself from the pile and picked up the clock and lamp he’d dumped to the floor.

“Don’t worry, we’re fine in here,” he called in case anyone was awake now.  Erin’s water bottle had rolled under the bed - she slapped Jordan’s ass when he reached for it.  With a smirk he sat right there and chugged the entire thing, then handed Erin the empty bottle.

“Jerk,” she laughed.  As Jordan began collecting his clothes, Erin pulled a sweatshirt over her head to cover the view he’d been enjoying.  When she opened the door again, they heard voices.  

“Morning sunshines,” she peeked around the side.  Darcy and Ryan were sitting up, still pretty close together, each with a water bottle in hand.  Neither looked too horrified at the situation, but no one looked too healthy either.

“Please tell me there’s a place around here to get ten pounds of home fries,” Ryan said.  He had dark circles under his eyes and that stick-straight hair had broken free from gel to stick up like a porcupine.

“And a bloody mary,” Darcy added.  If anything, her hair looked more bombshell than when she started.  

Erin lent Darcy a pair of yoga pants and a sweatshirt, while herself pulling on jeans and sneakers.  Jordan settled for his suit pants and the white v-neck t-shirt he’d had under his costume.  The whole effect was still a rock-solid hot guy in tight clothes.  “I’ll wear the mountie costume again if you wear that,” she said.

“Right,” Jordan tossed his keys to Ryan, “you guys leave and we’ll stay here.”  Ryan was too slow and the keys hit him right in the chest, landing on the floor with a jingle.  He glared at Jordan without  moving to pick them up.

“Okay, let’s go.”  They took two cars and drove to the nearest diner, snaggings seats away from the windows where sunlight wouldn’t bother their two vampire friends.  Darcy polished off a cup of coffee before the pot went around the table.  She was next to Ryan, their chairs no closer together than any others in the place.  Erin tried to catch Darcy’s eye so hard she was practically fishtailing around the table, but her friend refused to look up.  Finally Jordan started laughing.

“Will you please tell Erin if you hate each other?  She’s dying.”

“I am dying,” Darcy corrected.

“At least we’ll be together in the afterlife,” Ryan mumbled into the hand that was holding up his chin.  That got a smile out of Darcy, and Ryan grinned too, all pale and weak-looking.  Completely unsatisfied but willing to wait, Erin put questions aside and dove into her omelet.  Everyone carbo-loaded in hopes of sopping up some of the alcohol in their systems.  Ryan finished his corned beef hash, eggs and home fries, then started on a corner of Darcy’s French toast.  He got a whole slice before she even realized.

“Stop eating my food!” she tried to stab his hand with the fork.

“I’ll buy breakfast next time, promise.” He licked a drop of maple syrup from his lip.  Suddenly Darcy went still like she’d just seen something amazing, and Erin thought the two of them might kiss right there in broad daylight.  Even Jordan stopped, a bite of eggs halfway between the plate and his mouth.

“Ha,” Darcy said weakly.  “Next time.”
____

The boys had plans to look at a few apartments in the afternoon.  As soon as the NHL deal fell through and Jordan suggested the idea, everyone jumped on it.  It seemed he and Erin were not the only ones hoping the Oilers stuck around OKC for a while.  Darcy had declined a drop-off, opting to hitch a ride with Erin.  Ryan looked at her for a long moment, big hands stuffed into his pockets like he didn’t know where else to put them.  Then he just said goodbye.

“Darcy!” Erin said the second they were inside the car.

“Shhhh, please.  My head,” Darcy reclined the seat as far back as it would go.  

“You could’ve hugged him or something,” Erin whispered sharply.

“I didn’t throw up on him either.  At least then he’d stop asking me out.”

“HE ASKED YOU OUT?!” Erin shouted.  “On a date?”

“Nuh,” Darcy moaned and rolled toward the door.  “Not a date.  He said, ‘I was wondering if I could....’ and then he kissed me.  But I think he was going to ask me out too.”Erin slapped the steering wheel so hard the horn honked.  “All we did was kiss,” Darcy said in defense, then her voice dropped.  “I keep doing that.”

“You like him,” Erin insisted.

Instead of answering, Darcy put an arm across her face to block out the light.  Erin gave up and drove her home, promising to run her to her car when she was well enough to drive.  

“Should be in about a week,” Darcy said before shutting the door.
____

Ryan crawled into bed in his t-shirt and jeans, pulled the covers over his head and passed out without a word about Darcy.  Jordan showered and changed.  He thought of packing up the stuff they’d strewn around the hotel room; he wanted out of there right away.  The first thing he was going to do when they found a place was buy nice sheets and pillows and invite Erin to a sleepover that involved no sleeping.

When he was finally able to drag Ryan out of bed an hour later, Taylor was pounding on the door.  In Edmonton, this would have been a production managed by the Player Personnel Department, a professional realtor and probably someone’s agent.  In the AHL, renting an apartment meant being a normal person who drove to an address and knocked on a door.

The first place was too small.  It had brown carpet and a cramped bathroom that Jordan knew he would always feel dirty in.  There was no way he could bring Erin to a place like that.  Next up was a loft-style studio with lots of open space, but the bedrooms were merely sections with dropped in walls that didn’t go all the way to the ceiling.  It felt too much like IKEA and would sound too much like Taylor snoring.

Walking up two flights of stairs was no easy feat with a hangover, and Ryan barely made it to the third apartment.  It was Schultz’s place, recently half-empty due to roster moves.  The Barons teammate he’d been setup to live with didn’t make the roster when the lockout added three new names.

“I’ll take it,” Ryan said almost immediately.  It was a nice place, large if not all that clean.  Justin had been living there a while, so it had the easy feel of already being home.  Jordan was a little jealous.  Too bad he could never leave Hallsy and break up the bromance.

“You don’t wanna live with us, Nuge?” Taylor asked.

“Bachelor pad, this is,” Schultz looked very pleased with the arrangement.  “No married guys allowed.  Plus he can move in right away.”

Once it was sorted that Ryan would move Sunday, after the weekend’s games, Jordan and Taylor went to the next place on the list.  It was only a few blocks from the arena, near a lot of bars and restaurants.  The street outside was fairly quiet with a wide, clean-swept sidewalk and an awning over the front door.  It even had a doorman, who sent them in the elevator to the fourth floor.

“So, yeah?” Taylor asked the minute they opened the door.  It was big, with high ceilings and warm, off-white walls.  The carpet was new, the kitchen was spotless.  They’d have to get furniture in, but the team had a rental service that could bring almost everything on a few days notice.  Two large bedrooms, one with an en suite bathroom and one across from the second bath in the hall, had picture windows and deep closets.  Jordan could picture a bed pushed into the corner, pillows piled against the wall, himself and Erin curled up talking.  It could feel like his own place with a little of her help.

“Ryan jumped ship too early,” he laughed.

“Only old married guys here,” Taylor said.
____

Thursday night football was Erin’s favorite night at Wild Wings.  People came in numbers, always grabbing their tables before eight o’clock.  It was almost the weekend, so they had a few extra beers and tipped well in anticipation of a the days off.  Then they went home early.  

She clocked out just before midnight.  It was the first night in a while that she didn’t have plans with Jordan, just an apartment full of minor messes and a job interview in the morning.  Erin smiled.  A job interview.

She’d been at Wild Wings long enough to know she could work there a lot longer - and that she didn’t really want to.  It always felt like a stopgap.  There were things she wanted, like paid vacations and benefits, that waiting tables would never provide.  Instead she felt like a kid with a summer job, which was okay for now.  Her situation wasn’t so different from Jordan’s.  

A text was waiting on her phone.  

Jordan: Me and Hallsy got a place.  Ryan’s going to live with Schultz.  Says their place is for single guys only.  We move Sunday.

Erin:  Can’t wait to see it.

Jordan: Good luck tomorrow.  They’re idiots if they don’t hire you.

At home, she wiped a few spills and took out the trash, then put on her comfiest pajamas and lay down in bed.  It seemed big for just one person.  Jordan slept on his back, Erin usually lay on her side  nestled in close.  The empty space was distracting and her mind began to race.  She missed Jordan - honestly missed him.  It was one night.  In total it had been less than a month.  She was nervous about the interview - if she got it her life would change.  If she didn’t, it might not change again for a long time.  The routines she’d established worked because of Jordan: he had free time when she did, they spent it together.  Once he left - and she never let that truth get too far away - all those hours would be like weights on her chest.  if she could get rid of them now, she might be okay later.

Erin rolled onto her side and hugged a pillow.  A poor substitute but it did the trick.
____

On Friday, Taylor was up early like an overly excited as a puppy whose family has just come home from vacation.  At the morning skate, he was bounding up and down the ice; in the locker room he was crowing.  “I had to tell Amanda we couldn’t have sex last night because it was a game night!” he said far too loudly.

“You don’t even believe in that,” Ryan said.  Taylor had flouted the rule pretty openly in Edmonton.

“Don’t be jealous, Nuge.  Someday you’ll hit puberty, be beating them off with a stick,” Hall said in a chipper voice.

“Till then,” Shultz sauntered by in just a towel, “I’m afraid it’s just beating off, Ry.  But at least you’ll have your own room now.”

Ryan turned his blushing face toward his locker.  The guys only gave him the same hard time they gave each other, but Ryan didn’t think he’d ever trade jokes or stories about girls so easily.  Especially not when they’d all seen his grade school makeout tactics at the Halloween Party.  He was trying to keep them from remembering that.

“Your girl coming tonight, Nuge?” Abney asked.

“She’s not my girl,” he said a little more forcefully that intended.

“Whatever, bro.  You bagged the hottest chick at that party and you did it dressed like Ebs.  You’re twice the stud now.  If she knows what’s good for her, she’ll be here.”

Schultz finally had pants on.  “I hope she wears those boots again.”

Jordan waited till they were outside the locker room before saying anything.  He had left Ryan along about it long enough.  “Darcy is coming tonight, I think.”

“She is.”

“You talked to her?” Jordan asked in surprise.

“Yeah.”  Ryan looked down, clearly self-conscious.  “I, uh, I called her yesterday.  Told her about the apartment.  She said she just wants to be friends still, ‘cause I’m too young for her.  It’s okay.  I just wanted to know, you know...” he jerked his thumb back toward the locker room, “before those guys find out.”

Jordan admired the confidence in what Ryan was saying, even if his face gave away a little sadness.  It wasn’t easy being the youngest, and it wasn’t easy being constantly reminded of that fact.  On top of all that, the kid was a little lonely.  Jordan slugged Ryan on the arm.  “At least now you’ve got Schultzy,” he said.

Ryan smiled.  “And a lock on my door.”
____

Erin sat down at Starbucks, feeling conspicuous in her one and only black suit.  Anyone wearing one at odd hours of the day without rushing off to a meeting or office was clearly interviewing.  The girl behind the counter even gave her a free upgrade on her gingerbread latte.

It had gone well.  Erin was a little rusty at interviewing, but she knew her stuff when it came to hospital administration.  Her main concern was that she’d gone over a year without an internship - they weren’t easy to get after graduation, and she had been working full time.  St. Anthony’s was smaller than the state and university hospitals, but was ranked fifth overall.  Erin hoped they’d be a little more understanding of her situation.  The woman she’d spoken to was very upbeat and outgoing, even positive about the job market.  Erin smiled as she blew through the little hole in the lid of her coffee cup.
____

It was Friday night and Erin looked around at the six thousand or so people in attendance at the Barons game.  She wondered how many of them appreciated what they would get to see tonight - one of professional hockey’s most exciting and promising scoring lines, up close and personal, for the bargain price of twelve dollars.  At least that’s what the newspaper said.  Deep down Erin knew that she didn’t really understand it either.  The Oilers organization held some authority over the Barons, and they didn’t want to play Taylor too much just off injured reserve.  He would get some shifts tonight, she had read, but not play a full game.  Tomorrow night he would sit out, but wouldn’t sit with them in the stands.

Amanda was next to her now, in the front row behind the glass, one section away from the Barons bench.  None of them had ever seen Taylor on the ice before.  He seemed like a giant, though the program insisted he only weighed ten pounds more than Ryan.  “Looks like fifty pounds,” Darcy said.

“Are you calling my boyfriend fat?” Amanda feigned outrage.

“Are you calling Taylor your boyfriend?” Darcy shot back.

“Well, yeah,” the blond girl sputtered.  She turned to Erin, “What do you call Jordan?”

“Well hung,” Erin said without missing a beat.  The girls collapsed laughing.  “Heyheyhey.  What is so funny about that?”

Amanda was wheezing, trying to catch her breath.  “He’s so short.”

“He’s not!” Erin smacked her.  “He’s like two inches shorter than Taylor!”

“Stocky though,” Darcy flexed her arms in a pose that looked more like a monkey.  “Solid.”

“Oh my God,” Erin went to cover her blushing face at the same second a puck smacked into the glass right in front of them.  The three of them shrieked, nearly falling out of their chairs.  When they looked up, all they saw was the back of Taylor’s jersey skating away.

“If I was your boyfriend, I’d never let you go,” Erin started singing Justin Bieber.

Darcy turned to Amanda.  “Do you guys do a lot of chilling by the fire while you’re eating fondue?”

When the warm up was over, the girls returned to their usual seats at the top of the lower section.  They could see far more from there and since they were behind the bench, they’d know when Taylor was going out for his first shift before his skates even touched the ice.  Still a little wobbly from the Halloween party, they opted for ice tea while people watching among the crowd.  More than a few of the fans were young and female.  Counting the jerseys and shirts was a fun game - there were more Eberles than Nugent-Hopkinses and a few less Halls.

“He’s just back, okay?” Amanda rolled her eyes.  She wore the only Hall #22 in the place - everyone else had Oilers stuff.  In fact, she wore the only Hall #22 jersey that wasn’t currently on Taylor himself.  Erin wore Jordan’s OKC #7 and Darcy laughed when they asked where her Nugent-Hopkins sweater was.

“We’d look like the Chipettes,” she said.  “Plus, I don’t want to crush the dreams of any of these girls.”

“They’d die if they knew you turned him down,” Erin said.  She still wasn’t over the fact that Darcy was being the responsible careful one while a perfectly foxy and, more importantly, trainable guy like Ryan kept coming around.

“They’d die if they knew he was such a good kisser,” she replied.

“Why don’t you want to go out with him again?” Amanda asked.

Darcy sighed.  “A, he is nineteen, and B, I think he’s a virgin.  I can’t be that girl.  Make out once or twice, okay.  That was fun.  But we can’t keep making out forever.  Eventually something else is going to happen and then pfft, he’s gone back to wherever Edmonton is.”  She chewed her bottom lip for a moment, looking out across the bright and empty ice.  “There aren’t enough nice guys left.”
____

The noise when the Barons took the ice was less than deafening.  It was the time when Jordan most missed Edmonton and the NHL - feeling like part of something so many people were invested in.  It wasn’t bad, but if he listened carefully he could probably pick out which voice was Erin’s.  He skated laps behind Taylor as the starting lineup was announced.  He, Ryan and Taylor were in it - just for show, they wouldn’t really play on the same line here.  Taylor got a respectable rise in volume.

“Told you it was weird,” Jordan said when they stopped at the blue line for the National Anthem.

Taylor shrugged like nothing was going to dampen his mood tonight.  “There are still girls here.”

When the puck dropped, for a second Jordan thought he was back in time.  The Barons pushed forward into the offensive zone, bounced the puck around at the point, then a high shot came toward the net.  Taylor simply lifted his stick a foot off the ice and redirected the puck right past the Houston Aeros goalie.  Thirty-eight seconds in and Taylor had his first goal.  Jordan tackled him against the glass.  In the stands, Amanda tackled Darcy.  

“Thank God,” Erin said as the goal horn blared overhead.  it was Important the Barons deliver and the earlier, the better.  Any publicity the team could generate would sell tickets; Taylor’s debut was a good way to do that.

The girls and the rest of the Barons fans were barely back in their seats fifty-odd seconds later when Jordan raced down the right side and shot from the hashmarks, putting it over the goaltender’s arm and into the net.  This time Amanda tackled Erin, nearly taking them both to the ground.  From the whoops and hollers, they could almost imagine there were twice as many people in the building.

After two quick goals, the business of hockey set in.  End to end, back and forth, the teams ground it out through the end of the first and part of the second.  The Barons were pushing into the Aeros’ zone and the girls were talking about job interviews, attention wandering, when suddenly Ryan went down along the far boards.  A collective gasp went up just as the ref’s whistle ring out clearly.  Ryan lifted his head slightly and a puddle of bright red blood gleamed against the white ice.

“Oh no,” Erin said, covering her own mouth.  Next to her, Amanda was already standing.  Her speed was no match for Darcy though.  In a blink she squeezed past Amanda, stepped over Erin’s legs and ran out the end of the their row.  She took the last three steps in one and disappeared onto the concourse.  Ryan was up, but bent forward at the waist with Jordan on one side and a trainer on the other.  As he started off the ice under his own power, the crowd cheered.  Amanda and Erin looked at the empty spot where Darcy had disappeared.

“She’ll beat him to the locker room,” Amanda sounded impressed.
___

Darcy had been downstairs at Cox Convention Center enough times to find her own way around.  A lone security guard didn’t even think about stopping the cute blond in a tight sweater who pelted past him in the hallway.  She turned a corner, sneakers squeaking on the waxed floor.  A trainer led the way as Ryan emerged from the tunnel, supported by the equipment guy.  They all looked up at the ball of motion that was Darcy skidding to a stop.

Darcy looked only at Ryan.  The gangly kid was a mountain in his pads and skates, almost a foot taller than her.  She could smell his gear.  There was blood on his adorable, sharp-angled face and a red trail mixed with sweat ran down his neck.  More had dripped onto his jersey, spreading and fading to pink on the wet fabric.  Her heart pounded from the run, from worry and a little bit from the look of complete surprise in Ryan’s dark brown eyes.  

“Can I help...?” the trainer started to ask.

“Gfnd,” Ryan mumbled, spilling fresh drops of blood from his lip.  Darcy winced in empathy.

The trainer shrugged.  “Alright girlfriend, you’re a nurse now.”
__