dancing in the dark VI | s. crosby
warnings: language, allusions to sex.
summary: sid decides he needs to take a shot in the dark and it ends well for both of you all things considered
request: yes
word count: 9.8k
a/n: im so glad i rewrote this omg the first draft was incredbily horrible
previous part | part six
—
Who the fuck was that guy?
Sid sat on the edge of his bed with his phone still pressed to his ear like an idiot, listening to dead air. You'd hung up fast. Not even a goodbye, not even a "hold on," just the sound of movement and then nothing. The call had lasted three minutes and forty-two seconds.
He set the phone down on the mattress beside him and then picked it back up. Put it down again. Picked it up. His thumb hovered over your name in the call log like he could will the conversation back to life, like if he pressed hard enough the last ninety seconds would rewrite themselves and that voice wouldn't exist. But it did. And now it was the only thing his brain wanted to think about.
Who the fuck was that guy?
He called you babe. Not "hey." Not your name. Babe. Like it was habitual. Like it was muscle memory. Like whoever that was had been calling you that long enough that it was just something that fell out of his mouth the way breathing falls out of lungs. Sid knew what that kind of familiarity meant. He'd been around enough couples, enough teammates with wives and girlfriends and partners, to recognize someone who'd been saying that word for years.
He dragged both hands down his face, fingers pulling at his skin hard enough to leave red marks along his jaw. The stubble that had grown in since the last time he shaved scratched against his palms. He needed to sleep. He had obligations in the morning, early skate, video review, all the shit that comes with a playoff push when every game feels like it could be the last one that matters. He needed to close his eyes and let this go. Let you go. Let the whole stupid, messy, confusing thing he'd gotten himself into dissolve into the nothing it was probably always supposed to be.
Instead he called you back.
It rang and went to voicemail. Your voice, a recording you'd probably set up years ago and forgotten about, said something about leaving a message. He hung up before the beep. Called again. Same thing. Voicemail. Generic message. He hung up again and this time he did put the phone down, tossing it toward the pillows hard enough that it bounced once and landed face-down on the duvet.
"Fuck," he said to the empty room.
He got up and paced. His socked feet barely made a sound on the floor. The curtains were drawn but he could see the glow of the lights in his backyard. He stopped at the window, pulled the curtain back an inch with one finger, and stared out at nothing. His driveway. Some streetlights. A recycling bin. Very romantic.
His brain wouldn't stop running the same loop. The voice. The word. The implication. What if you were married? What if that was your husband? What if this whole time, every single encounter, every fuck against a hotel wall and hotel bed and your bed, what if all of it had been you cheating? What if he was the other guy? The thought made his stomach turn in a way that had nothing to do with guilt and everything to do with pride, which probably said something ugly about him.
If you were married? If that voice belonged to your husband? If the man calling you babe at 4 AM had a ring on his finger that matched one on yours that he’d never looked for?
Sid would still want you.
He'd still show up. He'd still text. He'd still find whatever excuse he could to see you, to touch you, to hear that breathy sound you make when he's doing something right. He wouldn't be proud of it. He'd hate himself for it, probably. Lose sleep over it, definitely. But he'd do it. Because whatever this was, whatever unnamed thing had lodged itself under his skin since that first night at your restaurant, it wasn't something he could logic his way out of. He'd tried. Multiple times. He'd tried after the first night, told himself it was just sex, just a release, just a body he'd borrowed for a few hours. He'd tried after the second visit, when he'd ignored you at the table and hated himself for every silent second of it. He'd tried after you left him hard and aching on that hotel bed, told himself he deserved it, told himself to let you go.
And then he'd tried again after your apartment. After you'd ridden him like you were trying to break something, after you'd pulled his soul out through his cock and then fallen asleep on his shoulder. He'd left because he panicked. Left the money because he's an idiot. And spent every day since then refreshing a text thread that never lit up.
He wasn't above it. Sidney Crosby, the guy who does everything right, the guy who says the right things in press conferences and never makes headlines for the wrong reasons and tips well and holds doors and calls his mother every Sunday. That guy? That guy would absolutely wreck a marriage if it meant keeping you. He didn't want to. He really, genuinely didn't want to. But he would. For you. He could probably do it.
"Jesus Christ," he muttered, forehead pressed against the cold window glass. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
The backyard didn't answer. The bin didn't either.
He went back to bed eventually. Sat on the edge again, elbows on his knees, head hanging between his shoulders. His phone was still face-down on the pillows. He should sleep. He really, really should sleep. Tomorrow was going to be brutal and his body already felt like it had been through a blender from that last game they played, his shoulder was tight from a hit he'd taken, his knees ached, and there was a bruise forming on his hip from a cross-check he'd gotten away with not retaliating to.
But sleep wasn't coming.
He picked up the phone. Opened the text thread. Your message was still there, so were his. The apologies. The pleases. The "I'll do anythings" that had sat in bubbles collecting digital dust. He scrolled up through them slowly, reading each one like evidence in a case he was building against himself. Every unanswered text was another piece of proof that he'd fucked this up beyond repair. That whatever window had existed between you, he'd slammed it shut with a hundred-dollar bill and a disappearing act.
And now someone else was in your apartment. He started typing before his brain could catch up.
Him: Hey. I've got two tickets for the game this weekend. Bring your friend if you want. Figured you might want to come see.
His thumb hovered over the send button for a long time. Long enough that the screen dimmed and he had to tap it awake again. Long enough that he reread the message six times and changed "figured" to "thought" and then back to "figured" and then deleted the whole thing and retyped it almost identically.
Him: Hey. I've got two tickets for the game this weekend. Bring your friend if you want. Thought maybe you could come see.
He stared at the word "friend." Friend. Like he didn't know. Like he wasn't fishing. Like the invite was just a nice thing a nice guy does for a nice girl he happens to have fucked a few times. Bring your friend. Your friend who calls you babe. Your friend who might be your husband. Your friend who Sid wanted to look in the eye just once so he could measure himself against whatever the fuck you saw in someone else.
He hit send.
The message delivered. The little words appeared. No typing bubble. No response. Just delivered, sitting there in blue, mocking him.
He put the phone on the nightstand this time, face up, volume on, so he'd hear it if you answered. Then he lay back on the bed staring at the ceiling. The ceiling had one of those textures that looked like tiny mountains if you stared long enough. He stared long enough. He mapped entire mountain ranges across the plaster while his phone stayed silent beside him.
Ten minutes. Nothing.
He checked. Just in case the volume had somehow turned itself down. It hadn't. The screen was blank. He put it back.
Fifteen minutes. Nothing.
He picked it up again, opened the thread, stared at the delivered message. Closed the thread. Opened it again. Closed it. Put the phone down. Picked it up. Put it down.
"Stop," he told himself out loud. "Just stop."
Twenty minutes. Nothing. The typing bubble never appeared. Not even a read receipt that would’ve told him you were at least reading it, considering it, deciding whether he was worth the effort of a response. Just silence. The same silence you'd been giving him for weeks, only now it was louder because he'd gone and made it worse by inviting your maybe-husband to a fucking hockey game.
He started to spiral. He could feel his brain going from rational thought to catastrophic fantasy in about three seconds flat. You were reading his text right now. You were showing it to the guy. The two of you were laughing about it. The guy was asking who the hell Sid was and you were saying "nobody, just some hockey player who won't leave me alone." You were blocking his number. You were deleting his texts. You were rolling your eyes and climbing back into bed with someone who's not him.
Or worse. You weren't reading it at all. You'd put your phone away. You'd gone back inside and crawled back into bed and the guy had pulled you close and you'd let him because you were done. Done with Sid. Done with the back and forth. Done with a man who couldn't figure out how to treat you right even when you literally spelled it out for him. Why would you come to his game? Why would you fly to Pittsburgh? Why would you bring your boyfriend or husband or whatever the fuck he was just because Sid asked? He was nothing to you.
His phone buzzed.
He grabbed it so fast he almost knocked the lamp off the nightstand. The screen lit up and your name was there.
You: Why would you want me and my ex fiancé at your game?
Ex fiancé.
Ex.
Fiancé.
Ex meant not current. Ex meant over. Ex meant whatever that voice was, whoever that man was, he didn't have a legal claim on you. He wasn't your husband. He wasn't even your boyfriend. He was your ex, your former, your past tense. That should've been a relief. That should've made Sid relax.
But fiancé. That was the other word. Because fiancé meant you'd said yes to someone once. You'd worn a ring. You'd planned a wedding or at least started to. You'd looked at that person and thought "this is it, this is the one, this is the person I'm going to spend my life with." And even though it hadn't worked out, even though the ring was gone and the plans were ash, he'd been in your apartment tonight. Which meant the door was still open. Which meant some part of you, no matter how self-destructive or lonely, had let him back in.
And that meant he might not stay an ex for long.
Sid typed back with fingers that felt too big for the screen.
Him: Just thought it might be fun. I can leave the tickets at will call.
Fun. Like he invited women and their ex-fiancés to playoff games all the time. Like this was normal behavior for a normal person and not the desperate flailing of a man who'd rather watch you sit next to another guy than not see you at all.
The three dots appeared. Then disappeared. Then appeared again. He watched them pulse like a heartbeat monitor, each appearance a spike of hope, each disappearance a flatline.
You: You're serious.
Him: Yeah.
You: Why would I bring Michael?
Michael. So the voice had a name now. Michael. Mike. Mikey. It wasn't a bad name. It wasn't a good name either. It was just a name, ordinary and forgettable. Sid told himself that was an unfair judgment based on literally zero information. Then he told himself he didn't care about being fair. Michael was a stupid name. No, it wasn't. He knew it wasn't. He was just being pathetic about it.
Him: Because I invited you. Figured it was only fair that your friend come too.
Fair. What a stupid word. What an absolutely brain-dead thing to say. Fair to whom? Fair to Michael, who got to sleep in your bed and exist in the space Sid belonged? Fair to you, who'd have to sit through a hockey game next to a man you were clearly conflicted about while the man you were fucking played on the ice below? Fair to Sid, who was engineering his own torture because the alternative, not seeing you, was somehow worse?
Nothing about this was fair. He knew that. But he'd already sent it.
The dots danced for a long time. Longer than any of the other times. He watched them appear and disappear and appear again, each cycle lasting a few seconds longer than the last, and he imagined you on the other end trying to decide how much of yourself you were willing to give him after everything he'd put you through.
You: Fine. But only because I want to watch you lose.
He refused to call what he was feeling happiness because that would be pathetic, but it was definitely adjacent. It was in the neighborhood. It was within walking distance.
Him: Game starts at 8. I'll make sure the tickets are there. Thank you. Really.
He almost added more. Almost typed something like "I just want to see you" or "I don't care if he comes, I just need you to be there" or "I'm sorry for every single thing I've done wrong and I know the list is long." But he didn't. He backspaced all of it and left it at the polite response that made him sound like a functioning adult instead of whatever lovesick mess he actually was.
He set the phone down gently this time. Face up on the nightstand. Your conversation on the screen, the last message his. He kicked his socks off finally, let them crumple to the floor one after the other, and lay back against the pillows. The ceiling mountains were still there. He stared at them and let his brain do what it was going to do, which was replay every interaction he'd ever had with you in chronological order, looking for signs he'd missed, moments he could've done better, things he should've said or shouldn't have.
Apparently fucking things up was his signature move when it came to you. Show up, make you feel something, and then ruin it in the most spectacular way possible. Every time he got close to something real he cowered. Pulled back. Defaulted to the version of himself that kept things safe.
Safe. God, he was so tired of safe.
He couldn’t really shut his brain off. He kept thinking.
About Michael.
About the kind of man who stays at his ex-fiancée's apartment. About what that meant. About what had happened between the end of your phone call with Sid and whenever Michael had appeared at your side. Had he been there the whole time? Had he been in your bed? Had you let him back in because you needed someone, anyone, even the wrong someone, just so you didn't have to be alone?
If you crawled back to your ex because Sid made you feel like a transaction, then every single thing about this was his fault. He'd pushed you back to someone who clearly didn't deserve you. He'd handed you back to a man named Michael who probably wouldn't even know what he had.
Then two days later he did something even stupider. Maybe he was thinking about buying you something. A gesture. Something that said "I'm sorry" in a language more articulate than a hundred-dollar bill on a nightstand. Something that proved he'd actually thought about you, not just your body, not just the sex, but you.
He wasn't trying to buy you. He knew how that looked. He knew how it'd look especially after the money thing, like he was just throwing cash at the problem, like his wallet was the only tool he had. That wasn't it. It wasn't about the price or proving he could afford better than whatever Michael had given you. Okay, maybe it was a little bit about that. Maybe a human part of him wanted to put something in your hands that made everything Michael had ever given you look like garbage. But that wasn't the main thing. The main thing was... he just wanted you to have something from him that wasn't a mess.
Every single thing he'd given you so far had been wrong. Everything he'd touched, everything he'd offered, had turned sour. He wanted one thing, just one, that you could hold and look at and think, "okay, maybe he's not a complete disaster." He ended up in a little jewelry store with a woman behind the counter who helped him even when he asked for something “simple but nice.” He paid cash. Totally not to prove how much better he was than your ex. Definitely not.
"She's a lucky girl," the woman said as he tucked the box into his jacket pocket.
Sid shook his head, fingers closing around the box through the fabric. "No. I'm pretty sure I'm the lucky one. If she lets me be."
~
Traveling to Pittsburgh with your ex-fiancé is a kind of torture you wouldn't wish on anyone. Not your worst enemy. Not the girl Michael cheated on you with. Not even the guy who stiffed you on a sixty-dollar tab last Thursday and had the audacity to wink on his way out. Nobody deserves it. Jesus Christ.
It starts at the airport. He's late, obviously, because Michael has never been on time for anything in his life that didn't directly benefit him. You're standing at the gate with your carry-on between your feet and your phone in your hand, checking the boarding time for the third time, when he finally strolls up with a gas station coffee in one hand and his duffel slung over his shoulder. He's wearing cargo shorts. Cargo shorts. In April. With those beat-up Nikes he's had since college.
"Relax, we're fine," he says before you even open your mouth. "They haven't even started boarding yet."
"They started boarding ten minutes ago, Michael."
"We haven’t even been called."
"We're next."
"Same thing." He takes a loud sip of his coffee and leans on the pillar next to you, manspreading immediately, his knee pressing into yours. "So what's the game plan? We land, grab food, hit the hotel, pregame a little before this hockey thing?"
"It's not a 'hockey thing.' It's a playoff game."
"Right, right. Big deal. Very important." He says it the way you'd describe a child's school play. Patronizing with a little pat on the head. "Who are the Penguins playing again?"
"Philly."
"Philly? Oh, shit Flyers all the way, baby." He says it way too loud. He doesn't notice. He never notices. "Bunch of overpaid pretty boys in Pittsburgh anyway. Who even plays for them anymore? Bunch of old pieces of shit."
You don't correct him. You don't tell him that one of the "old pieces of shit" are the reason you're on this flight in the first place, and you definitely don't tell him that the man who invited you both is the captain. You haven't told Michael who it is. You're not entirely sure why. Maybe because the second you say "Sidney Crosby" out loud, Michael will either laugh in your face or spend the entire trip trying to prove he's better than a professional athlete, which, given that Michael's greatest physical accomplishment is a half-marathon he walked most of, would be genuinely painful to witness.
So you just nod and stare at your boarding pass and let him talk.
He talks the entire flight. The entire two and a half hours. You're in a middle seat because he took the aisle without asking, stretching his legs out into the walkway so the flight attendant has to tell him to move every time she passes with the beverage cart, and you're pressed against the seat in front of you with your forehead on the cold plastic watching the water slash around in your waterbottle while Michael provides unsolicited commentary on everything from the quality of the pretzels to the "bullshit" overhead bin situation to his theory that all hockey players are "just big dudes who can't play real sports."
"Think about it," he says, crunching a pretzel between his front teeth. "Football requires actual athleticism. Basketball requires skill. Hockey is just... ice and fighting. It's basically UFC on skates."
"Please stop talking."
"I'm just saying! The guy who invited us is probably looking to get back in those tight pants you got on. That's why he's giving away free tickets, babe. He's desperate."
You close your eyes and press your forehead harder against the seat. You think about Sidney's text. Thought maybe you could come see. The way he'd said "thank you, really" like you were doing him a favor instead of the other way around. You think about how different that made you feel from the man currently elbowing you to look at the “funny shit” in his movie..
"Look at this. Babe will you fucking look?"
You look. It's not funny.
When you land in Pittsburgh, Michael decides three things in rapid succession. First, that he's starving and needs to eat immediately even though you'd just had pretzels and he'd stolen half of your granola bar. Second, that the hotel you're staying at is "cheap as hell" even though it's perfectly nice and you're the one who booked it and paid for it because of course you did. And third, that he's confused about why you got separate rooms.
"Why would we need two rooms?" he asks, standing in the lobby with his duffel over his shoulder, looking at you like you've just told him you're sleeping in the parking lot. "That's a waste of money."
"Because we're not together, Michael."
"We're literally here together."
"You know what I mean."
He scoffs and swipes his key card off the counter without another word. He doesn't offer to help with your bag. He doesn't hold the elevator. He just walks ahead of you like he always has. Your room is on the fourth floor. His is on the sixth. The elevator ride is silent except for the mechanics of the elevator and the sound of Michael typing on his phone, his thumbs moving fast, probably texting one of his buddies about the trip. When the doors open on four you step out without saying goodnight and he doesn't say it either. The doors close and he's gone, ascending to the sixth floor and whatever version of the night he's planning that doesn't involve you.
The next morning Michael ruins everything. Obviously.
You're in the hotel lobby at ten, coffee in hand, scrolling through your phone while you wait for him so you can figure out what to do with the hours before the game. He walks out of the elevator looking like he slept in his clothes, which he probably did, and there's a hickey on his neck. A big one. An ugly dark purple mark sitting right below his jaw like a goddamn billboard. He doesn't even try to hide it. In fact, the first thing he does when he sees you is grin like he's twelve years old and just touched a boob for the first time.
"Morning, babe. Sleep good?"
You stare at the hickey. Then at his face. Then back at the hickey.
"What?" He touches his neck, feigning innocence for about half a second before the grin breaks through again. "Oh, this? Yeah. Met this girl at the bar last night. Stacy. Or maybe Tracy. Something with a 'cy.' She was insane. Couldn't keep her hands off me."
He tells you about it while you're standing with a lukewarm coffee going cold in your hand. Every detail. The bar he found two blocks over. The shots she bought him. The way she laughed at his jokes, all of them, even the ones that aren't funny, which is all of them. The Uber back to her place. The sex, which he describes in terms that make your skin crawl. He talks about this woman like she's a box score. Stats and highlights and a final rating out of ten.
"Solid eight," he concludes, nodding to himself like he's made a fair and measured assessment. "Maybe eight-point-five. She had this thing she did with her–"
"I don't want to hear this, Michael."
"What? We're not together, you said that, remember? I'm just living my life."
He's right. You did say that.
The day crawls by. Michael drags you to a sports bar for lunch where he watches college basketball on three screens and argues with the bartender about a call that happened in a game neither of them have any stake in. You eat a salad and stare at your phone. You google "PPG Paints Arena" and look at pictures of the building you'll be inside tonight. You google "Penguins playoff schedule" and scroll through articles you only half-understand about matchups and line combinations and goaltending statistics. You don't google Sidney Crosby. You've already done that enough times to fill a search history you'd rather die than let anyone see.
By the time you get back to the hotel to change, it's five-thirty and you stand in front of the bathroom mirror in your underwear and stare at yourself for a long time, trying to figure out what to wear, which is ridiculous because it's a hockey game, not a gala, and Sid's going to be on the ice in full pads and a helmet so it's not like he's going to notice whether you're in jeans or a goddamn evening gown.
You get dressed and you don't wear perfume. You tell yourself it's because you forgot to pack it. That's a lie.
Michael meets you in the lobby in a Flyers jersey. An actual Flyers jersey. Orange and black and obnoxious, clearly borrowed from one of his douchebag friends. "What?" he says when he sees your face. "I told you. Flyers all the way."
"You're going to get us killed."
"Nah. Pittsburgh fans are soft. What are they gonna do, politely ask me to leave?" He laughs and throws his arm around your shoulders as you walk out of the hotel. You don't shrug it off because the energy it would take to fight him on it isn't worth the three seconds of satisfaction.
You didn't really know what to expect from the tickets. Sid had said he'd leave them at will call. He hadn't said where the seats were. You honestly figured nosebleeds, maybe upper level, seats where the players look like action figures and you need binoculars to read the numbers on the jerseys. You would've been perfectly fine with that. Happy, even. You were just grateful to be there and watch number 87 skate in person instead of through a screen.
So color you surprised when the attendant at will call hands you two passes with "VIP Guest" printed across the top and a little map showing you exactly where to go.
A box. Like, a private, enclosed, fancy box with its own entrance and its own hallway and its own attendant standing outside the door with a clipboard and a smile. Something you've seen on TV during football games where celebrities sit in their own little glass bubble above the rest of the world. You've never been in a box. You've never been in any seat that cost more than forty dollars. You've been to exactly zero professional hockey games in your entire life, and your first one is apparently going to be from a seat that probably costs more per night than your rent.
"Holy shit," you say quietly, standing in the hallway outside the door, passes in hand.
Michael, predictably, acts like he owns the place the second you step inside. He piles a plate high with a little bit of everything from the spread of food provided before you've even taken your jacket off. He grabs two beers from the fridge without asking, pops them both open on the edge of the counter, and slides one across to you with the confidence of a man who has never once questioned whether he belongs in a room.
"This is how the other half lives, huh?" He drops into one of the leather seats and kicks his sneakers up on the railing, the orange Flyers jersey feels like a bad omen. "Not bad for a couple of nobodies. Your boy really went all out. Must feel pretty guilty about that whole paying-you-for-sex thing."
"Stop calling it that."
"What? That’s what happened."
Your phone buzzes in your lap.
Unknown: Hope you enjoy the game. Let me know if you need anything.
You read it twice. It's so polite. Just genuine kindness from a man who put you in a luxury box and asked for nothing in return except that you enjoy yourself. It's hard to be mad at someone who talks to you like that. It's hard to hold onto your anger when he keeps reaching out with open hands instead of clenched fists. Michael would never send a text like that. Michael would send "you better be grateful" or "told you I'd make it worth your time" or nothing at all.
Warmups start and you find 87 immediately. You tell yourself it's because the number is big. That's all. It's just basic visual recognition. Anyone would notice. The number 87 is objectively interesting and your eyes are naturally drawn to them. It's science. 71 is there too. And 39. And 25. See? Three others, 87 isn’t at all special.
Michael is somehow already on his second beer and hasn't looked at the ice once. He's got his phone out, scrolling through something. "When does the actual game start? This warmup shit is boring."
"Soon."
"Good. Can't wait to watch your boy choke on live television." He toasts his beer toward the glass. "Flyers in four, baby."
Warmups end. They introduce a line of players, maybe the starting line? You’re not entirely sure. One by one, names and numbers called over the speakers, each one met with a cheer from the crowd. When they announce 87 the building shakes which seems like a fitting intro for someone like him.
Puck drops and you learn very quickly that watching hockey on TV is like looking at a photograph of a fire compared to standing next to one.
These men are fast. The puck moves in ways that don't seem physically possible. The hits are louder than you expected. You wince the first time you see a player get pinned against the glass. It looks like it hurts. It looks like everything about this sport hurts.
And then there's Michael.
"See that? That's called a face-off." He leans toward you without taking his eyes off the ice, one hand gesturing with his beer. "They drop the puck between two guys and they try to win it."
"Michael."
"And the goalie, obviously, that's the guy with the big pads. Team loses? It’s probably his fault."
"Michael, I swear to God."
"What? Fucking what?"
You press your lips together so hard they go white. He doesn't stop. He never stops. Michael has never once in six years considered the possibility that you might be capable of understanding something without his help. He just talks. You’re convinced he gets off to the sound of his own voice..
During the second one of their bigger guys lays a hit on Sid. He doesn't go down. He stays on his feet somehow. Whether the hit was dirty or not you don’t care. You just know that you didn’t like it and it was against Sidney so that automatically makes it dirty.
"Good hit," Michael says, grinning. "About time someone knocked that old fucker around."
"That was dirty and you know it."
"It's hockey, babe. They hit each other. That's the whole point."
During intermission, you pull out your phone. You tell yourself you're just passing time. Just scrolling. Just checking Twitter because the arena's in-house entertainment isn't really your thing and Michael is at the food spread assembling his third plate. But your thumbs don't go to your timeline. They go to the search bar. And you type his name. The tweets are a firehose. Most of them are positive, enthusiastic in that specific way sports fans get during playoffs where everything feels like life or death. But then you scroll down further and find the other kind. The opposing fans.
You almost respond to a few negative comments. But then you stop yourself and think what the fuck are you doing? You close the app. Stare at your lock screen for a second, which is just the default wallpaper because you haven't changed it since you got the phone, and then, before you can stop yourself, you open Twitter one more time and hit follow on the Pittsburgh Penguins official account.
They win. The Penguins win game one and you feel ready to jump out of your seat and run laps around the arena. Michael is not happy. His newfound loyalty to the Philadelphia Flyers, a team he did not know existed a week ago, has him acting like a toddler who just found out Santa isn't real. He's muttering under his breath, arms crossed over his Flyers jersey, face screwed up into that sour expression he gets when the world doesn't cooperate with his wants.
"Fucking rigged," he says, kicking the leg of his chair. "Absolute bullshit. Those refs were blind all night. Philly had them, they fucking had them, and then the refs just let that old fuck walk right in and score. Overrated captain bullshit. He's got the league in his pocket."
"You don't even know the rules."
"I know enough to know that was bullshit." He drains the last of his beer and tosses the empty can toward the trash. It misses, rolling across the floor. He doesn't pick it up.
Whatever. Honestly, nothing could ruin your mood. Not Michael's tantrum, not the empty beer can on the floor, not the Flyers jersey staring at you like a neon sign of bad decisions. You feel good. Like you watched something beautiful happen and it was meant for you, even though you know it wasn't, even though you know twenty thousand other people saw the same thing and felt the same way and you're not special, you're just a girl in a box who got lucky.
Your phone buzzes.
Unknown: Wait up if you can. I'll come find you.
You don't mind waiting. You can wait. You can wait all night if you have to.
"He wants us to wait," you say, trying to keep your voice neutral. "He's gonna come up after."
"We gotta wait for the prick now?"
"You don't have to stay. Seriously. Go back to the hotel. I'll catch an Uber."
He considers this before looking into your eyes and deciding that he’d actually prefer to ruin your good mood. "Nah," he says slowly, cracking his knuckles one by one, each pop deliberate. "Nah, I'm good. I wanna meet this guy. Wanna see what all the fuss is about. See if he's actually worth all the drama you've been putting us both through."
"Michael."
"What? You dragged me to Pittsburgh for a hockey game so you could see some dude who pays you after sex. Least I can do is shake his hand, right? Man to man. Tell him thanks for the tickets, the free food, the nice seats." He gestures around the box with a sweep of his arm. "Real generous of him. Real classy. I'm sure he's a great guy."
Michael's not just being difficult. He's marking territory. He doesn't know who Sid is, doesn't know the name or the number or the face, but he knows that whoever this man is, he's competition. And Michael has never handled competition well.
You nod and settle back into your seat and you lose track of time. You don't know how long hockey players take after a game. You don't know if there are showers and press conferences and team meetings and ice baths and whatever else happens in the parts of the building the public never sees. You just know it takes a while.
Michael goes to the bathroom three separate times, each trip louder than the last. He drinks four beers. He makes a mess of the food spread. He starts three different conversations with the staff guy, asking about player salaries and whether the box ever gets famous people and if they can hook him up with a signed puck. He even tries to figure out how to call a car so you can “get the fuck out of here”, he fumbles with the app on his phone while complaining about pricing. At one point he watches stupid videos on his phone at full volume until the staff member politely asks him to turn it down.
And then the door opens.
He's in a suit. Navy. The tie is loosened, the top button of his shirt undone, and his hair is still a little damp from the shower, pushed back off his forehead, curling just slightly at the ends. His eyes do that thing. The thing where they take in everything at once before settling on the one thing that matters. They pass over Michael, over the mess of empty beer cans and decimated food platters, over the staff member standing quietly in the corner, and then they find you. And they stay.
You barely get to your feet, your body moving on instinct, half-standing from your chair with your mouth already forming the shape of the word "hi" when Michael ruins it.
"Well, well, well. Look who finally decided to show up." He says it the way you'd greet a plumber who took too long. "The big hero himself. Hell of a game, man. Barely scraped by, huh? Those Flyers guys had you sweating out there."
Watching Michael act big-headed and loud and completely oblivious to how small he looks next to a man who just won a playoff game in front of thousands of screaming people, is a special kind of torture. He doesn't know it's Sidney Crosby. Or maybe he does and doesn't care. Either way, he's standing there in his orange Flyers jersey with beer on his breath and another woman's hickey still fading on his neck, puffing his chest out like he has anything to prove.
But Sid takes it in stride. Of course he does. He extends his hand and Michael shakes it, squeezing too hard. Sid doesn't flinch. Doesn't match the squeeze. Just gives a normal handshake like a normal person would.
"Appreciate you coming out," Sid says. His voice is calm, you've heard him use that voice when he talks to you about things that are clearly tearing him apart inside. "Tough game. They played hard."
"Played hard? They had you guys beat and you know it." Michael claps Sid on the shoulder like they're old friends. Like they've known each other for years instead of twelve seconds. "If it wasn't for that last goal, which I'm still not sure was clean, you guys were dead. The refs were in your pocket all night."
"Could've gone either way," Sid says diplomatically. "Philly's got a good team. Gonna be a tough series."
"Tough series? You guys got lucky tonight. But hey, respect for the effort. Can't win 'em all, right?"
You almost want to save Sid from it. Almost want to step between them and say "okay, that's enough, stop embarrassing me and yourself and every person who's ever had the misfortune of being in the same room as you, Michael." But watching Sid suffer through it is a little worth it, if you're being honest. Just a little. It’s like watching someone try to explain physics to a physicist using a children's book as their source material.
You need to get a new man. Honestly. This fucked-up love triangle you're stuck in is ridiculous. It's a mess. It's the kind of situation that would make your friends stage an intervention if you had the kind of friends who did that, which you don't, because Michael isolated you from most of them during the engagement and you never quite rebuilt those bridges after.
"So here's what I'm thinking," Michael says, clapping his hands together once. "Me and my girl are gonna head out, hit up this spot I saw on the way in. Heard it has cheap shots, loud music, none of this fancy box bullshit." He pulls out his phone again, swiping through it with one hand. "She needs to let loose a little, you know? Been a long trip. Lot of stress."
What kind of fucked-up shit is this? What kind of choices have you made that led to this exact moment? This is your life. This is actually your real life.
"Alright, man, nice meeting you. Thanks for the tickets, the food, the whole setup. Real generous. But we're gonna head out. Early flight tomorrow." He's already moving, already steering, his hand finds the small of your back, pushing you toward the exit. Deciding the meeting is over. Speaking for both of you the way he always has.
You haven't even said hello to Sidney yet. You've been in the room with him for ten minutes and you haven't spoken a single word to him. Sid steps forward. He doesn't look at Michael. He looks at you. Only at you. His eyes find yours and stay there.
"Actually," he says, and his hand comes up, not grabbing but offering, his fingers brushing your arm just above the elbow with a touch so gentle you barely feel it. "I was kind of hoping to steal you for a bit."
He's talking to you. Not Michael. You.
Michael doesn't let you answer.
"She's alright, man." His hand tightens on your back, fingers pressing harder into the fabric of your top. "She's had a long night. We're gonna go grab some drinks, decompress. You've already done enough."
Michael knows exactly what he's doing when he says it. He's reminding you, in front of the man who hurt you, that you were hurt.
"Michael." You say his name the way you've said it a thousand times. The vocal equivalent of grabbing someone by the collar. Knock it off. Stop it. Shut your mouth.
He shrugs. "What? I'm just saying. The guy doesn't need to wine and dine you after what he pulled. Unless that's his thing. Pay you a hundred bucks for a lousy fuck and then take you out to dinner to make himself feel better about it?"
Michael's hand moves to your arm, his fingers wrap around your bicep, way too tight to be comfortable. He's holding you the way you hold something you own, something you don't want someone else to take. Like a dog with a bone. Like a child with a toy he's not done playing with.
Sid looks at Michael's hand on your arm, and he wraps his fingers around Michael's wrist. He holds on until those fingers peel away from your arm one by one, and gently moves his hand away from you.
"I don't think so," Sid says quietly. "You should head out. There's plenty of good spots nearby. I can have someone point you in the right direction if you want."
"Oh, that's rich," he says, and his voice is different now, lower, meaner, stripped of the performative bravado. "That's really fucking rich coming from you. You think you're saving her? You think you're the good guy here?" He laughs, but it's more of a bark,. "You left her cash on a nightstand like she's a hooker and now you're standing here acting like Prince fucking Charming. At least I was honest with her. At least she knew what she was getting with me."
"Michael, stop." Your voice comes out smaller than you want it to.
He turns his attention to you. “You called me. Remember that?” He asks even though you both know the answer. “You dragged me to this shithole, and now you're standing here looking at this asshole like he hung the moon when three days ago you were under me making the same sounds you probably make for him."
You feel six years of being cut down and built back up and cut down again by the same pair of hands. Sid steps forward and stands beside you. And his voice, when he speaks, is the quietest it's been all night.
"That's enough."
Michael’s fists clench at his sides, and you wonder if he’s stupid enough to actually do it. "Whatever," he says instead. “She's all yours, man. Good luck. You're gonna need it." He grabs his phone off the counter, shoves it into his back pocket, and walks toward the door without looking at either of you.
Sid doesn't say anything but he reaches down and takes your hand.
"Come on," he says softly. "Let's get out of here."
You just follow him. He walks like he knows exactly where he's going, which he obviously does, this is his building, his arena, the place where he's spent more hours of his life than probably anywhere else. He turns left, then right, then through a door that someone holds open for him. The innards of the arena are a different world. You pass doors marked with labels you only half-read as you pass: EQUIPMENT. MEDICAL. STORAGE B.
He's just allowed to do this, apparently. Just allowed to walk a stranger through the restricted areas of a professional hockey arena without anyone stopping him or asking questions. Security nods at him as you pass, a big guy in a black polo who gives Sid a familiar chin-lift and then glances at you with the disinterest of someone who's seen players walk through here with guests a thousand times. A couple of staff members call out congratulations as you move through the hallways, and Sid responds to each one with a polite smile and a short "thanks" or "appreciate it" without ever breaking stride or letting go of your hand.
He pushes open a side door at the end of a corridor and you're in a private lot connected to the arena. The lot is mostly empty now, just a handful of cars parked in reserved spots, each one presumably belonging to a player or someone important enough to have a designated space this close to the building.
Sid's car is there. Nothing flashy, which surprises you and then doesn't. It's nice, clearly expensive if you know what you're looking at, but it's not screaming for attention. He lets go of your hand only long enough to open the passenger side door for you and waits until you’re settled before closing it gently and walking around to the driver’s side.
“You okay?” he asks when he settles into the car. “He was… a lot.”
“You handled him better than I would’ve. I almost felt bad watching you stand there and take it.”
He hums and puts the car in gear and pulls out of the lot, the arena fades away behind you as he merges into the traffic. For a while you just drive in silence. It’s okay. Sid keeps both hands on the wheel, eyes on the road, but every few blocks you catch him glancing over at you like he’s making sure you’re still there. You don’t mind the quiet. After hours of Michael’s nonstop voice it feels like a relief, like someone finally turned the volume down on the world.
You watch the city through the passenger window. Pittsburgh is pretty at night, which annoys you because you don't want to like anything about this city. You don't want to think about the fact that this is where he lives, where he's built his life, where he comes home after games like the one you just watched. But you notice anyway.
Sid clears his throat. "He kind of seemed like a jerk," he says. Carefully. Like he's aware that the man he's talking about is someone you once loved, someone you said yes to, someone you planned a future with, and he's trying to be honest without being mean.
“He is. Always has been. I don’t know why the hell you told me to bring him. And I really don’t know why I actually listened.”
Sid’s fingers flex on the steering wheel. “I don’t know either. Figured if I invited him too it’d be harder for you to say no. Stupid eh? Really fucking stupid.”
You nod. “I mean he made the whole trip miserable. I feel like I should’ve told him to fuck off the second we landed.”
He doesn't say anything to that he just reaches over the center console, his right hand leaving the wheel, and finds yours in the space between the seats. His fingers slide between yours. That same calloused palm, those same rough patches that you felt when he led you out of the arena, feel softer now somehow. Like the car is a different context than the hallway, like the privacy of this small dark space has given him permission to touch you with less caution and more care.
He doesn't ask if you want him to turn around and take you back to your hotel. You don't ask him to. Going back to the hotel means going back to the same building Michael is in. Going back means the elevator and the hallway and the room on the fourth floor that smells like industrial carpet cleaner and loneliness. Going back means being alone tonight, and you've been alone enough. You've been alone in a relationship, alone in a breakup, alone in a series of hotel rooms and one-night stands and fire escape phone calls at 4 AM. You're tired of alone.
So you don't ask. And he doesn't offer. He just keeps driving and you don't mind one bit.
The neighborhoods change. The houses go from "normal people live here" to "people with money live here." It shouldn't surprise you that he lives somewhere like this. He's Sidney Crosby. He's been playing professional hockey since he was eighteen. He makes more money in a year than you'll make in your entire life, probably several lifetimes, and he's been doing it for over two decades. Of course he lives in a nice community. Of course his house is going to be beautiful. Of course the driveway is going to be long and the garage is going to be attached and the landscaping is going to look like someone tends to it regularly.
But thinking it and actually seeing it are two completely different things.
You wonder if he gets lonely here.
You look at the garage that he he pulls into, the empty space next to his car where another car could go but doesn't. You think about the size of the house, the number of rooms that are probably on the other side of that door, the hallways and bathrooms and spare bedrooms that don't have anyone in them. You think about him coming home after games, after wins and losses and injuries and flights and press conferences, walking through that door into a house that's beautiful but empty. Hanging his keys on whatever hook he hangs them on. Maybe eating something standing at the kitchen counter because sitting alone at a table for one feels too depressing. Maybe turning the TV on just for the noise, just so the rooms have a voice in them that isn't his own.
You get lonely at your place. But your place is small. The loneliness is small too. It fits in the corners and under the bed and behind the couch. His loneliness would be bigger. It would have room to spread. It would echo off the high ceilings and bounce around the empty spaces and fill the house.
He gets out of the car and comes around to your side. Opens the door for you again, because apparently that's just what he does, this gesture of care that probably doesn't even register as unusual to him but that no one has done for you in years. His hand finds the small of your back as you walk toward the door that leads into the house.
You feel almost like you're invading. You can't really explain it. He invited you. He drove you here. He's the one leading you through his garage and toward his front door with his hand on your back like this is exactly where he wants you. But there's something about stepping into someone's actual home, their real space that feels different from a hotel room. Hotels are neutral territory. Nobody really lives there. But this is his.
You're honestly waiting for him to pull back. Any second now. Any second he's going to look at you standing in his entryway and some circuit in his brain is going to trip, some alarm is going to sound, and he's going to think what the hell am I doing? Why did I bring a waitress from another city into my house after a playoff game? This isn't right. You're bracing for it.
But he doesn't. He looks at you standing just barely inside his house and he shuts the door.
"I'm gonna kiss you," he says.
And he reaches for you. Both hands this time, one cupping the side of your neck, thumb against your jaw, the other sliding around your waist and pulling you in until there's no space left between you. It's different from every other kiss you've shared. Not the frantic hotel kiss from the first night. Not the controlled kiss from the hotel bed when you straddled him and made him beg. Not even the consuming kiss from when he showed up at your apartment and pressed his lips to yours before you could say hello.
This one is slow. His lips find yours and he stays there. You feel his exhale against your cheek, its a little shaky, like even he is surprised by how much this affects him. His tongue brushes your lower lip, asking, and you open for him, and the sound he makes against your mouth makes your knees go soft.
"Come on," he murmurs, and he bends slightly, his hands dropping from your face and neck to slide under your thighs, and he lifts you the way he did the first night. But this time he doesn't press you against a wall. He carries you, one hand spread wide across the swell of your ass, the other gripping your thigh, and he walks.
He doesn't take you to a guest room. You'd honestly half-expected him to carry you down some hallway to a nice but impersonal spare bedroom with clean sheets and matching pillows, the room you put guests in, where you keep a boundary between your real life and whatever this is. But he walks past closed doors without even glancing at them, past what you think might be a home office and maybe a bathroom, and pushes open the door at the end of the hall with his shoulder.
His bedroom.
It's bigger than your entire apartment. The bed is against the far wall, massive, and you wonder how they even got it through the door. King-size at least, maybe bigger. He lays you down in the middle of the bed and follows you onto it. This bed could fit four people and still have room. This bed doesn't have a dip. This bed is what beds are supposed to feel like when you're not buying the cheapest option at the furniture outlet and praying it lasts more than two years.
He lowers his mouth to yours again. His hand slides down your side, tracing the curve of your waist through your top, and then back up, taking the fabric with it, his palm warm against the bare skin of your stomach. He stops there, fingers spread wide just below your ribs, like he's feeling you breathe.
"You know," he murmurs against your mouth, pulling back just enough that his words brush your lips as he speaks, "you're gonna have to stay in Pittsburgh till the season ends."
You blink. Your fingers pause where they'd been working on another button of his shirt. "What?"
"Playoffs are long." He says it matter-of-factly, like he's explaining a hockey rule. "Could be weeks. Can't have you flying back and forth every time. That's a waste of money. Waste of time." He kisses the corner of your mouth. "Waste of energy you could be spending on better things."
"Better things," you repeat, voice going breathy despite your best efforts.
"Mhm." Another kiss, this one to your jaw. "Like watching me play. Coming to games. Being here when I get home." His lips find the spot below your ear and you feel your entire body soften, your spine pressing deeper into his ridiculously comfortable mattress. "Sleeping in a bed that's actually big enough for two people instead of that thing at your apartment that tried to kill my back."
"Oh, so now you're insulting my bed?"
"I'm telling you the truth. That mattress cannot be up to standard."
You should laugh it off. You should tell him he's crazy, that this is moving too fast, that you've known each other for a handful of encounters spread across weeks and most of them involved either fighting or fucking or both. You should remind him that you have a job, a lease, a life in another city that's small and imperfect but yours. You should point out that your ex-fiancé is currently somewhere in Pittsburgh getting drunk and you should probably deal with that situation before you start making plans to move in with a man whose middle name you don't even know. Instead you kiss him again.
"Shut up and take my clothes off," you murmur against his lips.
And he does.
—
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