Chapter 9

Sidney sat down in his living room and flipped on the TV. He idly changed the channels without paying a whole lot of attention to what was on. This living by yourself in your own house thing wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. Sure, it was nice to have your own place, but sometimes it was downright boring, like right now. He hadn’t had anything to do after practice today and now he was just sitting here with nothing to do.

He couldn’t help himself, he was someone that needed to have things to do. He enjoyed down time as much as the next guy, but he was so used to being busy that if he had nothing scheduled it drove him crazy. It was days like this that he’d liked living at the Lemieux house. Someone had always been home whether it was Mario, Nathalie, or one of the kids. He always had someone to talk to and spend time with.

He debated calling up one of the guys to see what they were doing, but decided against it. Instead he glanced around the living room and looked at the plain white and blank walls. Maybe he should start figuring out how to decorate his house. He stared hard at the wall in front of him and tried to picture what would be on it, but was drawing a blank. He knew next to nothing about decorating and didn’t know where to start.

Maybe he should just hire somebody to do it for them. That way he didn’t have to do anything himself. He could just tell them to avoid using certain colors and let them do their thing. Even if he wasn’t thrilled with the outcome, any decoration would be better than the blank house he was living in now. Suddenly the sound of his phone’s ring tone pulled him out of his thoughts. He smiled when he saw it was Bryce.

She’d been a very pleasant surprise. He hadn’t expected to randomly run into anyone from home, let alone Bryce, here in Pittsburgh. He also hadn’t expected Bryce to be the girl he was getting to know and was enjoying spending some of his time with. She just wasn’t what he’d always thought she was all through school.

His change in opinion had as much to do with how she looked now as it did with her personality. Outwardly she was a completely different person than he’d known. Inwardly she was a different person than he’d have suspected. Bryce had been the typical loner math geek. He’d never really thought much about her at all. Now he thought about her a fair amount.

It turns out that Bryce actually had a personality. She was witty, sarcastically funny, not afraid to voice her opinion, and mysterious. He couldn’t help but marvel at how outgoing she was now. Even so he could tell that she was holding something back, hence the mysterious. There was more to Bryce Sirota than met the eye, and the more time he spent with her, the more he wanted to find out what that was.

“I had a disaster of epic proportions with a container of oats. Don’t ask me how it happened, but I destroyed the container and had to find something to do with the oats so I made an enormous amount of oatmeal raisin cookies. Please tell me you’ll take some so I don’t put on 100 pounds from eating them all myself,” she gushed out when he answered.

“How many did you make?” he asked after he finished laughing at her.

“Uh, I stopped counting at 5 dozen,” she replied. He nearly choked.

“You just made more than 5 dozen oatmeal raisin cookies?” She laughed at his question.

“I told you I needed help!” she exclaimed.

“Okay, I have an idea. I’ll take all of them if you come over and help me figure out what to do with my house,” he bargained.

“Deal!” she agreed. He rattled off his address and she told him she’d be over soon.

Bryce showed up at his door 45 minutes later in a pair of jeans and a black sweater, carrying multiple containers in her arms. He laughed when he saw the amount as he took them out of her hands and led her back to his kitchen so he could put them down. She blew her bangs off of her forehead as she collapsed down onto a stool at the breakfast bar.

“Thank you so much!” He opened one of the containers and took out a cookie, taking a bite.

“No, thank you,” he returned when he tasted the oaty goodness of these amazing cookies. She laughed in response.

“What the hell are you going to do with all of these cookies anyway?” she wanted to know.

“The guys will eat them,” he assured her as he popped another cookie into his mouth.

“Oh, right. I forget about the stomach capacity of hockey players,” she cracked. He grinned over at her.

“Well, if you’re going to help me with the house, I should probably give you the tour.” Bryce agreed and got up from her seat on the stool.

He led her through the house showing her each room and she took time in each one to really look them over. He wasn’t sure exactly how much Bryce knew about interior design, but he was hoping that at the very least she could give him a starting point. They ended the tour back down in the living room where Bryce sat down on the floor instead of on the couch.

“Okay, the first thing we need to do is figure out paint. Everything else depends on the color scheme of the room. What’s your favorite color?” He sat down on the floor next to her and turned his gaze to the wall she was looking at.

“Green.” She nodded and kept her eyes trained on the wall as she fell silent.

She then began asking him about what he wanted out of each room. Did he want to entertain in them, who would be in them, what they would be used for, and so on. He hadn’t realized so much went into paint color. He answered each question as Bryce wrote down his responses in a small notebook she’d pulled out of her purse.

“Are you up for shopping for paint?” she asked when her questions ceased.

“Right now?” he returned. She shrugged.

“Do you have something to do?”

“No.”

“Then yes, right now.” She stood up and he followed suit.

He offered to drive and they got into his car and headed to a paint store. They walked inside and Bryce headed straight for a wall covered in paint chip samples. She immediately began pulling strips out and looking them over. He watched as she surveyed each one, keeping some in her hands and putting others back. She seemed satisfied after a while and waved him over, spreading the strips out on the counter.

“Okay, I grabbed a bunch of different types of green. It’s up to you which color you like best,” she told him. He didn’t know how he could ever make a decision with the options in front of him. It was just too much.

However he went through and immediately pulled out the shades of green he didn’t like. Then he had to get Bryce’s help. Eventually they settled on a light sage and then they got to work picking out accenting colors. Then they had to move on to other colors for the other rooms. It took a while but eventually they knew what they needed and he put the order in.

Since it was going to take a while for all the paint to be ready they went out for some coffee and hung out. Once they figured they’d killed enough time they headed back to the paint store to pick up their cans of paint. Bryce grabbed the rest of the things they’d need while he carried cans out to his car. Once he’d paid they headed back to his house.

“Thanks for doing this with me. I wouldn’t have even known where to start,” he said to her.

“That’s what friends are for, right?”










I spread the drop cloth out over the entirety of the room while Sidney pushed the little bit of furniture he owned out of there. Once done with that we got to work taping. This part by far was my least favorite part of painting. Even so, I couldn’t handle anything less than perfection, and I knew I didn’t have the sturdiest hand.

“How do you know all this?” Sidney asked me after I finished showing him how to use the roller and make sure he didn’t use too much paint.

“I’m pretty sure my mom painted the entire house a different color about every other year,” I told him. He laughed and shook his head.

“I’ve just started doing this and I’m annoyed. How could anyone want to do it that often?” I let out an incredulous laugh.

“No one said my mother was sane.” He laughed at that, probably figuring I was being sarcastic. Unfortunately I wasn’t.

We talked while we painted, mostly about his hockey career and my college days leading into opening the restaurant. I felt like we were both dancing around saying anything too personal about ourselves, like neither of us really wanted to talk about it. We took a break after finishing the room, which also happened to be the biggest wall, and ordered some dinner.

“Do you still keep in touch with anyone from home?” Sidney asked just as I popped a piece of a spicy scallop roll in my mouth.

“Uh, no, not really. Just my family,” I replied shifting uncomfortably in my seat. I wasn’t liking where this conversation was heading.

“Really? No one from school?” he pushed. I did my best not to glare at him and tell him that he’d destroyed any chance of that.

“Really, no one. I didn’t have many friends. I kind of kept to myself.” Even though I knew that he was aware of that fact, I could hear my voice quieting as I said it, like I was embarrassed. I kind of was. “How about you?”

“The same group I always spent time with. They haven’t changed or treated me any differently since I went pro. Other than that, not really.”

We finished the sushi and headed back out to continue painting. We’d moved on to the next room at this point and the smell of paint was beginning to permeate the entire house. We were quiet for a little while until Sidney started sneezing. It got us laughing and talking again, keeping the mood light.

We’d started on opposite sides of the room and worked towards each other. I had my back to him and didn’t see that he’d moved really close, and brought his paint tray with him. I took a step backwards and felt the cold liquid ooze between my toes just in time to feel myself slip backwards and land with a hard thump on my back, paint splattering all over.

“Jesus, Bryce, are you okay?” Sidney asked, squatting down next to me, a look of concern on his face.

I simply looked up at him from my position and then began to laugh. He made a face that told me he was trying not to laugh, but eventually he burst into laughter as well. When I’d finally managed to stop, I sat up and glanced around me. My foot and the bottom of my jeans was covered in light sage. Then I felt paint dripping down my back. That’s when I realized that I had paint all over me.

“And that is why we needed a drop cloth,” I told him with a laugh as he helped me up off the floor.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t laugh,” he said between giggles as I felt paint start to roll down my forehead from my hair.

“It’s okay, it really is funny,” I assured him with a laugh of my own. “I don’t suppose you could let me shower.”

“Yeah, sure.” Before I had a chance to respond I was suddenly in his arms and he was moving towards the stairs. Being lifted into his arms was unexpected and threw me off for a moment. Feeling his arms wrapped around me, my face so close to his was causing my heart to begin to race.

“What are you doing?” I asked, in a little bit of a panic.

“I wasn’t about to let you walk through my house leaving green footprints everywhere,” he explained. The explanation calmed me when I realized that there was a completely logical explanation to being in his arms.

He put me down in his shower and brought in a pair of his sweatpants and a t-shirt for me to put on when I got out. After handing me a towel, Sidney walked out of the bathroom, closing the door behind him. I stripped off my clothes and did my best to rinse all the paint off my body and from my hair. I dried off, threw my wet hair up in a messy bun, and put on his clothes.

The smell of him hit me as I slid the t-shirt over my head. I hadn’t really been close enough to really smell him before, but now I could, and it smelled incredible. It was then that I realized that this had been my ultimate fantasy at one time in my life. I was standing in Sidney Crosby’s house, wearing his clothes. The 14 year old version of me would be so jealous.

The 22 year old version of me wanted to get home and get out of his clothes so the 14 year old me would stop confusing my brain. I didn’t like having those old emotions stirred up inside me when I was on a mission to hurt the same guy I used to be in love with. I pulled the drawstring tight to keep the pants from falling off of me and made my way out of the bathroom.

“I think I’ve had enough painting for now,” I stated as I stepped into the kitchen where Sidney was putting away dishes. He turned to me and laughed.

“That’s understandable.”

“I think I’m just going to head home and get these clothes washed. Maybe I can salvage something. I’ll bring your clothes back tomorrow.” Sidney and I had already made plans for me to come back tomorrow and continue the painting process.

“Don’t worry about rushing it. You can give them back whenever. Let me give you a sweatshirt to wear home. It’s cold out there.”

I took the sweatshirt he offered me and said goodbye. I stepped out of my car and headed into my building amidst strange stares at my oversized Pittsburgh Penguins ensemble. I averted my eyes from all of theirs, put my head down, and kept it down until I walked into the condo. Immediately I heard laughter coming from Harmony.

“That was fast,” she commented, eyeing my clothes with her eyebrows raised. I tossed the bag that held my paint stained clothes.

“I didn’t sleep with him. I fell into paint.” She opened the bag and looked inside before laughing again. I rolled my eyes and shut myself up in my room. I moved to take Sidney’s clothes off, but hesitated. One night in them couldn’t hurt.