Trip to Your Heart - A Hockey Fanfiction

Uncle Wayne... Uncle Jakub... Aunt Cara... Uncle Steve... Uncle Brayden...

"What did you think?" Claude asked me as we drove out to dinner.

"I wish there was someway I could help them all," I sighed, leaning my head against the window.

"Me, too," he said, "And I saw that look in your eyes, you want to adopt all four of them, don't you?"

"I... I don't know. I do and I don't. Four would be a lot to handle right off the bat when neither of us have any experience parenting and I want them all to be treated equally, but it seems like it would be worse to split them up when we met all of them already," I frowned at Philadelphia's passing landscape.

"Four would be a lot, and I don't want to split them up, either, but we have to do what is best for all of us, you know? We probably can't handle more than one or two, and what about them? Would they function if one or two of them disappeared? Or would it be better if they stayed together for as long as possible?" He asked.

"You're right, they would probably do better together. So then what? What do we do now? We have to go back. We promised them that we would and I don't want to crush those kids' hearts more than I have to. If we didn't keep our word to come back, it would be horrible," I replied.

"I know. We'll go back, and maybe we'll adopt a younger kid instead, a baby, maybe?" He suggested, "It would be more like we had had a kid that way. And we'd get to nurture them by ourselves, they would get full attention and would never have to spend time wondering why no one chose them."

"I like that idea, but I still feel bad," I said as we walked into the Chinese restaurant. We were taken to a small window booth where we could watch the light snow falling over the city outside.

"You know," Claude said, taking a sip of his wonton soup a bit later, "The wives and girlfriends usually put on a few events throughout the season, maybe you could convince them to do an event for or with the kids in the adoption agency. You could get them new clothes and toys, or take them on a field trip to a zoo or something."

"Claude, that's brilliant!" I exclaimed.

"Well, I try," he said.

"Wow, I'll have to talk to the other girls, but that would be wonderful," I marveled at the idea; I'd get to help all of the kids waiting to be adopted and maybe make their life a little better.

Later that evening, Claude and I were scoping out the bedroom that we had agreed would be best for our future child. Claude had whipped out a tape measure from some mysterious place; I didn't bother asking because I figured it was some point of pride for him, like, I'm a super manly dude because I have a super secret stash of tools. He probably had power tools in the shed out back, but I wasn't concerned about it at that point in time. I had the laptop in my lap and was browsing Ikea's online store for baby furniture. Claude had a pencil between his teeth and a pad of paper tucked under his arm as he took dimensions of the room and the furniture that was currently in there. He wanted to crunch numbers about how much paint or wallpaper and carpet we would need depending on how I wanted to decorate the room.

"I really like the idea of white furniture with blue walls," I said.

"Like on a boat?" Claude asked, looking at me over his shoulder.

"Hmm, maybe not..." I trailed off and pulled up Home Depot's website to look at paint.

"What about yellow?" Claude suggested.

I crinkled my nose, "I hate yellow."

"Pittsburgh is yellow and black," he pointed out.

"No, they're black and gold," I corrected.