Trip to Your Heart - A Hockey Fanfiction

You're A Crappy Friend, Robert Bortuzzo

Stella's Point of View

My office door opened and I didn't know what I was expecting, but it sure as hell wasn't him. "Robert?" I asked, surprise coloring my tone. He stared at me, shell-shocked and rooted to the spot. Nothing happened for what seemed like a very long time, we just looked at each other. I wasn't ready for this, for him to come barging into my office and my life after ignoring all of my phone calls. I knew he was busy, I did, but you couldn't receive a call every day for weeks and not know they were coming.

I studied him, doing my best to hide my emotions from him. He didn't look too banged up, except his hand, which seemed to be bruising. That was probably why he was here. He was tired, too, and I knew how that felt because the circles under his eyes matched mine, except I covered mine up with makeup so other people wouldn't see them. He was dressed in all of his gear and had a glove under his chin, presumably because that's where he had decided to hold it. He opened his mouth to speak, my heart fluttered at the chance to hear his voice again, and the glove fell to the floor. "Uh, sorry," he muttered and knelt to grab his glove. His stick fell from his hand and clattered to floor as he did this, startling me. I knelt down to grab his stick and smiled a bit to myself as I heard him using a creative mixture of curses and inanimate objects. For some reason, I looked up at him. He was looking at me. Whatever smile had been on my face was gone because he seemed distracted and unhappy. There was pain in his eyes, and it wasn't the kind I could fix with a bandage or a wrap or stitches, no matter how much I wished I could. I wished that he didn't have to feel that way, I wanted him to be happy. And I wanted my friend back.

"I'll just-" he stood up to go, but I couldn't let him leave yet, he'd just gotten here.

"You're forgetting something," my voice sounded dead in my own ears, like I'd never feel happy again, which, at that point in time, didn't seem that unlikely.

He stared at me, somewhat blankly, as he tried to figure what he was forgetting. I was holding his hockey stick in my hands, right in front of him, but it appeared that for Robert, the lights were on and nobody was home. We stood there in a silent standoff, me hoping that he'd realize that I had his stick and that I was a trainer who could fix whatever he'd done to his hand so he would stay and not leave me and him acting much more like Beau than himself. Eventually, it was too much. I couldn't have him stand there and stare at me and not say anything, it was worse than being on the phone and having him not saying anything because he was right here, close enough to touch and I still wasn't allowed to close the distance between us. I felt horrible for wanting that because I had Claude, but I couldn't stop. "Here," I held out his stick. He took it, didn't say anything, and didn't move. I was fighting with myself internally; half of me wanted him to stay and half of me wanted him to go. The side that wanted him to stay won out because I said, "I can wrap your hand if you would like. If you don't want me to, that's fine," before turning to my supply shelf. Actually, it was not going to be fine if he just left. I turned around with the wrap in hand expecting him to be gone, but he wasn't. I could feel my eyes widen in surprise as I saw him sitting on the trainers' table with an amused expression on his face.

"What's so funny?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. I approached him slowly and cautiously, as if he was a wild animal that would attack.

His voice was low and mesmerizing as he answered, his dark eyes meeting my lighter ones, "We used to take bets about Neal having you on the trainer's table, but I think I told you that."

"Now I have you there," I replied without thinking, a small smile rising to my lips as I imagined what it would be like to have him in my arms, heated skin on heated skin, hearts beating as one on the trainers' table in my office. I blushed as the image took over my mind and I ducked my head so that he wouldn't see my flushed cheeks because I knew that if he did, my thoughts would be as easy for him to read as the pages of an open book.