GARRETT HALE
We won the game 3-2. Austin and I are currently heading up to the girls. We got ready after and already answered the questions we had to.
"Hey, man," I greet a friend of mine. "Good game. I didn't think you were going to win," He laughs.
Thomas plays football, not hockey but is still a good friend. We walk into the room where the girls are, along with Thomas and Kayla looks like she is about to burst with excitement.
I can tell that Leona knows who he is, but it doesn't look like she cares.
To be fair, she has probably met a ton of Olympians and at least half of the men in our hockey league.
"I love you," Kayla deadpans looking at Thomas. I'm guessing that she has never met him before based on how she is acting, which surprises me because he's also friends with Austin.
"Aren't you married?" He questions her. She just chuckles and waves an arm around. "What does that have to do with anything? Actually, I don't love you, I love your ability to play football. It's beautiful," She says and Thomas looks between her and Austin a few times.
"Thanks," He replies. His eyes settle on Leona and look at her for a minute. Now look away. "I know you," He says to her.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I very highly doubt that he has watched the figure skating Olympics.
Surprisingly, I'm not saying this because I don't want to have a reason to talk to Leona. He doesn't seem like someone who wants to watch other people play sports.
"You do?" She slowly asks like it is surprising her. "I don't know from where. Where did you go to high school?" He questions her.
Leona didn't go to high school. "I didn't go to high school," She replies and I smirk. I know everything.
He looks at her for a second before shaking his head. "Probably someone else," He says and walks towards the door. "I should be heading out. Just figured I would see you assholes before I left," He tells us.
"Why are you in Ontario anyway?" Austin questions him. "I was planning on going to this game in New York, but then it got moved here and I decided to just come anyway," He shrugs.
He leaves after a few minutes, and I think Kayla just got out of shock.
"Ready to go?" I ask Leona and she nods with a smile, her eyes flickering down to my lips.
"Do you want to go eat something?" I question her and she shrugs. "I'm not hungry," She says and rubs the back of her leg.
I think something is wrong with it because I've been seeing her do that a lot recently.
I'll question her about that in a little while when we are alone. We walk outside of the arena after a few minutes. There are a ton of cars here.
Once we get back to the hotel room, Leona almost immediately lays down.
She gets back up a few minutes later and gets ready to go into the bathroom but I stop her. I pull her down onto the couch next to me. "What's wrong with your leg?" I remember I wanted to ask her.
"I pulled my hamstring, so it's being annoying." She grumbles and crosses her arms over her chest. "Here, lay down," I gently move her towards the bed. I move her so she is laying down on her stomach and her thighs are going across my lap.
I start to rub the back of her leg using both hands, hard enough that it will help, but not too roughly.
"Ow," She grunts when I first start. "I'll stop if you want me to, but it usually hurts at first then starts to feel better," I tell her.
"Mmm," She groans after a few minutes. "Feel better?" I question her and she just nods her head.
"I have to replace this," She taps one of the things on her arms for her diabetes. "I'll be right back," She says and walks over to the mini-fridge.
She pulls out some stuff that I saw her put in there and walks to the bathroom.
After about ten minutes she comes out with a new one on her arm. "Why didn't you change this?" I point to her other arm which has another device on it.
"That's my Dexcom and it only has to get changed every ten days. The one that I changed is my omnipod and has to be changed every other day," She explains and I nod.
"So. I have a question." She shyly says. It's so fucking cute when all of a sudden she goes back to being shy.
"What is it?" I question her.
"Whyhaventyoukissedmeyet?" Was I supposed to know what she just said? "What?" I question again.
"Why haven't you kissed me?" She grumpily asks, crossing her arms over her chest. I let out a chuckle and she glared at me. "That's it? You just want to be kissed?" I rhetorically ask, but she still nods her head.
I pull her close to me and stop right before my lips reach hers. "Yes," She grits her teeth together, moving closer, and tries to kiss me.
"Are you sure?" I tease her. It's so fun getting her worked up like this. She just shoots me a sarcastic smile and pulls out of my grip.
She lays down on the other side of the bed and faces the wall. "I'm just messing with you," I say with a laugh.
She just inaudibly grunts something at me. I let out a sigh and pull her back towards me. She sits up and I lean closer to her and give her a peck on the lips.
"That was not a kiss," She complains. "Yes it was," I say to her. She just glares at me for a minute.
I hadn't even realized that I haven't properly kissed her yet. I've kissed her on her forehead and cheeks, but not on the lips which is apparently what she wanted.
I sit up and pull her right into my lap, facing me. Before she has time to think, I crash my lips to hers.
After a minute she pulls away, out of breath. "Was that good enough for you?" I ask her blushing face. "Yup. Good enough for me." She quickly says and stands up off the bed. She walks into the bathroom once again, but this time is probably to calm herself down.
She's so cute.
A few minutes later she walks out and grabs some clothes out of her suitcase. She walks into the bathroom and comes out of the bathroom with wet hair.
Coming from someone who grew up sharing a bathroom with his sister, I didn't think a girl could shower that fast.
We have our flight leaving in the early afternoon tomorrow, so we'll probably do something before we have to leave.
"I'm going to order something to eat. Do you want something?" I ask Leona. She's standing in the doorway of the bathroom drying her hair.
"No thank you," She mumbles, turning off the dryer.
"Okay," I say. She looks extremely wiped out so that might be why she doesn't want anything.
I order some food, along with a small bit of extra stuff in case she decided she's hungry.
A few minutes later she comes back out and sits on the bed a little bit away from me.
She takes out her phone and I see her text someone. I pull her a bit closer into my side and she shuts off her phone and closes her eyes.
A few hours later, Leona is knocked out on the couch and I'm ready to go to bed.
I had dinner, showered, and packed everything up, including my hockey bag.
I fall asleep within the first little while of laying down, loving Leona's small body lying against mine.
—
The first thing I notice when I wake up is that there is no longer a small body pressed against mine, or in the room at all.
I get up after a few minutes and Leona walks through the door. She looks exhausted, which surprises me because even if she woke up early, she went to bed extremely early and shouldn't be tired.
"Are you okay?" I question her. Probably, nope, definitely not the right thing to ask a girl when they look tired.
"I'm okay. Just didn't sleep well." She mumbles and rubs her eyes. "Where'd you go?" I wonder out loud.
"Kayla's flight was early so I went to say goodbye to her." She tells me and I nod.
Austin has mentioned something about having an early flight because Sabrina had a doctor's appointment of some sort later today, and they didn't want to have to reschedule it.
"You should have woken me up if you couldn't sleep," I tell her and she shrugs. "It's just like that sometimes. Because of these," She points to the two devices on either arm.
"I can't get comfortable laying down on either side," She yawns. "I'm sorry. Do you want to get something to eat?" I question her.
"If we can," She shrugs. It seems like she doesn't eat as much as she could. If she doesn't, she should. She needs to have a normal schedule to eat.
"There's a small diner a little bit away from here. If you don't want to eat there we can get something quick," I tell her, giving her a choice.
"A diner is fine," She tells me. I notice that she is still wearing the clothes that she wore to bed last night.
It doesn't matter, because I can almost guarantee that none of the other guys on the team are awake yet, and the other people on this floor of the hotel are players and their wives and possibly kids.
She grabs some clothes and comes out wearing a heavily layered outfit, which is definitely a good idea considering the brutal wind there is going to be today. Plus, it's always cold on planes.
We walked down the street to where there was a small diner.
A hostess leads us to a small both towards the back of the diner. "Thanks," Leona quietly says when she gives us menus.
She has her face leaning against the palm of her hand as she rubs her eyes over the menu.
A waitress comes over to our table and asks us what we want to drink. I just ordered a normal black coffee and Leona ordered a strawberry tea.
After a while, Leona did finally start to wake up some more.
"What are you getting to eat?" She questions me. "Just a steak omelet," I tell her. "What about you?" I ask and she smiles.
"A broccoli and cheese omelet," She looks back down to the menu. A few minutes later the waitress comes back to take our orders. We both got the omelet that we said we were going to.
"That guy was kind of weird," Leona says. I don't even know who she is talking about.
"Who?" I question her. "Thomas," She says and I nod. He did kind of seem off last night. He was definitely acting off.
"Yeah. He was kind of acting strange. I don't know." I shrug. I'm sure it was nothing. I've known the guy for a long time.
"Kayla looked like she was about to burst when she saw him," Kayla giggles.
"Yeah. She gets like that sometimes. You on the other hand didn't really care." I point out and she looks at me.
"Well, I've been meeting so-called, famous people, my entire life, so meeting one random one doesn't seem like a big deal," She shrugs. That's fair.
I've been around famous athletes and celebrities, and not just NHL athletes either. As a professional athlete, we are basically forced to go to a ton of events.
I have to go to an award ceremony tomorrow night. All the captains of the NHL teams have to be there. It's an end-of-season award ceremony for the NFL.
"Are you busy tomorrow?" I ask her. I'm supposed to have a date, anyway and I would love to have her make the night a little bit more tolerable.
"No I don't have anything to do," She says after thinking for a a minute. "Want to be my date for something I have to do tomorrow?" I ask her.
"Sure. What is it?" She curiously questions. The waitress comes back and gives both of us our plates and then walks away in silence. "It's the NFL awards ceremony. All the captains of the hockey teams have to be there," I tell her.
Award ceremonies are boring as it is, but even more boring when it's for something that you have no interest in.
"Oh. Okay. Well, I'm not busy so I'll be there," She smiles at me and starts to eat her omelet.
It takes about half an hour until we are both ready to go. Once we are Leona tries to pay, but I don't let her.
"What would you like to do before we have to be on the plane?" I ask her. I'm sure she's been to Ontario before because of her dad, so she probably knows what's around.
"I don't know. I don't even know what there is." She tells me. Okay, that's the complete opposite of what I just said.
"Let's see. Want to just walk up Ontario avenue and see what there is to do?" I ask her and she nods.
I'm sure she did something here with Kayla yesterday. We walk up and I see one of my teammates and his wife walking past us.
Leona was walking on the street side, so I guide her to the opposite side of me. "Why did you do that?" She questions me. It's kind of force of habit that my dad drilled into my head. Since I was a kid he drilled it in my head that if your walking with someone, your wife, girlfriend, a girl you barely know, or even your sister that you have them walk on the inside of the path and you on the outside.
Ryder is one of the older guys on the team. He probably only has two to three more years left until he retires.
He and his wife Cynthia walked up to us. They have kids and two of them are standing here.
"Hey, buddy," I tell their ten-year-old son. "Your goal was amazing yesterday. It was great. I'm better than you though," He quickly blurts out and I chuckle.
I can see Leona holding in a giggle from the corner of my eye. "Really?" I sarcastically ask him, but he doesn't know that.
"I'm Cynthia," Ryder's wife holds out her hand to Leona. They shake hands and then Leona introduces herself.
"Leona," She greets. "She's Andre's daughter," Ryder tells her. "I didn't even know that Andre had a daughter," Cynthia mutters.
A lot of the guys on the team probably didn't.
"Which flight are you on?" He asks me. "The 1:45," I say and he nods, and then tells me that he's on the same flight.
We part ways a few minutes later. "Have you ever been to Ripley's before?" I question her. I'm not Canadian, but everyone knows that at some point you need to go to Ripley's.
"The aquarium?" She questions and I nod. "I think I went when I was younger, but I don't remember." She says.
"I'll have to take you in there if you want," I offer. I've been a few times with family and it's been a while.
"Sure. Let's go," We walk into the aquarium and you can immediately smell the animals. Not in the good way.
It's a cool place, but the smell makes it a bit worse. "Two adult tickets," I tell the teenager at the front counter who hands me the red wristbands.
Leona swipes her card before I have the chance to and I look down at her and see her grinning.
I wrap my arm around her waist as we walk away from the counter and towards the animals. "I was going to pay for that," I scowl at her.
"I know," She cheerfully says. "That's why I did it. You've been paying for everything." She tells me. I mean, she's not wrong.
She stops in front of the stingrays and looks down at them. "You can touch them!" She whisper yells at me after looking at the sign.
"Yeah. Just put your flat hand against them," I tell her and do what I said.
It glides out from under my hand and she looks at it in amazement. She puts her hand gently into the water while she waits for a another one to come past her.
A few minutes later another one does and she lets her hand gently touch its back while it glides under her.
"They feel weird," She looks down at her hand. There are not a ton of animals that you can touch here, most of them you are only able to look at.
She dries her hand with a paper towel and then squeezes some of a hand sanitizer out of her purse.
I dry off my hands and then she squeezes some sanitizer into my hands.
It smells like what Leona always smells like. We walk past a huge enclosure with what looks like two sharks.
"Wow." She murmurs looking at all the animals. She's so cute. "I don't remember there being this many animals when I was here before," She tells me.
To be fair, that was years ago and there are probably a lot more animals now than there were then.
Her eyes widen when she looks at the sea turtles roaming around in their tank.
"We should steal one," She has a mischievous grin on her face. "Why do you want a sea turtle?" I question her. "They're so cute! Ooh, and they have their little baby sea turtles they're so tiny and cute?" She exclaims.
"Ew." She mutters as we walk past the jellyfish. She has a ton of different reactions as we walk through the entire aquarium.
Not long after we make it through to the end, we have to head to the airport to catch our flight back to New York.
"Leona Montgomery!" I hear a loud voice yell. So close. We were walking away from the Starbucks in the airport when we heard her dad.
"What?" She groans. "Why are you here?" He questions. Shouldn't he at at least pretend to be happy to see his daughter?
"I came with Garrett," She nods her head at me. I like her. It's not a secret so I don't really care if her dad knows that we have been hanging out. It's not like I've been playing her, or just fucking her for the fun of it.
I haven't been fucking her at all, actually. "Why?" He questions. Honestly, he has been pissing me off more and more recently, and not just with stuff to do with Leona.
"Because we are friends and I came to see his game." She says and I try not to grimace when she calls us friends. I don't really care that she doesn't want to say something else, because what is there to say?
I haven't asked her to be my girlfriend yet, and that's on me so there isn't anything else for her to say besides that we are friends.
They talk a bit quieter and I can't hear what they say after that.
"Are you okay?" I question her and gently rub her back. Leona looked up and me and didn't look okay. She looked genuinely sad.
She shrugs and shoves her face into my shoulder.
She stays like that until we have to catch our flight. I assume that she needs space and we don't talk until we are on the plane.
"What did he say to you?" I pry. I usually wouldn't but clearly, it was something if she is this upset over it.
"Nothing. He's just being his usual normal annoying self," She says. I have a feeling that isn't true, but I'll let it go for now.
I need to figure something out so that I can ask her to be my girlfriend.
I'm not good at things like this. I don't know what to do at times like these. I look at Leona's seat and see her curled up and ready asleep with her seatbelt on.
She stays like this for the duration of the flight. I didn't wake her up because I doubted that she wanted a snack if she was tired enough to sleep for that long.
—
I roam around my house looking for my phone. "Mom's surgery is tomorrow," Evelyn tells me. She is the one to usually update us on our mom's health, if not one of my parents.
"What time should I be there?" I immediately ask. This sucks more than anything because I'm required to be at the award ceremony tomorrow.
That's not a doubt in my mind, of course, I'm fine with missing that for my mom, I just don't feel like having to deal with the host because of my lack of presence.
"It's going to be a while. Dad is going to be there for the whole thing. Me and you can be there right when it's over, then the other two weirdos can come a little bit later so she's not too stressed," She tells me.
It's probably for the best to not have all four of us there at the same time. "She tried to change it so that you didn't miss the awards ceremony, but if she did it would have been a few weeks," Lynn tells me.
"Seriously? That's nothing. I'll be there as soon as I get the call saying she's out." I sternly say.
"I need to go, but I'll see you tomorrow," She says, and soon after we hang up. Time for a night of no sleep.
I always feel bad for getting frustrated with my mom. She's sick and gets these mood swings that she can't help.
I love my mom and all my family but it's hard seeing the woman who raised me and made me who I am today like this.
She puts everyone first, and I don't always do the same for her.
I decide to call Leona and tell her that tomorrow is off.
"Hi," She shyly says as she answers the phone. "I have to tell you something," I start off, kind of awkwardly.
"What's up?" She curiously asks, paying more attention to me now. "My mom is having a surgery tomorrow, so I'm not going to be going to the ceremony," I say and she looks surprised for a second before snapping out of it.
"Is it the good surgery that you have been waiting for her to get?" She questions. I had told her that we are just waiting for her to get the tumor removed, but I had mentioned how she has also had to, unfortunately, have a few emergency surgeries.
"She's finally getting the tumor removed," I tell her and she smiles through FaceTime. "That's wonderful. Let me know if you need anything, alright?" She asks with a smile on her face.
"I will. What are you doing now?" I ask her. I might as well talk to her now while I have her here.
"I'm eating some food," She turns the camera down to face what looks like a chicken salad. "I'll let you go then. I'll talk to you tomorrow."