For Charity's Sale: Three, The End

They walked into the arena, James leading the way and Amber following a half step behind. Even though they were a few minutes early, they were one of the last to arrive. James cut through the dressing room so he could pick up his skates, and then they made their way out to the rink. Amber shed her coat but left on her scarf and gloves, and then sat next to him on the bench as they laced up their skates, ready to join everyone else who was already on the ice.

James was wearing faded jeans and a thick, brown, cabled sweater that looked warm but not soft. Once his skates were laced and secure, he stood and hopped over the boards like he was ready for his next shift. Amber was slow to follow, worried that she wouldn’t get her footing and would lose her balance. He offered her his hands and asked, “You good?”

“I think so,” she mumbled, turning down his help once her blades were on the ice. She gave one strong push off from the boards and started to sail smoothly forward—until Jordan Staal came flying up around the corner and slung his arm around Amber’s shoulders, and her feet almost went out from under her. She let out a little shriek, which echoed off the glass and called attention to her awkward presence.

“Whoa there,” he chuckled. Heather came up alongside them, then turned and started going backwards so she could circle around them. Amber felt like she was surrounded by sharks. “So this is Nealer’s, uh ‘friend’?”

Heather nodded, a sly smile playing across her lips. “Yup, that’s Amber. And Amber, this is my boyfriend, Jordan.”

“Nice to meet you,” Amber mumbled, ducking out from under his arm. Once she resurfaced, James skated up onto her other side.

Jordan looked at her. She was a little pear-shaped, but she was much better looking than he expected, considering he had imagined the worst. “So where did you come from, and where has Nealer here been hiding you?”

Even though Jordan had been addressing Amber, James answered. It was easier to take control instead of worrying about what she would say. “Gary Roberts—well, his wife, actually—introduced us.” It wasn’t a lie, but it certainly wasn’t the whole truth either.

Amber looked up at him, a little surprised. She wasn't sure if he was trying to maintain their façade as friends or acquaintances dating back to February, but she had to admit that his explanation sounded better than the total truth.

“No shit?” Jordan asked, intrigued by the news. He had played with Roberts a few seasons ago and would have never made the connection. But he did think that it explained James’s ambivalence toward her when they talked in the locker room, if James was feeling trapped or pushed into seeing her.

While she knew that the situation was going to be a little weird, attending a Christmas party with someone she barely knew and under circumstances that were strained at best, she suddenly felt like it was a bad idea. She still thought that James had had a point when he had said that she deserved to go, because she did contribute, but she had obviously walked into something that she didn't feel comfortable with. She was definitely out of place—especially when she looked around and saw only families, pairs, and some kids. And she was just a stranger to all of them, including James. Feeling defensive, she acerbically quipped, “I used to babysit for them. Apparently, they thought James here needed babysitting, too.” Amber then awkwardly tried to push off to begin skating again, to put some distance between her and everyone else.

Jordan snorted a laugh and Heather giggled. James caught up to Amber in one fluid motion, sailing up on her right, and muttered under his breath, “That's nice.”

“Are you offended?” she asked, looking straight ahead even though she was tempted to turn and observe the expression on his face. “Because that's kind of what it felt like, you know, being asked out of the blue to meet with you to do you a favor. And then you didn't even show.”

“I didn't ask—”

“I know you didn't,” she cut him off. She couldn't help herself, so she turned to look at James and turned her torso in his direction. The change in posture threw her off, and she flailed her arms to try to balance herself.

Amber began to spin, and James, for a split second, thought about letting her fall. He was probably just as frustrated with the situation as she was, but for different reasons. After the moment quickly passed, he wrapped his left arm around her ribcage and pulled her toward him. James was too solid and too sure on his skates to be taken down so easily.

He put his other hand on her hip as he waited for her to still. Once she was stable, he didn't move or release her, in case she wasn't quite ready to stand again on her own. Quietly he asked, “All right now?”

She worried that the heat from her face would melt the whole floor of ice in the rink. It wasn't that she was embarrassed to almost-fall again—being so close to James was making her blush. Amber was perfectly aware that he was cute, maybe even hot if depending on whose opinion you asked, but she had been so caught up in thinking that he was a jerk that she couldn't have possibly cared a lick about his good looks. But being pressed up against his chest elicited a rush of emotions she hadn’t felt in a long time. Not since her boyfriend dumped her on Valentine’s Day the week before Mrs. Roberts called about James.

Something in Amber’s body chemistry changed, and there really was no rhyme or reason to why proximity or contact altered her emotions so suddenly. Maybe it wasn’t the contact per se, but the reason or act behind it that made her feel on fire: it was chivalrous thing to do, to keep her from falling.

Her voice came back to her slowly. “Yeah, I’m okay,” she told him, standing up straight and taking a deep breath. Amber turned away from him, hoping he wouldn’t see her face and hoping even more that she wouldn’t give herself away.

James reached for her hand and began to skate again. She felt her heart palpitate and her lungs deflate. In her head, she knew that he was probably doing that so she wouldn’t fall, but it was still a shock. She was glad that she had kept her gloves on so they wouldn’t have skin-on-skin contact.

He continued where they had left off. “I already said I was sorry, didn’t I?”

Amber nodded and whispered, “Yeah.”

“Then what else should I do to show you I’m sorry?”

She looked down at the new skates on her feet and began to feel bad. Amber didn’t think that he was trying to bribe her into being nice, but it was hard to be mean when he had bought her brand new skates; she didn’t know how much they had cost, but they probably weren’t cheap—by her standards, at least. Guilt was an easy emotion for her, which was probably why she was so nice in the first place. If someone who didn’t know her had seen her behavior and reactions, they would have thought that she had been holding a grudge these past ten months, which wasn’t true. It wasn’t until she finally met James that she began to deal with her buried resentment. She hadn’t even been totally mad, more just irked or annoyed.

So she apologized. “Sorry. But you have to admit, you kind of walked into that one.”

James tilted his head to the side and let out the softest of chuckles. Amber imagined that James was probably never too loud in any way. “Okay, maybe.”

They skated side-by-side for a while, and then they stopped so James could chat with his teammates or coaches and their significant others or families. When they looked at his companion, he dutifully introduced her as Amber—no qualifier like “friend” to give her presence at the party context.

When he talked, she looked up at him. He had very intense eyes that could be intimidating. Not in a threatening way, but in a could-look-right-through-your-soul kind of way. James had a slight smattering of hair across the bottom half of his face that looked reddish beneath the bright arena lights—so red that it looked gingery. Or it could have been the residual red bumps from razor burn.

Amber got bored with listening to them talk, so she excused herself and skated off the rink to the food table. There was a whole group of girls standing there, chatting animatedly and laughing boisterously apart from the men. She weighed the benefits of eating what looked to be delicious catered food versus the disadvantage of having to subject herself to the ongoing scrutiny of those women, and decided that she would be better off if she went hungry. Before she could turn around and head back to the ice and the safeness of James, Heather caught her molesting the food with her eyes and waved her over.

Feeling like she had no other option, she carefully teetered over on the blades of her skates and grabbed a plate. Heather properly introduced Amber to everyone, announcing their names and which of the players they were associated with, be it as girlfriend, fiancée, or wife. And then Heather said, “Girls, this is Amber. She’s Nealer’s... ‘friend.’”

At least one eyebrow of every one of them shot up, and Amber felt vastly out of place all over again.

“Friend?” one of them asked. Amber couldn’t remember any of their names. “Is that all?”

She nodded as she began to peruse the awaiting selection on the table. “Yeah, just friends.”

Another one spoke up. “I saw the basket you did for him. That was you who put it together, right? For the, uh, Wives Association?” When Amber nodded, she continued, “You did a good job with that, by the way. I liked the golf motif.”

Before she took a bite of chicken salad, she said, “Well, you know James. Ardent golfer.” They all looked at her as she chewed. Amber swallowed and then said flatly, “Listen, I don’t know why he invited me here, either. We’re not dating, never did, and I just threw stuff in a container for him for the charity auction because he asked me to. Well, kind of asked.” She shook her head and set her plate down. “It doesn’t matter. But I know you all are expecting to find something that isn’t there, I promise you, it’s not there.”

They continued to watch her, like they were expecting some other, better explanation—but Amber had nothing else to offer them. She knew what the situation looked like or what it must have seemed like to them, and she was tempted to tell them that their assumption that a hockey player would only bring a serious girlfriend to a function like this was false; sometimes, a person just didn’t want to attend a social gathering alone.

Amber was also tempted to reveal the truth of their relationship, that she was just a girl that had been roped into assisting a friend of a friend, but she didn’t want to do that to herself or to James, who would have to live with these girls probably making fun of him for it for a long time thereafter. It was too embarrassing. But she knew that if these girls were aware of the situation, they wouldn’t be looking at her like that.

“Hmm,” Maureen said, looking away at something in the distance. Amber turned to see what she was staring at and saw James looking in their direction—at her, more specifically. When they made eye contact, James turned and said something to his coach. Maureen chuckled. At least, Amber thought it was Maureen, Chris Kunitz’s wife. “There’s something, even if you don’t know what yet. He wouldn’t have brought you here otherwise. Or you wouldn’t have come here either.”

Some of the other WAGs nodded, but Amber just shrugged. There was no sense in arguing with them when she couldn’t set them straight—that she hadn’t come just because he asked, but because she had helped with the basket. But then she would have explained her role with helping the basket, and it was all too complicated and silly to bother with.

Heather changed subjects and asked, “Are you coming out with us after?”

James hadn’t mentioned anything about hanging out beyond this party, so Amber was pretty sure that she was not invited to any extracurricular activities. She wasn’t surprised, but she was surprised that she felt a little disappointed. “No, I don’t think so.”

“You should,” a pretty brunette said. She had already forgotten her name, but she noted her soft French accent. “It’ll give us a chance to get to know you.”

Amber felt that there was no reason to get to know anyone of them because this would probably be her only team seeing them. It seemed like these women formed a secret club, bonded together because of their roles as WAGs, and Amber would have been a disruptive force.

They alternated asking her the basic questions, like where she worked, where she was from, how old she was—all questions about her and having nothing to do with James. It was a nice gesture on their part, and Amber was sure that it had something to do with how they themselves didn't like being defined by their relationships to hockey players and wanted to be seen as individuals in their rights.

After several minutes of chatting, someone dressed in a plush Santa suit appeared from the locker room, and the young kids went nuts. They gathered around him, all desperate to climb into his soft lap and whisper their Christmas wishes to him; in return, they were given big goodie bags filled with candy, coloring and activity books, crayons, mini-sticks, trinket toys, and probably more stuff that Amber couldn't see. They were all so ecstatic that it made Amber feel different, more childlike and caught up in the magical atmosphere of the holidays.

Some of the kids were running around, fueled by excitement and possibly sugar, and one ran into Amber and spilled the contents of his bag. “Uh oh. Here, kiddo, let me help you,” she said, crouching down and picking up some of the candy that had scattered across the floor. He held out his bag so Amber could drop it in, and then he tried to run off. She said, “Wait! You forgot your box of crayons. Don’t you want these?”

“Yes!” he replied. “I like to color!”

She smiled at him. The kid was so darned cute, it was hard not to respond to him. “Me too. Coloring is fun.”

James watched from the rink as Amber interacted with Jackson, Matt Cooke's seven-year-old son. She had gotten down on one knee, so they were just about at eye level with each other. He watched as Cookie walked over to them, properly introducing his son and himself, and as Amber easily chatted with them. They were strangers, but they had no problem getting on well enough, considering they didn’t know each other. That was something James admired; he was a little shy and very soft-spoken, and he couldn’t talk to someone—really talk to someone—until he knew that person.

That had probably been part of the problem when he arrived in Pittsburgh. It was more of a struggle for him to make friends than normal people. It made adjusting to a new place and new teammates difficult. It took him to a while to warm up to everyone. James admired people who could go with the flow so easily and makes friends wherever they went, and he could see that quality in Amber. He liked that.

He skated over to the bench, sensing that the party was coming to a natural close. Véro was still there, waiting for Marc-André before they’d leave. She turned to him, “Looks like Jackson’s putting the moves on your girlfriend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” he muttered, leaning over to untie his skates.

“A girl that is your friend, c’est une petite amie, non? A girl friend.” Véro was making light of it, seeing that James was digging his feet in the ground, metaphorically speaking. As much as he wanted to say that they were just friends or that there was nothing between them—or that Heather forced him to—there was no way that James would have invited someone to a team party if he didn’t like her, even if it was just a little bit. He obviously just couldn’t admit it to himself, and was using the situation as an excuse, all to his advantage. “Anyway, Jack is going to steal her from you. He is talking to her more than you have all day.”

“That’s not true.”

Véro shrugged. “Are you going to come out with us for dinner tonight? Both of you?”

“Uh.... I was just going to go home. I don’t feel like going out tonight.” He wanted to go home, where he could let Amber get her car, and then he could hang out for a while on his own and relax to let all the stress of the day—and this party—fall away.

Marc appeared, dressed in his coat and with his fiancée’s in his hand. “Laaaame.”

“Yeah, I know,” he admitted.

“We can come over instead,” Marc suggested.

“Yes, that’s a great idea!” Véro agreed. “We can all just stay in, order some food, and watch a Christmas movie or something. I like that idea.”

James was about to argue with them for inviting themselves over to his house—which certainly wouldn’t have been the first time that had happened—but Jordan appeared and asked where they were going, and Marc told him, “We’re going over to Nealer’s.”

He went along with it, simply because he had no other choice; once they all had an idea in their head, there was no changing it. They headed out, and James decided to do the right thing and ask Amber if she wanted to stay and hang out with them.

She turned him down. Amber knew she didn’t fit in with them. “No, I... I think I’d better go. Thanks, though.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, feeling disappointed for some weird, unknown reason.

“Yeah, I think I’m just gonna head home.”

James pulled his car in front of his house, so he wouldn’t block her car in. He hated parking on the street, especially with the worst of the winter weather yet to come. It was his experience that Pittsburgh drivers were horrible: they either were too cautious and slow and then could never make it up the hill, causing them to slip and slide into the cars parallel parked on the side of the street, or they were overly confident in their four-wheel-drive SUVs and still side-swiped the parked cars.

Amber got out and took her skates with her. She stood by her driver’s side door, trying to think of the polite, appropriate thing to say in such a situation. “Thanks again, James, for inviting me to the party. And for the skates too.”

“Oh, you’re welcome. Thanks for coming. Merry Christmas, Amber.”

“You too. Merry Christmas.”

Just as she was ready to slip into the driver’s seat, a sleek car pulled in behind her in the driveway, locking her in and hanging out onto the sidewalk. She watched feebly as Jordan unfolded himself as he got out of the car.

“Excuse me, but you’re blocking me.”

Heather frowned. “You’re leaving already?”

“Yup.” She didn’t bother to give a reason why; the reason was irrelevant.

Jordan stuck his finger in his key ring and twirled his clanging keys around his finger. “But I already parked.” He began to walk up the driveway toward the front door of James’s house.

Exasperated by his rude and presumptuous behavior, Amber looked at Heather with pleading eyes. Surely she would act as an ally and help her out. Heather merely shrugged and said, “Even if I got his keys off of him, he’d never let me drive his car. But it’s okay, I mean, it’s only for a few hours. And Marc and Véro are coming, and TK and Kelsey. Maybe even Geno and Oksana. It’ll be fun.”

As she walked away from her and avoided the confrontation in the driveway, Amber turned to James. “Can’t you do something?”

“I wish I could,” he mumbled, shoving his hands in his pockets. He was embarrassed for the both of them. “But he’s stubborn. I’m sorry.”

Amber let out a frustrated growl. The whole day felt like a plot for a sitcom—everything just kept spiraling out of control. With her patience being so persistently tested, she vented, “Doesn’t it bother you, how everyone just kinds of takes control? And you just kind of have to go along with everything?”

It was his turn to shrug. Sure, it bothered him occasionally, when it was inconvenient like at this moment; however, for the most part, it made his life a lot easier to go with the flow. He took a step closer to her. “Sometimes. But are you sure you don’t want to stay?”

“Do I really have a choice at this point?” she huffed.

“Well, I can take you home, if you really wanna go,” James offered.

That was her out, but she didn’t take it. “And just leave my car here? No thank you.”

Something in James clicked or snapped into place, partially because he didn’t want to be pressured into an uncomfortable situation by his teammates, again, and he didn’t want to put Amber through anymore of the bullshit either. She had already gone out of her way to do some nice things for him, so maybe it was time to repay the favor. It would get him in some shit with the guys later, but he’d deal with it when the time came. “You know, we don’t have to do this. Hang out here, I mean. I think.... I think I owe you a cup of coffee. Do you wanna...?”

Amber glanced at Jordan and Heather, who were waiting for James to unlock the front door and them let them in so the fun could start. She hated to disappoint them, but she didn’t really want to sit around with them more. They were all strong personalities, and there was only so much of that that she could handle at any given time. They waved back at Amber and James, and Jordan said, “Come on, guys!”

She turned back to James and nodded once firmly. He was taking charge, and she liked seeing that side in him instead of the helpless pushover that he had always seemed to be. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

James smiled and held out his hand for her, and Amber took it with a grin of her own.

Jordan called out, “Hey! Where are you guys going?”

“You’re on your own,” James answered, getting the door for Amber.