Fire & Ice

eight

When my alarm rang in the morning all I wanted to do was sleep. All of the excitement from Travis' show last night left me feeling crashed this morning. It's a good thing we have a nice long 7 hour bus ride to Ohio. I'm looking forward to sleeping through most of the ride. Slowly I got up out of bed and collected everything I needed for the weekend away and stuffed them into my team issued duffle bag. Once I made sure I had everything I walked out of my room and threw my sweatshirt over the back of one of the kitchen chairs.

            Just as I was finishing up making breakfast I heard Cassies door open and she walked out. She looked like she was barely awake rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

            "I just wanted to see you off before you go." Cassie said and yawned.

            "Thanks, I hope I wasn't too loud. I didn't want to wake you up early on a day you have off." I said and put the pan I was using in the sink.

            "Leave it, I'll wash it after I make myself breakfast. Wait, you have a tattoo?" Cassie asked and limped over to me to catch my wrist.

            The limp in her walk is very noticeable now and I wondered if her holding my wrist is steadying her to keep pressure of her bad leg. I looked down at my forearm and smiled and the tattoo. It's fairly simple tattoo, two hockey sticks interlocking with my number 23 on the left side of the sticks and a four leaf clover on the right with a hockey puck on the bottom in between the stick blades.

            "Yea, I think I have lived in my sweatshirts since I got here. My mom got the four leaf clover tattooed on her arm as well and Travis has the hockey sticks." I said and watched as Cassie ran her fingers over the tattoo. It was then when I noticed that we were so close to each other. If either of us moved closer to each other there would be barely any space between our lips.

            "That's really cute that you and your mom have matching tattoos, my mom would never." Cassie said quietly.

            "We've been through a lot together, before we drove up here we got them together so we always have a little piece of each other no matter where I am in the country." I said and clenched my jaw trying to push bad memories away.

            Before either of us could say anything there was a pounding on the door. We could both hear Becca whining from the other side of the door that we were going to be late if we didn't get a move on. Cassie jumped back a little and her hand dropped from my arm.

            "I'll be out in a second!" I yelled through the door. I wrapped my breakfast burrito to go and put it in my backpack before slipping on my sweatshirt and grabbed my old four leaf clover hat and put it on my head. Once I made sure I had my phone I went to grab my backpack and found Cassie was holding it. I took it from her and put it on my shoulders and looked at Cassie.

            We both just look at each other for a moment deciding what to say to each other. Apparently we were taking too long because Becca started to beat on the door again to get us moving. With the decision made Cassie closed the distance. For a second I was scared. Was Cassie about to kiss me? The next milia seconds felt like hours as Cassie wrapped her arms around me in a hug. It took a second for my brain to catch up and I followed suit and wrapped my arms her.

            "Good luck tomorrow." Cassie said when she pulled away.

            "Thank you." I said and gave her one last smile before pulling away completely and grabbed my duffle bag.

            Cassie held the door open for me and I was met with a tired looking Becca. We didn't say anything to each other as we left the dorm and walked all the way to the hockey house. When we got to the front of the house the bus was already waiting for us. We gave our luggage to the driver and they loaded it up as Becca and I went onto the bus to find a seat. Becca picked a sit in the middle of the bus and I put my backpack against the window seat while she put her bag in the seat next to mine.