Rosie Labrun is a lot of things: a college student on the cusp of graduation; an intern for the Portland Pirates, a romance novel connoisseur; and the most recent addition to her resume...the girlfriend of a professional athlete.
She won't let it d...
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How did Erik and I meet? Now that, is a good question. One I'm sure I would wonder whenever I heard of a girl dating a professional hockey player that wasn't an Instagram model; or famous for something, herself.
Did we meet at a game? At school? At a bar? Did we lock eyes across the room? Did we go home the first night? Did we have a spark that almost burnt down the building? Or was I just the one-night stand that never left?
All of them are possibilities, I'm sure. Ways that one could meet a significant other. When it comes to meeting a professional athlete, the venues of meeting are a little different. They typically range from someone sliding into the others Instagram DMs; or a girl being the type to go to the player's frequent bars. You know the kind.
I don't know if I would call her a puck bunny, because she really doesn't care that he's a hockey player. What she does care about, is his money; and of that, he has a lot. But players have begun to learn of these women; they've become able to spot them in a crowd. So now they just bag them and then take them out with the rest of the trash.
"Um." I stammer, not sure if I should - or if I want to, tell Erik's family the story of how we met. I suppose it is one of romance; a damsel in distress meeting her heroic night. If only they knew he had been lying about who he really was.
I get why he lied; and I've quickly forgiven him but the fact that is hard to digest is that we don't have a better origin story. Something like he's the bad boy hockey player that wooed the intern who wanted anyone but him. Or the hockey player that met the one girl he couldn't walk all over and followed him for the rest of her life, just because he liked her sarcastic tone.
Ours, is much more boring than that. One that's unbelievable in some ways: that he would ever lie about who he was and that someone like me would just happen to stumble into his arms. I'm no Anastasia Steele, but I would be lying if I said that I was the one being crawled back to and not the other way around.
I mean, maybe Erik was the one that reignited our spark; that reached out and told me who he was when he found out I worked for the Pirates. But I've always attributed that to him having known my location and not knowing anyone else that lived here - other than Kayden, who doesn't exactly count. I've never really asked him about it; how he knew I worked for the team. Maybe I should.
"We met online, we told you." Erik responds, looking a little red in the face, himself. His referencing of my brief "we met online" tidbit is neither convincing nor a way to get Cassidy off his back. In fact, it sets a fuel in her eyes that seems to have only grown alive now that she's put the kids to bed.
"Like, on Tinder?" She wonders, clearly knowing nothing about online dating or how romancing online works. Erik told me her and Link met in high school and that she's been with him ever since. It must be nice to have a high school sweet heart; but seeing their dynamic, it seems like her life revolves around him. And that, I would never want.
