A Little More You (Jonathan Toews)

Chapter 1

"Her life's out there waiting,
Got a better plan,
That's where she's going,
She's young,
And the world's wide open."

-Jason Aldean

Bzzzzz Bzzzzz

Mati groaned as she heard her phone start chiming and vibrating to wake her up for the day.  After hitting snooze for another 15 minutes, she finally rolled out of bed.  Her feet hit the carpet and she sleepily padded to the bathroom to get ready for the morning.  With one last glance in the mirror, shegrabbed her official Blackhawks North Face, a banana, a Naked, and prepared forthe freezing journey to her car with another sweatshirt layered over herNorthFace, and a down parka.  After all,it was January in Chicago.

Maybe the extra layers were a little extreme, but being a Texas girl, it was unheard of cold.  She willed her car to start, and when it did, she made the 20 minute commute to the United Center.

"Little overdressed aren't ya, Mati?" her boss, Tammy teased her as she walked into their shared office.

"Brrr...how can you not be dressed like this to go out in this?!" she exclaimed.  Tammy laughed and started going over theday's schedule.  There was no game tonight, just a press conference after practice, and going over appearance schedules with a few of the guys.  Mati was thankful for the short day, so she could go home (after a pit stop at Starbucks) and crawl under a blanket with a latte and work on some more songs.  Even with her internship with the Blackhawks, Nashville still demanded new music, and she was always one to deliver. 

After checking emails, Tammy suggested they go sit and watch practice. They could always talk work in the seats, and Tammy thought it would be good for Mati to get some exposure to....well, hockey.  It was nice to have an intern who was in it for the experience instead of just being around the team, but the poor girl barely knew when a goal was scored.  An odd fit for a Blackhawks PR/Media team internship, but she was a hard-worker,and the two of them got along famously. 

The pair sat and watched practice. Once they guys started to leave the ice, that was their cue to head down to the conference room where the press were waiting.  The Hawks were coming off of a week long road trip that hadn't gone quite as expected, losing all but one game on a West Coast swing.  The press would be hungry.  Mati and Tammy were there to ensure things went smoothly, no one asked any inappropriate questions, and no one gave any answers that would come back to bite them.  With a room full of deadline looming journalists, and angsty hockey players, it could be difficult, Mati had quickly learned.  They rehearsed answers with Coach Q and the players, and handed out forbidden topics to the press with the threat of being tossed out attached to them. 

There were only a handful ofplayers participating today, which made their jobs much easier.  As she rehearsed answers with Patrick Sharp, she glanced up at the doorway as Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane strode intothe room.  Patrick gave her a grin. "Hey Mati..I promise you won't have to duct tape my mouth today!"

At her first briefing with him before the first press conference (on her first day, nonetheless), he had been teasing her the whole time by answering profane, heated answers to all of her questions.  Once she realized he was just messing around, she had grabbed a roll of tape from a maintenance closet and had threatened to use it on him if he didn't shape up. 

"Too bad. y'all would probably be happy if his mouth was taped shut" she chirped right back. 

Jonathan chuckled at her comment and partially at her sweet southern accent.  Mati made eye contact with him for a brief second, and turned her attention back to Sharp.  She noticed his brown eyes...but that was it.  Sure, he was cute, she thought, but he sure lives up to the Captain Serious nickname.  If every girl who swooned over him knew how serious he really was, they probably wouldn't be as impressed.  He had always been professional, and even pleasant to Mati over the past two weeks, but unlike the other players, he rarely wanted to chit chat, and only focused on hockey.  Not her kind of a guy.

The press conference went over smoothly and after going over schedules with Andrew Shaw and Corey Crawford, Mati waved good-bye to Tammy, ran to Starbucks, and headed to her apartment.  As she stepped in the door, she nearly tripped over her roommate, Tess's boots. 

"Hello?" Mati yelled.

"Hey girl" Tess said as she rounded the corner into the kitchen.  She was dressed for work and was on her way out the door.  "Wanna watch Lifetime movies and see if we can't kill a bottle of pinot tonight?"

"I would love to" Mati smiled.  She was lucky to have found Tess as a roommate.  She didn't really want to move to a strange new city and try to rent a place by herself, so she did some Craigslist surfing and stumbled upon her. Tess had a lease until June, and her old roommate had left to go to Vegas one weekend and came back married and witha U-Haul, so Tess was desperate.  It was perfect.

Mati grabbed her croissant and vanilla chai latte and headed up to her room. She grabbed her guitar and a notebook and started to play.  She missed Nashville and couldn't wait to head down there in February to record and write. Texas was home but Nashville was a close second.

She must have drifted off at some point because she awoke to Tess jumping on her bed holding two brown paper bags.

"The best Chinese in Chitown and Barefoot are calling our names. This is no time for sleep!" She announced

"Say no more" Mati nodded as she got out of bed. She threw on a Baylor football sweatshirt and headed towards the living room.

A/N: this is my first story, so I would love feedback!  Also, I am writing this in Google Docs, copy and pasting it into Word, then putting it on here...the format is getting kind of messed up, so I think I fixed it all, but if there's errors, please let me know :)