The Hockey Life - A Patrick Kane Fanfic

Part One - The Internship

THE HOCKEY LIFE

PART ONE: THE INTERNSHIP

Hockey is addicting. All it takes is one game to get a person hooked. Even the least sporty people can fall in love with the sport as easily as one, two, three. I guess that was why it only took a second for me to fall in love with it.

Hockey has always been my life, ever since I could remember. My dad swears I was born to love hockey. He told me a story about how I always got all smiley as a baby whenever he had a game on. He also said that my first word was hockey, but that was just a funny lie. My mom would always get annoyed when he made up stories like that. She wasn’t quite as easy going as my dad. And I knew that she hated when he rubbed it in that I loved the sport, just like him and my brother.

My mom had a son first, my older brother, Brian. She loved him, of course, she still does and always will, but she had wanted nothing more than a daughter. My dad had his fun with Brian, though. He got Brian into hockey when he was young, and Brian has carried on with it ever since then. When I was born, my mom was overjoyed to finally have a daughter. She was excited for dress up, tea parties, Disney Princesses, ballet, the works. She bought tons of dresses and pink outfits for me. She even gave me the name Lena, because she thought it was beautiful and feminine. However, I wasn’t the girly girl that she had always wanted. I was a tomboy, and my dad had been right - hockey games excited me even when I was a baby. I started on a team as soon as I could, and my mom hated it. She called it “a guy’s sport” even, but nothing stopped me from playing.

My mom and I have never really been that close, but at least now I like going shopping with her. I’m girlier now, but I still love hockey. Because of that, she still holds back with me. I think it reminds her of how she never got to have the experience with her daughter that she wanted, because after me, her and Dad never had any other kids.

I thought about this when I saw her number come up on my phone, sitting on my bed in my tiny apartment. The phone call had interrupted my studying - being a senior in college was a lot of hard work.

“Hey Mom,” I answered, finishing a sentence on Microsoft Word simultaneously.

“Hi Lena. I’m just calling to see how you’ve been.”

“I’ve been fine. Midterms are coming up, so I’ve been pretty busy with schoolwork lately,” I answered.

“Sounds fun. Are you doing okay in your classes still?” My mom had always stressed good grades, on both me and Brian.

“Yes, I’ve kept my grades up, Mom. Don’t worry about that, I’ll still be graduating in May,” I promised.

“I’m just checking. How’s your team been doing?” It was the question I knew she dreaded having to ask. I had continued hockey in college. It was more of a recreational team, but we still had games and moved on to championships. It wasn’t quite as official, because that would make it too hard to focus on school, but it was still something.

“Good. We’re actually on a winning streak right now. You should have seen my goal the other night. It was the game winner, actually,” I began to ramble. I couldn’t help it. It was so easy for me to go on for hours about hockey.

“I’m sure it was amazing, Lena. But don’t let that distract you too much from your classes, okay?”

“I know. I won’t.”

“Okay, well, it looks like Puck needs to go out, so I’ll have to let you go.” Puck was my beautiful Siberian Husky. I had always wanted one, and I finally got him at the end of high school. He couldn’t come to college with me though. My apartment didn’t allow dogs, so even after I got out of the dorms, I couldn’t keep him with me. My parents kept him at home, so seeing him was always one of the biggest highlights of my visits when I went back home.