The Hockey Life - A Patrick Kane Fanfic

Part Forty-Nine - Hockey and Halloween

PART FORTY-NINE: HOCKEY AND HALLOWEEN

The regular hockey season began as soon as October arrived. The Hawks started off the season with a win, which was always good. From there they continued to do well for the next few weeks with only a few losses but mostly wins. It seemed like everyone’s head was in the game, and the whole team plus Coach Q had optimistic outlooks on the rest of the season.

Hockey was obviously a priority for Patrick, but since it was October, he had other things to worry about too. Just like Jonathan Toews hosted the New Years party, it was Pat’s job to host the team’s Halloween party. Everyone was expecting it to be good, so I harassed Patrick about it quite a bit. Maybe even too much.

“So…how about that Halloween party?” I said on our way home from the United Center one afternoon.

“Are you ever going to give that up?” Patrick asked me.

“Not until we’re actually ready for it! We seriously need to go shopping. We don’t even have costumes yet, babe. That’s sort of crucial for a costume party, in case you didn’t realize that.”

“Okay, okay. Fine. We’ll go to Halloween City on the way home,” he grumbled.

When we got to the store, he seemed to be amazed at all the things I was filling our shopping basket with.

“Are you sure we really need all of this?” he asked as he examined the things I was mindlessly adding to the basket.

“Yes. We have to decorate, it’s a Halloween party!” I reminded him. Once I had grabbed enough decorations, we migrated to the costume section of the giant store.

“We have to match, don’t we?” Pat asked.

“We’re a couple, aren’t we?”

“As far as I know,” he laughed.

“Then yeah, we need matching costumes. Do you have any ideas?”

“Not really.”

“We better start looking then and hope we find something amazing. The hosts really should have the best costumes.” We both looked for a while. We found plenty of funny and creepy costumes, but eventually I stumbled across a Princess Peach costume.

“Hey, I’m always Peach when we play MarioKart,” I said. I saw a Mario costume nearby and I knew what our costumes were going to be. “Would you like to be Mario?” I asked.

“Sure. Who doesn’t love Mario?” It was decided. We would be Mario and Princess Peach for Halloween. I wasn’t sure if we’d have the best costumes, but we both loved the idea, and in the end that was all that really mattered.

After another week of hockey, it was finally the day of the party. I went to Patrick’s apartment plenty early so I could help him decorate, because let’s be honest, he definitely didn’t know what he was doing. After I told him what I had envisioned when we bought all the decorations, he helped me put up fake cobwebs, door decals, signs, the works. I set all the tables with tattered, bloody tablecloths and I set out random fake body parts, creepy looking animals, Jack-o-lanterns, skeletons/skulls, and cauldrons. He hung bats from the ceiling and other high places that I couldn’t reach very well. By the time we were done, his whole apartment looked like Halloween threw up in it, even the main bathroom. The only place that wasn’t decorated was his room, it seemed.

“Wow, it looks good in here,” Patrick decided as we examined our hard work.

“Yeah, and you didn’t think we needed all the decorations,” I reminded him.

“Whatever. You were right, I was wrong. You happy now?”

“Yeah, I guess so. We better get changed into our costumes now. Everyone will be here in an hour and I still need to set out the food and make punch,” I said.