The Hockey Life - A Patrick Kane Fanfic

Part Fifty-Three - New Interns

PART FIFTY-THREE: NEW INTERNS

“Frolik Navidad! Frolik Navidad!” Tess and I sang as we got into her car. Now that Thanksgiving and my birthday were both over, it was time to think about Tess’ birthday and Christmas. Luckily, I had already covered both her birthday and Christmas presents, and she had covered mine, so I was told. We needed to start buying things for our families and boyfriends, though, so that was our mission. It was good that we both had a lot of Christmas spirit, because even though it wasn’t Black Friday or anything, shopping at Christmastime could get a little crazy.

Tess plugged in her iPod and set it to her Christmas play list, which we listened to the whole car ride to Water Tower Place. We both knew it wasn’t smart to overload on holiday music too early only for it to get old by the time Christmas actually arrived, but we couldn’t help ourselves. I didn’t want to wait to jam out to All I Want for Christmas Is You, which was my favorite holiday song.

When we got to the mall, we couldn’t help but go to all our favorite stores first. Even though we couldn’t even afford to buy things for ourselves, we still had to look.

“Would it be over the top to send a wish list to my parents? I can just take pictures of everything I want today and send some to them,” Tess joked.

“I don’t know, I think we’re a little old for Christmas wish lists,” I told her.

“I guess you’re right. Oh, what do you know, an escalator!” she said. “Ready?” She looked over at me for confirmation.

“Let’s do it,” I grinned. We both got on the escalator at the same time, putting one foot on one step and the other on one behind it. We let our legs stretch out until we were practically doing the splits. We put on our most serious faces and watched for reactions from people. The kids we saw laughed, some young adults gave us props, and the older adults rolled their eyes. We kept it up until we couldn’t contain ourselves anymore. We returned to normal stances and started cracking up laughing. We did this thing where we re-enacted random stunts from Elf to see how people would react. It was always a ton of fun, but we made sure not to be over the top in case someone decided to kick us out, which we feared might happen.

Luckily, we didn’t get kicked out of any stores, but we did have a lot of success when it came to shopping. Tess and I both got our moms a few things from Lush. She got her dad a Home Depot gift card and I got my dad a Sports Authority gift card. I bought Brian a gift card to the Nike store. I even got Patrick’s gift, which consisted of a few different things he wanted and needed including a phone case, a new hoodie, shirt, and baseball cap, and some hockey stick tape which of course was necessary for him. Tess and I stopped at Giordano’s for some pizza when we got hungry and after I picked up a toy, a bone, and some treats for Puck who I missed dearly, we were done for the day.

That was on an off day, when I didn’t have to be at work. However, when I got back to work, I knew I would be in for some fun. Brad told me that another internship was starting, so I would get to talk to this year’s interns and help them out. Of course, Dylan had a pretty busy schedule, but he made sure he could come to the United Center whenever possible, including the first day of the internship.

“Welcome back,” I greeted Dylan when he arrived at the United Center on Monday morning, which was the first day for the newest set of six interns.

“Thanks. I’m glad to be back here. It’s crazy that it’s been a whole year since we were interns…but at the same time, it almost feels like it was a decade ago,” he said.

“Yeah. A lot of things have happened since then,” I said as I thought about how things had changed.

“Mostly good things, though. So, when are they going to get here?”