Love On the Brain (Corey Crawford)

14| Snow Day

Corey

As December starts the first real snow fall hits the city, and bad. We've had a few dustings and even some snow that stuck, but this is the first time we had a storm system push through and let me tell you, it was awful. It was "practice is canceled" bad and it's never been that bad before. And since I was already up I decided that I might as well get a jump on the day. So I write a little and did some laundry. I look at my schedule and sort things out for the next few weeks with my meetings with Jessica and hockey obligations. December was always a busy month for me with hockey and the holidays and my birthday at the end of the month, but it's not like I can go out and get gifts right now so I had to do what I can given the circumstances.

At about 11 I hear a knock at my door and stop. I thought it was weird because who in their right mind came out in this weather? So I go to the door to confront the crazy person and I see my crazy girl standing there all bundled up as she tries to hide from the cold.

"You are insane, you know that" I ask as I pull her inside. There was still a good amount of snow on her as she tries to shake it off.

"So I've been told" she says as her teeth chatter.

"Why in the world did you leave your place today? It's like Pompeii with snow out there" I say.

"I noticed" she laughs. "I was already on my way to the United Center before I saw that practice was canceled. Then I was going to head home but the roads were so bad I had to pull off to the side of the road. Then I recognized that I was by your place so I ditched the car and walked here hoping that you were here and would let me in" she explains.

"Well it's your lucky day, I have some sweats you can borrow and plenty of heat and a bunch of hot chocolate" I tell her and she smiles.

"God you're a saint" she sighs.

I give her some dry and warm clothes to change into before we head to the kitchen. I grab two mugs and fill them with water before she stops me.

"What? I'm not a good cook but I know how to make hot chocolate" I assure her.

"Make it with milk, it tastes better" she claims.

"Milk" I asks and she nods. I just shrug as I go to the fridge and pour in the milk. After heating it up in the microwave we pour in our packets of not chocolate and use candy canes to stir it. After adding the little mini marshmallows we head into the living room and relax on the couch. She sat on one end and I sit on the other so neither of us get any bright ideas.

"So what do you do what practice gets canceled" she wonders.

"Enjoy it because it doesn't happen all that often. Hardly ever do we get a day off so I usually try to do nothing of importance for once. Just play catch up on laundry and see what I have to do in the upcoming weeks" I say.

"Are you really enjoying your time off if you're sitting here worrying about what has yet to happen or what has already happened" she questions.

"I guess not" I shrug.

"If we spend each day wishing for the next one to get here or thinking about the last ones then you're going to waste a lot of days you will never get back. No day is worth throwing away telling yourself you'll make it happen some other day. Today is someday, and if you're not careful today will become yesterday and it gets wasted worried about things that were going to happen anyway.

You're an athlete Corey, you don't get a lot of days where it's finally someday. Sure you can't do much right now but worrying about what's going to happen next or something that's behind you is no way to spend your one day free. You should be doing something you love that no one else knows about or rearranging your apartment to get a new perspective on life or learning how to play the piano. I don't know, something worth being thankful for" she explains.

"Like spending some time with you" I say and she smiles.

"That's one way" she admits.

"I can't think of a better way to spend my day off than being trapped inside with you" I insist.

"Aww that was almost cute" she teases.

The next second the power goes out and the apartment grows dark. It wasn't pitch black but it wasn't exactly easy to see either. The only light we had was sneaking through my window and even then it wasn't much.

"Uh oh..." Jess says softly as she looks around. I go to the window and it looked like the snow took out a lot of power around here. There were not a lot of lights on around the city.

"Now what" I ask.

"Well if we try to leave we have 27 flights of stairs to go down, not that it looks like there's anywhere to go" she admits as she joins me by the window.

"The power should be back soon, they have generators but they're probably not hooked up yet" I explain.

"We just need to stay warm" she insists.

"And how do we do that" I wonder.

"You got some blankets" she asks.

"I got some on the couch" I admit.

"Then we can wrap up in those. Our only source of heat is body heat right now" she claims and I raise my eyebrow.

"You mean you and me in a blanket together" I ask and she rolls her eyes.

"Don't make it weird" she begs.

"I'm not! I'm just making sure we're on the same page here. Sometimes I feel like we are and other times I feel like we're on different pages" I admit.

She reaches out and grabs my hand and I couldn't stop the smile from coming on my face. She smiles back at me as she squeezes it letting me know everything was going to be okay. I wish I could bottle up the feeling I had when she touched me and keep it forever.

She pulls me to the couch before grabbing all the blankets off of it. I sit on the couch and she places herself in my lap. I wrap all the blankets around us and we quickly get warm.

"Wow, you are so comfy" she admits.

"Are you calling me fat" I tease.

"No. Just comfy" she insists as she wiggles a little. I bite my lip to keep myself from moaning as she moved around in my lap. "Are you good" she asks. 

"Great" I smile.

I look up into her eyes and I see something that wasn't there before. It was a little sparkle that was in her eyes that shined in this dark room. Everything was dim except for her, she always stuck out to me anyway. Not even the strongest of storms could put out her light and I thought that was pretty special.

She slowly starts to lean down and I close my eyes hoping that her lips would meet mine before I would open them again. But there's a loud crash that makes her jump then the lights turn back on. I look around as things start up again and the power comes back. I was hoping they wouldn't find the generators this quick, I felt like we were finally going somewhere with our relationship and of course it gets interrupted.

"Looks like the powers back" she says.

"Yeah. Guess we don't have to create our own heat now" I say.

"I don't know... I'm very comfortable" she smiles.

"I wouldn't mind if we stayed like this a little while longer" I admit.

"That makes two of us."