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timetravelingheart · 5 years

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Consequences Chapter Three: A.M. Imagine

“And then,” Mitch had to stop to catch his breath from his laughter, “he spilled her own drink on her!”

Auston sat, arms crossed, with a dark look across his features, while the guys who were supposed to be his best friends laughed like loons at his expense in his own living room.

When the four fools finally caught their breaths and their laughter subsided, they turned to their now stewing friend who looked like steam could start coming out of his ears at any point.

“Are you guys done?” he spat. The four guys - Mitch, William, Kasperi, and Morgan - tried to keep straight faces before tumbling into fits of laughter once again.

Only Mitch had seen the little exchange between Auston and Tessa the previous night, so he felt it was only necessary to catch the rest of the guys up on the events.

“Great, thanks guys, thanks so much,” Auston stood up and stomped into his kitchen to get another drink. “So fucking happy I get to call you guys my friends.”

“Man,” Willy started, wiping tears from his eyes, “how, and I say this with love, how did you manage to fuck up again?”

“Oh, oh, tell them about the ‘no’ is a full sentence part! That was golden,” Mitch started bouncing up and down, about to get to the second best part of the story.

“Why don’t you tell it, you seem to know it so well?” Auston mumbled, grabbing waters from the fridge and tossing them fairly aggressively towards the vultures in his living room.

“So, Matts asks her why she said no and she basically balks at why she even needed to give him a reason and says, ‘no’ is a full sentence and that she doesn’t owe him anything,” Mitch explained, still feeling such an odd sense of pride for a girl he barely knew. “Steph thought that part was amazing!”

Of course he told Steph, Auston thought. Nothing stays a secret in this team.

“’No’ is a full sentence,” Morgan mused. “I love that. Fuck. I’m rooting for you man, but damn, good for her. What a woman.”

“That sounds like something my mom would say whenever my sisters said they felt guilty about turning a guy down who had a crush on them,” William added. “It’s such a good line.”

“So now what happens?” Kapanen asked, turning from his spot on the sofa to look at Auston who was still standing in the kitchen. “How did it all end?”

“I just asked for her to give me a chance and she said she’d think about it,” Auston shrugged, keen on downplaying his own anxieties and insecurities about what she meant by that.

“Are you going to call her?” Morgan asked, genuinely curious. They liked to take the piss out of their friends, but they still rooted for them too.

“He didn’t get it,” Mitch piped up as Auston hesitated.

“What?” the other three exclaimed in unison.

“How will you contact her?” William asked.

“She works for MLSE, right? So her office isn’t far away. I figured I would send her flowers in a couple of days,” Auston took a sip of his water as he sat back down. He was quite proud to have thought of that gesture.

“And then what?” Mitch asked.

“What do you mean and then what? I’ll send her the flowers, add my number to the card, and wait for her to call me.”

Auston was actually a little offended at the scoffs he heard come from each of his friends who were now staring back at him.

“What?”

“You think you’re capable of calmly waiting for her to call you?” Morgan looked disbelieving.

“I mean, how long does someone usually wait to thank someone after they send them flowers as a romantic gesture?” Auston shrugged, thinking his plan was foolproof.

His plan was not foolproof. In fact, his plan seemed to be absolutely full of holes, Auston couldn’t help but think as he moved aimlessly around his apartment, exactly 48 hours after he had sent the flowers. It turned out that Morgan was right - he was incapable of waiting calmly.

And so, he did a thing he had been trying to talk himself out of for the past ten hours at least. He grabbed his car keys and drove himself over to her office where he figured she was probably working that afternoon.

Desperate times.

He got into the building and onto her floor with ease, everyone obviously recognizing him and assuming he was there to discuss future events or volunteering opportunities.

He took a couple of deep breaths before he knocked on the door with her nameplate. He waited until he heard a gentle, ‘come in’ from the other side. When he walked in, he saw a stressed-out looking Tessa standing at her desk and sorting what looked to be hundreds of papers. When she looked up at him, the look of surprise was evident and Auston immediately felt like he made a mistake.

“Auston? What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”

He stepped forward, closing the door behind him.

“Yeah, I just - I was just in the area and wanted to stop in to say hi,” he lied. He gestured to the papers on her desk. “It looks like maybe I caught you at a busy time?”

“Yeah, it would seem that way, wouldn’t it?” she bit sarcastically. At the hurt look that crossed his face, a wave of guilt moved through her. “I’m sorry. I’m stressed and I haven’t eaten yet. I get mean when I’m hungry.”

Auston laughed at that.

“Hangry? I can go grab you lunch if you’d like? Or maybe you can take a break to regroup and we can get lunch together?”

“I don’t think so. I’m probably just going to Postmates something. I have too much to do for an event coming up.”

Before Auston could reply, her office phone rang. She held up a finger to tell him to wait while she took the call. He took this as an opportunity to look around her office. He saw photos of people he assumed to be family, as well as some of campers and other staff he recognized from Launchpad. He couldn’t help but feel slighted when he didn’t see the flowers anywhere, only to wonder if she brought them home, and if she did, where did she keep them? He was lost in his thoughts when he heard her clear her throat.

“Looking for anything specific over there?” she teased, still a little tension in her voice and in her shoulders.

“I was actually wondering where you keep the flowers I sent you,” he retorted. He watched as her face fell slightly. If he had learned anything about Tessa in their few interactions, it was that she was not good at hiding her emotions. At all. And if he was reading her correctly, the flowers did not have the desired effect he had wanted.

“I took them home. Thank you for sending them, they were beautiful.”

��But?”

“But what?”

“Come on, Tess,” he pushed, using a nickname he had yet to hear anyone else call her, “most people would message or call the person who sent the flowers to thank them. I got radio silence from you.”

“I’m sorry, you’re right. That was rude of me. I guess I just wasn’t sure what would come of us talking on the phone.”

“Well, I was hoping that I would be able to ask you out again. Not even as a date, but just a hang out.”

“With the hope of it eventually leading to a date?”

“Yes.”

“Auston -”

“Tess, I sent you the flowers because I like you and I think you deserve to have something beautiful. And yeah, I definitely wanted to send you something so that when you saw them you would think of me. But I also wanted to show you that I’m trying here for you. I’m in this, for you. I’m not just trying to get into your pants here.”

Tessa looked him over hesitantly as if she were searching for any visible signs that he was full of shit. When it didn’t seem like she found any, she let out a full body sigh and plopped into her desk chair. Auston took a seat across from her and waited patiently. It was her turn and he had to remember to give her time to reply before he word-vomited all over again. While you could read every emotion that crossed Tessa’s face, she was thoughtful with her words. Auston was almost the exact opposite. Years of media training helped him hide his reactions and emotions, but he often had to remind himself to think about his words carefully so he didn’t spew out the first thing that came to mind.

So he waited patiently, biting his tongue, as he waited for her response.

“Okay, here’s the thing,” she clasped her hands out in front of her, as if she were about to engage in some sort of negotiation and not just a conversation about a date. “You can’t send flowers to my office. And you can’t just show up unannounced to my office. It’s not appropriate.”

“Not app-”

“It’s just not. Do you know how hard it is to be a woman working in the sports industry? I don’t even have anything to do with anything you guys do on the ice and I still get questioned about it. I cannot under any circumstances have my position within this company be linked to you. I have worked too hard for too long to get this job and I absolutely love it. I’m not going to risk that just because you think you might be interested in me-”

“I know I’m-”

“When I first started volunteering for this organization, I was asked fairly regularly, both seriously and mockingly, if I was only doing it to meet a Maple Leaf or a Raptor or a Blue Jay or an athlete from whatever the fuck other male-dominated league or sport there is in this city.

And when I got a job here? Fuck, that was even worse. And now, not only am I asked if I want to date an athlete, I’m also asked if I can introduce some of you to the girls at school.

THAT’S how people still view women who work even remotely close to a male-dominated sport. I work with children. I am here for the children. So if you come in here on a day when an event is not planned and you send me flowers, it starts to look like I’m that person people expect me to be. I become the stereotype. And I refuse to have that happen.”

Auston waited to make sure she was really finished before responding. He reached forward and wrapped his large hand around her clasped ones that had now gone white. At his touch, her fingers released and she let him hold her hands in his.

“Tess, I’m sorry. I know I should know all of this, and I know it’s a cop-out, but it honestly never crossed my mind that anyone would think anything. I just wanted you to have my number so we could communicate. And I’m sorry that me being here makes you uncomfortable. I’m an idiot, okay?”

Tessa let out a little laugh and Auston’s heart twitched.

“No, I’m overreacting a little. I do that sometimes,” she laughed, taking her hands back and running them through her hair. “I was just letting years of judgement cloud any appreciation I could have had for what was a very sweet gesture.”

“You think I’m sweet?” Auston grinned.

“That’s not what I said.”

“You think I’m sweet!” he hummed, grinning even wider now. Tessa couldn’t help but grin back, dimples on full display.

“I take it back. You are an idiot.”

Auston just laughed and continued to beam at her.

“Yeah, but I think you’re starting to warm up to me anyway, so what does that make you?”

“Also probably a bit of an idiot, but here we are. I really do have work to do so are we done here?”

“There’s just one more piece of business first,” he stated formally. She looked at him with questioning eyes until he pulled his phone out of his pocket dramatically. He held it out to her.

“If you give me what I came here for, and nothing more or less, I will leave in peace,” he stated, still formal, even more dramatic.

She eyed him carefully. If she gave him her number, she knew she would likely walk right into this trap he was setting up and she was pretty certain he also knew it.

And yet, for some reason, it still felt like the best decision she ever made when she reached for the phone and put in her number when she saw the way his eyes lit up, as if he were actually surprised his plan had worked. When she handed it back to him, she felt her own phone vibrate almost instantly. She looked down at the ID, seeing the name and number she had put into her phone two days ago despite her refusal to actually call it. She looked up at him, shaking her head and trying to hold back a laugh.

“Had to make sure you weren’t giving me a fake,” he winked at her as he stood up and made his way to the door. “Talk to you soon, Tess.”

When the door closed behind him, she dropped her head to her desk with a small thud.

What was she getting herself into?

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