Chapter 4: What could have been

When Autumn finally made it back from her roll call, Nathalie walked out of the bathroom and looked at the list, “Everyone where they should be, huh?”

Autumn slumped down on her bed, shrugging. As if it even mattered.

Wanting to keep a conversation going, Nathalie continued, “So what Jacob did for you was really nice.”

Frowning, Autumn looked over at her, “He didn't have to do that, he's not here to save me. He's here to save pucks.”

Poetic, Nathalie thought as she rolled her eyes and went over to her own bed. Autumn clearly wasn't in a very good mood, so talking to her would only make things worse.

“Well, good night...” Nathalie turned off the light on her side of the room and crawled under the covers, checking her phone one final time before letting her head rest on the pillow. Tomorrow was going to be a long day.

-

For the staff of Team Sweden, an early start to the day was perfectly normal. Not so much for the recently hired girls, though...

“Ughhh I don't want tooo...” Nathalie moaned as her alarm went off for the third time. “This is not faaaair.”

On the other side of the room, Autumn was hitting the snooze button yet again, until she realized the time, “Shit!” She flew out of bed. “We're gonna be late, get UP!”

Nathalie held on to her pillow for dear life as Autumn tried to drag her out of bed, “Pleeeease no...”

Sighing, Autumn filled a glass of ice cold water and poured it over Nathalie's head, causing her to shriek loudly, “It was my only choice...” Autumn set the glass down and watched Nathalie putting her clothes on while cursing in what sounded like very angry Swedish.

“Stop bitching and hurry up!!” Autumn raised her voice and started going through the mini fridge they had in their room. She grabbed a bottle of water and drank all of it in next to no time at all. Blinking at the strange taste, she started to feel a little weird, and everything was starting to look a bit fuzzy.

“Ok let's go...” Nathalie said and put her keycard in her wallet before she went over to the door and opened it for Autumn. She followed Nathalie and made her way towards the elevator, ignoring the feeling of dizziness that was rushing over her more and more. After pressing the button to get the elevator to arrive, Autumn started to feel unbalanced, and before she knew it she was on the floor.

“Oh my god!!” Nathalie crashed onto the floor next to her. “Are you okay? Autumn...?”

“What's going on?” Came a voice from behind Nathalie. She looked up and saw Jacob standing there with Tim and David. “I... I don't know... She just fell...” Nathalie looked over at Tim and saw him smirking, which immediately made her hover over Autumn to smell her breath. “You asshole!” She stood up, looking right at Tim. “What did you do?!”

Jacob looked confused, “What are you talking about?”

“She's drunk... And the last thing she drank was... A bottle of water, which I'm assuming WASN'T water.”

Tim held up his hands, “Hey, I'm innocent... She must like her drinks.”

Nathalie gave him an evil look and mimed “Fuck off.” before she turned her attention to Jacob. “Please help me... I still have to do my work, but she can't go like this. Can you take her back to our room?”

“Of-of course... Yeah...” Jacob hunched down and picked Autumn up into his arms. Standing up, he realized something. “I'll need your key...”

“Oh right...” Shaking, Nathalie took it out of her wallet and handed it over to him. “It's room 25.”

“Ok... You guys can cover for me, right? Say I'm feeling a bit of a sore throat or something?”

“Yeah, of course. We'll come up with something.” Nathalie assured him. Just as she said it, the elevator arrived and Tim, David and Nathalie all went inside. Just before the doors closed, Jacob heard Nathalie screaming at Tim, and he shook his head with a slight smile.

Autumn moved in Jacob's arms as he started to walk towards the girls' room, “Put me doooown...” She moaned, slightly opening her eyes. “I... woooork...”

“Nope...” Jacob said, holding a tight grip of her. “You're going to rest today, ok?”

“I caaan't...” Autumn sighed. “They'll fire me...” She repositioned herself and tried to climb over Jacob's shoulder in order to escape, but he caught her in time and opened the door to their room.

“Nice try, but do you think you can climb over me?” Jacob gently set her down on top of one of the beds. He then went over to the fridge, grabbing a new water bottle. Just to be sure, he opened it and took a sniff. He wouldn't want her to get even drunker. Luckily, this one contained pure water, and so he went back over to the bed with it. “Take this, you need fluids.”

“Nooo... No... No...” Autumn pushed it away. “It made me... sick...”

Jacob picked it back up, “It won't make you sick, it'll make you bett-”

“Kill meee...” Autumn interrupted him, groaning. “I am in a hotel room... with the... annoying... sessy guy...”

Jacob raised his eyebrows, still trying to get her to drink the water, “Pardon me?”

“Wait...” Autumn swallowed loudly. “If you're SWEDISH why aren't you... blonde?” Jacob sat down on the bed next to her and she accidentally burped, “Sorry...”

Jacob smiled, “We're not ALL blonde, actually. Now drink this.”

“NO!” Autumn moaned.

“It'll make you feel better...” Jacob pleaded, holding the bottle up once again. His negotiating went on for another twenty minutes before Autumn would even consider touching the bottle, and he was so close to giving up. When she finally took it, she managed to spill more than half the contents over her shirt.

“Fuck!” She exclaimed, looking down at herself. Jacob sighed and picked her back up, having thought of something that might help. Autumn protested, though,“What are you doing?!”

-

In the lobby, Nathalie had gone over to talk to Roger, and was just finishing up Autumn's excuse when David showed up behind her, “Coach, Jacob's feeling a bit of a sore throat so he'll pass on practice today. He wanted me to tell you... Better safe than sorry, you know.”

“Right...” Roger nodded. “So we're one goalie and one assistant short. Can you handle it alone, Andersson?”

“Yes, I'll take care of it, sir.”

Roger nodded once again, “Good, good... So get everyone on the bus and we'll leave for practice, yes?”

“Of course...” Nathalie took a deep breath as Roger walked over to the assisting coaches. She didn't know exactly how to handle it all alone, but she would figure it out somehow.

“Wow you look so tense...” Tim came up behind her and whispered in her ear. “Looks like you could use a good whole-body massage. You know, like I used to give you... And as always, it would be followed by-”

Nathalie felt a shiver go all the way up her spine when Tim started to speak, and she pushed her elbow into his stomach, interrupting him, “You. Shut. Up.” She said through gritted teeth. Taking another deep breath, she walked away from him, counted slowly to ten in her head and went to gather all the players.

In some magical way, they all arrived at the practice arena in time and managed to complete a whole practice without any major cutbacks. Nathalie was doing the best she could, but she had a feeling some of the players were trying to see how much she could handle. This ended with her sitting alone on the bench at the end of practice, catching her breath. Two players were left on the ice: Tim and David, who always went off last. They skated over to her and as they left the ice, Tim winked at her and bit his lip. She just shook her head and focused on what she had to clean up around her. She wouldn't want to actually kill him. 

-

Meanwhile, Jacob was running a bath for the poor drunken and soaked girl he was supervising, but she didn't seem to like it very much.

“I said, what... are you... doing?”

“I'm running you a bath,” Jacob replied. “Get out of those clothes and get in the tub...”

“WHAT?! NO!” Autumn yelled. “I knew it, you're just trying to get in my pants!”

Jacob held up his hands, “I just want you to take a bath, I won't do anything... Now do you want to take a bath in your underwear or fully dressed? Your choice.”

“How about neither.” Autumn tried to get out of the room, but Jacob pulled her back. If she was going to be this stubborn, he'd have no other choice but to use some force. He lifted her up yet again, and put her down in the hot water. She started coughing and splashed water around her, “I'm going to kill you!” The words coming out of her mouth were finally smooth and without any sound of drunken nonsense.

“Fine...” Jacob crossed his arms. “But you're talking normally now...”

“Oh...” Autumn calmed down in the tub and leaned back against it. “I guess so...” She put her arms around her knees. “I'm sorry...”

Jacob sat on the edge of the tub, rubbing her back gently, “You don't have to be sorry... It's ok...”

“No... “Autumn whispered. “If it wasn't for me you had been playing tonight... It's all my fault.”

Jacob frowned, “You didn't do it all yourself, it's not on you. And I can manage missing the game against Lativa...”

Autumn looked up at him, noticing a scar on his cheek, “Where did you get that?”

“Oh...” Jacob unintentionally touched his face. “I was playing hockey with my brother and got a stick there... No big deal.”

“That happened to me once, too...” Autumn said, suddenly very calm.

“You played hockey?” Jacob looked pretty surprised.

Autumn nodded, moving back her hair a little bit, “When I was little... See, under my neck here? I got slashed by accident...” She paused. “It's kind of in the shape of a heart... Do you see it?”

Jacob looked closer, “Yeah... That's actually cool, mine's just a line...”

Autumn reached up and touched it, “Yes... You've got freckles, lots of them... I never noticed. It's a remnant of the child Jacob, you know. Before you leave your teens, it's all you have left of that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well... You've still got some boyish features... Bright eyes, the freckles, dimples... And your mouth.”

“My mouth?”

“Yeah... It's...” Autumn ran her thumb over it and leaned closer. “You're... beautiful...” She moved her hand to the side of his face and kissed him slowly. Jacob put his hand on the back of her head, returning the kiss. The two were interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Jacob?” Oliver's voice came from the hallway. “Roger wants you to take part of the team meeting...”

Jacob swallowed, looking into Autumn's eyes, “I'm sorry... I have to... And Nathalie's probably gonna be here soon...”

“Yeah, yeah...” Autumn bit her lip, watching him walk away. She sighed and laid back in the tub, looking up at the ceiling. What was she doing?

A couple of minutes after Jacob left, Nathalie walked through the door and found Autumn in the bathroom, “What the hell happened in here?”

Autumn looked at her, “Oh he just made me take a bath... To get me sober...”

Nathalie raised her eyebrows, looking at the complete mess that was their bathroom. She felt bad for whoever was going to clean their room in the morning, so she did what she could to clean up while Autumn put on dry clothes and crawled into bed.

“What a day...” Nathalie thought as she brushed her teeth and looked over at Autumn, who was already sound asleep in her bed. Little did she know what direction Jacob and she had been headed before they were interrupted. And maybe it was better that she didn't know.