"we were. and then we weren't."
a chance meeting.
a whirlwind romance.
a life changing trade.
a broken heart.
a tale of love, loss, forgiving, and forgetting.
Jamie Oleksiak + Greer Holden
{lowercase intended}
There's a forkful of half-chewed salad in my mouth in the moment that my world stops spinning.
The fork in my hand falls out clanking down hard on the plastic breakroom table, startling my fellow co-workers as I read further into the article that Sophia has just sent me.
The text attached simply read OPEN THIS NOW!! with a link that leads me to an NHL.com article. And I should have known right then it wasn't going to end well if it had something to do with hockey. But this? This was so not what I expected.
Jamie's coming back to Dallas.
How could this be happening? I mean, what are the freaking odds of Jamie being traded back to the team that had traded him away just a year ago?
According to the article he's been dealt back to Dallas in a mirror trade of the one that originally sent him to Pittsburgh originally. A trade like this is apparently a rarity in the sports world, one that makes me both nauseous and irate.
Tossing the rest of my salad into the trash with my appetite now out the window I grab a cub of coffee from the nutrition room and hit the floor eager to find Jade to take her up on her offer for after work drinks. The bubbly blonde is easy to find, hanging out at the front nurse's station talking to Drew, the handsome respiratory therapist that she has a crush on.
"Hey, Gigi! How was your lunch?" She asks peppy as always as soon as she sees me come around the corner with my afternoon coffee in hand.
"Meh, hey are you still going to The Wheel tonight?" She smiles and nods as I ask, looking between Drew and I as he blonde curls whip around, "Good, I'm in now. Drew you should totally join us! Sophia and Riley are coming too."
"The Wheel? Sounds like fun, I'll see ya'll there. And page me if you need me, Jade." The red-head winks at Jade before excusing himself from the desk, which sends the petite blonde into a schoolgirl-like frenzy.
"G!!! He said yes!! And I can't believe you said yes! What gives you never want to go out after work, no homework tonight?"
I shrug picking at the lid on my coffee cup, "Well, I just got some interesting news, so I could use a drink."
"It's not your Dad is it?"
"No, my family is fine, but I just heard that Jamie got traded back to Dallas."
Jade's jaw drops open before she clasps a hand over her mouth in dramatic fashion, "No way! Did he reach out to you?"
"No," I shake my head, "Soph just sent me a link to the trade announcement."
"Well, that sucks, and you definitely deserve to look hot, get free drinks, and forget about that asshole. Which is so what we're doing tonight." •••
Five hours of work later I head home to let Murphy out and change into a more bar appropriate outfit. Impressively, I'm back out the door and on my way downtown in under an hour. The Uber driver drops me off at The Wheel's front door where I meet up with Jade, Sophia, and Riley.
•••
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