Marriage
Daze
Chapter
6: The X-files
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Notes: From Guy’s point of view.
Well, this pretty much sucked.
He was having a huge fight with Connie. At least they weren’t broken up, but if they went on like this, who knew what was going to happen between them?
Besides from that, he also had his amounts of fights with Sarah. Formerly known as the cute blonde girl, now known to him as the big-mouthed perfectionist. Well, she wasn’t as hyper as Cecilia could be, but when it came to projects and assignments, she was a real pain. If it wasn’t the nervousness for bad grades, it was the eternal struggle for the teacher’s approval.
Not even Fred was that annoying when it came to school, and he was REALLY a bad case sometimes. Cecilia was annoying too, but to the exact opposite. She was always so ignorant when it came to school and homework, that the others got annoyed with her for not caring at all. She seemed to be totally disregarding the fact that some of her friends actually cared about school.
They couldn’t all be so damn clever, as she must imagine she was. Some of them just tried to get by. She did too, even if she didn’t seem to give a damn if she got an ‘A’ or an ‘F’. Her concern, or the lack of it, for school seemed to be growing for every day they’d been at the school.
Anyway, that wasn’t really Guy’s problem. It was Fred’s headache, or for the moment, Charlie’s.
Guy’s headache was more related to that beautiful brunette with the number eighteen on her jersey. Next to her, Sarah wasn’t even cute. She was nothing.
So, he had to come up with a waterproofed plan to get Connie to either apologize to him, or surrender to him. She had to cave in, that was for sure. But how?
There was no time to think about that right now anyway. Sarah wanted them to play husband and wife this afternoon, and he had to do the ‘homework’ she’d assigned him with. School must be that girl’s favorite hobby.
Yes, this not only sucked, this was hell too.
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“Is she bugging you yet?” Nish asked him. They were all gathered in the locker-room for their Wednesday practice. It seemed forever since they got paired up, but it’d only been two days ago. Guy was already tired of being ‘married’.
“No, I’m finding it quite entertaining to be married with her,” Guy exaggerated. Entertaining, demanding, whatever. The fact the she might be the one giving him his very first myocardial infarction was not something he was going to share with Nish. Even if it was the truth.
“Yeah, right,” Nish smirked. Well, if someone should know the truth, it was he. He’d spent his whole childhood with Sarah. Guy couldn’t even imagine how that must’ve been.
“Where are the ‘captain-couple’?” Averman asked, sounding awfully serious, compared to his usually wisecracking mood. Maybe the act of marriage was getting to him too?
“You mean the Conways’,” Adam corrected. “They’ve been experiencing their first marriage set-back. Last time I saw them, they were kinda mad at each other.”
“Who can blame them?” Fred muttered. Connie slapped him on the arm, and Fred gave her a pain filled, angry stare. “Ouch, stop it! Not only are you abusing the kids, now you’re going after me too? I’m this close to calling the police. Ouch! Stop hitting me!”
Everyone knew about Fred and Connie’s marriage trouble by now, and they laughed. Connie threw a towel at him. “Don’t bring that egg into the conversation. Forgive and forget, jackass. I’ve gotten over it.”
“Well, I’m not just gonna forgive and forget about the child that you smashed. I’m gonna remember it. Forever and ever, and then some more. I’m gonna bring it up at every therapist session and marriage counseling that we’ll ever attend. Believe me.”
“Jeez, it was just one of the children. We still have the twins, don’t we?”
“You mean the triplets, minus one? Yeah, and stay away from them, or I’ll get a restraining order against you.”
“You can try, but you won’t succeed.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be the happy couple?” Goldberg asked.
“Struggling!” they both answered.
“Yeah, right. The ‘struggling’ couple.”
None of the couples on the team seemed to be content with the arrangements. Connie and Fred was arguing over the death of their ‘baby’, Julie and Scott was at each others throats for their un-solved business from the beginning of the year, Sarah was bugging Guy’s brain out, and Charlie and Cecilia was bickering and bitching more then ever.
This was not a project anymore. This was the actual highway to hell. Guy was pretty sure that he was on that freeway right now. He was just waiting for a truck to hit him, or something.
He was wondering if Cecilia and Charlie had worked out their problems by now. His question got answered quickly, when Charlie came storming into the room. He had his usual pain filled look, like always after a fight with one of his co-captains. However, Guy was pretty sure that Travis had nothing to do with this.
Charlie dropped his bag in front of his locker, leaned against the wall and started to silently count backwards from ten. When he got to ‘four’, Cecilia burst into the room with a loud crashing sound. Charlie sighed and turned to face her.
“Well, I’m officially in hell,” Charlie muttered.
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Cecilia agreed. “I want a divorce.” She slammed a bunch of papers to the locker and gave Charlie an icy stare. “Sign ‘em.”
“Don’t try and boss me around, Cee. I’m the team-captain, so you should listen to my commands.”
“Like that’s ever gonna happen. I wouldn’t listen to you, even if you had something clever to say, which you usually don’t have.” Cecilia put her hands on her hips and gave him an impatient gaze. “Now, Charlie.”
“It’s Mr. Conway to you,” he told her. “Got a pen?”
“Wait a minute, are you two giving up already?” Fred asked. “We’re not, and we’re suffering from a serious murder in the family.” Fred ducked when Connie threw another towel towards him.
“Well, we can’t all be so damn cheery like your happy family is, can we?” Cecilia hissed. “I wish I could have a serious death in my family.”
“I do to,” Charlie growled. “I wasn’t even too motivated to begin with, since marriage is the worst thing God’s ever made up for us unfortunate mortals.”
“Talk for yourself, Conway,” Cecilia objected. “Marriage is on that list, but it’s definitely not the worst thing. You are.”
“Nice come-back. You almost got it this time.” Charlie wrote his name on the paper. “There, now get out of my face, before I have to make myself a widower.”
“Don’t you mean a murderer?” Cecilia asked.
“I don’t know, let’s find out, shall we?” Charlie took a menacingly step towards her, but the others cut through their argue. Cecilia went over to her own locker and stuffed her gear into it. Charlie did the same thing, only on the other side of the room.
“Well, I’m fed up with this by now,” Fred moaned. “Maybe if we raise a mutiny, Ms. Adams’ll let us off the hook?”
“I seriously doubt that. She’s the one holding the sign with the letters ‘hell’ on. We’re just walking the path, not realizing where we’re going. We’re just complaining about the heat and the fact that it’s getting darker, without one clue why. Aren’t we supposed to at least try and get out off the road, before we’re trapped forever?”
Everybody just stared at Guy. Okay, so maybe he shouldn’t have aired his thoughts about hell like he just did. It was actually kind of stupid. This was the reason why they never included him in any deep conversations.
Luckily enough, Cecilia decided to take his side, making an even more stupid comment. “Guy has a point there. We’re the team from hell, and Charlie Conway is the Devil.”
“Screw you,” Charlie said under his breath.
“I guess it’s true, married couple do start to copy each other after a while,” Fred grinned. Cecilia shoved him off the bench with another loud crash.
Man, this was really going to be two pain filled weeks.
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Notes: From Travis’s point of view.
It wasn’t often that Travis got left running the team by himself. Both Cecilia and Charlie usually were there, so they could help each other out. This was not that kind of time.
Charlie and Cecilia were acting like lunatics, practically trying to kill one another with hard checks into the board. Even if Cecilia was strong, she had nothing to put up against Charlie, when he started to throw her around.
Travis couldn’t do much to stop them either. More then roll his eyes, of course.
“Hey, cut it out you two!” Coach Bombay yelled from the players’ booth. He was leaning so far over the board; Travis was expecting him to fall over at any minute. Instead he climbed over the board and pushed Charlie and Cecilia apart.
“Didn’t you hear me? Stop that right now.” Bombay sounded terribly angry. He shoved Charlie into the booth and pushed Cecilia at the other direction, out on the ice. “I don’t care if you kill each other on your spare-time, but on my practice, you’ll behave.”
“Well, tell him to stop checking me then,” Cecilia answered with a pathetic voice.
“You’re supposed to be the team-captains. Behave like it,” Coach Bombay told them. “Cecilia, take your position. Charlie, sit here and behave like the captain you are.”
“Can’t Travis do it for the both of us?”
“He’s already doing that, believe me, Charlie. He’s the living example on how you should behave.”
Travis let out a deep sigh. No matter how good it might sound to be a ‘living example’, it wasn’t as good in practice. It might make his parents proud, but it really didn’t improve his situation on the team as the ‘boring one’. God, why did he have to be so dull and predictable all the time?
“Well, peachy for him then,” Charlie mumbled. He gave Travis an excusing look. “Sorry, I didn’t really mean that.”
Of course he’d done. The disturbing part was that he was so used to comments like that, that he didn’t even care anymore.
Charlie waited in the booth for his turn to play. It didn’t take long before Cecilia, Jesse, Guy, Averman and Derek climbed over the boards. Travis grabbed his stick and jumped onto the ice. Charlie was right behind him, and he decided in the last minute to drag Cecilia down on the ice, while she was trying to get over the board.
She fell backwards with a gasp and hit the ice with a crash. That was the third crash today, caused by the same two people, for the same stupid reason.
“Charlie!” It was Bombay who’d bellowed. Charlie twirled around and shoved his helmet down over his face. He looked awfully content with his deed, while Cecilia was moaning somewhere down on the ice, on the other side of the board.
Fred skated up to them and pushed Charlie out of the way. “Get off her,” he said angrily. “Leave her alone, Charlie.”
“Mind your own business, Fred.”
Uh, oh. The absolutely worst thing you could say to Fred, if you were trying to pick a fight with Cecilia. Connie joined them too, along with the rest of the team.
“Hey, I don’t care what she did, but you’re not pushing her like that. You could’ve hurt her,” Fred said with a loud voice. “Even if we’re the victims of some psycho school-project, she’s still my girlfriend!”
Cecilia crawled up, grabbing the board to haul herself onto her feet. She looked a bit light-headed. She brushed the snow and ice of her jersey and gave Fred an annoyed gaze.
“Don’t try to stick up for me, I can take care of myself,” she exclaimed.
“Hey, I’m just trying to keep you out of trouble. Obviously you’re not the master of that on your own. I don’t want you to get killed, you see.”
“Well, I’ve managed to survive until now, haven’t I? Don’t patronize me, I’m a hockey-player. I’m supposed to get hurt.”
“If you’re a bad hockey-player, maybe,” Fred replied.
“Well, I am, obviously, why else are you trying to protect me all the time?”
“Because I care about you?”
“No, because you think I stink at the game. I don’t even know what I’m doing in the first line at all; I’m not the best player by a long shot. Even you’re better then me, and that says a lot.” Another famous outburst from Cecilia. God, she had more mood-swings in one day then there was numbers to count them with.
Fred gave her a tired look. “Sorry, but I can’t do anything to improve your self-confidence, but I can offer you a piece of tape to that mouth of yours, so you can’t talk anymore crap, okay?”
Travis sighed again. Great, this was perfect. The last thing they needed was more difficulties in the team. They had games to play, and they couldn’t play if they all were... ‘Un-ducky’.
God, what a stupid word.
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