Chapter One

Jason Aldean - Don't Give Up On Me


“Sasha, when are you going to settle down and give me great grandchildren?” Grammy asked while we sat together on her porch.  There was a chill in the air which only meant one thing; it was almost time to go back to DC, back to my alter ego.  In the US, I was known as Alexander Ovechkin, Alex the Great, the Russian Super Star.  Over here in my homeland I too was a superstar, but here it was different.  Here I could be myself.  Life in America was totally different.  In the West it was all about the material things you owned.  Everything and anything could be purchased with the right amount of cash.  When I was here, it had all to do with my family and my friends.  These were the people I trusted.  They were the people who knew me the best.  At the moment, I was with the person who meant the most to me and the only person’s opinion that mattered to me.

I left out a loud laugh and leaned back into the rocking chair.  “Really, Grammy?” I said in my native tongue.  “I’m having too much fun at the moment to settle down.”  Of course that didn’t mean I didn’t find myself in and out of love with every new dawn, but I couldn’t help it.  I loved women.  I didn’t want the whole playboy, serial dater persona, but my weakness of falling too quickly, easily gave me that label.  I was constantly on the hunt for my future wife.  Unfortunately there always ended up being some sort of issue that would arise in the relationship, whether it was something to do with the fact that they were too into themselves, or we just weren’t a good fit; there was always an issue. 

Contrary to what I portray or what the tabloid portray; I am a family man.  Having a strong family is what I have always wanted.  My family was strong and because of them, I am the person I am today.  I am not afraid to face the world head-on because my parents instilled that into me.

Finding a good woman was looking like a bigger problem then I had ever begun to imagine.  Don’t get me wrong, I had no problem always having a different beautiful girl on my arm or in my bed, but none of them would be the woman I would marry.  Even a playboy Russian Superstar had standards, and mine were frankly very high for the woman who would become my wife.  A good man always had a good woman by his side; my Grammy taught me that.

I sighed and shook off her comment about settling down, “When I find the right one…”

“You need a good Russian woman to settle your ass down.  These American girls have you up on such a pedestal and have clouded your mind with their perfume and greed…”

I nodded in agreement with her.  She was right.  I had no doubt that my future soulmate would be Russian.  There was something about the women from my homeland.  They were beautiful.  Not that there weren’t some beautiful women from North America, but I found that there were none that seemed strong enough to be by my side.  Russian women are sincere, honest and good cooks; women like my Grammy and mother.  My mind was made up.

“Please do not tell me that I need to be apart of this!” I whined immediately after stepping foot inside my townhouse to find red and white streamers strung from one end of the living room to the other.  My roommates, Faith and Becky were having an NHL Fantasy Draft with a bunch of their obsessed hockey friends and somehow our place was nominated for the party.  I gingerly stepped over extension cords and power strips that were laid out on the floor for the dozen or so laptops that would be soon set up in the room and pressed my hand to my head.  My headache was quickly compounding by every passing second.  The day at the bakery had pure and utter hell.  I’m sure it didn’t help that I had finally fallen asleep at 2am, only to be woken up at 4:30am by my alarm to get into the bakery.  I was a pastry chef.  It was a job that was not for the feint of heart.  Lots of long hours were spent by the ovens and behind the counter.  I started my own little shop when I was 21.  Four years later I was finally starting to make some money, but that didn’t mean I could slack off in the work department.

“Oh Lana!!  I’m glad you’re home!  Did you bring home the cupcakes I ordered?!” Faith jumped around the corner, looking slightly frazzled.  This was her undertaking, which meant everything had to be perfect, if it wasn’t, we would probably hear about it for the rest of the week.

“Here ya go…” I pushed the box into her hands and dropped my bags by the coat rack.  I was dead.

“Oh my gosh! These are totally adorable!” Faith squealed.  “Becky, look!”

Becky bounded out from the kitchen and peeked under the lid with Faith.  “Oh my gosh, Lana, you have to be the master.  But how in the world did you get these eagles so perfect and how did you know what numbers to put on the cupcakes?” she asked, raising a curious eyebrow.  She knew all too well that I was not a hockey fan and knew that I was oblivious to anything that had to do with sports.

“Well, I do work at a bakery right outside of DC, so I’m fairly sure this is not the first time I had to make cupcakes for one of the Washington teams…” I frowned.

“You are the one that didn’t even know that Mike Green and Brooks Laich frequent your bakery,” Faith reminded me for the millionth time.

I just shrugged my shoulders and rolled my eyes.  “I knew they frequented it, but I just didn’t know what they did for a living, nor do I care.  They are nice guys.  Besides, I have a lot of good looking guys that frequent my shop,” I informed them.  In fact, Mike and Brooks had stopped in today with some goofy guy that spoke broken English with a missing front tooth and a shaggy haircut.  I assume he was a teammate, but I wasn’t about to ask the puck-twins who he might be, because I didn’t need them harping on me to get his autograph too.  I was running a bakery, not a sports collectables store.

“But these two are Mike Greeeeeen and Broooooks Laich!” Faith said in this high pitch voice that reminded me of a noise a bat was supposed to make.  “They are fucking hooooot!” she continued while Becky quickly snatched the cupcakes out of her hands before they got ruined from her dramatic Italian hand gestures.  “I still think there has to be a way to get them to go out for drinks with us some night,” she immediately started out with one of her insane ideas.

“Yeah, I can just see it now.  Here’s your hazelnut coffee, Mr. Green, can I give you my number?” I paused and continued in my best attempt at a flirty voice, “Yes, I’m sure you have girls twice as thin and twice as tall as me fawning over you, but don’t worry, fat kids give good loving too…Yeah, I’m sure that would reeeeaaallly work,” I snorted sarcastically.

“You are not fat!” Becky squawked.  “A toned, size 10 is not fat!”

“Whatever,” I mumbled, taking a step towards the basement stairs.  We had been in this argument a 100 times before.  When we went out I was the one who ended up becoming the 5^th wheel because I wasn’t the size 2 like Faith, nor was I the size 6, fiery red-head like Becky.  I was never going to be small.  I had the gift of having a stocky soft-ball player body.  Sure, I might be toned, but the hot guys wanted the twigs in the magazines who dressed like a million bucks, not girls like me.  Heck, I couldn’t even last 5 minutes in a pair of 2-inch heels.  My only saving grace that got me double takes was the fact that I had a pair of D-cups and a southern accent.

“Oh, and we need a 10^th person for the league, because you know how much I hate having an uneven amount of anything, so you are team #10.  Be back up here in an hour, Lana!” Becky yelled loudly as I plodded down the steps.  I had gotten out of being apart of their fantasy bullshit for so long that I thought I might be safe, but that obviously wasn’t the case this year.  I could have argued, but it wouldn’t make a difference.  I already had a feeling this was going to happen, so I figured I’d play along, pick some people whose names sounded cool and then do absolutely nothing with my team for the whole season.  Someone always has to be last, so why not let it be me?  At least I wouldn’t have to listen to too much whining tonight.  An extra Advil will need to be ingested now.

Since I paid in the most for the townhouse, I got to have the biggest room in the place, which was the finished basement.  Of course it wasn’t totally awesome when it was laundry day and all the humidity built-up, but it was definitely the biggest room in the house and quite possibly the most sound proof.  The whole sound proof thing came in handy during the days of Washington sporting events.  Faith and Becky felt it necessary to have a party for at least every other game.  Each time they would claim it was for something totally special, despite the fact that every game never seemed to be different from the other.

For example.  Last season they had a party for the day Mike Green was coming back from an injury.  Then there was a string of parties that were held while they were waiting to celebrate Alex Ovechkin’s 300^th career goal.  That party was held for at least a month, mind you.  Oh and how could I forget when HBO did that reality special on the team before that outdoor game…that was probably the quietest I had ever seen my two best friends?  It was as if someone was pulling a hypnotist act every time the damn show was on.  Their eyes became glazed over and drooling was not an uncommon scene.  What made the whole thing worse is that they would talk about each episode the whole week following, which just made my own eyes glaze over.  They talked about the players as if they knew each one personally and called them by silly nicknames.  Two of the guys they called Sasha and Nicky.  It took me a year to realize they were talking about two guys and not two girls.

When there was no hockey, it was baseball.  They were obsessed with Washington Nationals.  That obsession still raised my eyebrows because it was obvious by the daily chatter I heard in my shop that the team sucked ass.  However, Becky swore up and down that the team would sometime soon eclipse the Phillies because they had some guy named Strausburg and they signed this guy named Jayson Werth who was going to be their answer in the outfield.  Funny, I’m fairly sure I saw a headline on the newspaper that said Werth-Less with his picture under it…

Needless to say, sports were not a passion of mine.  Sure, I played softball when I was growing up and I enjoyed being outside going for walks, but I was most content curled up on the couch with a good novel and enjoying quiet time.  If I watched TV, it was to watch cooking shows like Hell’s Kitchen or Top Chef.  I was a stay at home kind of girl who was never into the flashy dresses and make-up.  I had a couple boyfriends over the years, but they were the ones people would call the computer geeks, nice guys, but never anything that lasted longer than a year.

Some might ask how I even became friends with Becky and Faith, but that all started when we were still in high school in Bethesda.  We were military brats.  At least one of our parents worked at Bethesda Medical Center as either a doctor or a nurse.  We had all moved around to a thousand different places before our families finally settled here in Maryland.  That bond right there would make us the best of friends for life.  I went to a 2 year pastry school while Becky and Faith both went to school for teaching.  We were now all done school and had jobs, but I was poor from owning my own business and the other two were poor from their crazy school loans and wasting money on sporting events and clothing.

“Why we stop here?” I asked Mikee as we pulled up in front of a row of shops in Arlington.

“I need my Hazelnut coffee and croissant, the girl here makes the best ever…” he gushed.

“I actually have to agree with him,” Brooks commented, undoing his seatbelt to also get out of the Escalade.  “She’s not bad to look at either,” he winked.

“How come you never bring me to this place before?!” I laughed, following the guys down the sidewalk.  It was a warm fall day and one of the first sunny ones we’ve had here since I got back to the States.  For some reason, ever since the hurricane hit, it seemed DC was destined to become a rain forest.

Before walking into the shop, I looked up and saw a sign in the shape of a sun with Lana’s Down-South Bakery painted in quirky letters.  The place was painted cheerily with an industrial edge to it.  An ungodly amount of pastries were held on shelves and in a couple cases.  A few people were sitting at a few wrought iron tables, while a few more people were chatting with one another while waiting in line.  The place smelled of coffee beans and sugar.  No wonder Mike loves this place.

There were two girls running around behind the counter, waiting on patrons and quickly punching numbers into the cash registers as money was handed over to them.  The one girl, a tall blonde, seemed to have legs that probably went on forever.  It was easy to tell because she had on a pair of short jean shorts.  I didn’t realize Mike and Brooks had already placed their order with the other girl because I was still too busy staring at the blonde.

“Sasha,” Brooks whispered loudly before jabbing me in the side with his elbow.  I looked over at him and then followed his eyes towards the girl waiting to take our order.  She was a brunette, hair thrown messily up with a plain black baseball hat sitting on top.  A few pieces of hair fell into her face and she looked totally frazzled.  There was something cute about her, but nothing to make a man take more than a double take except for maybe her big boobs, in fact the long-legged blonde walked behind her and I instantly began following her with my eyes again as I placed my order with the brunette.

“Um…I have what he is having,” I mumbled.

“Dude, I’m having a Chai Latte,” Brooks piped up, finally grabbing my attention from long-legs.

I looked over at Brooks and then back to the brunette who was looking at me strangely.  “Eew. Nyet. Um, I have coffee, black, no cream, no sugar and one of those…” I spouted out, most likely making an insane face because I hated Chai Latte’s.

“Rookie,” Mike snorted next to me.

The brunette just smiled sweetly back before turning around to fill our order.

Soon our order was in our hands and we were back on the road to Kettler for practice.  “So who is the girl?” I asked, taking a bite of the éclair and thinking about the sexy blonde.  It definitely wasn’t on my diet, but I would be burning it off during our practice, so I wasn’t worried, besides, the thing was absolutely delicious.

“That was Lana, she’s the owner,” Brooks informed.  “She’s a cute little thing, has never acted star struck or anything.”

I nodded in agreement, despite not agreeing with calling her cute and little.  She was definitely tall and beautiful.  “Wonder if she has a boyfriend,” I remarked, thinking of her long legs and the curve of her ass.  I’ve always had a thing for tall, blondes.

“If she does, he is a saint because God know how much time she spends at that place.  She told me one time that she is at the shop by 4:00 every morning to start baking,” Mike chimed in.  “But then again, if she would bake this stuff for me everyday, I’d be more than okay with her leaving my bed early.”

Again I nodded, took another bite of the amazing pastry and began plotting what would probably become another crash course for a short lived romance.