should've kissed you anyway.

She said she'd never had champagne before.

So, he stopped a waiter, took a glass, handed it to her. He'd never really liked hospital galas, found them too stuffy, too pompous. But there's something about this one, he'd decided, as he watched Mel scrunch her nose at the taste.

"Too dry," she declared. He'd always agreed with that assessment.

He’s her designated driver tonight, even though she only had one drink. He glances at her the entire ride home, sitting in his passenger seat, running her fingers through her hair that lost some of its curl as the evening progressed, in a gold dress that matched the color of the beverage she’d tried earlier that night.

She lets him walk her to her front door. Before she can find her keys in her clutch, he leans down and kisses her. She parts her lips; he licks into her mouth.

She’s never liked hockey.

She prefers baseball, likes the endless statistics and methodically keeping score like his dad taught her at one of Penny’s softball games. She does this even when they watch Pirates games at home, Tanner checking over her shoulder to make sure he’s doing his scorecard the right way, too, Penny playing with the dog at her feet and Frank always sitting by her side, his thumb rubbing over her kneecap.

But hockey is Frank’s favorite, the quick pace and ceaseless action matching the way his brain tended to move at one million miles per hour. Even in the breaks in play, something was always moving – a player skating to the bench, a puck gliding across the ice, the occasional fist fight breaking out despite the referee’s whistles.

When she overheard one of the new surgical attendings talking about selling her pair of rinkside tickets to game seven of the Stanley Cup Final between the Penguins and the Sharks, she couldn’t pass up the opportunity. She and Frank were both already off that day, the cosmos seemingly aligning to Get Frank Langdon to a Stanley Cup Playoff Game.

And she’s never liked hockey, almost told him to take Donnie. But now – surrounded by the stench of spilled beer, sweaty men with their shirts off and so much yelling – she knows she made the right choice, coming with him.

“There’s confetti in your mouth.”

He looks at her. She doesn’t know how he heard her voice through the noise, but maybe she shouldn’t be surprised; it’s him. He’s always heard her, no matter how metaphorically or literally improbable it seemed.

He looks at her. Sure enough, there is black and gold confetti on his lips.

“What?”

He shouts obliviously around the confetti, above the roar of the crowd celebrating the fact that the Penguins just won the Stanley Cup. She goes to speak, but then she really looks at him (as much as she can through all the aforementioned confetti). Splotchy skin, flared nostrils, and are those tears in his eyes?

The same hat on his head that he wore that first day he came back to her.

“Never mind,” she decides.

He grins at her, that confetti smile.

@thepittmonth week one: parallels becca and her real life boyfriend / mel and her coworker who she is really normal about