23. H A Z E L
TWENTY-THREE
H A Z E L
“Just tell me when…” the waiter instructs and before I can comprehend if I’ve hummed out a response or not, they’ve already begun grating some cheese on top of my spaghetti and meatballs.
I watch as the topping falls on top of the pasta, assessing each strand like a metaphor because I cannot escape the power of my mind.
Each turn of the grater represents the effort I’ve put in over the years to make Green notice me—see me beyond just that of his best friend and perhaps this week, he did, but without an explanation as to what he saw me as instead, I’m left like this grater, turning the thought over and over in my mind.
“Um, Hazel?” I can hear Hart’s voice, but still, it doesn’t quite hold the power to break me out of this trance.
Seriously, what did Green think our talk today was going to accomplish? I can’t believe him. I really can’t. How dare he come so ill-prepared for an apology. This is madness.
“Hazel?” Hart calls out my name for a second time, but again, it does nothing. The sound of my name is only a reminder of how Green called out to me earlier.
There was a sadness in his tone—in the way his voice dropped and I could've sworn it started to break when he mentioned his parents' party for me this weekend. Fuck, I don’t want to go. I’m so over parties by now that I don’t even care if it’s my birthday. I’ll spend it alone at this point because right now, that’s how I feel without Green— alone .
“Hazel?!” Finally, Hart’s voice is so loud that it snaps me back into my chair and forces me back to reality as I realize the mounds of cheese that rests ahead.
“Oh my goodness!” My hands fly over my mouth as the waiter finally stops, pulling back with a troubled look on his face. No one has ever had so much cheese on their plate in their life.
Is now a bad time to say I'm lactose intolerant?
“Is that enough, ma'am?” The waiter hesitates as the heat rises to my cheeks. “Or would you like some more?”
“Uh…” I’m too embarrassed to speak. “That’s uh—perfect, thank you.”
He nods reluctantly before he takes a step back. “You two give me a wave if you need anything, alright?”
“Will do,” Hart answers on behalf of the two of us as I stare down at this monstrosity ahead. I need to stop zoning out. I’m on a date, not a mental field trip in my mind.
Get it together.
“Well, Hazel, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve come to the conclusion that either A., you really love cheese, or B., bringing you to this date after your talk with Green was a bad idea.”
I wince out a smile in his direction as I use my fork to scoop some of the cheese aside, twirling the pasta within my fork as I stay silent.
“I’m taking the silence as the latter.” Hart surmises, leaning across the table with a saddened look. “Listen, love, we can go if you’re not feeling up to it. I’ll just call the waiter and we can heat this food up later?”
I shake my head to disagree. “No, I’m sorry,” I spew out. “I just—zoned out. Talking to Green earlier…” I can barely finish my sentence, given how frazzled my mind is. “You know what, let’s not talk about it.” I settle on. “Let’s just enjoy dinner. What did you get?” I try to sneak a peek of his plate, but all I can see is this unimpressed look on his face instead.
“Hazel.” He draws out my name, forcing my eyes to meet his. “Sweeping this under the rug isn’t going to help, just like how scooping all that cheese off your meatballs isn’t going to make your food any better. Here.” He hands me his food and takes mine in place. “Eat this instead. Lucky for you, not only do I like cheese, but I like to listen. Now, talk . Tell me what you’re thinking about in that mind of yours.”
I fall back into my chair and slump my shoulders, caving instantly. “There’s nothing to say, Hart. Mine and Green’s conversation…well, it was about as productive as my ability to tell the waiter to stop grating the parmesan. I don’t know what’s going on between the two of us. We’re a mess— clearly. ”
The ambient sound of chatter that surrounds us is the only thing I hear for the next few seconds as Hart appears to ponder what to say.
“Listen, Hazel.” He drops his fork to the side of the plate, interlacing his hands as one as he scoots his chair in closer. “Trust me when I say I know Green can be a pain. I’ve played with him for years, I can confirm, but I’m sure deep down he had good intentions for acting the way he did, even if he didn’t execute it properly.”
I’m having a hard time believing what I’m hearing right now. “Are you seriously defending him?” I debate. “Really, Hart?”
“Hazel…” He sighs, brushing his hand through his hair. “Sometimes love makes you do stupid things that don’t make sense.”
I just about choke. Now was not the time to take a sip of water.
Did he just say love ?
“I know, I know, sorry to drop the ‘L’ word, but it’s true Hazel. Both you and Green have been friends forever, of course you love each other—in a platonic way, of course.”
Oh, Hart, you have no idea just how thin the ice that you’re treading on is right now.
“I’ve spent the last few days thinking about it and if I had someone I was that close with then I’d only want what’s best for them as well. Obviously, Green and I have had our ups and downs over the years, that’s a given, but with that aside, I can't blame him for not being particularly fond of us being together...”
I cock a brow. “What are you on about, Hart? You do realize that you’re quite literally perfect, right?”
Somehow, amidst all of this chaos, I’ve grown more comfortable expressing outward compliments toward Hart. I suppose there's been more stressful things I’ve been dealing with than fussing over that.
“You flatter me.” He smiles. “But maybe you’re not seeing the whole picture.”
“I’m an artist,” I retort with a laugh. “What on Earth could I be missing?”
Hart allows his once hovering body to sink back in defeat. “What uh—did Green tell you about me exactly? You know, before he set us up?”
I shrug, unsure of how to respond to this quite simplistic question. “I don’t know,” I say. “He mentioned a bit about your family, your position, how long you’ve been playing with Crawfield. Things like that.”
“So nothing reputationally, then?”
I chew on the inside of my cheek. I know what he’s trying to get out of me, but I refuse to say it.
“Go on, Hazel.” He can see what I’m doing. “You’re not going to hurt my feelings. Whatever you say, let’s just say I’ve heard it hundreds of times before. Go on, tell me.”
I toy with my hands nervously beneath the tablecloth before I part my lips to speak. “Well, it’s not really what Green said. It’s kind of what everyone has said about you over the years…”
“Which is?”
I cave. “That you’re a player. That you go through more women than days in a year. But those are all just rumors. I refuse to believe that was true. People were probably just jealous of?—”
“It was true,” Hart cuts me off as I attempt to give him the benefit of the doubt, and not only am I silenced instantly, but his remark leaves me at a loss for words. “Wait…what?”
“It’s true, Hazel.” I watch as Hart runs a nervous hand along his forehead. “Before you and I were kind of thrown together, I had this vengeance for love. A terrible outlook on it, really. It’s gotten better over the years, but there was a point in time where I was trying so hard to distance myself from the feeling that I filled the ache with one-night stands and situationships that I knew would never amount to anything, but it did absolutely nothing. If anything, it made things even worse...”
“Worse?” I repeat. “Hart…I—” I’m so lost right now. “What are you talking about?”
Hart runs his tongue along his bottom lip as he looks down in thought, but before he can seemingly contemplate what he’s about to say next, his mouth moves faster than his mind as he speaks. “Did Green ever tell you that I lived in Spain for a while?”
I run the fact through my mind and almost instantly it starts to ring a bell. Green did mention something about that, but when I pried for more details on the subject matter his guess was as good as mine. He had told me that Hart had always kept tight-lipped about it and that wasn’t just with him. No one on the team knew what happened when Hart went to Spain, nor the reason why he came back.
Is he about to tell me?
“I’ll assume that from the look on your face that Green may have mentioned it to you, but what I know for a fact is that you don’t know how much my time there meant to me and how since then…I’ve never been the same.”
I've heard Hart’s voice more these past few weeks than I have in the years I’ve known him, and as I watch his words unfold in front of me, I can see a pang of sadness in his blue eyes—they’ve deepened.
Now, they’re no longer the blue of the ocean, but that of the deep, dark sea. Hart’s once optimistic smile is now nowhere to be seen and with the way he parts his lips, I know in my heart, I’m about to hear something he’s held back for far too long.
“When I was twenty-one, I got recruited to play for this academy in Barcelona. My mum and dad were super against it, they wanted me to stay local, but at the time I was young, rebellious, and decided I wanted to do something for me for once. Besides, I’d never left England before and thought, ‘What the hell, why not?’ Anyway…” Hart soothingly runs his hand along his right wrist as he speaks. “Without rehashing all the details, I met someone while I was there and very quickly…I fell in love.”
A redness makes itself visible along Hart’s cheeks before he shakes himself out of it and focuses back on the story.
“It uh—didn’t work out between us, though.” He swallows. “Too many variables holding us back. The most important being she was there and I ultimately would end up back here. She didn’t want to give up her life to be with me…I—I wasn’t enough…”
“ Hart .” I reach for his hand across the table and when I grasp it, it’s cool to the touch. I attempt to warm him up, but as the words continue to fall from his rosy lips he only gets colder—it makes my heart deflate in sadness.
“When I left, I tried one final time to convince her to be with me. I wrote her a letter—very romantic, I know.” His laugh turns into a scoff. “I guess I was hoping my words would be enough for her to hold onto what we had instead of letting it all go. Needless to say, she didn’t answer. She ignored me. It took me a long time to come to accept the truth of that and when I finally did, it broke me. It broke me so badly that I wanted to create this distance between her and me. That’s why I started being with so many women. I was trying everything to forget her touch, her taste and quite frankly, everything that made her special to me. It was no use though, I couldn’t run from her love because it was living inside of me. It still lives inside of me, and to this day, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten rid of it. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to…”
I’m in shock— disbelief . Christ, I don’t think there are enough adjectives in the English language to accurately portray how it feels to be let in on a secret that Hart has never shared with anyone else, and somehow, before I even think to respond to his truth, empathize with his hurt, my mind selfishly thinks back something else instead.
Step four: learn a secret about them.
How is this plan progressing without me even trying? And why in the hell am I thinking about that right now?
“I—I don’t know what to say, Hart.” I clutch onto his fingers, forcing his eyes to peer into mine. “You’ve really never told anyone this before?” I’m in shock.
“Never,” he’s quick to admit, making me wince. “I suppose I’m only telling you this because, deep down, you’re the first person I’ve actually tried letting in since Sofia .”
“Sofia?” I say her name out loud and somehow it forces goosebumps to rise to my skin.
Hart nods softly as he attempts to hide the pain washing over his face, but as I continue to squeeze onto his palm, slowly it starts to dissolve.
“I don’t know, Hazel,” Hart speaks. “A part of me wants to believe that the two of us being together… Well, it’s helping me to break down this wall I’ve built up over the years. You’re helping me to realize that maybe not all love is bad and maybe…it’s time for me to start over.”
The depth of his words weighs me down as I turn into a sputtering mess—lost when it comes to what to say. “Hart, I?—”
“You don’t have to say anything.” He saves me the trouble. “I know that was a lot. Trust me. But I’m not telling you this to unload all of my trauma. I’m telling you because I want you to know that I know what it’s like to love someone so much that even when you’re mad as hell at them, they’re still the first thing on your mind. That’s been me with Sofia all these years and it’s done nothing for me. So, when it comes to you and Green, Hazel, let me just say this. I knew Sofia for six months, you’ve known Green for fifteen years. Give him another chance to apologize because if there’s one thing that I wish Sofia had given me, well…” He looks away, melancholy. “It was a second chance .”