Chapter 2 #2
He found himself tongue-tied around Hannah that weekend, when he had never had any trouble talking to women before.
He had enjoyed many dates at university but Hannah touched something else inside him.
They had had a little conversation that weekend, despite her shyness, and he had left dreaming of a future where he could work up the courage to ask her out.
But someone else beat him to it, he found out on his next visit to Maple Tree Lodge a couple of months later.
Faye, Hannah’s mother, had been chatting away about how Hannah had moved in with her boyfriend Sean and Alex had had to stop himself sinking down into a chair in shock.
Instead, he smiled and nodded, agreeing with Faye how lovely it was for her daughter.
All the while, he felt his hopes and dreams dashed.
Trying to move on from his broken heart over Hannah, Alex had continued to date but had had only one significant relationship in those early years.
He had asked out Claire from work almost immediately after his return from that fateful weekend at the hotel.
It had begun as a knee-jerk reaction to Hannah moving in with Sean.
But slowly, he had grown fond of Claire and begun to perhaps even see past his infatuation with Hannah.
He had been young but he had thought that it might just be love and had proposed.
Claire hadn’t felt the same way though, and he had discovered a few weeks into their engagement that she had cheated on him.
All trust was broken and Alex went back to casual dating, never wanting to trust anyone ever again.
In the meantime, Hannah’s relationship with Sean had broken off after a year together and she had moved home.
Initially Alex had let her mourn her failed romance but slowly over time, she seemed happy to settle at Maple Tree Lodge in her single life.
As far as Alex knew, she had never dated anyone since.
His feelings for her grew stronger over time.
Whenever they were together, he just wanted to be near to her.
But, wary of upsetting his best friend, he only ever saw Hannah when they were all together at the hotel.
However, with such a big family around they were never alone, there was never a chance to ask her out or declare his own feelings.
Even now, as his friends helped him into the kitchen, his concern for Hannah was greater than his own. She was in tears by the sink, held by Dotty, her grandmother.
‘He’ll be fine,’ Dotty was saying as she looked up when they came in.
Hannah too looked up, her cheeks shiny with tears, her eyes filling with even more.
‘Alex, it’s all my fault that you’re hurt,’ she told him, her voice breaking with emotion.
‘It’s fine,’ Alex replied quickly, anxious to quell her fears. ‘Please don’t be upset.’
But Hannah merely shook her head and her lips continued to tremble. Alex found that even worse than the actual pain he was already in.
His friends helped him to the huge oak table around which the family gathered for many meals and he gratefully sank down onto the nearest chair.
Faye crouched in front of Alex and, with immense care, she slowly and carefully began to slip off his trainer. Alex winced and tried not to cry out when his foot was released, such was the pain he was now in.
Faye looked at the foot which was already swelling and changing colour. She shook her head. ‘It’s not good. I think you’d better go to hospital,’ she said softly. ‘You need a doctor to look at this.’
Alex nodded. He had already known that it was serious and would need to be checked to see if it were broken.
‘I’ll take him,’ said Jake, with a heavy sigh.
‘Thanks,’ said Ben, still staring at Alex.
‘Sorry, mate. I need to stay here to take care of the guests.’ The hotel had full occupancy due to many of the athletes staying over that weekend, one of the many reasons that Alex had been so keen to participate in the triathlon and ensure that the hotel’s tentative prosperity continued.
As Alex carefully stood up, only putting his weight onto one leg, he glanced once more at Hannah who was still staring at him with an ashen face and shaking her head in misery.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he told her softly. He hated seeing her so upset.
‘Absolutely,’ added Ben, ever the supportive big brother. ‘It was just an accident.’
‘Yeah, he’ll be running around as usual and making the rest of us look lazy before the weekend’s over, I reckon,’ said Jake, giving her a wink. But as he turned away from Hannah, Alex saw that Jake’s serious eyes betrayed his jovial tone.
Ben looked at Alex and said, ‘Well, mate, it looks like you might finally get that holiday that we’ve all been nagging you about for the past decade.’
As his friends took him by the shoulders once more to help him towards Jake’s car, Alex was surprised to find that, despite everything, a tiny part of him was relieved when he thought about Ben’s words.
A holiday? He wasn’t even sure what that was.
He and his dad had declared many times that the Commonwealth Games were the big goal.
And without that, the pressure was over at last. The shock that he was finally free from competing swept over him.
And yet he could feel himself thinking that, at last, it was at an end. He had even given up his accountancy job a month ago to focus on the Commonwealth Games. Suddenly he had no work and no triathlons either in his calendar.
At least perhaps he could get in a rhythm now, he found himself thinking.
Have a normal life, whatever that was. Whatever happened from here on in, it was his own future at last. That dream of normality away from the competitions perhaps made the pain just a little bit more bearable, in spite of knowing with sure certainty how that decision was going to impact on his dad.
He was comfortably off for money in the meantime. But his soul? It felt empty a lot of the time. Away from the time when he was swimming, cycling and running, not much else happened in his life. Take away the triathlete and he wasn’t sure what was left in its place.
Despite being on his way to hospital, Alex realised that now he had nothing but time on his hands, he might just have a chance to find out, he thought with a glance back towards Hannah before his friends helped him out of the room.