Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
Tweetie’s Journal Entry
Eight years ago
Florida
To my teenage self,
Our worst nightmare just came true, and I’m not sure where we go from here. I want to apologize, buddy. I fucked up and understand if you never forgive me. A part of me doesn’t even want to write this down, but another part of me needs to purge what happened onto the page to see if I can make sense of it myself.
It’s like someone put the biggest dark cloud over me, and it refuses to move on no matter how much I beg and plead.
First, my injuries.
Next, my trade.
Then, Tedi.
I was used to the gossip. Used to fans, both men and women, saying shit that wasn’t true and had no basis in reality. Okay, it was mostly the women. Especially when I was single. But once Tedi and I got together, the blogs turned my way. Reports of how happy I looked and how they liked seeing us together. And slowly, I saw that wall lower around Tedi. Brick by brick, she tore it down until I didn’t feel the need to reassure her all the time, to make sure she knew I wasn’t going to ever cheat.
So after the trade, I took it for granted that she knew that still held true. I was so hung up on my injury, on my trade, that I didn’t put her first. Things got to a crisis point, and as I held a crying Tedi in my arms and saw her fear of losing me, I promised myself I wasn’t going to wallow anymore. I wasn’t going to be pissed off that she didn’t move to Nashville with me. We talked it out that night, and I made love to her over and over again so that by the time she got on the plane back to Florida, she would be assured I wasn’t going anywhere.
But with the way my life had been going, I should’ve been prepared that that wasn’t the end of it.
So the morning Tedi opened the door to find a tall blonde who looked vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t put my finger on why, I didn’t realize that was the beginning of the end. I wasn’t even sure how the woman got into the building, let alone knew where my apartment was.
“Who are you?” she said to Tedi as if Tedi was a girl I was cheating on her with.
I came up behind Tedi, holding the door open and only wearing my pajama pants and no shirt. Tedi was wearing my shirt, just how I liked it.
“I’m sorry? Who the hell are you?” Tedi’s back was up immediately. She didn’t look to me to see why a woman was standing outside my door, and I stupidly patted myself on the back for the job I’d done being an excellent boyfriend the night before.
“I’m the one he got pregnant,” the stranger said.
“What?” I shouted.
Tedi took the door from my grip and slammed it shut. Turning around, she crossed her arms. “Please tell me she’s delusional.”
“She is,” I affirmed, panicking.
Tedi swung the door back open.
The woman turned as if to walk away, but then she stopped.
Fuck, that moment will haunt me for a long, long time. My heart stopped, worried that Tedi would believe her.
It took weeks, but a hefty lawyer’s bill and a blood test freed me from the woman who had falsely accused me. I’d never even slept with her. The investigation I launched revealed that she was dating someone in my building, and I’d run into her and him in the elevator a few times. He was a big hockey fan and always chatted me up.
The woman wouldn’t admit that she’d never slept with me, and I saw the doubt that lingered in Tedi, although she came to every lawyer’s appointment with me. She stood by my side without asking me every day if I was telling the truth. All of it took a toll on Tedi and me, and I didn’t know how to undo the damage.
In the end, the woman said that she had been hoping that I was alone in the apartment that morning to try to seduce me to get back at her boyfriend. But when Tedi opened the door, she didn’t know what to do, and she panicked, then it all got out of hand.
She blew up my fucking life because she didn’t know how to rein in her false accusations. I was beyond pissed and retreated into my apartment, then went into overdrive with Tedi to make sure she didn’t think I would cheat, but I felt everything we’d built crumbling.
I knew it was bad, but I didn’t know how bad until I returned to my Florida house when I had a two-day break and walked downstairs to find Tedi crying.
She’d had plans with Saige the night before, so I’d hung with Aiden and Ford. I’m pretty sure she told Saige all of our problems, and I told Aiden and Ford my version. I didn’t love the advice the guys gave me, and Tedi had come home in a worse mood than when she left.
So tonight was our only night alone together, and I wanted to take her out and make it special.
As my feet hit the main floor, I heard the sob from the kitchen. Tedi’s back shuddered, and she was trying to catch her breath.
I broke the distance and wrapped my arms around her from behind, sorrow and frustration and fear filling me. “What’s the matter?”
“I can’t do it.” Her voice was a raspy whisper.
I looked over her shoulder to see the phone on the counter. Her screen was black, and I didn’t want to see what I’d uncover if I opened her phone. I didn’t want to know that she was still checking the hockey blogs. But I was the delusional one, because I honestly didn’t know it had gotten this bad between us.
“Babe, we’ve talked about this. It’s all bullshit.”
She nodded and slid out of my grasp.
I shouldn’t have given her the space from me, because she grabbed her phone and threw it across the room.
“Tedi.” I’d never felt weaker than that moment. I didn’t know what to say or do that I hadn’t done already.
She walked over to the couch and sat down, burying her head in her hands.
When I joined her, her body stiffened.
As if some other creature emerged, her back straightened, and she lifted her gaze and set her eyes on me. “I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
Her words crushed me like a hit from behind into the boards. Sure, she was different, we both were. But it was all temporary, and we’d get back to who we were.
I couldn’t find the right words to say.
“See? You know it. God, Tweetie, you know it too.”
“It’s just all the shit we’ve been dealing with. It will pass. All of it will pass.” I didn’t know if I was trying to convince her or myself.
She shook her head, and when I felt the devastation of that one small movement sink into my soul, my walls went up. I couldn’t deal with the feeling of abandonment I knew would follow if she did this. I’d been ignoring that creeping feeling since I went to Nashville, thinking that if I didn’t give it room, it couldn’t grow, but it did. Like a slow creeping vine, it had been winding its way around us, and we didn’t notice until it choked the life out of us.
“Say something. Please.” She looked at me with as much devastation in her eyes as I felt inside.
“It’s all my fault.” My voice didn’t hold any emotion as I mentally prepared the walls around my heart.
This was it. We were ending this right now, right here, and I knew in that moment I would never have with another woman what I had with her. I’d never even be able to sit in my family room again without envisioning Tedi’s tear-stricken face.
“It’s not either of our faults. But we can’t go on ignoring it. I loathe myself. I’ll convince myself one day that everything is good, we’re happy, then the slightest thing will set me off and this version of myself that I loathe comes out and I want to book a flight to Nashville so you can reassure me everything is fine.” She cried into her hands, deep, racking sobs. “I can’t do it anymore.”
My body went cold, and I went numb. I had no idea what to do, how to change this. Suddenly, I was that twelve-year-old kid again, sitting on the step and waiting for my dad to show up. Not worth anyone’s time. Anyone’s attention. Not worth sticking around for.
“So that’s it. It’s over?”
Her head popped up. She narrowed her eyes at me.
I didn’t know what she wanted me to do to fix this that I hadn’t already tried. It was my fault we were in this position. It was my injury, my trade, my job that had fucked this all up. All the hockey blog bullshit was because of me and my need to be the center of attention and Mr. fucking Charming all the time, and it wasn’t going to go away anytime soon.
Then my earlier conversation with Aiden and Ford ran through my head.
“If you want her, you have to show you’re serious. You’re asking her to give up everything for you. You need to give up something too.”
They were two men I’d looked up to. Two men who had found and kept the women they loved. I looked up to them as examples of great men and hockey players.
So I did the only thing I could. I fell to one knee and grabbed her hands.
“Tedi, will you marry me?”