Chapter 30
CHAPTER 30
GABE
“And you’d better not be sneaking any goodies from that bakery,” Kristin says as she walks backward from my front porch to her car.
Her large bag of PT equipment—most of which it feels like she’s spent the afternoon using on me—swings from her shoulder. “The nutrition folks will go berserk if you’ve been indulging in the local treats while you’ve been hiding away.”
If only she knew exactly what local treat I’d been indulging in. “That means you loaded up at Kneads Must on your way here, right?”
She opens the back door and inhales. “This smell is going to make me salivate all the way home.” She puts her bag on the back seat, presumably carefully avoiding the baked goods, and slams the door.
“Drive carefully,” I tell her.
“Yup.” She opens the driver’s door. “And remember, Jamal is under strict instructions to not let you overdo it when you’re back in the New York gym tomorrow. Take the weekend to do enough, but not too much. You’re in good enough shape, but not perfect shape.” She gets into the car, then leans out to look at me over her shoulder. “And I’ll see you back at the Launch Pad first thing Monday morning.”
I nod and wave as she pulls out of my driveway.
The second she’s out of view, I head back inside and collapse on the sofa.
Jamal, our trainer, is meeting me at the team’s Manhattan gym tomorrow.
Tomorrow .
All of this is over.
My anti-Christmas experience in Warm Springs—which has turned out to be the exact opposite—is over.
And the inevitable conclusion of all of that is that my Natalie experience is also over.
Do I want it to be? No.
Would it be possible to make it work? Unlikely.
So there’s no point prolonging the agony, pretending there’s a way to continue seeing each other with me traveling on a punishing game schedule and her bringing quirky little plays to the kids of New Orleans. Which, by the way, makes them the luckiest kids on the planet.
But how the fuck am I going to tell her?
Last night was incredible. I was really starting to come to terms with the fact that I’m obviously falling for her.
But now, this.
I mean, we both knew we’d only ever have these two or three weeks. But now our time is suddenly up after one. The rug has been yanked unceremoniously, and with great force, from under my feet .
Talking of rugs, my eyes catch the one in front of the fire and my mind flashes back to Natalie lying naked on it less than twenty-four hours ago.
Fuck.
What the fuck have I done?
The empty, rolling sensation in my stomach says that whatever it is, I haven’t behaved well.
I should never have given in to those lustful feelings that first night in the theater. I should have pushed her off when she jumped on me. What kind of saint would ever have the willpower to do that, I have no idea. But it should have been me.
“Fuck,” I yell, balling my fists and slamming them into the sofa.
And right on cue, my phone chimes with the video call ringtone.
Really not in the right frame of mind for this.
But I guess it will give me something else to think about, at least temporarily.
I grab my phone from the coffee table and swing my feet up onto the sofa.
“You have a sunburn,” I say to Mom, whose nose is red and peeling. And there’s a tan line right across her forehead where her hat must have sat.
“Oh, it was the best day,” she says, beaming. “The best. We went whale-watching. Whale-watching! ”
They’ve said every day has been the best, but it fills me with such love and gratitude to see them enjoying the cruise so much and knowing it’s something I’ve been able to give them. Payback in a way for all those years of them driving me to hockey practice before dawn and traveling all over with me when I was on the local Columbus youth team.
“Did you see a lot?”
“Five! Five humpbacks. And one of them breached. Almost its entire body came out of the water.” She leans backward to demonstrate. “We got splashed, we were so close. So close!”
Now that’s something I’m definitely envious of. Next offseason I should take myself to see some whales. “Was Dad wowed by it too?”
She looks to the side, presumably at Dad. “He’s just taking a little nap.”
There’s a groan in the background.
Something is definitely wrong here. “Is he okay?”
“He’ll be fine.”
“That means he’s not fine right now. What’s up?”
“We weren’t going to tell you because we didn’t want you to think we were disappointed or anything.” Oh fuck, what has he done? “But I can’t bring myself to hide anything from you. It wouldn’t be fair.” That sentence twists like a knife in my guts. “He was actually throwing up from about five minutes after we left the dock.”
“Oh shit.”
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she says. “He’s had some anti-nausea pills now. And that drink they give babies to rehydrate them.”
“Can I talk to him?”
“Gabe wants to speak to you,” she says to my dad.
“I’m fine” comes Dad’s barely audible moan.
“Mom, can you just turn the phone around so I can see him?”
“He won’t be happy if I do.”
“You just said it’s not right to keep anything from me.” Again, the irony of me holding that over them hurts like hell .
The camera does a spin around the cabin that makes me feel a bit dizzy. Then it lands on the palest face I’ve ever seen in my life.
“Are you sure you’re fine, Dad?”
“Yup,” he says. He’s lying flat on his back on the bed, with Mom holding the phone over him. “Just need to rest. My stomach’s been in the wars.”
“Have you seen a medical person?”
“Yes,” Mom says, out of view. “The whale watch crew told us to go straight to the nurse’s office as soon as we got back on board the cruise ship. That’s who gave him the pills and the drink.”
“She said I just need to rehydrate and sleep,” Dad says.
“Okay, well, I should probably go and let you rest. Did you manage to look up from all the…not feeling well to see the whales though?” I ask, trying to find some upside of this for him, but avoiding the word “puking” in case it sets him off again.
“One flipper.” Dad cracks a smile. “Magical. Such huge creatures. Out there living their lives. And I got to see a flipper. Truly amaz?—”
He pauses and rests his hand on his chest. Then lets rip a gargantuan burp.
The phone spins back to Mom. “He’ll be fine once he’s rested and his stomach has settled enough to get some food inside him.”
“I have some news that might cheer him up.”
“Oooh, what’s that?” she asks. “Have you met someone?”
Where the hell did that bit of psychic phenomenon come from? “What? What made you say that?”
“Well, you know, when you’re staying at a place like the one you’re at, those exclusive places usually only have a few clients at a time, so you all get to know each other quite well. And I imagine there’s probably only a small staff too, and you’re all there cooped up together getting to know one another. And there’s hands all over you all the time and?—”
“It’s really not like that, Mom.” And now I feel even more ashamed of lying to them. Appalled by my own behavior.
Maybe I should just come clean right now—rip off the Band-Aid. Hopefully it might take half my skin and a few internal organs with it and I can suffer all my punishments for all my bad decisions in one awful, stinking ass of a day.
Natalie would be proud of me if I did.
My guts clench for the inevitable fallout as I take a deep breath and go for it. “And it’s not really like that, mostly because I’m not actually?—”
“That young woman we saw the other day seemed nice,” Mom says. “What was her name now…” She looks around as if struggling to remember. “Was it Natalie? Yes, Natalie. She was delightful. And is obviously very bright if she’s a special shoulder specialist or whatever she is.”
Wow, she hasn’t been thinking this through at all, has she?
And now all my good intentions of coming clean about where I am and what I’m doing here fly out of the window and my only goal in life is to get off this call.
“Anyway, my good news is that the head of PT has given my shoulder a clean bill of health.”
Mom’s mouth drops open, and she presses her free hand against her cheek. “Did you hear that, Jeff? Gabe’s going back to work.”
“Is he back for the Ironmen game?” Dad’s voice is suddenly stronger now that we’re getting down to serious business.
“Should be,” I say, louder so he’ll hear me. “I’m meeting the trainer at the gym in New York tomorrow and Sunday. If he also gives me a clean bill of health, then I’m back to training with the team on Monday and playing against the Ironmen on Wednesday.”
“There couldn’t be better news.” Mom’s eyes go a little misty. “Five whales and Gabe being recovered. What a day.”
I should be as overjoyed as they are. This is what I live for. Hockey is my entire existence. But it also feels like a tiny notch has been cut out of that now and filled in by Natalie. And her dragging me into the play and the pig lighting shenanigans has even managed to make me feel like a part of me might belong in this odd little town.
Mom sits on the edge of the bed, and I get a view of Dad’s body from his chest to his knees behind her.
“Take care of yourselves,” I tell them. “Have fun, but make sure Dad takes it easy till he’s fully better.”
“Same goes for you, son,” Dad’s voice says. “Don’t dive in before you’re ready. You’ll only make things worse in the long run.”
If only he knew how much those words apply right now—but not only to hockey.
“Speak soon,” Mom says before blowing me a kiss. “And say hello to the lovely Natalie for us.”
I slide the phone back onto the table and bury my face in my hands.
I have to go find Natalie and tell her I’m leaving first thing tomorrow morning.
Christ, she’s going to hate me. And the thought of that makes me feel as sick as my dad looked.
But goddammit I have to do it.
I reopen my phone.
ME
Hey, where are you?
My stomach grumbles. I can’t face the thought of food, but I do need something inside me so I can think straight, figure out what to say to her, and how. Maybe I could force down a protein drink.
NATALIE
At the theater. Why?
ME
I’ll be there in a few minutes.
Now I have to do it.
I move my churning guts toward the kitchen, but something stops me before I get there.
The pink Christmas tree next to the fireplace.
The one that belonged to the little girl of the family I bought this place from. The one Natalie set up before I was awake the first morning I was here. The one I snapped at her about. The one whose lights I’ve refused to turn on ever since.
What a wasted moment that was. Any moment that I was with her where we weren’t smiling or laughing or teasing or being naked with each other feels like a total waste of time now.
I run my fingers along one sparkly pink branch and over the ornament of a donkey wearing reindeer antlers that says “Warm Springs Donkey Sanctuary—We’ll Save Your Ass” on its side .
Despite the gut-wrenching, chest-aching awfulness of this situation, I can’t keep my lips from curling into a slight smile.
And I reach down to the socket and plug in the pink lights.