CHAPTER 24 BEN
It seems like it took forever to get to this day—probably even longer for Kaylee, who did all the heavy lifting with wedding planner Molly—but here we are.
I’d like to say I’m calm, cool, and collected.
I’m not.
I’m a nervous fucking wreck, shaking in my custom Tom and Jerry wedding day boxers.
I’ve been staring at the suit she picked out for me to wear today for the last half hour. I can’t seem to bring myself to actually put it on.
I just keep thinking about the past.
About my parents.
About Tatum.
About marriage.
I love Kaylee, and I know she’s bending on the things she wants so we can have a future together. But for as much as I come off as looking like the selfish one, I’m bending, too.
I don’t want to get married, yet I’m staring at the suit I’ll be married in later today.
I’m doing that for her.
For me, too, I guess—for the media, for my image, and all the shit that goes along with it. But the top priority today is making Kaylee happy.
I keep reminding myself of that, but it doesn’t push me to actually getting off my ass to put the suit on.
It’s one particular fight my parents had that keeps playing on a loop in my brain. I haven’t thought about that fight in a long time, but today the mental blocks came down and it snuck back in like a bad dream.
I was twelve, and they’d already been fighting for months. They didn’t know I’d come out of my room because I couldn’t sleep.
I remember sliding down the wall in the hallway just around the corner from the family room.
I’d drawn my knees into my chest and looped my arms around them, squeezing them tightly as I bent my head down into the circle my body created while my body shook with silent tears.
Even at twelve, I knew this was the end, but I still hated hearing my parents fight.
No kid wants to listen to that, but it was like a train wreck. I couldn’t walk away.
My life was about to change. I was about to be a pawn in their game as they both fought to emerge the winner.
There were no winners.
“I never should’ve married you,” my mother yelled at my father.
“Marriage is for fools.” My father’s words were clear, concise, and direct.
He didn’t raise his voice the way she did.
Through the entire divorce, I never heard him yell at her.
I never saw him raise a hand to her. The same couldn’t be said for her.
He was the calm to her hot temper, and she hated how he could remain so passive when she was in fight mode.
I memorized those words. Marriage is for fools.
I didn’t want to be a fool.
“Then I guess I’m really stupid because I’ll show you. I will get married again, and this time it’ll be with the right person instead of—”
“What?” my dad asked, cutting her off. “An idiot like me?”
“Exactly,” she hissed at him, and my heart twisted in my chest at her mean words to him.
“I guess he wasn’t such an idiot,” my dad said coolly.
My mom was quiet a beat, and I remember trying to picture her face screwed up with guilt or remorse. I wanted her to have those emotions, but I’m not sure she ever did—at least not until our talk before her rehearsal last weekend when she admitted my dad was it for her.
“He made me feel like a queen,” she retorted.
“For a night,” my dad said. “But nobody has the power to give you the kind of happiness you want. You have to love yourself first. You have to know what you want out of life instead of chasing some dream that you haven’t even figured out the ending to.”
He’d gotten quietly up and left the room at that point, but he didn’t come down the hallway where I was.
I woke to my mom gently shaking me before helping me back to my room.
We never talked about whether I overheard them. Instead, I tucked their words deep inside.
But even now, that vivid memory of my dad’s words hit me, and I’m worried I’m more like my mother than I’ve ever been comfortable admitting.
All I ever wanted to do was play football. I know the end is near. There have been all sorts of studies done in the league, and the peak age for a tight end is around twenty-five.
I’m nearing thirty-three.
There are a few big names who’ve played long past their thirty-third birthday, but the list gets thinner and thinner with each passing year.
Mom didn’t know what dream she was chasing. Neither do I. What comes after my playing days are over? Tight Fit, probably some charity events, and…what?
Luke hung up his cleats to start an agency. He’s working hand-in-hand with his wife and her PR firm. They have a kid and another one on the way.
Jack isn’t hanging up anytime soon, but he’s got a kid with another on the way, too.
Josh has a little boy.
Kids are everywhere, and it seems like all the signs point to that being the next step.
And that’s when thoughts of Tatum sneak back into my mind. What if I were to tell Kaylee yes, let’s have kids, and then there were complications or worse? I can’t go through that again.
I can’t go through that loss again.
Much like my parents’ divorce, it flipped my whole world upside down. It was good to learn that Tatum was a liar, but that didn’t make the loss any more bearable.
Mom didn’t love herself—at least according to my dad. I don’t know if she does now or not, but the way she goes through men like water leads me to believe she’s still in search of the kind of happiness my dad told her she’d never achieve.
And as I look at my own life…I’m not sure I can honestly say I love who I am, either.
Except when I’m with Kaylee.
I love the man I am when I’m with her—cheesy as fuck to admit that even to myself, but it’s the truth.
I love how I can make her laugh. I love how I can be a quiet strength for her when I’m never quiet.
I love how I can talk to her about things I’ve never talked to anybody about.
I love how I can give her pieces of me while I collect pieces of her to hold onto.
I love how I feel like I’ve found a teammate and a partner—not just someone who wants to be with me because I’m a professional athlete or because I have money in the bank or because of the bragging rights that come with bagging a dude like me, but because she doesn’t give a fuck about any of that shit and she still somehow loves me.
She makes me want to be a better man. She makes me want to sacrifice the things I thought I wanted just to see her happy. She makes me want to protect her with a ferocity I didn’t know existed.
And that is the shit that pushes me off the bed and into the damn suit.
Just as I grab the hanger from where it rests on the hook on the back of my door, my phone starts to ring.
I set it back onto the hook as I grab my phone to see who’s calling, and even though I’ve opted to ignore her for the last week or so, something inside me snaps as I finally pick up the call.
It takes exactly three seconds before I wish I’d never picked up that goddamn call.