Chapter 31
CHAPTER 31
GABE
I pull up down the street from the theater’s stage door, parking behind a large moving truck for cover. Natalie’s old Jeep Wrangler is way up ahead.
Now that I’m this close to her, I’m on the verge of vomiting. All I want to do is slam my vehicle into reverse, go back home and never have to have this conversation.
But I can’t do that to Natalie. She would never do that to me. She would sit me down and hold my hands and look into my eyes and explain everything. And I should give her the same respect.
That woman deserves the world, deserves someone with the time and space in their life to make her the center of it. And no matter how much I’d like to be that person, I am not.
And that’s exactly why I should have stuck to my plan to spend the holidays alone and get involved with nothing and no one. Maybe I should have just stayed in the city, where that’s easy to do .
But this place, this town… Jeez, how could I have predicted what it’s done to me?
My stomach feels like it’s climbing into my chest with the aid of ice picks. The dread of what I have to do sits like a lead weight across my shoulders.
I kill the engine, undo my seat belt, and my fingers pause, poised on the door handle, daring me to open it, when my phone buzzes.
Taking any excuse to delay the inevitable, I pull it from my pocket.
NATALIE
Did you still want to see me for something? I’m about to leave the theater. You can catch me at home in a bit if you like. Or come to the rehearsal at the pond tomorrow morning. Or call me?
I’m still trying to decide whether I’m relieved that I don’t have to do this right now or agitated that I can’t get it over with, when the stage door swings open.
Natalie steps out and my heart lurches.
She’s smiling and sharing a laugh with the woman and kid who’re with her.
The boy is one of the generic townsfolk in the play. He stuck in my mind because when he skated out onto the ice the other day it was like he’d been born with blades on his feet.
Natalie looks down at him while he tells her something with the seriousness of a scientist explaining a breakthrough that will kill all known diseases and bring world peace at the same time.
She gives him her undivided attention. She’s not even pretending. Her eyes are fixed on him, hanging on his every word.
Just watching the magic she has with children feels like she’s pulling on the end of a string that’s attached to my chest.
She tugs her blue hat lower over her ears as the wind picks up her hair and blows it over her shoulder. Her jeans hug her thighs right below the hem of her winter coat, and all I can think about is the last time they were on either side of my face, then wrapped around my waist.
I will never have that again. It’s in the past. Gone.
It’s an experience I had this week that will live with me forever. Something I want but can’t have.
I get that she needs to go through with the move to New Orleans to prove something to herself. But I wish she’d understand she has nothing to prove to anyone else. What’s there to prove when you’re as perfect as any human could hope to be?
I, on the other hand, am riddled with flaws. Deep, dark rivers of them.
Natalie’s head flies back in a hearty laugh I can almost hear from inside my car. Whatever the kid said makes his mom laugh too. But not in the same way that Natalie does. Not in that unbridled, giving-herself-fully-to-the-joy way that she has.
She places one hand on her chest and the other on the boy’s shoulder and tells him something that changes his face from that of a serious world-saving scientist to that of a child who wants to have fun.
Then the boy’s mom looks like she might be saying thank you, and Natalie’s waving her hand to dismiss the transformation she brought about in the kid as nothing.
Of course she is. She has no idea of the natural gift she has for what she does. The children and parents of this town are lucky to have her. And I bet they’re going to miss her like holy hell.
They exchange waves and Natalie turns away from me, head down, trotting into the wind toward her Jeep farther up the street.
And all I do is sit and watch. Watch her open the door. Watch her get in. Watch her toss her bag onto the passenger seat and pull on her seat belt. Watch her drive away.
I grip the top of the steering wheel with both hands and drop my head onto my knuckles.
Fuck.
My heart races. I should follow her and talk to her the moment she gets home.
But I really am everything she said I am.
A man whose only friends are his parents.
A man too weak to tell those parents that he wants to spend Christmas alone.
A man who had a friend but fucked it up so badly that when that friend turned up out of the blue, he told the woman who he’d spent a week falling for that she should stay away from him.
And she should have.
Just like I should have stayed away from her.
I’ve been right all along. Not getting involved with people and living alone in an isolated house or a penthouse in a Manhattan apartment tower and doing nothing but training and playing hockey has to be way better than how this feels.
Should have stuck to my guns.
Because now I’ve had a taste of it, it’s worse than never having tasted it at all .
The person who might make me happier than I ever dreamed possible has just driven away and taken a slice of my heart with her.
This is not good. It is not good to be this vulnerable. Vulnerability is what I spend my whole life fighting in hockey. Stay strong. Show no weakness. Guard your blind spots.
Natalie was a blind spot I didn’t know I had.
And that I didn’t see coming.
I straighten and let my head flop back onto the headrest.
Whatever I tell her, it’s only going to sound beyond bad. Hey, I’m the big, rich athlete who cruised into your small town, banged you for a week, and now I’m headed back to the city. See ya.
No matter what I say or how I say it, that’s what she’ll hear. And I couldn’t blame her. They are the facts.
But they don’t take into account the torrent of feelings racing under them.
“You are such a fucking idiot.” I slam the side of my fist against the steering wheel.
Not only am I a grown twenty-eight-year-old man who’s too weak to be honest with his parents, I’m also too weak to look into Natalie’s eyes when I tell her I have to go.
Hurting her is bad enough.
But looking at her face while I do it is an intolerable idea.
I pull my phone back out of my pocket.
ME
Sorry, can’t make it tonight after all .
I’m an asshole.
I ignored the part about meeting her at the pond tomorrow because I’m not going to explain in a text that I’ll be back in New York.
Total asshole.
I drop my phone into the center console and turn the engine back on.
And in this moment I feel that crisp, crackling cloak of grumpiness and solitude that Natalie had ripped away wrap itself tightly around me again.
It’s comforting.
And welcoming.
This is what I know. This is how I know how to be.
I yank my seat belt back on, push the start button, put the car in gear, and swing it around to retreat back to exactly where I came from—my place as the fool on the hill.