9. Bree
Bree
Here’s the thing nobody tells you about loving someone. Even after they break your heart into about a hundred pieces, some stupid little part of you still wants to know that they’re okay. Still trying to find out if they’re eating. Sleeping. Taking care of themselves. It’s the worst.
I was pretending to wipe down mugs behind the counter, but my ears were glued to the little TV in the corner, playing yesterday’s Redcoats press conference, like my whole life depended on whether Gavin had actually cleaned up his footwork in the pocket this week.
I glanced over to make sure Dad was still busy talking to Mr. Alvarez, explaining, again, in way too much detail, exactly why his son-in-law’s name was up on The List. I’d asked him about a hundred times to stop telling the whole story to every single customer who asked. He never listened.
Nobody was watching me. It was four, and the deli was nearly empty, one last customer finishing up in the corner. We’d be closing soon. I reached over and quietly turned the volume up, just a couple notches, and there he was. Gavin. And the first thing I noticed was he hadn’t shaved.
To anybody else in the world, he’d have looked like a guy nervous about Sunday’s game. But I knew…
No, maybe that’s all it was. Maybe he really was just nervous about the game.
Why on earth would I think, for one second, that he looked like that because of me?
God, I was so stupid. So, so stupid. Wren was probably standing right next to the camera crew that very second, holding out a water bottle and a towel for him, being so helpful, so supportive, so there.
I sighed and clicked the TV off.
I looked around and caught my dad watching me from across the room. I gave him a little smile. He smiled back.
As I was going into the kitchen to check on a couple of to-go orders that were waiting, I knew Dad was following me in there. He came in with me, and as I reached out to the tickets, he put a hand on my shoulder.
“You okay, darling?” he asked.
“Yeah, Dad, all good,” I said, picking up a plate and checking it against the ticket.
“Tomorrow is Gavin’s game.”
“I know.”
“Has he been calling you?”
I nodded.
I didn’t tell him just how much. Gavin had been calling me every single hour, like clockwork, and texting me nonstop the whole day too.
I’d spent most of yesterday just wrestling with my own feelings.
One minute I felt so betrayed, so heartbroken I could barely breathe.
The next minute I felt this awful pull of guilt, thinking about how stressed he must be, with the biggest game of his season coming up and me not answering a single call or text. His game was in two days, and?—
Stop it, Bree.
You have to be strong. You cannot keep pining after this man.
He doesn’t need you. He already made his choice.
And the only reason he was still calling, still checking in, was because deep down he was a good guy, and maybe, somewhere in there, he was feeling bad that he was falling for Wren.
I mean, come on. She was his ex. She was gorgeous.
Any man would fall for her. Of course he did too.
Why else would he call his whole life with me baggage?
“I could drive you,” Dad said, and I snapped back into the room.
“Huh?”
“I said, if you wanted to go see his game tomorrow, I could drive you.” He glanced toward the kitchen door. “But don’t tell your mother it was my idea.”
“Don’t tell me what?” Mom said, walking in right at that exact second.
“Bree was asking if I’d drive her to see Gavin’s game,” Dad said, way too fast. “I told her no way. I am not driving three hours to watch that loser play.”
He looked at me. Pleading, almost. I knew exactly how much it had cost him to say that, out loud, to my face, given how much he adored watching Gavin play, given that he’d been the one to put Gavin’s name on that stupid list in the first place.
That list meant something to him, and pretending Gavin was just a loser now was probably the hardest job of his life.
Mom looked between the two of us, suspicious. Then she turned to me, her voice gentle. “Do you want to go, sweetheart?”
“No,” I said. “There’s no point, Mom. It’d just make everything worse for him. He’s made his choice. And I guess he’s happy with it.”
“If he was happy with it,” Mom said, “he wouldn’t have sent you what’s sitting outside right now.”
“What is it?”
“Something came for you today,” she said. “I didn’t want to just wait around until you got home to see it. Go on out and look. It took me a LOT of time to transport it here.”
She pushed open the kitchen doors.
I walked outside, feeling weirdly, stupidly hopeful, which honestly made me hate myself a little bit.
Don’t you have any self respect, Bree?
But I had to see what it was that my usually guarded, reserved husband had sent me.
Should I still be calling him that?
And then I saw it, and I completely forgot what I’d been thinking about at all.
There were bouquets everywhere. Dozens and dozens of them, lined all through the front of the deli, and more were still coming in, carried by one of our bus boys, Oliver, who looked somewhere between amused and completely over it.
He spotted me and smiled, “Gavin wants to make a point.”
I walked closer. Every single bouquet had a number written on it.
I found the one marked one. There was a little card tucked into it.
Start here, and read through the numbers.
The bouquets were scattered all over the place, no order to any of it. Oliver had been bussing with us for over a year after school hours and on weekends. Mom was convinced he had a little crush on me.
“I can line them up for you in order.” Oliver offered, trying hard to make it sound like it was no big deal.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to.”
“No, I got it,” he said, already moving flowers around.
“He sent you fifty-nine of these, by the way. Guy’s a millionaire, I guess.
Fifty-nine bouquets.” He shrugged, a little smile on his face.
“Guys like me, we can afford, like, one. For our girl.” He blushed a little, saying it, and went back to sorting them by number.
I found the first note and read it.
Bree, I’m sending you fifty-nine bouquets.
One for every single day since Wren walked into our lives and I let her start making you feel small.
These are the bouquets I should have handed you on every single one of those days.
Every day you felt belittled. Undervalued. Humiliated. And I said nothing.
Every bouquet has a note in it. These are words I should have said to you on each of those fifty-nine terrible days, and never did.
I’m sorry for not standing next to you. I’m sorry for getting irritated every time you brought up Wren. I failed you. It was all on me. Not Wren. Wren was just being Wren. I was the one being the asshole.
I’m sorry. So, so sorry, Bree. Love, Gavin
I picked up the next one.
Day 1: You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, Bree. You’re the sun to my soul. I cannot live without you.
Day 2: For every word of humiliation you’ve had to hear from anyone, I want you to know it’s only because they’re scared.
Scared of how pure your heart is, how much joy you carry, how beautiful you are inside and out.
I’m here with you, Bree. Talk to me. You can tell me anything. I will always be right here.
Day 3: Of every award, every trophy, every accolade I’ve ever gotten in my whole career, the single biggest one is watching you succeed. You’re the best at what you do. I am so proud to be your husband. I thank God every single day that our paths crossed.
And it just kept going. Bouquet after bouquet after bouquet, on and on, every single one a sentence I’d been quietly waiting the last two months to hear him say out loud.
Day 12: Bree, I believe you.
Day 27: I stand by you. Every time. No exceptions.
Day 41: No one, not Wren, not anyone, can come between our trust or our love. Nobody gets to touch what we’ve built.
Day 50: You make every room brighter just by walking into it, and I stopped noticing, and I am so sorry I stopped noticing.
By then, Mom and Dad had come outside too, helping me gather the little cards off the bouquets. Dad picked one up, cleared his throat, and read it out loud in this gruff voice he was clearly working hard to keep steady.
Day 33: I used to think the best part of my day was walking off that field after a win. I was wrong. It’s walking through our front door and finding you there.
“The jerk did good,” Dad said, folding the card back up.
I could tell how badly he wanted to say something warmer than that, and how hard he was fighting himself not to, because the man had spent the last four years being Gavin Blakley’s biggest fan, and it was killing him to keep calling him a jerk out loud.
Mom pressed a hand to her chest, completely emotional. “I should write Ree a fan letter,” she said. “Tell her to put this exact scene in her next book. This is the perfect husband-asking-for-forgiveness scene. This is it.”
The very last note said:
Bree, I have not given up on us. I never will.
I still have to finish my commitments through the end of the season.
After that, I will spend every day proving it to you.
I will do whatever it takes to earn your forgiveness.
I promise you that. But I need you to wait until this season’s over.
You have always been my good luck charm at every single game, every single time, and if you’re not there Sunday, I understand. But I’ll miss you. I love you. Gavin.
I stood there thinking about every single game I’d ever sat through, every single one, cheering for him from the stands. I wasn’t sure, not even a little bit, whether I could sit through it tomorrow.
And right as that thought landed, the front door of the deli flew open.
And Wren walked in.