11. Gavin
Gavin
It’s funny how life works.
You turn into a stubborn asshole, dismiss the concerns of the one person you love most in the entire world, and then, right around the moment you finally figure out how wrong you were, how big of a dick you’d actually been, that person is already gone.
And you’re left sitting alone in your house, the night before the biggest game of your season, counting little bumps of paint on the ceiling because there’s nothing else left to do.
At that point, the only thing left is to strip away every last bit of false pride you’d been carrying around and go beg them to give you another shot.
I’d walked into that deli overconfident.
I had no idea how much damage I’d actually done to Bree.
The person I’d stood up in front of everyone and promised to love and protect and stand beside, no matter what.
And instead, I’d stood right beside the one person determined to tear all of that down, and I let her do it, while my own wife got pushed further and further to the side.
And the words she’d actually heard me say?
I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror thinking about it.
What I’d said to Wren, behind the stadium, that whole conversation.
What could have possibly made me think, even for a second, that my life with Bree had turned into baggage?
Was it the fight we’d had the night before?
Was it exhaustion? How could I have said that?
With Bree, everything’s a conversation. Everything’s a thing we have to sit down and talk about and process.
How could I have said that? I loved Bree more than anything on this planet.
How could I have been that careless with my words?
How could I have let something like that slip out of my mouth?
No amount of frustration, no amount of exhaustion, gave me any excuse.
That was all me. If I was frustrated about something, I should have brought it to Bree. Not Wren.
And on top of everything else, I’d hugged Wren.
The exact same way I’d hug Bree. That hug was ours.
It belonged to us. What was I even thinking?
How was Bree ever supposed to believe me if I tried telling her the hug came out of nowhere, that I wasn’t even thinking, not even a little?
I’d just been missing the old version of Bree so badly that day that I’d let myself unravel completely.
And of course, Wren had taken full advantage of it.
At this point, the only thing left for me to do was finish the game tomorrow, and then spend the entire off-season begging Bree for forgiveness.
I didn’t deserve to have her back. But if she could just find it in herself to forgive me, that would be enough.
I had failed her as a husband. Failed her as a partner.
Failed to stand in her corner when she’d asked me for one simple thing, to trust her judgment, and instead I’d brushed her off as paranoid, called her immature, called her insecure.
I got up off the bed, sat down on the edge of it, and put my head in my hands.
Think, Gavin.
I was a planner. I’d always been a planner.
I’d spent a full month planning out my proposal to Bree, pulling every contact I had, working out permission to reserve fifteen minutes for the two of us at the top of the Eiffel Tower.
She’d been so happy that night. I could still remember the exact smell of the floral perfume on her dress when she said yes to me, standing up there, that fall evening in Paris.
I’d also spent years saying no to her every single time she brought up having kids, because the planner in me had already mapped it all out.
Play out my career. Rack up as many endorsements as I could.
Bank enough money to secure her future, our family’s future.
Retire at twenty-nine. Then, only then, have kids.
That plan was shit, honestly, looking back on it now.
But the point was, I was a planner. If there was one thing I knew how to do, it was plan something out and then go execute it.
So I just had to plan my way back into her forgiveness.
There was no version of this where I sat around twiddling my thumbs, firing off useless texts, calling her at all hours of the night just to annoy her further. I had to actually show up. I had to undo what I’d done.
After a lot of sitting there thinking, I landed on a four-step plan.
Step one started with a phone call. I got my secretary, James, on the line and told him to get me in touch with Wren’s assistant, Lavi Perez.
Lavi had been the one filming my workouts a few weeks back, the day Wren wasn’t around, and he’d mentioned wanting to eventually go freelance, maybe open up his own production office someday.
Well. Tonight felt like as good a night as any for Lavi to land his first independent assignment.
Sure, Lavi’s whole personality could get a little much sometimes.
The guy walked around like a happy unicorn with a rainbow halo floating over his head, personal confetti cannon going off wherever he went.
But he was genuinely good at his job. And honestly, maybe a little of that confetti energy could rub off on me right about now, because my own personal sunshine had packed a bag and driven three hours away to New Haven.
James called me back a few minutes later.
“I talked to him,” James said. “He’s thrilled you want to speak with him. Especially tonight, of all nights, right before the game.”
“Yeah? He said anything else?”
“He actually asked me if this was even a good time. Kept asking if he should wait until after Sunday.”
“Tell him I’ll call him myself in five minutes.”
I lasted about ninety seconds before I picked up the phone and called him myself.
Lavi answered on the very first ring.
“Gavin! Hi! How are youuuuu?” he said, so cheerful it almost hurt.
He sounded genuinely happy just to hear my voice.
“I’m okay,” I said. “Have you heard about what happened with the documentary?”
“Yes,” Lavi said. “Wren was furious. She called me and told me my services weren’t needed anymore. That I was fired.”
“She fired you?”
“I figured maybe you didn’t like something I said, or did,” Lavi said. “That maybe that’s why she let me go.”
“She didn’t tell you the actual reason?”
“No.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Uhh... noooo?”
I sat there for a second, shaking my head.
Trust Wren to make everybody’s life complicated, to be so full of her own pride that she couldn’t even admit her own services had been the ones terminated.
She could have handled the whole thing with so much more grace, so much more maturity, if she wasn’t such a manipulative narcissist underneath all that charm.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should’ve reached out to you myself before and cleared this whole thing up. I’m the one who terminated Wren’s contract. I know that’s going to affect you directly, and I want you to know, I had nothing against you. None of this was about you.”
Lavi went quiet for a second.
"Tell me this has something to do with Bree," he finally said.
"How did you know that?"
"Darling, we all saw how Wren was treating Bree. All of us. We all saw this coming from a mile away. It was so obvious. You'd have to be the world's single stupidest person not to see it."
A pause.
"Sorry," he added quickly.
"There's actually something else," Lavi said, before I could respond. "I should probably tell you this too, while we're at it."
"What?"
"Wren told me you'd given her all of Bree's old illustrations. From that first project of hers, the one that got her humiliated all those years back. She said you personally handed them over, told her it was fine to use for the doc. And I told Bree that. I told her it came from you."
Bree thinks I gave Wren the details of the most private, humiliating chapter of her entire career?
How much lower can Wren possibly stoop?
"I had no idea, Gavin," Lavi said. "I swear I didn't. I know Wren now, obviously, for exactly what she is. I know you'd never have done something like that to Bree. I'm sorry. I should never have just taken Wren's word for it and passed it along."
I sat there for a second, that heaviness settling into my chest, heavy enough that I actually had to press a hand flat against it.
"Thank you for telling me," I finally said. "I mean that."
"Yeah. Of course."
I took a breath.
"I have a job offer for you," I said. "Would you be interested?"