Page 241 of Steeling Her
“I know, but I do owe you one too. I have been thinking about it since last night when you spoke about her. Even after all these years, I could see your face look different when you talk about her. I thought about it once more last night for the first time in five years. You’re just like me; you’re stubborn. And don’t go thinking that you got it from your mother. You didn’t. You’re right about everything you said. I shouldn’t have interfered, it isn’t my life. It’s yours, and I wasn’t living my dream through yours. I was a good college football player, but I would have never made it to the NFL like you. I knew you could make it that far, Nick. I just didn’t want you to regret it if you got passed over. And look at you, you got drafted easily. Definitely shut me up.. And to be quite honest, I thought you would have gotten back together with her as soon as you made it.” He shrugs while still maintaining eye contact.
“She didn’t want to talk to me—”
“I know, you hurt her with the decision I effectively forced you into. I shouldn’t have. I knew you loved her then, and I know you love her now, but you weren’t going to get drafted, Nick. I thought I was doing the right thing as it was the only thing that I knew would get your focus back. Your game was slipping, whether you wanted to hear it or not, and I did talk to Bulldog. He agreed that your game was going downhill—”
“I can control my focus much better now,” I cut him off.
“I have no doubt that you can. I still watch you on TV,” he admits with sorrow in his eyes. I remember roaring at him that he cannot come to any of my professional games. I became a petty son of a bitch and only sent tickets for Ellie and my mom.
I was fuming; I never wanted anything to do with him. It’s only now I’ve realized that he thought he was doing the right thing at the time. He now knows that it wasn’t the case—that he fucked up. He still believed it until last night. All this time, he had convinced himself that it was the correct decision. And it only took to see how broken I am without her for him to realize that it did more damage than he initially thought.
“She was never just some girl to me,” I answer.
“I’ve only realised now,” he confesses. “And the truth be told, I never paid her any attention because I thought she was just another one for you. The ‘for now’ girl and that you’d move on to the next as soon as you left college. I mean, you looked like you were, judging from the media and the tabloids.” He’s making reference to the girls I had hooked up with over the last five years.
“Not my finest moments, I know.” I rub my hands together and shift from side to side, cringing at the thought.
“Everyone fucks up.” There’s a double meaning to that but I don’t push it.
It took him five years, I know, but he finally recognizes it.
“I’m sorry.” That’s the one thing I didn’t think he’d say, yet he did. He actually said it. But it’s hard for me to accept. All the pain and anger that he caused me won’t just go away that quickly. Our relationship is fractured, and it will be for a while. It will rebuild back but not to what it used to be. It will never go back to that.
“It’ll take time,” I tell him and look down at my feet. “Our relationship will not be the same, but you already know that.” I can see from the corner of my eye that he’s nodding softly.
“I understand. It will come in time,” he agrees.
I know no matter how hard we work on our relationship, it won’t be the same. There will be a hint of resentment from me, and he knows that. I’ve wasted five years without the woman I love because of him, and he knows that. It’s not about punishing him and it’s not about punishing myself. This is just what it is, this is what it’s all come down to. This moment.
Forgive, forget, and fix.
Forgiving is the easy part.
Forgetting is the hard part.
But fixing—fixing is the unknown part. That takes time, and I don’t know when it’ll happen but we can only start from the very beginning and try.
“Before I came out here, I spoke to Elaine Steel. She advised me to come see you and talk this out. She used three simple words—”
“Forgive, forget, and fix?” he asks. I snap my head around to face him. He stares back with a smirk on his face.
“Did she speak to you too?” I ask incredulously.
He chuckles and shakes his head. “No, it’s an old saying that some people from ’round here say a lot. She convinced you to come down here then? To talk this out with me?” I nod back and rub my hands along my mouth out of nervousness.
“She was like a second mom to me,” I whisper to him only for him to sit forward and gather my attention back.
“Your mom hounded me over this too. When you refused to talk to me at first for the first few months, so did she. She wouldn’t even look at me. I thought the marriage was over.” He sighs. “Love is complicated but you stick with who you love no matter what, and that’s what she did with me. Even when she didn’t agree with it, she stuck by my side.” My mom never told me any of this, she always kept me and my sisters out of any fights or quarrels between my dad and her. She never wanted us to see them fighting. That doesn’t mean we didn’t. She tried to hide it but we always knew. I always knew she fought with him about me and Carter, but I never got the details.
It remained silent for the next few minutes as we just sit in the stands during the hot sunny day. Nothing is going on, but I am able to find my inner peace by just sitting here, especially after having the civil conversation that I never thought I’d have, especially since the topic is something so traumatic for me.
I was traumatized after what had happened that day five years ago.
I had fallen in love with Carter, and it had been cruelly taken away from me. I was the happiest I’d ever been. I felt invincible, on cloud nine, but it was ripped away from me.
“I forgive you,” I say, simply to let him know. “I may not agree with how or why you did it, but I forgive you.” It was time to tell him that. It had been weighing heavy on both of us for so long. It’s time to let it go. It was not fair for either of us to carry it around, but it most certainly isn’t fair on Carter. “Having said all of that, I still think you owe Carter an apology.”
***
