The Tales of a Professional Hockey Player

Chapter 17: Rehearsal Dinner (Part 1)

~Eleanor~

He looks gorgeous. Olive had warned me about the shirt he bought, but I had no idea he would look this good. I had managed to stop finding him handsome in everything he wore, but I don't think I'll be able to help it tonight. The sleeves tighten around his muscles as he places Ophelia in her car seat, showing the efforts he puts in the gym. I can't help but look at him during the entire ride to the restaurant. If he notices, he doesn't say anything, so I keep gazing.

During the time we were apart, I forced myself to look at other men in a way I never would have allowed myself if Ben was around. I wanted to find them as or even more attractive than him, but I never found one who beat his attractiveness. I hated myself and I hated him for ruining every chance I had at being happy with someone else because, no matter what I did or who I was with, I kept comparing them to Ben, and nothing was ever good enough. When their reaction would have resembled Ben's, I thought it would be absurd to change something for the exact same, and when they did something Ben would never have, I found myself wishing they were more like him. I talk as if I had been with many other men since Ben left, but really, I have been with none. I just compared any guy I saw on the street or men I worked with to him. I think that's when I started to hate him. Or hate what he did because I don't think I could ever hate him. I loved him too much to end up hating him. I hated the fact that he was gone, and that I had no idea if he was ever coming back. He had left me with memories that no one could match no matter how hard they tried. Ben was all I had known since I was sixteen. I am twenty-one now. I should be going out every week-end, meet people I'll never see again, but I never had to because I had Ben. I had Ben to come home to almost every night and I never wanted anything else. Even after he had left, all I wanted was for him to come back. I know it sounds pitiful, but that was how I felt. It was how I felt until I met Hannah. The first thing she told me when she learned I wasn't with Ben anymore was: "That man is a fool. If I ever see him, I'll break his femurs that way, he won't be able to play hockey anymore. That'll teach him." I found her a little intense, but what she said got me thinking. She was right. Thinking that leaving was the best way to solve our problems was foolish. After this day, I started telling myself that he was the one who lost the most in this break-up. He not only lost me, but Ophelia too.

It was my father who convinced me to invite him to her birthday party. "He's her dad and he's back in town," he said, his voice full of hope. "You can't keep him away forever, sweetie." That's what I wanted though. I never wanted to see him again because I knew that, if I did, I would go back to the place where everything I wanted was for us to go back to the way we were. So, even when he was around, I kept the biggest amount of distance between us as I could, kept the conversations to a minimum, and avoided looking into his eyes. And it worked, I convinced myself that I was over him, that he could go fuck himself for all I cared. It's the photo Hannah posted that proved me wrong. I was so mad when I saw it that I could have slapped him. I almost did when he came to my room to talk, but something in what he said stopped me. When he quoted Pride and Prejudice, something switched in me. All this time, where I thought that he didn't care about what I liked, where I complained to my friends about how he didn't find it important enough. It wasn't true. He had read one of my favorite books well enough to be able to quote it to me. That sentence: "There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well," it opened a crack in my heart that I thought would be closed forever. Ever since, he has been making that crack wider and wider, until, one day, he'll maybe be able to crawl back in.

I went from not wanting to have anything to do with him to never wanting to be apart in only a few days. It pleased everybody but Hannah who keeps saying that he is an asshole who doesn't deserve me. "I'll prove it to you, you'll see," she promised after I told her that he was moving in with Ophelia and me in New York. I brushed it off, thinking that she would never actually do anything, and I was right. She never mentioned Ben again.