Page 114 of Mr. Charming

I take the small box. “Thanks. I’ll send her a quick text to thank her.”

“Oh, um… she’s with a really big client, so maybe wait until we land.” He’s jittery, but I just smile and thank him again.

The nice thing about where I sit is that there usually isn’t anyone across from me. Sometimes we have extra people like press or staff who don’t always go to games, but the space gave me privacy to interview the other players who, thanks to Bud, aren’t getting any publicity on the team.

The box isn’t wrapped in paper, but it’s a designer box with a ribbon around it. I hope Eloise didn’t spend a fortune on something for me. I untie the bow and place the ribbon on the seat next to me before lifting the lid to the box.

Pushing through the red tissue paper, I see two journals. Tweetie’s journals. The ones I gave him for Christmas the year before we broke up. He’d always used those black-and-white composition ones, and I’d make fun of him for it, while he’d joke about my fancy journals and colored pens.

My hand runs over the worn leather with a small heart in the bottom right corner. I wasn’t going to put his initials on it, and it felt weird putting my name on it, so I settled on a small embossed heart.

I pick it up out of the box. There’s no note or anything. I open it, and the first entry is dated the day I declined his proposal. I shut it and pull out my phone since we haven’t pulled away from the gate yet.

I can’t.

You said no flowers.

I took it back.

Please?

This is private.

Nothing is private when it comes to you.

The plane pushes back from the gate.

Tweetie…

Please. I love you, Tedi, and I want you to read it.

It’s a long flight.

Okay.

We’re on our way to Anaheim, and he’s right, we have a long flight.

As the plane barrels down the runway, I take a deep breath and open his journal. I’m not sure if my stomach dropping is from the plane or the words at the top of the page.

To my teenage self,

* * *

Our worst nightmare just came true, and I’m not sure where we go from here.

I knew he wrote to his younger self, but reading it makes me feel Tweetie’s pain. The way he’s almost telling his younger self, like, “Hey, look at us and what a fuckup we are.” The disappointment Tweetie feels when writing, how he made a mistake or messed up is soul-crushing. He’s told me stories about his dad and how messed up of a teenager he was. That if it wasn’t for hockey, he never would’ve gotten his life together.

Tears fill my eyes as I read how much he hurt just like me in those days and weeks and months after our breakup. How he fought himself from coming after me. Telling himself he didn’t deserve me, that he loved me enough not to drag me back into the fucked-up world of him being in professional sports and all that came with it. And then at some point, there’s a shift, and he seems to come out of his grief enough to see that he has to move forward.

If he didn’t play hockey, what else could he do? He never finished college, didn’t have a degree, so how would he support himself? With hockey, he could give his mom the life she’d always deserved.

It was the last entry before he seemed to turn things around that made a fresh set of tears fall down my cheeks.

I have to trust that the universe isn’t done with us yet—that Tedi isn’t just a memory, but a part of my story still being written. Maybe we’re just caught in some in-between, a pause instead of an ending. And one day, when the timing is finally right, she’ll be mine again.

Until that day comes, I’ll wait. And as I wait, I’ll become the man she deserves—the best version of myself, for her.

I pick up the other journal, stuffing the one I’ve read in my bag.

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