Page 43 of Taking It To Overtime

“I should have known you’d end up back here. Can’t stay away from your girl.” Mol winks at the two of us, and Vera’s face flushes. “Fate bringing you back together after all this time.”

I don’t blush because Mol’s right. I didn’t even have to know Vera was back here to be drawn into her orbit. I felt her. Like the hesitation at the top of a roller coaster, the suspended moment before the free-fall, or the feel of the air right before it rains. A swollen quiet that pushes against the skin until each drop takes shape.

“Yes,” I say as the diner owner slides enough food in front of me to feed an army.

I drizzle the little pot of honey over my fries and push the little white bowl of bread and butter pickles over to Vera. A small smile plays over her lips. A fork. I should have asked for a fork so she can… she pinches one slice between her index finger and thumb and brings it to her mouth, eyes closing as she chews. Mol deserves a two-hundred percent tip for the way she slips away unnoticed.

“Mol seriously has the best pickles on the planet. I can’t believe she remembered.”

I revise my number to four-hundred percent when Mol calls back, “wasn’t me honey.”

Vera’s eyes snap to mine and I pick up a French fry to look unaffected. I wonder if she can see the way my bones are rattling inside my skin. I wonder if I want her to see the effect she has on me.

“You?”

I nod. Although I’m not sure it counts as remembering if I never forgot. What would Vera think if she knew I’ve been ordering an extra side of pickles with every meal since I first packed up and left this town and this woman behind? Probably that Erik was right. The fucker.

“I guess some things don’t change.” Her laugh is low, hollow. “Or maybe they do.” She leans back in her seat, red vinyl creaking as she crosses one leg over the other. “You remember my affair with bread and butter pickles. You touch me like you never stopped…” Her throat clicks as she swallows and Mol needs to call Bruce and Gary to come look at her HVAC because it’s too hot in here for her unit to be working right. “But you don’t smile anymore. You’re my Robbie, the one I remember, but you’re not. You’re someone new, too.”

“People change,” I say, devouring the sight of her dark brows pinching together, the small lines that furrow between them. I shrug because it’s that or admit that I’m still hung up on her. I still think of her every minute. I’m not ashamed, not an iota, but I don’t know if she’d want to hear my confession.

“You don’t smile anymore, Robbie. Not after game winning goals, not in interviews, not in any photos. I’ve seen you at the start of each game, glowering around the rink with your hand over your heart. You kiss your palm and you point at the camera and anyone else would smile, flirt, something… but you don’t. You just press your hand over your heart and skate away again. Every single time.”

She’s kept up with me, the way I have with her.

All these years.

She watched me play.

She listened to me talk.

She sought me out. Maybe she doesn’t even realize she did it, but it still counts. My heart turns over, my stomach coiling up into a knot.

“What changed?” She’s looking at me with an expression I can’t read. Pity, maybe. It burns like acid.

You.I want to say.You happened. I lost you.Maybe this time I should. I should tell her that when people say you don’t forget your first love, they should have said it was because the loving never stops. Because years later, I remember the shape of her mouth and the vibrations of her soul. Because my dad taught me from a young age that we protect the things that are precious, the things that matter, and she has always been what matters most. More than I needed to keep her, I needed her to be happy.

“People don’t recover when they lose half of their soul.” It feels as if the words force their way out of my throat, each one leaving it raw, bloody.

Whatever I expected Vera’s reaction to be, her recoil wasn’t even on my radar. In theory, I always thought maybe she felt the same. Our connection had been too deep, too real, to ever be one-sided. On bad days, I wondered if the loss must haunt her the same way it haunts me. On good ones, I hope that she’s found happiness even if it’s not with me.

“Don’t,” she whispers and I should stop, I know that, but I can’t put the words back, can’t stop the flood. It’s like trying to mop up Niagara Falls with a handkerchief.

“Losing you changed me, Vera. It broke my heart—”

“Stop.” Her hands cover her mouth and then slide back as if to block her ears too, to stop my confession. “You don’t get to do that.”

Do what?Tell her the truth? Bare my soul? I have nothing to lose. I love Vera Aster Novak. I loved her at twelve, and at seventeen, and now I love her at thirty-three. I don’t know when it started, probably the day we met, but I do know it will never end. I will love her through forever until the sun absorbs the earth and whatever is left of our physical form is blown into the tiniest of atoms. Those pieces of me will still exist solely to love Vera Aster Novak. Whether she feels the same or not.

“You left me. You ended things with me.” Her eyes flash fire. “I didn’t break you Robbie, you broke me.”

She isn’t saying anything I don’t already know, and yet her words are a gut punch. My lungs deflate. I’m not rewriting anything. She doesn’t know. What I’m saying has gone right over her head. Yes, I’m the one who ended things, but it’s because I saw no choice.

“I was leaving,” I remind her.That doesn’t mean I stopped loving you. Doesn’t mean my heart didn’t shatter, too.

“I’d have gone with you. You said no.”

I’m not the villain, I swear I’m not. We were just two kids who were in too deep. I knew she would have followed me. Partof me wanted her to. She’d have left school or poured everything into a long distancesomethingwith me. With a boy who barely had time to blink or breathe between his school and the juniors practice schedule. She’d never have gone abroad, or walked for Cooper, or moved to L.A. She’d have followed me across the country, keeping track of my stats until I convinced her to marry me and knocked her up, or she grew to resent me and came back here.

---