As we’re getting to the first dance scene, Odette pauses the movie. “Potty break, ladies.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” Sheila says. “I’ve had way too much wine and I need to make room for more.”
Goldie goes with me to take Sweet Pea out into the snowy night.
Definitely not my dog’s favorite activity. Poor little paws. Need to get her some booties before this happens again.
The street’s empty. Snow falling thick enough that when we step out from beneath the overhang at the entrance to the building, I can’t see Goldie clearly.
“You shouldn’t be out here with your hip,” I tell her while Sweet Pea picks a corner to do her business in.
“I didn’t think you’d be here at all,” she replies.
I glance at her, then back at my dog, and then I sigh. “Bad day.”
She doesn’t push.
And that makes it easier to keep talking. “My dad—he was hard on us growing up. Demanded perfection. I couldn’t meet his standards in school, but rugby—I knew I was good on the pitch. So that’s where I put all of my energy.”
“Looking for validation,” she says softly.
“Still wasn’t good enough in school, and I picked fights with Bink too much, and he didn’t even make it to half of my matches, butIknew. I knew I was good.”
She slips her bare hand into mine and squeezes.
“He apologized today.” The words taste like ash.
“And you feel like shit because you can’t sayit’s okay, because it’s not,” she says quietly.
For the first time since I left that damn dome this morning, I let every last molecule of air leave my lungs. “Yes.”
She squeezes tighter. “It’s okay to make him prove to you that he means it, and it’s okay if you’re not in a place where you want to see him right now.”
“Fucker said that to me too.”
“And now you feel like you don’t have a right to be angryanymore because he said the right things that you never thought you’d hear him say.”
“Yes.”
Leave it to Goldie to put it into words for me.
Fuck, I’m gonna miss her.
She huddles closer to me while Sweet Pea finishes up. “Life’s a complicated bowl of crap sometimes.”
I snort. “That’s exactly what Jessica said when she told me she wanted a divorce.”
“You loved her.”
“Fucking worshipped everything about her.”
“Why’d she leave?”
“Too young. Graduated high school, got married, moved to Britain so I could play for Nottingshire. She hated living so far from family. Got one too many bottles of sparkling water when she was expecting still. Struggled to make friends. I was gone half the time with the team. And then she was late and thought she was pregnant, and she wasn’t, but it shook her up. I wasn’t leaving Europe, and she didn’t want to raise kids so far from family. So that was it. She left.”
I haven’t talked about this in fifteen years.
Haven’twantedto talk about it in fifteen years.
