Until It's Over

It’s nearly impossible for someone outside of professional sports to understand how hard it really is. Sure, there’s the money, but there’s also the fame and an abundance of women throwing themselves at you, well aware of the consequences yet choosing to ignore them. Being a professional athlete gives you the opportunity to do what you love on the largest platform in the world. All of a sudden, everyone’s eyes are on you. Naturally it can go to your head. People are wearing your name on their back and are cheering for you. It’s easy to lose touch with yourself if you don’t have someone to keep you grounded.

I met her when I was thirteen. Eleven years have come and gone since then and I still remember every little detail. She wore her hair in a ponytail, her loose curls the color of maplewood as they tumbled down her back. A navy blue sun dress hung awkwardly on her thin body but was appropriate for the summer heat. July had just begun and everyone in the neighborhood was enjoying every ounce of freedom. That particular day it came in the form of a pick-up street hockey game. Her brother Noah was always my team’s goalie. She asked if she could play too, but I told her she couldn’t because she was a girl.

I expected her to argue with me, maybe kick me in the shin or the groin and go home to complain to her parents. She didn’t. She grabbed Tyler Fitch’s stick and delivered one of the most powerful slap shots I’d ever seen. Her brother didn’t even know what was happening by the time it was tucked into the back of the net. No one said a word; I surely didn’t. A girl half my size had a better slap shot than me and for the life of me I could not figure out how. I was half in love with her by the time she gave us all the finger and went home to change into a pair of worn jeans and a New Kids on the Block t-shirt. She was my centre for the rest of the summer.

Noah wouldn’t let me take her on a date until we were sixteen. I’d been hounding him for three years, bribing him with video games and five dollar bills and whatever dirty magazines I could round up from the upperclassmen I played with. He always told me he looked forward to the day I gave up, that it wasn’t going to happen. Over his dead body. I couldn’t tell you how many nights I went sleepless trying to plan the perfect murder. At sixteen you’re still supposed to think girls are kind of gross. You’re definitely not supposed to have already been in love for three years, but I would’ve waited a lifetime longer for her if I had to.

Our first date had gone horrifically. A friend of mine had thrown a New Year’s Eve party and I thought it’d be a cool place to go. At sixteen you’re supposed to show off and try to convince your friends you’re the coolest and most invincible kid in all of Canada. To this day I’m certain Natalie only agreed to go with me because it was obvious how hard I was trying to impress her. And that’s exactly what dug my grave. At sixteen you’re not supposed to know how to handle your alcohol and I was no exception. My nerves caused me to drink one too many Coors Lights and the clock had barely struck ten-o’clock when I threw up all over Natalie’s shoes. She asked me to walk her home and I brought in the new year stumbling through the streets of St. Andrews alone.

That was the first time I thought I’d lost her.

The following afternoon, she showed up to my hockey game with a brown paper bag and a travel-sized bottle of Aspirin. I was too hungover to function and scored no goals, had record penalty minutes and came close to a broken nose, but just seeing her in the stands made everything worth it. She sat with my mother and made a point to show me her new pair of shoes when she caught me staring. That’s when I was certain I was in love with her, yet I still did nothing.

When we were seventeen, she started dating Michael McManus. He was a year older than us and drove a BMW his parents leased. My bedroom was half the size of his guest bathroom and he took her out every Friday and never let her pay. Noah didn’t like him and neither did I. Natalie stopped coming to my hockey games because Michael told her to. I tried to ignore the stories Noah would tell me about her coming home in the middle of the night and crying herself to sleep. I tried to forget that I’d been in love with her for four years because nothing had ever hurt worse. It wasn’t so much the fact that she wasn’t mine—that was awful enough—but that she was the arm candy of an absolute tool. She deserved better.

Back then I wasn’t so sure that I was what she deserved. Between hockey and private schools, I was gone a lot, usually only making an appearance in St. Andrews at holidays. However, Michael McManus was as good as dead as far as I was concerned. It was the only time Noah had openly been in my corner. He expected me to be her knight in shining armor, to save the damsel in distress and live happily ever after but my armor was tarnished and Natalie didn’t want to be rescued. What could I have done except wait until it was over?

They broke up the night of my eighteenth birthday. Natalie hadn’t shown up to the party Tyler threw for me and I drank to mask my disappointment. I was halfway to a coma when Noah told me I’d better go clean up the mess Michael had made. No matter how torn apart I was that she’d picked some asshole over me, I still dropped everything to let her cry on my shoulder. Maybe it was liquid confidence, maybe the timing was just right, but that night I told her everything I’d been keeping inside.

I told her I’d been in love with her since the summer of the street hockey game. I told her I’d never forgive myself for throwing up on her shoes. I told her how angry and jealous I’d been the year she dated Michael McDouchebag. I told her about the nights I stayed up plotting her brother’s death. I told her everything, and she kissed me.

I’d only been twenty a few months when I won the Cup. It’d been a rough few months in the NHL but Natalie stuck by my side through it all. She moved to Michigan without a single complaint and didn’t even bat an eye when the seasoned puck bunnies set their sights on the new kid in town. Natalie had an effortless confidence. I’d been in love with her for seven years—if nothing we’d gone through in that span of time had tore us apart, no woman was going to. There had only been Natalie for so long that I never considered being with anyone else.

Still, the stress of rumors didn’t go away just because the suspicion did. Hearing something on a regular basis and expelling the energy to defend me took a lot out of her. She went home to St. Andrews for a few months to find herself again, to decide if it was worth it, and once again I didn’t know what to do with myself. It was another Christmas alone, another new year to remember my ghosts of New Years past.

That was the second time I thought I’d lost her.

I wasn’t a baseball player but I knew you only got three strikes before you were out. I had two. Only an idiot would risk letting the woman of their dreams walk away without a fight and most of the time I wasn’t an idiot. Even though I’d known it all along, it became crystal clear in that moment that I’d already found the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Striking out before that could happen wasn’t an option. Over my dead body.

The Valentine’s Day after I turned twenty-one was the first time I ever cried. The team had just suffered an embarrassing home loss when I went back to my apartment, dreading the thought of being alone, to find Natalie sound asleep in the bed we’d shared. Her suitcase sat in front of the closet and her set of keys was on the nightstand on her side of the bed. The television was showing a rebroadcast of the night’s game and I knew she’d been watching. Losing a game was one thing—there’d always be another one to play, another day to redeem ourselves—but I couldn’t stomach the thought of losing Natalie. I thought she was gone for good, the one that got away, but there she was in our bed. I’d have to save that strike out for another time.



“Do you remember the first New Years we spent together?”

I laughed as Natalie handed me a glass of champagne. We were bringing in 2011 with my teammates and their families. Natalie had made quick work of winning over everyone in the Red Wings organization. I couldn’t go one interview or practice without someone asking me how she was or what she was up to. That’s the way it always should’ve been. But, as I began looking back on all the years we’d spent together, I wouldn’t have changed a thing. Everything we’d been through had happened for a reason, even if she still did have a better slap shot than me.

“Please don’t remind me,” I grumbled.

Natalie laughed. “Please don’t throw up on these shoes. They’re a bit more expensive than the last pair you ruined.”

I wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her into my side. “I’ll buy you all the shoes in the world if you want me to.”

“Very sweet,” she said, shaking her head, “but I don’t need you to start buying my love now.”

And that was the God’s honest truth. Money meant nothing to her. Even though I made millions of dollars, she would’ve loved me just the same if I was back home in St. Andrews working at a fast food restaurant. That was more than some of my teammates could say and even though it was frustrating, I swelled with pride every time we went out and Natalie insisted on paying for our meal. She was everything a man could want in a woman and she was mine. She always had been.

“It’s almost midnight,” I commented as I glanced at the clock.

“Are you going to be my New Year’s kiss?” she teased. She puckered her lips, which were painted a shade of red only Natalie could pull off, but pulled away as soon as I leaned in. “It’s not midnight yet!”

Almost, I thought. There were only two minutes left in 2010 and I couldn’t have been more happy to see the year go. It hadn’t been a bad one in the least but I wasn’t like some people I’d met that wanted the clock to go backwards. I looked forward to each year I spent with Natalie, each new memory I could store in the back of my mind and save for a rainy day. The future didn’t scare me half to death like it did to some. Not anymore, at least. I had someone to spend the rest of my days with and I had no intention of letting her go.

People started counting down with the clock. Twenty seconds. I stole one last look at Natalie: black silk dress cinched at the waist, seductive red heels, alluring dark curls. There wasn’t a flaw to be seen. Ten seconds. She gripped my hand tightly, her excitement like electricity as it flowed through me. There was no denying how much I loved everything about her. After everything we’d been through, this was the moment I’d been waiting for. There were times I wasn’t sure we’d ever make it but here we were.

Five. I thought of that afternoon in July when proved herself worthy.

Four. I thought of our first New Year’s Eve together and her acceptance of my flaws.

Three. I thought of my eighteenth birthday and being her knight in shining armor.

Two. I thought of all the times I’d almost lost her.

One. I thought of all the memories we still had to make.

When everyone was shouting and pulling in their significant others for a kiss, I dropped to my knee and pulled out the tiny velvet box. No one noticed but Natalie but I could’ve sworn we were the only people in the room. This moment had been eleven years in the making.

Eleven years I wouldn’t change for anything.