La Doleur Exquise

I wasn’t known for my romantic longevity but I guess things change when you meet the right person. All at once you’re consumed by this desire to be all about them: the way they smell, the feeling of them wrapped in your arms, the way your stomach drops when you lock eyes from across a room. When you’re so accustomed to falling in love only for a night, the deadly allure of lust ever present, real love is nothing short of a battlefield you’ve no idea how to navigate.

I was twenty years old and naive when I met you. A brief, fleeting moment of eye contact—blue on green—was all it took for me to completely lose my head. It had been Max’s idea to go out and it had been Max’s idea to introduce us. You hadn’t christened his sheets like the other girls in the club and he made a snide comment about his bed always being open for the likes of a girl like you if you got tired of me. We’d only exchanged awkward ‘hello’s and his comment made my blood boil as if my possession toward you was justified.

It wasn’t. You—whatever your name was—were a mystery to me. You weren’t willing to enlighten me, either. The club was cramped and the space between us could only accommodate a sheet of paper. As a man, I learned a lot about body language. Even if I hadn’t, it wouldn’t have taken a rocket scientist to realize you was miserable, probably looking for the nearest exit because pulling out your phone to text your girlfriends was too obvious. I hated myself right then. What was so wrong with me that you couldn’t stand to be close?

By some divine intervention you finally relaxed and I offered to buy you a drink. You said you were underage; I said I didn’t care if you didn’t. You told the bartender you liked your Tequila Sunrises without the olive. He didn’t hear you and gave you one anyway. You dropped it in my drink when you thought I wasn’t looking.

I didn’t know it then but olives were the bane of my existence. They weren’t extremely popular in my mother’s cooking and I’d gone all twenty of my years without having ever eaten one. Finding out I was allergic the night before a huge game versus the Flyers was a nightmare; the guys gave me shit for weeks. It was worth it, though. You felt so bad for poisoning me that you let me take you to dinner.

The rest, as they say, was history.

As big of an impact I hadn’t made in the club I tried to make up for at dinner. I picked you up exactly at eight, I made sure to iron my clothes and vacuum the inside of my truck, I called ahead and made reservations at the nicest restaurant in Pittsburgh, and I minded my manners so well my own mother would’ve been in tears. I’d never put forth such an effort before and I was so desperate for you to like me I almost made myself sick again worrying over every little detail. You were perfect and I had to have you.

We talked about what you considered to be trivial things: how long we’d both been in Pittsburgh, what you did for a living, what I did for a living, and what our families were like. When you found out I had three brothers you almost died — you had three sisters. You didn’t stop talking after that. There’d been a wall between us and family was what broke it down.

You told me about Kendal first, the oldest of you four. She was a divorce attorney down in Louisiana. You made a face then, like you couldn’t figure out why anyone would possibly want to live in Louisiana, and you pulled it again when you told me about the Mercedes she’d just bought. Jonathan Toews bought the same one, so what does that tell you? You only knew that because of Tyler, the one born after Kendal who covered the Blackhawks for the Chicago Tribune. Then came you, Haley Jane Balistrerie, a junior at the University of Pittsburgh—developmental biology major with a minor in neuroscience because what the hell. Your youngest sister, Zoe, was still trying to survive high school back home in Minnesota.

I’d never told you this but I fell in love with you that night. As soon as I got back to my place I called Max and asked him how he’d found you. You were too good for him: beautiful and smart with enough self-respect for the two of us. He just laughed and said something about Tyler not sharing the same morals.

For some reason I’d never understand you kept seeing me. You didn’t call security when I’d randomly show up on campus to take you to lunch and you’d text me back even when I knew you were in the middle of some uber-important microbiology lecture. I’d never gone so far out of my way for a girl. My brothers would always joke around with me, saying in due time I’d grow up and find someone that made me forget I was young and had hordes of women throwing themselves at me, and I knew that person was you.

I waited for you to feel it, too. You’d been putting off the conversation for months, using exams and impromptu trips back home once your father got sick as excuses. When the playoffs rolled around I’d all but given up. Hockey was my life, my career; I couldn’t let someone jeopardize that for me, but I had: every shift I thought of you, every goal I scored was for you, and you never even knew it. It seemed surreal, me being in love with a girl who thought next to nothing of me, but that was the sad reality of it all.

Once we advanced to the Stanley Cup Final I made the conscious decision to let you go. You had made it more than clear that you weren’t interested in becoming part of my life and submerging yourself into its chaos and I tried so fucking hard to fault you for that but always came up empty. Max would say I was better off, that love made people do crazy things and that’s why he never fell in love for more than one night. Everyone else told me not to listen to him, to do what I felt in my heart was right. The trouble with that, I argued, was that nothing felt right. At least not anymore.

During those seven games I experienced more stress than I ever had before. Sid told me to find my “happy place” and stay there. The team couldn’t afford for me to lose focus. You were my happy place. That night in the club I spent with my head in the toilet, our first date when you wouldn’t shut up about your sisters, the night in December when Toronto handed our asses to us on a silver platter and you showed up at my place with a six-pack and Chinese takeout, the first time I kissed you—those were my happy places. Thunder Bay was a mirage, a place I’d made up to fill in the blanks between the time I was born and the day I met you, and I hadn’t thought of it once.

Max scored two goals in game seven. Just like that we were Stanley Cup champions. I lifted the Cup and felt twenty years’ worth of dreams and hard work raise into the sky along with it. We had a parade, brought hope back to our city, became overnight sensations. I wondered if you’d watched from your dorm, if you took a day off from class to go to the parade. I looked everywhere for you but always came up empty. There were millions of people to sift through but I’d know those green eyes anywhere.

You’d gone home the week before.


“Jordan!” my mother called from the bottom of the stairs. “You’ve got mail, sweetie! It looks important!”

I groaned, heaving the pillow that’d been covering my face onto the floor beside my bed. Going back to Thunder Bay was the worst decision I could’ve made. My brothers were relentless in their questioning, wondering where you went and why I wasn’t seeing you anymore, which prompted another slew of questions from my parents. There was that all too familiar golden gleam of hope in their eyes that I’d finally screwed my head on straight and found myself a nice girl to settle down with. I had found her, I told them, but I let her get away.

I descended the steps in twos. Eric and Jared were in the living room playing video games; Marc was out with Dad doing god-knows-what. Mom was in the kitchen fixing everyone lunch: her typical assortment of sandwiches and vegetable sticks with dip. I groaned again. We’d been eating turkey and tomato sandwiches since we were old enough to chew and swallow them without asphyxiating ourselves.

She spoke without turning around. “It’s on the table, honey.”

I sifted through the mail, tossing a few in the garbage that were addressed to my brothers just because I could, until I came to the bottom of the pile. There was an envelope with my name on it in an indistinguishable handwriting. It was neat, so it wasn’t from any of my teammates, and the texture of the envelope felt fancy, like whatever was inside was more important than regular mail.

I began ripping it open before my mother scolded me. “Jordan, use the letter opener! You’re going to ruin it.”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s just an envelope, Mom.”

“I swear you boys go off to play professional hockey and lose all your manners!” she huffed, handing me the letter opener before returning to her tray of sandwiches.

Once it was open, I wasn’t sure what happened first: my heart sinking or me dry heaving. My mother was the only one who noticed. She dropped the knife she was using and rushed over to me, asking me over and over what was wrong. I couldn’t answer. My hands started shaking and I watched the invitation flutter to the floor. Mom picked it up and scanned it, instantly knowing what was wrong.

“Oh, Jordan.” Her voice was an octave I’d never heard. Her heart broke for me. She helped me into a chair at the table and fetched me a cold washcloth for my face. “Put it on your forehead,” she instructed.

She had to set the invitation on the table. Just looking at it made me sick to my stomach. This was supposed to be the greatest summer of my life, one to rival Eric’s when he won the cup. All it was shaping up to be was a disaster.

Because you have shared in our lives by your friendship and love, we
Haley Jane Balistrerie and Matthew Christopher Leed
Invite you to share the beginning of our new life together...

A wedding. You invited me to your wedding. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why. Not only why you’d invite me, but why you never told me you belonged to someone else. Why hadn’t you worn your engagement ring whenever we were together? Why didn’t you tell me to back off? Why did you let me fall in love with you when you knew you couldn’t love me back?

August 8th, 2009. Your invitation told me to save the date, to repondez, s’il vous plait, but what was I supposed to do? I loved you. I was ready to lose my head over you and now I’d have to watch you walk down the aisle and into the arms of another man. I’d have to watch you promise to love him forever, through sickness and in health, until the day you died. Was it awful of me to wish you dead right then? Was it selfish of me to wish Matthew dead, with his boastful medical degree and bogus trust fund?

Max persuaded me to go. He’d gotten an invitation from Tyler—literally and figuratively speaking. The Frenchman had been nothing but smiles all week. He’d taken to calling himself “Finch” after watching American Wedding and asked how one would go about having sex with all the bridesmaids without anyone noticing. Max disgusted you but I think you would’ve laughed at that.

“Relax, mon ami,” Max said from beside me, instantly noticing the way my body stiffened once Pachelbel’s Canon started playing. “She is only a woman.”

But you weren’t only a woman. You were supposed to be it for me. You were supposed to love me the way I loved you and spend the rest of your life with me, not the asshat at the front of the church who kept his hands shoved in his pockets the entire time. I hated him. I hated him for being such a douchebag and I hated him even more for being the one to make you happy. I hated the thought of him touching you the way I’d only dreamed of and hating even more that I knew he already had.

All at once everyone seemed to sense your presence. They stood, turning around to watch as you entered the church on your father’s arm. There was a collective gasp, one that I partook in, at the mere sight of you. I thought Max was going to die. You were breathtaking, just as stunning as I remembered, and I felt my body burst into flames. Every inch of my body ached with want. I’d never felt such pain and I heard Tanger in my head: “That is la doleur exquise, mon ami, and it spares no one.” The exquisite pain—the heart-wrenching pain of wanting someone you can’t have.

Max was talking but I didn’t hear him. I watched you like a hawk eyeing its prey, laughing to myself spitefully because no matter what happened I always felt possessive of you. You weren’t mine anymore. That much was evident as you tearfully recited your vows and swore your devotion to another man.

The officiant asked if anyone objected to your union. Max glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, trying to guess if I was going to do something stupid. Would it have been stupid, or would it have worked? Was there anything I could’ve possibly done to bring you back to me? I shook my head. If there was, I would’ve known. I would’ve done it. Instead of standing to tell you all of this, I stood to leave. For a brief moment I could’ve swore you caught my eye—green on blue once again, and for the last time—but I was probably imagining things.

La doleur exquise indeed.