Skyfall

The hair stood up on the back of her neck as soon as she saw him; Tara had been right, he looked real good. The last time she had seen him, the last memory she had of him, he had been crying—his eyes puffy and red—trying to beg her for forgiveness and making up lame excuses about why he was too young. He looked totally different now.
The baby fat that hung around his chin and midsection was replaced with a well-defined jawline and chiseled abs.

Ava wiggled around in her mother’s arms, tapping her dolly with her hands, and trying to shield her eyes from the bright sun outside. From the other side of the pool, Ben flagged her over. He had tricked her.

“Elle! Over here!” Ben called and Gabe’s head spun from where he was sitting on one of the beach chairs. The brunette boy—who was about to be in a whole mess of trouble—waved his hands over his head to try and flag her over. It failed as she stood with legs that turned into cement.

She managed to pick up her feet, however, and began to make the trek back to her car. When Ben had called her this morning, one of her only days off of both school and work, to come and hang out by the pool, she had expected to be just with him or maybe with a couple of the other Ranger players… not Gabe. Certainly not Gabe.

“I made him call you and invite you over. I told him that I would blackmail him if he didn’t call you and invite you to the pool. I knew you wouldn’t come over, and obviously I was right, I just want to see you… and the baby.” She stopped quickly on her feet, spun around and met Gabe chest-to-chest. Stepping back, she became a little flustered by the overall new look, but thankfully Gabe hadn’t taken notice to it. She didn’t back down though, no. She let the weak-kneed, loss of words, heart racing feeling fly from her mind, and grabbed up all of the courage she had in her little five foot two body, and let him have it.

“You don’t get to decide when and where you get to see me and Ava,” she spat and as soon as the child heard her name, she peaked up and started giggling. “It’s not your choice. I forgot about you, I moved on, I went on with my life—with my daughter’s life, and now you’re back expecting to just talk with me, like it’s all hunky dory. Guess what, Gabe? It’s not. You left and went to Denver, and I accepted that. You just don’t get the choice of when you want to see us.” All of the things that she said were true and factual, yet they hurt Gabe deep down. He hadn’t expected her to be this upset. In a way he had expected her to just forgive him—albeit be a little upset—but nowhere to the proximity that she was at.

“Why can’t we just talk?” Her face turned neutral, she pulled her lips in by her teeth bit down and let them go with a loud pop!

“Did you not hear what I just said?”

“Eleanor, I heard what you said,” he spat as his blood pressure rose, and he began to get more and more agitated. This wasn’t going as well as he had hoped it would. “I asked you a question now. It’s a yes or no question, and I’m hoping like God that you’re going to choose the first. Hear me out here, El… I’ve changed.” Gabe was pouring out his soul in front of her on the tile-top of a pool deck and all Elle could do was scoff. He hadn’t changed, he figured out what he was missing out on—the sex was what she was assuming—and now he was just coming back for an easy fuck and another run away. But Elle couldn’t handle that anymore, she had another human being to take care of—one that was more important than herself, and she just couldn’t allow him back into their lives.

“No.” Gabe’s face dropped as Ben walked up. Elle raised her eyebrows towards her brunette friend and shook her head. If she had known this was the kind of bullshit that she was going to have to put up with today, she would have never left the house.

“Elle, let me have Ava,” Ben motioned towards the baby and opened out his arms. Elle tightened the grip on her daughter, and shook her head.

“Why?”

“Give me Ava, and go to my place with Gabe. He just wants to talk, hear him out. It wont kill you.” Elle raised her eyebrows towards Ben as if to signify she wasn’t going anywhere. “Elle, I’m not giving you the option. He wants to talk, it’s the least you can do. You don’t even have to listen to him--”

“Hey!” Gabriel cried raising his hands. Ben shrugged towards him as Elle handed over Ava, diaper bag and all.

“Well? Just talk for like twenty minutes, then you can get Aves and go back home or wherever. I can’t stand him sitting in my apartment all day moping about how he wants to talk to you; I can’t do it, Elle. I might go insane and kill him, store his body underneath the kitchen cabinet, and then set the place on fire. I don’t rock prison guard orange and he is driving me insane with the incessant asking about you. Do me a favor and talk to him.”

Gabriel raised his hands again and moved them around, “Am I not even standing here?” he asked to both of them, obviously irritated by the banter that was going on between Elle and Ben about him, right in front of him. Ben shrugged his shoulders and began to walk with the little girl over to the cabana.

“Oh! Please don’t have S-E-X all over my living room, keep it classy,” he spelt out with a laugh, though it wasn’t funny to neither Elle nor Gabe. Gabriel looked over at Elle who shoved her hands into the pockets of her shorts.

“After you?” he motioned towards the walkway. Elle let out a long huff before mumbling something underneath her breath and rolling her eyes. This was going to be fun, Gabriel thought to himself.

~~~~~

She sat on the couch, legs tucked up under and her cell phone planted firmly in her hands. They had already been in Ben’s apartment for five minutes and neither party had spoken a word. Gabriel sat, wordless, across from her on smaller sofa and couldn’t begin to speak the words he wanted to say. All of a sudden he felt intimidated, nervous and terrified. Two years, hell even a year ago, this wasn’t the same Elle and Gabriel against the world. He was able to talk to her about everything, one of the reasons he fell so hard in love with her, and she would listen—good or bad. Now it was all awkward and knot-in-stomach feeling.

“Are we just going to sit here and stare at each other?” Gabe finally asked sounding more assertive than his nerves made him feel. She looked up from her phone with a small smirk—was that good or bad?

“I never promised Ben I would talk to you. I’m going to sit in here for twenty minutes, try and not throw up over the fact that I have to do this, and then get my daughter and take her home. I don’t want to talk to you, Gabe. There is nothing to talk about.” He was going to take that for bad.

“Nothing to talk about? Damn it, El, there’s a whole lot to talk about. Like: the baby, and us, and our schedules, and how everything will work out.” The moment those words came out of his mouth and Eleanor’s face dropped into pure pissed off, Gabriel realized he shouldn’t have said that.

“What do you want to know so badly, ‘daddy’ Gabriel?” she mocked his tone with long drips of sarcasm, but Gabe failed to notice.

“What’s she like? What have you guys been doing? I just want to know her.” He spoke honestly and from the heart, yet Elle wasn’t taking any of it. He could talk the talk, that much was obvious, but he could never walk the walk.

“First of all, the baby’s name is Ava. Ava Nicolette Reagan. She was born seven pounds three ounces, 21 inches long at 4:52 in the morning on December 7th, 2011, after I spent fucking twenty-seven hours in labor. Not that you’d know since you damn well didn’t even call to find out she was even born. I know Ben told you, he probably told you as soon as she was born seeing he was the fucking one in the fucking delivery room with me instead of you. She’s beginning to crawl and starting to talk and she’s the most brilliant and smart baby I’ve ever seen in my entire life. She gets the most awful ear infections that go on for months and next month she’s schedule to have tubes put in her ears because for weeks on end she keeps herself—and me—awake with screaming because her ears hurt so bad and the antibiotics wont help. She gets an upset tummy when you feed her strained peaches because of the high acid content, so you end up with strained peaches and milk all over your shoulder. She only sleeps with a blanket on one of her legs, the left, and it must be placed a certain way before she sleeps or else she wont fall asleep. She has the most brilliant and vibrant blue eyes, she got them from you, and sometimes I feel like I’m staring into the goddamn ocean. And her hair is a trip. It’s blonde and curly and messy, and she refuses to keep bows and bands in it. She hates socks and shoes and loves to get kisses from Papa’s puppy.” Gabe couldn’t help but smile despite the verbal attack he was inadvertedly being fed from Elle.

“You know what, El? I know you’re pissed at me, I know you’re hurt… But can’t you forgive me? I’m coming back because I realized how much I missed out on and how much I miss you… and Ava. Don’t you at least have it in your heart to begin to look past the wrong doings and into the future?” Elle about blew her lid at him. He had no rhyme or reason as to talk to her like this.

“The day that you sat me down and told me you were ‘too young’ to be a dad and that you weren’t ready for that kind of responsibility, that was the day I reserved all rights to forgive you. I was eighteen, Gabe. Eighteen. I was still a kid too, yet I am the one doing all the work. It wasn’t just me who was at fault for getting pregnant, you helped too; I was scared, more than you because you were just allowed to leave. I was the one who got kicked out of my house at seven and a half months pregnant, I was the one who slept in my fucking car for two weeks while I waited for my rent money to go through so I was able to get an apartment. I was the one, who at barely eight months pregnant had their water break on a fucking public transit because my car was broken and I couldn’t afford to fix it. I wasn’t full-term yet and I went into labor… all by myself. I was scared and terrified, and all I still wanted was you there. If you had shown up that day, I would have taken you back. But you didn’t. You stayed in fucking Denver, where you probably fucked half the entire city, while I was in labor, and your best friend fed me ice chips and let me squeeze his hand while my insides were being ripped from me. I probably would have been fine if you showed up two months after she was born, said hello and started acting like a fucking father. But no, Gabe, it doesn’t work that way. Not anymore. You don’t get to just choose when you come into somebody’s life. You don’t wait until their seven months old to just pop up and pretend you’ve been there for everything. You don’t get to do that and I don’t have to forgive you. You hurt me and now you show up and expect everything to be fine. Well it’s not.” To say that Elle was upset and emotional at this point would have been a grave understatement. By the time her little rant had ended she was wiped fat tears from underneath her eyes and Gabe felt like he was the scum of the world.

“I’m sorry.”

What else was he supposed to say? He had hurt her, he knew that; he just hadn’t expected her to be this upset and downtrodden about it.

“I’m sure you are, Gabe… I really am, but sorry doesn’t cut it after a year. You ripped every little fiber out of my heart and stomped on it when you said you were leaving for Denver early and not to ever try and get in touch with you… It hurt. You’re too late now.” Gabe wanted to wrap his arms around her and never let her go. He wanted to tell her all the things he had written in the letters (all of them still sitting in his closet waiting to be sent). He wanted to show her how much she (and Ava) meant to him and how he wanted to have a do-over to begin his family again. But he had screwed up. He had fucked up the one good thing in his life besides hockey and now she was about to walk away for good.

She looked down at her phone and then back up at Gabe, “It’s been twenty minutes, I need to go get Ava and go home.” Her expression came out tough, but Gabe knew (because Elle never wore her emotions too well) that she was having a tough, if not tougher, time with this than he was. There were so many factors that had to be figured out and both were just too pigheaded.

“Promise you’ll think about it?” Gabe managed to choke out as she opened the front door. She turned around and faced him with pursed lips.

“No.” she mumbled back quietly as she allowed the door to close behind her, leaving Gabe to deal with the post-fire.