Skyfall

After the slightly awkward lunch that Gabe and Elle had encountered on Sunday, she finally pulled every ounce of courage in her body to call up Gabe. Before they had left Zola’s that afternoon she had made it very apparent she was in charge of everything leaving him with, “I’ll call you when I’m ready, ok?” He nodded, and got into his car. All there was to do was sit and wait.

“If you’re not busy today, you can come over after my clinicals and meet her.” She didn’t answer the phone with any kind of pleasantries; she got to work and stuck to it. Gabe wasn’t surprised anymore at the abruptness of her tone; he would have been lying if he had said he was even surprised that she let him see Ava.

“What time should I be over?” His tone was slightly short too. At nearly two in the afternoon he was just pulling himself up from bed while his counterpart had been awake since nearly four in the morning. She shrugged on the line, pinning the phone between her shoulder and ear as she passed through the cafeteria during her break. It was Tuesday and there was a mad rush at the hospital for Tacos, and Elle wasn’t going to miss out on the deal.

“I get off at seven, but typically she’s fed, bathed and in bed by nine or so… You decide.” In a way she was hoping that he’d show up ten or fifteen minutes before she fell asleep—the really hard part of the day—and realize how difficult it was raising a baby, leave, and never come back.

She could always wish.

“I’ll be over at 7:30.” He mumbled sleepily before hanging up the phone on her. If she wanted to be rough, he could play just as rough… he was a hockey player.

~~~~~

“Can you say Mama? Ma-ma?” Elle asked to Ava as they sat on the floor during playtime. Ava blinked back at her mother with a giant toothy grin on her face and clapped her hands together. “No? No talk yet?” She asked again as the baby pushed herself from sitting position on the floor to a scooting position on her butt. Distracted once again by a toy she had to have on the other side of the room. Elle grinned at her daughter and thought about how it seemed like just yesterday she was holding her in the hospital five minutes after she was born and now she was about to start crawling and talking.

“Ca!” Ava cried as she made it to the toy and then landed on the soft cover backwards, hitting her head on the covering. Immediately she looked over at her mother with the toy in her hand, and stared at her with glassy eyes before letting out an ear-piercing scream with ensuing waterworks. Elle rushed over to her baby and cradled her in her arms, pressing kisses to the top of her red-ish blonde head.

“It’s okay, baby. You’re okay.” She reminded her over and over again. Slowly she began to stop crying and finally dropped the toy on the ground that was when the doorbell rang. Elle took a deep breath and hitched Ava up on her hip before answering the door. Her heart was pounding as she opened the white oak door and smiled small at Gabe on the other side with a handful of daises, her favorite flowers.

“Hi,” Gabe said slowly as he was invited into the threshold. Elle bit down on her lip to restrain a sarcastic quip, quick to her tongue, and replied back the pleasantry.

“Hello.” She bit back as Gabe rolled his eyes. This was going to be fun. She ignored the eye roll and grabbed for the flowers in his hands. At least if he was going to be there, he was good for flowers. “Gabe this is Ava. Ava baby, this is my friend Gabe. Can you say hi?” Elle asked her baby who was staring at Gabe with wide eyes, at first she seemed curious, then confused. Gabe waved towards the baby and said hello but nothing came out of the little girls mouth, instead she wrapped her chubby arms around her mothers bicep and buried her face into her mothers bosom.

“Ave? Are you getting shy here?” She asked, trying to pull the little girl from her chest, but it was to no avail. She was stuck like glue. “She doesn’t normally act like this, I guess it is because you’re such a stranger.” And that was all Gabe was able to take.

“Are we going to be pleasant tonight or am I going to regret having to be around you?” He didn’t mean for it to sound terrible but there was no sugar coating the way he was currently feeling and Elle was only adding to harbored feelings. She shot him an annoyed look.

“I don’t know, Gabriel. Why am I having to defend myself in my own home?” Gabe let out an exasperated sigh and ran his hands through his hair.

“I didn’t come over here for you to act like a total and complete bi--”

“Watch your sentence before you finish it.” She warned with a raised eye. If there was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was someone cursing in front of her baby.

“I want to see my kid.”

“I allowed you over here didn’t I? See her, see your kid.” She mumbled, pulling the baby off of her hip and handing her to Gabe—who looked as if he had seen a ghost. “It isn’t that easy is it?” She asked as he picked her up from her mother’s arms gingerly and began bouncing her on his hip.

“Hi baby girl,” He grinned as she stared back at him with wide eyes. Gabe grinned and laughed as he sat down on the couch with her and began bouncing her on his knee, playing the “Giddy Up Horsey” game his parents had played with him and his siblings as a young child. “Can you say daddy? Daddy, yeah?” Elle looked up from where she was cleaning off dishes in the kitchen and watched them carefully.

“Ca! Ca! Ca!” The little girl giggled much to the relief of her mother.

“She doesn’t talk much yet, besides babbling,” Elle spoke, wiping her hands on a dishtowel and walking into the kitchen. “She’s beginning to form words, but most of it comes out as babbling. She hasn’t said her first word yet…” Gabe continued on asking her if she could say daddy, while the words couldn’t get on the babies lips, Elle was slightly worried- and jealous- that her first word might be a word that wont mean a damn thing at the end of summer. They babbled back and forth to each other while Elle made her way around the house doing odd ends and things, when Gabe gasped loudly.

“Elle, I think she needs a diaper change.” He spoke, holding her in the air away from his body and towards her mother. Elle raised her eyes with a bemused smile.

“You want to be the ‘daddy’? You can change the diaper.” In a way she secretly hoped this would have happened. Diaper changes, especially with Ava, were extremely difficult as she tried to roll herself off of the changing table at every chance she got.

“But I don’t know how to change a babies diaper.” He complained, still holding the child away from him. Elle’s eyebrows were still raised in sheer and pure amusement.

“Guess you’re going to teach yourself now.” She added as she directed him down the hallway where Ava’s nursery was.

~~~~~

When it was all said and done with and Ava had her diaper changed, her teethies brushed and she was fast asleep in her pink and grey nursery, Elle found it high time for Gabriel to be scooting himself out of her apartment. She had to hand it to him, he lasted a lot longer than she had betted Tara on, and in the end she lost ten bucks over it. She assumed after a diaper explosion and puke all over his shoulder had happened, that he would go running for the hills. But he didn’t, he grabbed a rag, wiped his shoulder and finished burping the little girl.

“Can we talk?” He asked as they were sitting down in the living room. Elle looked up from her thumbnail that she was picking at and made eye contact with Gabe.

“What’s there to talk about?” She asked innocently, knowing damn well there was a lot to talk about. Gabriel let out a exasperated sigh and shut his eyes as he shook his head.

“You just don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what?” she responded back with a bit of a tone. Two could play this game.

“That I want to be around for you guys. That I never stopped loving you, Elle. That had to do what my agent, coaches, and family told me to do. I didn’t want to leave you barefoot and pregnant, but I did what everyone told me was for the best.”

“You believed it was for the best, Gabe. That’s what kills me.” He shook his head.

“I didn’t. It’s not right that you’re allowed to pin me in the corner as the bad guy, I was just doing what I was told.” She rolled her eyes and ran her hands through her hair, annoyed.

“I did what I had to do, Gabe. I went through a pregnancy I didn’t want too, I went through hours of excruciatingly pain labor by myself, and I have been raising my daughter, by myself. I do get to pin you in the corner as the bad guy. You were eighteen and perfectly capable of making your own decisions. You chose not to be a father because you didn’t want it to look bad on you coming right out of junior into the NHL and having a kid. As much as I was upset that you threw us to the side like a pile of trash, I accepted it and moved on, and honestly, Gabe, that’s what you need to do now. It’s really hard for me to sit here and not pin you as the bad guy, because that’s the only thing I see you as.”

“What if I make it up to you?” He asked.

“How? How are you going to do that? Go back to two Marchs ago when I found out I was pregnant and tell me everything is going to be okay? Go back to last June when you were drafted and I was sitting next to you, hiding my pregnancy, and tell me that I shouldn’t be scared? Are you going to go back to last August where you came over to tell me you were heading out to Denver and you never wanted to see me again? Or maybe to the day Ava was born, eh? You can’t do that. There is no time machine. You have to live with your actions and the consequences of your actions. You could have changed what happened a year ago and you know it.”

“I did, I made a decision to leave you guys behind. You know why? You want to know why I spent a month pinning over what I should do?” She nodded, egging him on. “Because I was so worried about you, about us, and about the baby. The media would rip you apart once they heard about it, and they would rip our family apart. I already had enough media scrutiny in my life and I didn’t want to bring you two into it.” Elle let out a sarcastic laugh.

“There you go again, blaming someone that isn’t yourself. Get a grip, Gabe, it was your choice. You made that choice. I agreed to let you meet her, and you did. Just please stay out of our lives now, I don’t need some fatherly figure in her life popping up during the summer and then leaving as soon as the actual important part of his life begins.” That hurt him, deep down. “I think you need to leave.” She finally said after a couple of minutes. He followed her to the door as she opened it to let him out.

“I still love you, Ellie.” He mumbled as he brushed past her. She shook her head in his direction.

“No, Gabe. No.” She answered back as she shut the door behind him and locked the deadbolt.

It was never easy, having to say goodbye.