Losing Him Was Blue!

Brr. It was freezing today in downtown Pittsburgh. Had to be roughly -2 degrees outside, and snow was everywhere.

I pushed Lucia through the park, a Starbucks coffee tucked into the cup holder and the light sound of my UGGS crunching the snow beneath my feet.

Brander Park wasn’t anything like Ferrence was in Buffalo, it had a fountain smack dab in the middle of it, what seemed like thousands of trees filling the area and various park benches.

It was adorable and when it hit fall, it just looked gorgeous with all the trees different colours.

I spotted Troy, sitting on a park bench with a Starbucks coffee in his hand. He had on a dark blue jacket, a red ball cap and blue jeans. I actually hadn’t seen him at all in the two years I’ve been in Sweden and he honestly looked the exact same.

Sidney looked absolutely identical to his father, there was no doubting it. The eyes, the shape, the colour, the intensity of them. The face shape and the nose were completely identical.

“Hey Troy,” I greeted, moving my bang out of my eyes and taking off my sunglasses. He sat his coffee on the bench beside him and stood up. He was where Sidney got his height from, he was between 5”11 and 6”0. “How are you?” I accepted his hug and pulled the stroller towards the bench where I sat down beside him. Lucia was wearing a wool hat, a sweater under her coat, jeans, snow pants and her boots. Claude covered her with a blanket before I left the house.

“Meh, I’m tired,” He yawned, drinking from the to-go cup. “I flew in last night, and I am staying with Sidney over the Christmas weekend,”

“Is Trina coming?” I asked, trying to deter the subject. I wanted to have less of a ‘you should talk to Sidney’ conversation, and more catching up. I highly doubted it would stay that way, but one can dream I guess.

“No. Dear god, she hates planes,” He laughed. “So she decided to stay home. Taylor was going home anyway, so we didn’t want to leave her behind,” He put his coffee on the ground and picked Lucia out of the stroller. “Wow, she’s getting big,”

“Two in April,” I mused, drinking my coffee. “It’s hard to believe. It feels like just yesterday I was pregnant for her,”

“If Sidney could see her,” He frowned, letting Lucia take a hold of his finger as their eyes met. Here we go. “So Emily, you never really did tell us… what exactly caused the break up?”

I sighed, twirling my hair around my finger. “It’s hard to explain,” It was even harder telling this to his parents. I felt awkward, because they knew we were having sex and that just I felt made it worse. “So, we’ve been sexually active since the baby steps of the relationship, and we’ve always been careful. I’ve been on birth control, he’s doing the whole condom thing, well, we talked about our future and he said he didn’t want to get married for another ten years,” I frowned, watching the embarassed look on Troy’s face, hearing his son is having sex. He’s 23, he should be by then. “I was sad, I wanted to have a baby like within a year, with him and get married to him. I didn’t want to be with someone else,”

Troy cut me off. “Are you trying to say, that you got pregnant and that’s what broke you up?” He seemed a little ticked off. “I really don’t want you to blame my granddaughter for this,”

“Troy,” I put my hands out. “I am not and I will never blame Lucia for this, ever,” I stopped the flow of tears. “It’s me. All me. I got scared that Sidney would find out I was pregnant and leave me. I didn’t want to get hurt, so I did what I had to do. I left,”

“I’ve asked Sidney his side,” Troy sighed. “Obviously it’s different from yours, because he doesn’t know about Lucia,” He turned his brown eyes on me. “He said he told you he loved you, and you freaked which made him think he scared you off. Then he got in a fight with some kid in a bar in defense of you and you broke up with him then and he hasn’t seen you since,”

I took in a deep breath. It was true. Sidney wasn’t lying. I nodded my head. “Yeah, that is exactly right. I was a little scared that he loved me, because I was pregnant at the time, I didn’t believe he could love me,” I rubbed my face with my hands. “And the thing at the bar, is legit. A guy sent flowers to the Pens locker room, found me in the bar and Sidney flipped and threw him into the crowd. I never-- in the year we were together, I never seen him act that way, ever,”

“In the 23 years I’ve known him,” Troy started and I knew what was coming. I knew this was what we were going to talk about. They wanted Sid and I to get back together. “I have never seen him cry the way he did, when he told me what happened,” I felt my heart break right then and there. “It broke my heart to see the state he was in,”

“I didn’t want to break his heart,” I whispered into my hands that were wrapped tightly around my cup. “I feel so bad,” He looked out towards a few kids playing around by the fountain. “I miss him, you know,”

“He misses you to Em,” Troy glanced briefly over at me before returning back to Lucia on his lap. “He still has your picture hanging in his room,” I simply frowned at his response, knowing Troy wouldn’t lie to me or sugar coat how Sidney actually was. “So, I’m attending his game tonight. And I think you should come with me to see the game,”

“I can’t,” I blurted out. “What if he recognizes me?! Troy, I am so not ready for this,”

He furrowed his brows together. “Emily. As much as I love you like a daughter and want you to be my sons wife, I really don’t like that you want me to continuously lie to my son, knowing how hard he’s been taking this,” He grabbed a gift bag off the ground beside the bench and placed it in the back compartment of the stroller. “Pretty soon, he’s going to find out and you will wish you told him yourself,” He sat Lucia back in the stroller and as the tears streamed down my face, I got up and walked out of the park, leaving Troy sitting there.

I wasn’t mad at Troy, at all. I was sad because I knew what I had done and I was so unsure how to get out of this. He was right, though… one day, I will make a mistake and everything will come crashing down on me.

= = =
Two Days Later
Ugh. I dragged myself down the stairs, carrying the two gift wrapped presents from Troy and Trina. One to Lucia and one to me. I was dying to know what they were. I stuffed them at the front on the ground and moved into the kitchen to check on the turkey.

I cooked turkey like my mother did. I spiced it, and let it cook on very low over night, so the entire house smelled of turkey on Christmas morning. I lifted the end of the tin foil and seen it had been browning over night, and it looked pretty good to me. I turned it up and shoved it back in the oven.

“Ugh, why are you up so early?” Claude yawned, walking into the kitchen. I turned on the coffeemaker and sat down at the kitchen table. Claude joined me with a very sleepy Lucia in his arms. It was only 730AM, which was meh for the both of us.

Claude liked to sleep in though when he didn’t have drills or a practice, which was today. I was shocked, a few teams however, weren’t so lucky and they had a game today.

“I had to check the turkey and get stuff ready,” I pulled my hair down from my clip and messed my fingers through it. “If you want to sleep some more, go for it,”

“Nah, I’m up, besides it’s all the way up the stairs and I’d rather not,” He gathered Lucia and walked out into the living room where I heard the TV turn on.

In a matter of twenty minutes, Lucia was fully woken up and wanted to open the presents. She was almost two, so she sort of understood Christmas to an extent. Claude and I sat on the floor with her and watched her open the gifts we picked out for her. Every item was a new experience for her and it seemed like we picked out the best presents for her.

I got her some new dresses, various other articles of clothing and some toys. Dad got her a Barbie car that was sitting out on the porch, Matt got her a doll house and Farrah gave her some clothes and bought her a few dolls.

Claude got her a gift and refused to tell me what it was, which made me nervous, but I was excited to see what he got her.

“Open this,” Claude smiled, reaching across her face to grab the horribly wrapped box that he dropped in her lap. She looked at it and then at him. “Go ahead, it’s for you,” He was like a kid in a candy store. She ripped the paper off of it and pulled out a toddlers sized Giroux jersey.

“Oh Claude,” I smiled, taking it into my own hands. “It’s adorable,” Lucia stood up and I pulled it over her head. It fit pretty good on her, even though the sleeves were a little long. He assured me she’d grow into them. The last presents were from Troy and Trina.

“Who are these people?” Claude asked, after he swiped the gift out of my hands. “DO we know them?”

“Yes, they are Lucia’s other grandparents,” I snatched back the box and pulled on the bow. Lucia was still working on hers. “Her Dads, parents. I didn’t cut ties with them, it just didn’t seem fair because he and I weren’t getting along,” I got the paper off and smiled widely at the bottle of Daisy by MarcJacobs in my hand.

Underneath was a letter that I snatched and stuffed into my bra before Claude seen. He was busy helping Lucia with the bow on her present. This perfume was the kind I wore when I went to the family dinner at their house.

I watched the present reveal itself to be a tiny pair of hockey skates and a set of padding and a little goalie stick. Lucia was over the moon about the skates. She loved skating, especially when Claude takes her on the ice after practices sometimes, she can barely stand up on them, but she definitely had Sidney’s determination to keep going.
Claude and I promised to take her skating with her new skates. I bought Claude new cologne and he got me a necklace in the shape of a heart, with a C engraved on the back. “Oh Claude, you are so sweet,” I held it in my hands and looked it over. It was gorgeous, shiny silver on a matching chain. I leaned in and pecked his lips before securing it around my neck.

“I knew you’d love it, you don’t wear any chains even though you have a weird bottle cap necklace in your jewelery box upstairs,” He gathered up the wrapping papers off the ground and ventured into the kitchen with it.

He had set aside a garbage bag for all the wrapping paper. I secured my hand around my necklace and frowned, remembering the Heineken bottlecap necklace.

I had wanted to put it in the envelope to give back to him, but I just couldn’t do it. It meant so much to me.

It was the first thing Sidney ever gave me.