Last Year Was Complicated

Last year was complicated...

“So everyone should be arriving at the house in the next fifteen minutes, and the wake ends around three and then depending on how you’re feeling maybe we’ll order in for dinner. I know how you feel about finger foods.” Brett had to admit that she was only half listening to her father as he drove the car from the cemetery back to their house after the funeral.

She was starting to regret her decision not to say anything, even though she still had no idea what she would have said… but wasn’t this a once in a lifetime thing you couldn’t take back? Maybe that was why she was feeling guilty.

Her mind was completely empty from the time that she got up that morning.

She rolled through the morning routine motions; wake up, take a shower, have a light breakfast, brush hair, get dressed. She tried to take her time with each step because it was a distraction, because she was afraid that if she let herself think for even a single second she would never be able to get up off of the floor again.

She had remained quiet all the way to the cemetery, they were the first to arrive, of course. Gia didn’t even try to make conversation, she simply sat with her and held her hand as they waited for things to start. Antoine had taken the seat next to Gia, with an arm stretch out over the back of the chairs so that he could rest his palm against Brett’s back from where she sat next to her father, holding his hand.

Again, not a single thing went through her mind. She simply sat, sunglasses perched on her nose covering her eyes, staring at the centre of the coffin waiting to be lowered into the ground without ever really actually looking at it. She knew it was mahogany in color, and that the detailing was brass, but that was it.

She didn’t listen to a word anyone had said through the entire thing, in fact, she couldn’t even say how long the service had been even if she tried, despite the fact that at one point when she had to move her eyes she looked down at her watch and stared at the little three on the right side of the face.

She hadn’t been surprised to see Antoine, Jamie, Jordie and even Jason show up with Kelly, she hadn’t been surprised when Antoine had taken the seat next to Gia, but she had been surprised to see Tyler. He wasn’t with his teammates, in fact Brett wouldn’t have even known he had been there if she hadn’t turned to say something to her dad as people were starting to leave after the service was over and caught sight of him.

He had been standing in the very back, behind the last row of chairs, he hadn’t made a single effort to get closer to where she was, he hadn’t made any effort to come to say hi or to even let her know he was there. Part of her found that infuriating, but she was also genuinely grateful for it. That was the last thing she needed to deal with today.

When they pulled into the driveway Brett wasn’t sure how she managed to heave herself up and out of the car and into the house when all she wanted to do was stay put where she was and pretend today didn’t exist. She forced herself to keep on her feet because she was sure that if she sat down she wouldn’t be able to get up again so she went straight into the kitchen and ran a sink full of water and little bit of dish soap so that they could keep up with dishes from their guests.

She was wiping down their already clean kitchen counters when Antoine and Stars Company walked in, and Antoine asked her, “Is there a reason you’re cleaning already clean surfaces?”

“I don’t really want to go out there.” Brett admitted to him softly, her hand pausing, dish rag resting against the counter as she stared down at her fingers.

Brett was surprised, and it showed on her face, when Jason took a few steps forward and wrapped an arm around her shoulder, pulling her into his side. Sure, they got along well, Brett would even go so far as to say that he was a friend, but this wasn’t the kind of friends that they were. She was sure in the time that she had known him they had never once even shook hands, let alone hugged.

Still, she found herself relaxing, even letting go of the rag in her hand to wrap her arm across his stomach, hand resting on his side as she leaned into him. He rubbed her bicep through the sleeve of her dress and he even leaned over and kissed the top of her head. After a few seconds he let her go, knowing if it were him he wouldn’t want the constant touching all of the time.

That was when Jamie told her softly, “Tyler was here, you know.”

Nodding Brett said, “I know, I saw him.”

“He didn’t come with us.” Jamie informed her, and when she didn’t respond right away he went on to tell her, “He came on his own.”

There was a commotion of voices that floated into the kitchen when Gia pushed the door open and walked in, and they were enveloped in silence again when the door fell shut. Brett looked over at the door instinctively, catching a few familiar faces before it closed but not the one she had been looking for. Not that she was expecting him to be here. The funeral was one thing, but she knew Tyler well enough to know that he would draw the line at showing up to her mother’s wake.

The funeral had been a show of support, because despite all that had gone on between them and in their relationship, Brett knew deep down, somewhere hidden, Tyler did care for her in a friendly way at the very least. How could he not? You couldn’t spend that much time with someone and not grow to care for them at least at the most basic of human levels.

Jamie, because he didn’t really know what else to say and the silence was uncomfortable, said, “I’m not even sure how he knew, we didn’t tell him.”

Brett knew exactly how Tyler had found out about her mother. She plucked the small white cardstock out of the bouquet of lilies that had arrived two days earlier, and despite her feelings toward Tyler in this moment she couldn’t bring herself to get rid of them yet.

Jamie flipped the card over to read it.

‘Brett,

Remembering your wonderful mother and wishing you comfort and healing.

Thinking of you, the Seguins.’


Brett wasn’t sure how his mother had found out about her mother, probably one of his sisters was her guess, but she was grateful for the flowers and even more so just the fact that she had thought of her at all. It wasn’t necessary and certainly wasn’t expected and Brett knew that his mother knew little to nothing of what had gone on in their relationship but reading that card made her smile just a little bit.

Jamie handed the card back to Brett and nodded his head, “Oh.”

By the time three-fifteen rolled around Brett had finished the last of the dishes, thanks to doing them as they were collected rather than doing them all at once. She did one more circle around the living room to clean up and then she kissed her father’s cheek and made her way upstairs and to her bedroom. As she crawled into her bed, not bothering to let any of her friends know where she was, Brett laid on her back and stared at the ceiling.

She wondered how anyone got through this kind of thing.

- - -

Five months later…

When Brett parked her car in an empty parking spot a few feet away from the front door of a bar and grille downtown she took a deep breath in and let it out as she unbuckled her seat belt. She leaned over to look in the rear view mirror quickly, making sure she was presentable, not because she couldn’t bare seeing him looking less than her best but because the only thing that had gotten her through the last few months was taking the time to make sure she looked nice when leaving the house.

She tucked her freshly cut hair back behind her ears, rubbed her tinted lip balm over her lips quickly before she tossed it into the bottom of her large bag and then she pulled her keys from the ignition and got out. She smoothed her hands over the front of her dress and then she tugged on the bottom of her blazer to take any wrinkles out of it as well before she slung her bag over her shoulder and headed inside.

Brett spotted Tyler before he saw her, he was sitting at a table by the window staring at his phone while he waited for her. She was surprised he was here, because when she looked down at her watch she found it was ten to four in the afternoon, Tyler was never early for anything they had planned. He was even early enough to have gotten himself a drink, and to have drank a quarter of it already.

As she slowly approached the table Tyler looked up, immediately shoving his phone into the pocket of his jeans as he rose to his feet to greet her. It was clear to the both of them that they no longer knew how to greet each other anymore.

He cleared his throat, cheek’s and the tips of his ears flushing pink as he smiled gently at her and motioned to the chair across from him. Once they had both sat down he asked her, “I got you a Sprite, you still drink that, right?”

Brett’s eyes flickered down to the glass on a thin, cardboard coaster in front of her and the corners of her lips turned up in the smallest of smiles. She looked over at Tyler and told him, “I do, thank you.”

He nodded his head and suddenly they were put into a silence that neither one of them were comfortable with. So Tyler did what he did best; he filled up the silence by telling her, “You look nice.”

“I had a job interview.” She told him, explaining why she was dressed so nicely to go meet him at a place like this, where the official dress code was jeans and graphic t-shirts. Tyler had wanted to keep it as low key as possible when he had selected the place, because he was surprised when Brett had agreed to meet him in the first place and he wasn’t about to push it by suggesting dinner at a fancy restaurant.

“Where at?” He asked her, watching as she looked over at him in surprise. She hadn’t been expecting for him to care to ask why.

She told him, “At a bank downtown.”

“Well, I hope it works out for you.” Tyler told her, and he seemed genuine when he told her, “My mom told me you’re graduating this month.”

Nodding Brett informed him, “Yeah graduation is in a week and a half. I loaded up on courses this semester. Wanted to get it finished.”

“Congratulations.” He told her with a smile, and he surprised her by asking her, “Would it maybe we okay if I came? To your graduation… as a friend.”

“You want to come to my graduation?” She asked him in surprise.

“I do, and my mom wants to go too.” Tyler told her, and he was very quick to add, “But I don’t want to come just because she does. I really do want to go Brett, I know it’s something that’s important to you and I haven’t always been around for your life like I should have been but I want to be there for this.”

The corners of her lips turned up into a smile as she told him, “You can come.”

Tyler watched as she picked up her glass and took a sip through her straw and then when she set the cup down he told her, “So… the last couple of months have been… eye opening I guess, for me. With the injury, the playoffs, and us… and I’ve done a lot of thinking and a lot of… soul searching I guess. I want you to know that I think I finally realized why I treated you the way that I did, and I’d like to talk to you about it because with how things ended between us I just want us to have the chance to be open with each other and kind of talk things out because that’s something we’ve never really done before.”

“Okay...” She was, admittedly, intrigued by this.

“I’ve always had this problem with blaming what I was doing and how I was acting on other things going on in my life. In high school it was my parent’s fault, in Boston it was just everyone’s fault because they let me let my life get out of control, and then they traded me and that kind of threw my entire world off balance. I’m not saying this as an excuse because the way that I’ve treated you, and frankly a lot of other people in my life, is inexcusable but… it’s taken me a long time to get over it honestly. It’s really easy to fake it, I do genuinely love Dallas and being a part of this team but that little voice was always in the back of my head telling me that you know, I was useless, that they traded me because I was worthless to them and that if I didn’t watch Dallas would do the same thing.

I didn’t know how to handle the feeling of being traded, because for a long time I didn’t see anything wrong with what was going on off the ice for me. I thought that the only reason it was getting so much attention was because of who I was or the team that I played for because surely every team had young guys that partied even more than I did. Like I said; I always found a way to blame someone else for my actions.” He told her, stopping to lean forward, forearms against the table, lifting one hand to wrap his fingers around his glass and taking a drink of his water.

Brett took his break in the conversation as her chance to ask him, “Was there ever a time where you actually felt the same way about me as I did about you?”

“From the second I met you. I think that’s what made being a decent person to you so hard for me.” Tyler told her, and a laugh bubbled out of her mouth.

His brow raised, but a small smile graced his lips as she covered her mouth and then she asked him, “You were a shitty boyfriend because you liked me?”

Tyler, now seeing the humor in his words, let out a chuckle, but he explained to Brett, “I love you more than I have loved anyone outside of my family before and that scared the crap out of me Brett. It terrified me because I knew what was going on in my head and I didn’t want to drag you down with me… which in hindsight I kind of did anyway.”

“No, I’m just too stubborn to let go of something that’s important to me, whether it's good for me or not.” She told him honestly, and he smiled over at her.

“I was afraid of finding out that you and I could be really, really good together because I was afraid of what you might think if you knew what was really going on with me. It was easier to just shut you out, because then I didn’t have to deal with this part of me that felt so… out of control compared to the rest of my life and especially compared to what I wanted my life to be like.” He told her honestly, adding in when she reached across the table and slipped her hand into his, “The last thing I want is for you to feel obligated to forgive me right now, because that wasn’t my intention and I know the last thing I deserve is your forgiveness but… I am so sorry for everything Brett. If I could go back and treat you the way that you deserved to be treated right from the beginning I would in a heartbeat.”

“You didn’t do it all yourself, you know. I was pretty awful to you too, so how about I’ll forgive you if you forgive me.” Brett told him with a smile.

Tyler looked over at her in surprise but it only took him a second to smile and tell her, “Deal.”

She chuckled and then she said, “I think we needed the time apart, real time apart not like we usually did, to grow up a little. Five months isn’t that long in the grand scheme of things, but it was time we needed to deal with some things and maybe now we can try to… I don’t know, move forward.”

“I’d like that.” He told her softly.

When they were enveloped in silence again Brett asked him the question that had been on her mind since that day, “How come you didn’t come to the wake?”

Clearing his throat Tyler explained to her, “Going to your mom’s funeral felt right, it was important, but I just felt like showing up at the wake would have been the wrong thing. That was for you, and your family and I didn’t want to show up and ruin anything. Maybe now, in the place we’re both at I would have reconsidered, but then… it would have been right.”

Her eyes welled up with tears, and she laughed at herself as they spilled out over her cheeks and before she could even reach up with her hand Tyler slid his chair closer to her and reached out to wipe them with the pads of his thumbs. There, that close to each other, Brett realized for the first time since sitting down at this table what she couldn’t put her finger on about him from the second she saw him.

He was a different person now than he had been the last time they had talked, or almost any other time before that. His words were genuine, something she wasn’t used to but could always tell whether or not he was when he spoke, he was gentle and soft and whatever soul searching he had done over the last five months was showing.

Once he pulled his hands back Brett looked over at him and with a small smile she asked him, “Do you think we could treat each other right this time?”

He smiled, “I think we could try.”
♠ ♠ ♠
I wanted to get the final chapter of this story just right and tie up any loose ends that I could think of.

I hope I did the story and Brett/Tyler and also you guys justice with this final chapter :)

Ps THANK YOU to everyone who subscribed, read and left comments through the duration of this story, I appreciate it so very much!