Page 8 of Say Hello, Kiss Goodbye

The next day

Nursing an orange juice and listening to Diana Ross through her headphones, Leia hunched over the table in her sister’s conservatory, sketching clothing designs in the back of her journal. The welcome warmth of the late-morning sun hugged the shoulders of her flannel Christmas pajamas, fending off the chill accompanying the first day of 2019. The glass-walled back room, a small addition to the one-bedroom ground-floor apartment, lay empty and still, albeit cluttered with the previous night’s excess. A stack of the just-purchased IKEA plates, now dirty, congregated on a bookshelf along with burnt tea-lights and discarded party hats. Empty beer and prosecco bottles and folded cardboard stuffed the recycling box by the patio door along with leftover sparklers, waiting to burn bright another night.

Sarah was still cocooned in bed, sleeping off the festivities, while her boyfriend, Jordan, desperate to make a good impression with their father, Eddie, had popped two extra-strength painkillers and joined Mr. Scott for a frosty New Year’s Day run around Islington. They’d been gone for forty-five minutes—Leia wondered if Jordan was keeping up or tossing his cookies behind a dumpster.

She flipped the pages of her journal, her eyes detouring past her snoozing laptop, Sarah’s framed London marathon medals, and the neat stack of her well-thumbed gossip magazines, then down to the floor and the two storage boxes she had purchased the day before. Filled with Canadian treats—boxes of Kraft Dinner mac ’n’ cheese, Rockets candy, Coffee Crisp and Mr. Big chocolate bars, and semi-crushed bags of various flavors of potato chips—the orderly stash was courtesy of their dad, who had arrived ten days earlier. Leia hadn’t lived in Oshawa, a city east of Toronto, for eight years, but such home comforts always transported her back to her parents’ tree-lined backyard, Hockey Night in Canada on TV, and weekend shifts as a teenager at one of her family’s two businesses, a bustling Tim Hortons franchise in the center of the city. Twenty-two years since opening its doors, Eddie, a former National Hockey League goalie, still stopped in daily, splitting his time with the car dealership he had founded with his wife, Jenny. For his daughters, cars took a back seat to donuts, so when Eddie walked through Sarah’s door before Christmas with the chain’s famous TimBits in his carry-on, the donut holes were wolfed down within minutes.

For Leia, no more TimBits meant Canadian Smarties were the next best thing. She ripped open a box and shook out a palmful of the colorful candy-coated chocolates. You’re procrastinating again. Listening to music, sketching, eating junk… stop it. She slid the candies back into their cardboard home and stared at the words written in ink twenty minutes earlier:

December 31, I was grateful for:

1. the lights coming back on at IKEA.

2. celebrating New Year’s with Dad, Sarah, and Jordan.

3.

Forehead scrunched in thought, she absentmindedly stuck her hand in an almost empty bag of Hickory Sticks, the smoky potato snacks a childhood favorite of hers. C’mon, what else am I grateful for? You’re not hungover—you have no excuse. She stuffed a handful of savory goodness in her mouth and chewed slowly, hoping something—anything—would pop into her head. Why is this so hard? She flipped a few pages to the front of the journal, desperate for inspiration, and read the first entry from Christmas Day, her birthday.

December 25, I was grateful for:

1. spending my birthday/Christmas with Dad and Saz.

2. food.

3. no more jet lag.

Her eyes jumped to the next entry.

December 26, I was grateful for:

1. yummy turkey sandwiches.

2. binge-watching all of Poldark. Aidan Turner is yummier than turkey sandwiches!

3. a day spent in flannel Christmas pajamas. Even if they’re in Saz’s signature blue.

December 27 was completely blank.

December 28 was half-assed with only binge-watching more Poldark (should I visit Cornwall while I’m here?) written on the first line.

The next two days were untouched. Leia had fallen off the gratitude wagon—but had she really been on it?

Before the holidays, Leia’s therapist had made her promise one thing—to keep a gratitude journal. “It will help diminish toxic emotions. It will ease your depression and anxiety,” she’d said. But finding time to do the homework stirred up more anxiety, not less, and the longer Leia sat cursing the blank lines in the cute zippered journal with the Brooklyn Bridge on the cover, the guiltier she felt. Gotta love the irony…

Her gaze leapt to the window sill in front of her and a glittery noisemaker, its golden streamers sadly splayed and torn. Out with the old, in with the new, so they say. Waking up her laptop, her fingers swept the trackpad and opened photo albums stuffed with New Year’s Eve memories: 2013, 2014, and 2015 in Pittsburgh, and 2016 and 2017 in New York. Over the years, the cities, faces, and multi-million dollar homes had changed, but the parties remained much the same, offering chef-catered cuisine, premium alcohol, and decadent desserts—everything Leia and her friends desired except a midnight kiss from their partners. Such was the life of a girlfriend or wife of a NHL player when their team had a New Year’s Eve road game. The league never stopped for “Auld Lang Syne” a reality Leia had endured, thanks to Tyler McClelland, her first love and recent ex-husband.

Diana Ross’s “Upside Down” filled her headphones, and Leia sucked in a breath, selecting New Year’s 2014—the night she sat in the stands watching twenty-two-year-old Tyler, an offensive defenseman for Pittsburgh, score the winning goal in a nail-biting 3-2 home win over Carolina. Afterward, the loved-up pair went out for a late dinner to celebrate. Four years feels like a lifetime ago. Leia clicked through her memories, an unsettled heaviness tightening her chest. First up, a photo brimming with youthful passion—Leia, all smiles entering her favorite Japanese restaurant, wearing a beloved upcycling design (a knee-length cocktail dress with a plunging neckline and bell sleeves created from meadow green velvet curtains), and holding hands with a beaming Tyler, immaculately dressed in a fitted charcoal gray suit, his blond hair still damp from his post-game shower. We looked so amazing that night.

She opened another photo: their secluded table romantically lit with candles. They always saved that corner for us.

Leia’s finger paused over the trackpad, but her heartbeat had already broken into a sprint. There’s no stopping now. She clicked. There he was, Tyler, the love of her life—the boy she had met at fifteen, the man she had followed to Pittsburgh for college at nineteen—on bended knee, a three-carat Tiffany dazzler in his hands. He was my meant-to-be. The one. Her jaw clenched as she enlarged photos of her tearful New Year’s “yes” and their romantic clinch. But I was one of many—so many—you fucking liar!

More clicks and she careened into their 2015 wedding album and the photos of a lavish mid-July affair in Toronto’s famous hilltop castle. Leia was twenty-two, Tyler a year older. If I had known what was to come… She landed on a black and white photo snapped while she happy-cried through her vows surrounded by teary-eyed friends and family.

I, Leia, take thee Tyler, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer… A sour expression pinched her lips. … in Pittsburgh and in New York, to love and to cheat, til divorce us do part…

She slumped in her chair, glaring at the screen. You heartless piece of shit. Her pulse pounded, outpacing the music filling her ears. Together for ten years, married for three, separated for four months, and divorced for two. You broke me. You stole the best of me and now I’m someone I don’t recognize anymore—someone who believes nothing lasts forever and there’s no such thing as true love. She gulped back a sob and trembled. At least I know better now. I won’t be hurt again.