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“This…this was the man I wanted to be with forever,” she said handing the picture to Emma.
“Oh, holy craps Stacey! This is…”
“Jake,” she said when her friend could do nothing but gape at her.
“Hold on at the wedding…”
“I hadn’t seen Jake since the night of our rehearsal.”
“Rehearsal for what?”
“Our wedding,” she told her giving her a copy of the wedding invitation.
“He didn’t show?”
“It’s complicated; when Jake and I first started dating it was magic. I felt like the most important person in the world to him when I was with him, then he graduated. He was a year ahead of me and went off to college. Our relationship was steady but after I graduated, my mom died. I was lost and Jake was there for me. I turned down the Ivies to go be with him and…and when I was there it just started getting harder.”
“What did?” Emma asked gently.
“Everything, most people took one look at me and thought I was a dumb blonde, they saw a pretty face and ignored me. Other girls were throwing themselves at him right in front of me and he never once told them to back off. He was enjoying the attention too much, I think. I only went part-time my first year because the school didn’t give me a scholarship and I couldn’t afford anything else. I lived in the dorms but had to work to do so and then my second year I got a grant to pay for the courses. That Christmas we went home, we were having a great day with his parents and the rest of our friends and family who were in town…”
“And?” Emma led.
“And as we were standing under the mistletoe, he pulls out a ring and proposes.”
“Wow…”
“It’s not like I could say no in front of everyone, and I didn’t want to say no. I thought it was his way of showing that I was the most important part of his life.”
“Okay so if it was that much of a shock to you—was his idea, why didn’t he show?”
“After that he wanted to have the wedding fast, we set the date and come to find out it was the same weekend as the draft. He didn’t tell me he’d put his name out there for it. When I finally found out we argued and I gave him an ultimatum to either show up for the wedding and marry me, finish college, and then work with his dad at the dealership or go after a Super Bowl ring.”
“And he chose football?”
“He said he was going to come to the wedding and convince me we could have it all but he saw me and knew I was serious, so he left and wrote me this.”
“What does it say?” Emma asked as she stared at the letter.
“I don’t know, I never opened it,” she admitted showing her the back of the envelope. “It hurt too much to try and read it, for me to see the final proof that I wasn’t his choice.”
“Ah Stace, and now?”
“Now, I’m still in that place Em. All I wanted was for him to tell me, the world, but especially those other girls who were draped all over him that I meant more to him, that I was his because he was mine. No one else has come close to making me feel the way I do with him, and I know it’s all going to end.”
“Ah honey, it might not,” she said giving her a smile. “He could see that his choice back then was the wrong one and come around. Would you give him the same ultimatum now? You or football?”
“No and honestly, I didn’t mean it back then either, not in the way he thought when I first said it. I just meant that I needed to know that I was the one who came first. Everything in my life revolved around football—Jake, the school lived and breathed it, our friends—it was always football, football, football.”
“Add in losing your mom and you were scared that one day football would come first so you pushed him away before that could happen?”
“Sort of,” she agreed. “I just couldn’t risk losing him to football and in worrying about that I lost him anyway because when I told him he needed to pick between me and football—what meant more to him, he got defensive. Which then made me defensive and take it to the stupid extreme I never actually meant.”
“But he’s here now and the two of you seem to be thrilled to be together.”
“That’s what I felt eight years ago, Jake showed up for the rehearsal his normal self and I swore I’d won that he admitted that I meant everything to him. But it was simply that he was waiting for the results of the draft and when he knew that he’d made it in football he changed his mind, chose it rather than me.”
“So, what are you going to do now?”
