Hold the Forevers

It had been six weeks since we’d been this close together. The hardest and most grueling six weeks of my life.

This wasn’t like the other times, where we had been too far apart to make this work. This was me actively avoiding him. Me saying that I couldn’t do this. Me trying to move on for the first time in my entire life.

He’d begged me not to leave after what happened on Christmas Day. He stuck around Savannah, even after I paid for a flight home so I didn’t have to drive with him. He didn’t think I was serious until Marley and I cleared my stuff out of his house and took Sunny with me to live with her. Then, it had sank in that I was leaving. I was really walking away.

But seeing him made it worse. Made it painfully clear that I hadn’t even come close to moving on.

I said my congratulations to Kristen and Hong Min and then retreated, but Cole followed me.

“Lila,” he said, stopping me in my tracks.

“Did you help plan this?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Me and a few of the other guys.”

“It was romantic. She’s going to be a mess the whole game.”

“Worth it.”

I nodded. “I should probably get back to work.”

“Hey.” He grasped my arm. “I’ve missed you.”

“I can’t do this.”

“It’s only been six weeks. We can work this out. We’ve gone longer than that before and made it work.”

I shook my head. “What we have is fundamentally broken.”

He winced at my words. “How can you think that?”

“Because I watched you throw the first punch.”

“I know, but …”

“After I told you to let it go and not let him antagonize you.”

“I didn’t know you’d been together at Georgia–Florida. It was a shock. I just reacted. I’m sorry.”

“I know you are, but you apologize and you apologize, and it doesn’t make a difference. It doesn’t change your behavior.”

We’d already had this conversation. We’d had it more times than I could count in those early days. I told him what had really happened at Frat Beach. Not that it justified it, but we’d been broken up, and I’d been wasted and mad. It hadn’t been what Ash painted it as, but it hardly mattered because it got the reaction he’d wanted from Cole. He hadn’t even stopped to think. Even after all of our fights about it.

“Please, Lila,” he said. “I still love you, and I know that you feel the same.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. “I do care about you, Cole. That hasn’t changed, but it doesn’t fix the problem.”

“I’ll do anything.”

“Now but not before.”

“Give me one more chance.”

My stomach knotted, and I felt sick again. One more chance was exactly what I wanted to give him. I wanted this to work. I wanted to look into his face and know that we could move on from this. But I didn’t know that. The last eight years had proven that he had consistent behavior. He wasn’t going to change. Not for me at least.

“I can’t.”

“Look, come celebrate with me after the game.”

“Cole …”

“We can leave it up to chance,” he offered desperately. “If the Falcons win, then you celebrate with me. And if we don’t then … then I’ll back off.”

I chewed the inside of my cheek. Celebration didn’t mean a date. It was a risk, but I could see the hope in his face. And I hated dashing it, even after all this time.

“Okay. If we win, then we’ll celebrate, but it doesn’t mean dating.”

A smile broke across his face. The one that I remembered from college. The real smile. And I wanted to believe that this would turn the tides. That we’d come out on top of this, but I didn’t have that unshakable faith any longer.

I’d grown up and grown out of it.

The game went into overtime.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“I know,” Kristen grumbled.

“Twenty-eight to three, and they came back with twenty-five unanswered points,” I grumbled. “What the fuck is even happening?”

Kristen just shook her head.

Then we watched the Falcons lose the coin toss in overtime.

And lose the game.

The Patriots cheered victoriously to a game we should have had in the bag in the third quarter. I stood, stunned, on the sidelines as the players walked off the field.

It was over.

We’d lost the Super Bowl.

All of that energy and our best year since the ’90s, and it had ended this poorly. I followed the rest of the training team off the field. I couldn’t stomach watching the victory celebrations.

I’d changed, and I was about to head back to the hotel when Cole found me.

“There you are.”

“We lost,” I told him.

He nodded. “I know. It was fucked.”

“Yeah.”

I felt defeated. I wanted to sleep for a week and not think about the crushing disappointment.

“That doesn’t mean that we can’t go out. We can get a drink to wash away the sorrow.”