‘Home sweet home.’ I thought to myself as I pulled into the driveway of the house. I love North Carolina and all, but Markham, Ontario would always be my real home.

I had finally “grown up” and bought my own place here in Canada, so I could spend the off-season here I mean, I guess once you are 18, you are legally grown up, but if I didn’t make it into the National Hockey League, I would still be living at home… no question about it.

I parked the car in the garage and walked into the house. To my own surprise, the house was clean. This was the last thing I was expecting, since I let my brother stay here during the season. I thought he was gonna be staying with me, but him and his girlfriend are moving in together, so he left to go pack all his stuff up at our parents.

I was so tired from the drive up that all I wanted to do was eat and go to bed. It was times like these that I wish I still lived at home. A home cooked meal would be so nice right now.

I decided to call the house to tell them I made it home, thinking that maybe someone would invite me over to eat. I haven’t seen them since March. It was only April 11th, but still, it’s been a while… maybe they would want me to come over. That was one good thing about having such a close family—we always were together, which meant there was always good food around for us all.

The phone rang and rang, until my brother, Ben, finally answered.

“Hello?”

“Hey dude! How are you?”

“I’m good. How ‘bout you? You home yet?” he asked me.

“Just got here. I walked in and couldn’t believe you kept the place so clean!”

“Well, Haley was there cleaning last week for me, so…”

“I should have known.” I jokingly cut him off. “Tell her thanks for me.”

“Will do.” He said and I laughed.

“Hey, what is Mom making for dinner? Can I come over?”

“You can come over, but they are all on vacation still, remember?”

“Oh yeah… I completely forgot. What are you doing for food? Do you want to go out and pick something up?”

“Actually, I’m taking the girl out to eat. I think I am gonna propose tonight.”

“Congrats, man! Well… good luck!”

“Thanks, little bro. I’ll talk to you later. I have to go get ready. I have to pick her up in half an hour.”

“Talk to you later. Have fun tonight.”

“Alright, bye. Thanks again!”

“No problem, bye.”

I hung up the phone and decided to run to the store and pick some stuff up for the house. I grabbed my keys off the counter, threw on a sweatshirt, and ran out to the garage to my car.

I pulled into the parking lot and parked the car. I grabbed my phone out of the console and grabbed the keys, locking the door.

I started walking up to the door and there she was. I realized that the clean house was definitely not the last thing that I was expecting. This was it… she was it.

Addison Banks. This was the love of my life. The girl I was forced to leave when I went to training camp. All last summer, when I was home during the off-season, I didn’t see her and I thought I had finally moved on. It had been almost two years since I had last seen her. Two years since the worst day of my life.

*FLASHBACK* (Two years before)
“What do you mean? Why? We can make this work, Jeff! I know we can! We have made it through so much- good and bad... Kitchener, the draft, when my dad died. You were the only person that I could talk to during the worst time of my life. You said you would always be there for me and now this? I believed you when I was crying in your arms and you told me that you would always love me, no matter what and now I am sitting her questioning it all.” She said as we sat on the bench on her front porch and tears were running down her cheeks.

I pulled her in to me and wrapped my arms around her. I felt her shaking and I could not believe I was doing this.

“No one has ever meant more to me than you do, I promise. I do love you, Addison—I love you so much. And this is not easy for me at all, but it is something that is the best for both of us. I am moving to North Carolina tomorrow and I don’t want to take you away from the people you love here. We are only eighteen-years-old—that’s too young to just take you with me.”

“Too young?” I could tell that her sadness was turning into anger. “Love isn’t like a board game. You don’t have to be a certain age to play.” She pushed herself out of my arms. I went to pull her back in, but decided it was best not to.

She started again, “If you really loved me like you say you do, you would not be thinking about our age, you would be thinking about how hard it is gonna be to be away from each other, how hard it is gonna be to not spend all day texting back and forth and how hard it is gonna be to have no one there for you when nothing else in your life is going right…”

I grabbed her hand and she pulled away, standing up and looking down at me, tears still rolling down.

“I hope you’re happy, Jeff Skinner. I hope that when you saw yourself in the NHL, you saw yourself alone, because that is how it is going to be. I know this is not something that I ever imagined would happen. I wanted to spend my whole life with you. I wanted to grow old together and be able to tell our children that we had been best friends since we were 6 and realized we loved each other more than that when we got to high school. I wanted to be able to show them that our love was still so strong after all those years. That is how I saw my life—my future… with you and now it is all over.”

“I—“

She cut me off. Now she was very mad. “Thank you for wasting four years of my life. Good bye, Jeff.”

At the sound of that, my heart broke. I felt myself tearing up as I watched her walk into her house and slam the door behind her.

I walked over to my car and I sat in there just thinking about what had just happened. What had I done? She was the one. Everything she said, I felt the exact same way about. I saw her in my future. I saw us with our children, telling them about when we were young.
I tried to think of something to tell her to make us both feel better, but I just couldn’t find the words. All I could think of was how much I wanted her to go with me and how her mom had said no.

I couldn’t tell her that her mother was the reason that we couldn’t be together. After losing her husband only a few months ago, I couldn’t even imagine her pain when I asked her to take her only daughter away too. I understood that she didn’t want to be alone, and I knew it was selfish, but wouldn’t she want her daughter to be happy? She knew how much Addison and I loved each other. We were going to get married—everyone knew that, but her mother wouldn’t have it. She wanted her to stay with her.

*PRESENT TIME*
That whole day played back in my head the second I saw her. She was still perfect and I wanted, more than anything, to wrap my arms around her and just hold her. If only it could be that easy. I wish it could be, but it just wasn’t.

I walked toward the door and went inside. The little boy in front of me tripped and fell, so I leaned down to help him up. When I got back up, I saw her turning around to see what the crying was behind her. It seemed to happen in slow motion, like in movies when the flowing hair and beautiful face.

When our eyes met, her face showed an expression of surprise and pain. I could tell that she was hurting inside to see me when her face began to get red and her eyes started to water.

I looked up at her and smiled, a very small smile, and she turned around and began to walk away.

I slowly ran after her and grabbed her arm gently from behind, but she pulled away.

“What do you want?” She asked me, angrily.

“I just—I thought—I wanted—“

“I don’t have time for this. We’re done, remember? It was your choice.” She walked away and this time I didn’t follow after her.