The Road Back to Your Heart

Gabi tossed and turned the whole night, not getting a wink of sleep after the incident at the bar. She couldn’t help but feel that everything she had worked towards was slowly falling apart. Gabi sat at a table in the lobby with a cup of coffee and a muffin sipping slowly trying to decide what to do with.

“A penny for your thoughts?” Jordan asked as he sat down across from her.

Gabi looked up at him, “My thoughts are worth much more than a penny, Jordy but I’m just trying to figure out away to fix this mess I got into.”

“Why not sit down with both of them and explain how you feel?” He asked taking a sip of his orange juice.

She ran her fingers through her golden locks, “I can’t do that. They would never sit down with each other. Nathan hates Eric and Eric, I don’t know. He doesn’t know who Nathan is.”

“Actually he does,” Jordan said with a shrug. “Look, I promised Eric I wouldn’t tell you anything about the summers after you broke up and I won’t besides the fact he knows about you and Nathan. He doesn’t know he proposed, Whit decided that he didn’t need to know that detail before the cup finals.”

Gabi sat down her coffee cup, “No that’s impossible. Nathan would have told me if he met Eric. He wouldn’t have kept that from me.”

“Well, he might have if he thought if you knew that Eric might have come to Yale to try and win you back, he’d lose you,” He said with his signature smile on his face. “When a guy is in love he does stupid things. I am the expert in that case. At least you sort of liked him back.”

She chuckled, “I did like him. Nathan is a nice guy. He is funny and sweet and was there for me when I didn’t have my family and friends but he wasn’t Eric. He didn’t give me butterflies every time he kissed me or just made me smile with a single look.”

“Look, Gabs, you gotta sit Nathan down and tell him the truth. Tell him that while you liked him you weren’t in love with him,” Jordan started with a sigh. “Tell him that you never got over Eric and that he was there for you when you needed him but your heart belongs to Eric and that it always has and always will. Just tell him everything. Lay it out on the table and ask him to leave. It’s really the only thing you can do.”

Gabi ran her fingers through her hair again, “I tried that. I told him all those things after I rejected his proposal. He just has it set in his mind that I’m blinded by this hope that I can make a relationship work with Eric that I don’t see what is really in front of me. I understand that making a relationship work with Eric is going to take a lot. We have a lot of things we need to sit down and talk about but in my heart I know that Eric is who I am meant to be with.”

“Just like Eric knows he is meant to be with you,” He said squeezing her hand. “Just try again. It’s all you can do.”

Before Gabi could respond to Jordan, he got up and walked back to the elevator and as the doors opened, Nathan walked off as Jordan got on and replaced Jordan across from her.

Nate,” Gabi started with a sigh. “What the heck are you doing here?”

Nathan smiled, “I thought it was obvious. I am not letting you go without a fight. I love you, Nikki and nothing you say can change that. I want to be with you and I’m not letting some hockey playing asshole take you away from me.”

“You have no say in who I end up with, Nathan!” She exclaimed frustrated. “I don’t love you. I don’t want to be with you. I know that I have a hard road ahead of me trying to fix my relationship with Eric but he is who I want. Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamed of my wedding, at first yes I wanted to marry a pop star or someone famous as all little girls do. I wanted to marry a prince, someone who would come in and sweep me off my feet. As I grew up, my dreams changed. I fell in love with Eric, head over heels in love with him, and all I could see was us married, him with a Stanley Cup and me raising our boys. Yes, I was devastated when he broke up with me. I had spent three years by his side, through rumors of him cheating, through heart braking losses, through his draft, only to have him break up with because he thought he was holding me back from my dream. What he didn’t know was that he was my dream now and that all I wanted was to be with him and support him. I have spent the last three years of my life, trying to forget him, trying to move on but I couldn’t. Nathan, you are a great guy but I don’t love you. I never loved you. I fooled myself into believing that I could be happy with someone that wasn’t Eric. When you proposed, I tried to say yes but I couldn’t. I looked at you and I saw a great guy who is a great friend but that’s all. I didn’t see the man of my dreams, the man I could settle down with and have a family. I saw a friend who was there for me when I was going through some of the worst times of my life.”

Nathan frowned, “Nikki, I love you. That’s all I need to know to know that we can make this work. We could have a great life together.”

“I don’t want a life with you,” Gabi said with a sigh. “I want a life with Eric. It’s always been Eric and it always will.”

Nathan stood up, “I’m not leaving without a fight. I’ll prove to you that we are meant to be if it is the last thing I do.”

Before she could reply, Nathan had walked out of the hotel. Gabi sighed and laid her head on the table. She had no clue what she was going to do or how to even handle this situation. Gabi sighed and went upstairs, knowing that the next few days were going to be the longest of her short life so far.

Notes