Page 155 of Keeping Score

I crossed my arms around my body, trying to hold myself upright although the pain threatened to bring me to my knees.

“I left you a letter,” he said, nodding toward the coffee table. “You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to. I just needed to say it.”

“Fine.” I said, looking away to that thick envelope on the coffee table.

“I just want you to know,” he said, gripping the door as though it were the only thing anchoring him in that moment, “I don’t regret any of it. Even if this is how it was always going to end, I would do it all over again for the time we had together. I—” he paused, looking away. Blinking. “I just wanted you to know that.”

And then he left.

And true to his word, he didn’t say goodbye, as if it were truly too hard for him to utter. But honestly, I might not have been able to handle it if he did.

The lump in my throat sat heavy and unmoving, and I wondered if it might be there forever.

Moving toward the coffee table, I grabbed the envelope, tearing it open, desperate to hear the last parting words I’d ever get from Brody Callahan.

Maggie,

I’m not very good with words, but still I couldn’t leave without having something said between us. After all these years, a letter seems a pretty shitty way of concluding our story, but I’m too much of a coward to say goodbye in person. I hope you’ll forgive me for that. Or at least understand.

Now here comes my second apology. As you’ll see, most of what I have to say in this letter aren’t my words at all, but I hope you’ll forgive me, because our friend Nicholas Sparks managed to perfectly capture how I’m feeling better than I ever could. (I have a feeling you’ll recognize the passage I’m including below.)

Now listen Maggie, just because these aren’t my words doesn’t make them any less true. I mean them. Sincerely. Every last one.

So, I’ll stop rambling and get to it.

My Dearest Maggie, “I couldn’t sleep last night because I know that it’s over between us, I’m not bitter anymore because I know that what we had was real—”

I paused, eyes welling up with tears as I read the paragraph he included.

He’d written Noah’s last letter to Allie. That bastard was quoting my favorite movie in his goodbye letter to me, and all I could do was sit here on the floor of the home we once lived in and bawl my eyes out.

Using my blouse sleeve, I rubbed an arm across my eyes, staining the white fabric black with makeup. But I couldn’t bear the thought of ruining this letter with tears.

The last piece of Brody I’d ever have.

I sat there, savoring his words, thinking of the beautiful boy who wrote them. The boy who’d only ever wanted me to be happy. The boy who had never done a thing to hurt me in his entire existence. The boy who lived and breathed for the people he loved.

And I wondered how I could have ever been so afraid of that gentle boy hurting me when all along I should’ve known it was my own hand that would cause my heart to bleed.

Chapter Fifty-One

Brody

It was an odd thing, to put on my jersey and get ready for what very well might be the last game of my career.

It was the last game of the season, and unless a miracle came through, we already knew we weren’t making the playoffs.

Clearly, my life had been pretty void of miracles lately.

Honestly, it was a shitty way to go out. Definitely not the way I used to picture retirement when I was first getting started.

No matter how favorably the media was towards me, there would be no way to sugarcoat my piss-poor performance during my last season. Not that anyone really knew that yet.

The news of my retirement hadn’t come out yet, so the fans had no idea that I’d be walking away from the Harbor Wolves at such an all-time career low. They would hope for better next season, not knowing that for me, next season would never come.

My agent was still holding hope that I’d have a last-minute change of heart. The official decision to not re-sign didn’t have to be made quite yet, so even though I told him I was leaving. Told him I’d bought a new place. Told him everything was said and done, the guy still wouldn’t budge, infuriatingly saying, “you never know.”

That was true, I guess. You never knew where life might take you. One year ago today, if someone told me I’d be playing the last game of my career today and moving back to Michigan without the love of my life, I would’ve told them they were crazy. I would’ve said that’s the very last thing in the world I would ever want for my life.