After My First Love

Packing up to go to college is proving to be more emotional than I expected. Three months ago, I returned home from Ecuador, and I didn’t feel as emotional living there for the last year as I do now. How is that possible?

“Bryn!” I hear a familiar voice call from downstairs followed by the sound of a fussing baby. “Crap! It’s okay Milly, I know auntie B is around here somewhere.”

I walk out of my room and stop at the top of the stairs just as my sister starts climbing up. “Oh, thank god! Can you talk to your niece? She’s been on a war path all morning.”

She holds the offending creature toward me, and I accept the cute bundle. “Hey cutie! Have you been giving your mom a hard time?”

My niece gives me a gummy smile and grabs a handful of my curly hair and pulls. I’m so used to it now that I barely notice it but when she tries to stuff the strands into her mouth, I have to step in. I turn back around and carry little Milly into my room that is currently crowded with boxes. My parents insisted that I should leave my room the way it is, but I want to give them the option to use it as a guest room while I’m at college for the next few years. I’m going to come back for the holidays but will be staying next door with Poppy and Zac on those occasions. I can’t believe they bought the place at all since it’s where Zac grew up but they couldn’t bear selling it when his mom moved in with her new husband. So, Zac bought the place and proposed to Poppy on the doorstep they used to sit together on as kids a year later.

There is a lot of history in that place, so I’m silently glad it didn’t go to some other family.

Poppy walks into my room and drops back on my bed not caring that there is a pile of clothes underneath her. “My child hates me.” She grumbles before letting out a pathetic whine.

“That’s not true Poppy! She’s probably teething or something like that.” I coo at my niece making her giggle adorably.

“Yeah sure that must be it and yet she stop crying the second you hold her. How can she love you more when you were out of the country for the first three months of her life? I hate you. Why would you leave me at this crucial time?” My sister…always so dramatic.

“You’ll be fine plus I can always come back if things get really bad. You know I wouldn’t let you deal with this on your own.”

She sighs and sits up. “No. You deserve to have a life. It’s just…I’m going to miss you.”

“I’ll miss you too sis.” I wrap an arm around her and she is quick to hug me back.

We’ve always been close, and it kills me every time I have to leave, but I already postponed college so I could do charity work as a nurse assistant in Ecuador. I needed the experience for my field study credits and I wanted to get the done early. Plus, I wasn’t ready to be here when everything went down. Polly must see the expression on my face because she grabs my hand and gives it a soft squeeze.

“You haven’t heard anything from him?” She asks me.

I can’t help but laugh at the idea. “No. Why would I? He moved on, so I need to do the same. We’ll always be a part of each other’s lives because of you and Zac but never like we were.”

“He’s been through a lot B, maybe he needs more time.” She offers in his defense.

“He’s had plenty of time. Five years to be exact and still he hasn’t called or texted me. I thought after his injury that he would reach out and beg me to come take care of him like we had always planned but nothing. I couldn’t stay.”

“I know. Zac says things haven’t been going well. He isn’t sure Sawyer will get signed the way he’s going.” She shakes her head and lets out a disappointed sigh. “I can’t believe he would give up after all he’s done to get this far.”

Zac’s brother Sawyer used to be my best friend. When their family moved in after their dad left I say Sawyer once and knew we were going to be friends. He was a grumpy scowling little punk and I was the ray of sunshine to break through all his dark brooding. Not that he didn’t have a right to hate the world after his dad left, he was only seven at the time. One year older than me.

The day they moved in I marched over there with a plate of vegan cupcakes and told him I was his friend now. The jerk closed the door in my face. So, Poppy marched over with me to tell him off, but Zac opened the door instead. It was puppy love at first sight for them, and they have been inseparable ever since. Everyone knew Poppy was Zac’s girl even when they were nine years old. Sawyer on the other hand didn’t want to talk to anyone.

So what did I do? I didn’t’ give up. Everyday at lunch I packed him a small treat and would sit at his table and talk the poor guy’s ear off. He would shoot me a few annoyed looks but never got up and walked away. Slowly he softened to me, and it was all downhill from there. We became best friends and each other’s only friends for years. That is until he went on to his first year of high school and I was left to finish middle school on my own.

He was always a good skater and thanks to how cold it got around here, we would build our own personal rink in our backyard so we could all skate together. Sawyer was amazing and quickly got into hockey, so when try outs came along in his freshman year he went in and came out as a player.

At first nothing really changed other than I didn’t get to sit with him at lunch anymore. He would come home bruised up and frustrated because he was a perfectionist and never liked how he did at a game or practice. I would sit next to him on his bed and bandage him up as he vented to me. Bandaging him up was always my job and it moved me to want to study athletic medicine and physical therapy. Our plan was to get Sawyer drafted and I would apply to the same team.

That plan slowly began to fizzle out as he got busier. Soon he was bringing team members over to his house where they would mess around and party when his mom wasn’t home. The guys didn’t like me hanging around so I would wait until they left to hang out with Sawyer. Then he started making excuses to not hang out with me, and then shut me out completely. At school he would ignore me and only show up at my house to patch him up because I was the best at it according to him.

In my naive state I accepted the little scraps he threw me away, but I was miserable. So, when Sawyer was scouted to an amazing college, I didn’t bother saying goodbye. I looked down at him from my window as he climbed into his car and hoped he would turn back and look for me, but he didn’t. I knew then that I had lost my friend for good. So, I decided to move on and start my journey to fulfill my own dreams. I still wanted to study athletic medicine, but I decided that I would do it because I love it and not because I wanted to pathetically be with Sawyer forever.

When I was offered the chance to do an internship, I grabbed it and didn’t look back. About six months into my year of interning in Ecuador I got a call from Poppy crying. She said that Sawyer had gotten injured, and it wasn’t good. He was meant to be an early draft pick but suddenly he was hurt and benched. All his dreams were going up in smoke and I was thousands of miles away.

I wasn’t sure what to do but I couldn’t let him deal with this alone, so I called him. He never answered or contacted me. Eventually I had to give up and stop worrying about someone who didn’t want me in their life. Now I’m moving on to the next leg of my journey and try my best not to think about the jerk of a hockey player I used to call my friend.