The Tales of a Future Hockey Wife

Chapter 49: Telling Part 1

~Ben~

The first time I entered Eleanor's house, I was instantly jealous. I had never been inside a prettiest house than her parents'. All my friends lived in the same shitty neighborhood as I did and lived in mobile homes or in creepy old apartment buildings. No one I knew lived in a two-stories house with a garage, a pool, a spa, and a garden. There are four bedrooms in their house, three bathrooms, an office, a home theater, and a pool table in the basement. They had four bedrooms which is one more than they needed while my sister and I both slept in the same one until I was a teenager. She had everything I ever wanted in life. Her parents bought her and her brother anything they asked for. I think I'll always remember the year where El got the most recent MacBook Pro for her birthday. She didn't even ask for it, her parents just thought the one she had was getting too old, so they got her a new one. It was that simple. That same year, a few months later, for my birthday, my parents told me that they had paid for my hockey season and that it was all they could get me. I had told them about El's Mac, and they looked disappointed that they couldn't give me something like that. I never talked about Eleanor's parents to mine again.

What I always enjoyed about Ella's house was that I was always welcomed. No matter if it was a school night or a Saturday, her parents would always look very happy to see me. I spent countless nights at her place, pretexting that it was closer to the arena than my house was even if our houses were almost at the same distance of the arena. I loved the smell of coffee and bacon that filled her house at around eight on weekends when her dad would get up. That's another thing I loved. Even if his kids were old enough to make their own breakfast, her father always cooked breakfast on Saturday and Sunday mornings. We would get up and her father would be baking waffles or pancakes and there would be various types of fruits already cut on the table, fruits he had bought the day before. Usually, it would be Eleanor, her father and I. William spent most of his nights at his girlfriend's. I never understood how it could be better than breakfast at his own house, but I never judged him. I, too, used my girlfriend to escape my family. Her father would talk about his upcoming classes and he would update us on the plans El's mother was making for whatever house she was designing. He would ask about hockey and school until we fell in a comfortable silence that only happens with families. Her father would read the paper, ending with the crossword that Eleanor would help him finish. Thomas and Stephanie Martin were the kind of parents I wished to be someday. I still do sometimes.

Today is the second time where I am nervous as I walk up the steps that lead to the front door of her parents' house. The first time was when I met them. We had dinner, general Tao tofu with Cesar salad with no bacon, and played all types of board games. I didn't meet William that day. I only met him two weeks later, when he came back home after a fight with his girlfriend. He shook my hand before locking himself in his bedroom.

We landed in Victoria two hours and a half ago and we're staying until Eleanor starts school again in about two weeks. Spending the holidays in SV has been a tradition ever since we moved to Ontario. We don't come back often since plane tickets are expensive, but we find it important to fly over here for Christmas. Her father wanted to pick us up from the airport, but we declined, saying that William had already agreed to drive us. He found it weird, Eleanor and her brother were never the closest of siblings, but he went with it. The real reason is that Eleanor's pregnancy is now almost impossible to hide. With a fifteen-week-old pregnant belly, her parents would have to be blind not to notice and that's not how we want them to find out. We know it will be a shock, so we want to do it right especially since we'll have to announce it twice this week. We are having dinner with my parents and Megan in two days.

William knocks on the door when the four of us walked up the six steps that lead to the massive wood front door. The number 38 plastered on the wood seems bigger than ever like it's taunting me. When El will have reached that amount of weeks in her pregnancy, our baby will almost be with us. Her father opens the door with his usual huge smile.

"Will, you very well know that you don't have to knock before coming in. Don't influence your sister." His words may sound harsh, but his tone is playful and the tap he gives his son's shoulder to pull him into his house shows just how much he wants his kids to feel as if this was still their house even if neither of them has lived here for about three years for us and even more for William. Will mumbles an apology and something about wanting to announce himself as we all enter the house. I catch a glimpse of Eleanor's face in the mirror that hangs in the entrance. Her nervous expression matches mine even if I try to avoid the look, I would give myself if my eyes met my reflection. I don't even know if I would recognize the guy looking at me if I did see me. I feel like so much as changed inside of me these past few weeks, and I fear that these changes affected how I look on the outside. I am afraid that someone who knows me well, like Thomas Martin, would immediately know something was up just because the bags under my eyes turned purple about last week. After giving her father kisses on each cheek, Eleanor asks if her mother is around.

"No, she had to go to the office one last time before closing for Christmas. She apologizes, and will be here a bit before dinner," Thomas answers with a smile before pulling his daughter in for a hug. Eleanor's face goes bright red all the way down her neck. Even if I know that all she wants is to give her father a proper hug, she pulls away so that her arms are barely holding him. He lets her go, and what we dreaded the most happens.

"What's wrong, Ella?" She opens her mouth to probably say that nothing is wrong, but he cuts her off. "Don't say nothing, Eleanor. I won't believe you. And take off your coat, it's warm in here." She turns to face me, extends her hand that I take, and looks back at her father. She looks as if she was about to jump off a hill without a harness or a rope or if she was about to go parachuting with no parachute.

"We wanted to say it to the both of you at the same time, but I can't keep this coat on for hours, I'll burn to death. So, dad..." She lets go of my hand to start unzipping her coat. Her father's eyes open wider behind his tock glasses when she takes fully takes it off and hands it to William who hangs it in the dresser. I focus on my shoes to avoid Thomas Martin's reaction to seeing his twenty-year-old daughter pregnant.

"You...you're..." he mumbles without being able to complete a sentence.

"Pregnant, yes," she confirms, taking hold of my hand once again. I look up from my shoes for the first time since she started taking off her coat, and what I see surprises me. Thomas Martin doesn't look angry at all. In fact, he looks the opposite of angry. Tears start forming in his eyes and one falls down his red cheek, his lips slowly turn from an "o" to a smile that is even bigger than the one he gave us when he first saw us a few minutes earlier. He pulls Eleanor in for another hug, but since she doesn't loosen her grip on my hand, he ends up hugging me too.

"You knew?" he asks William after letting us go. El's brother nods, adding a wink in his sister's direction. Who knows, maybe this situation will finally bring them back together after years of feeling like the other didn't belong.