“Yeah, she’s making the most of every day. There’s a spa day with the girls while the boys play hockey. Beach bonfire after that in the backyard,” I murmur like I just had a root canal.“They didn’t want separate bachelor and bachelorette parties, so they combined them for tonight.”
“I understand why they did that. It makes it so easy for the bridal party to crash here. And Elijah is hosting Jackson’s groomsmen.” Mom nods, her smile widening. “She’s sure happy, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she is.” I chew the side of my cheek, fighting the urge to complain about all the wedding festivities. What I wouldn’t give to put her on a plane to Vegas to elope.Not that I’m thinking about eloping again. To get my mind off eloping because who would dothat,I hurriedly add, “Yeah, then tomorrow is the wedding.”
“Yes.” My mom beams, pride written all over her face. “Everything about this weekend is perfect.”
Only a whimper escapes as I pinch my lips tight.Yeah, everything is perfect. Not!
six
Elijah
I always thought groomsman golf was the mandatory pre-wedding bonding activity. Let’s say things look different when you’ve got a lineup of hockey players. Axl put together a makeshift hockey rink in the parking lot of my old high school. It makes me grin to lace up my rollerblades and roll out like I used to.
Axl’s clearly has done this before as he flies across the asphalt like the pro he is: smooth, effortless. Tyson, who we don’t normally hang out with off the ice but Jackson needed an extra groomsman, and he was game, skates backward in front of Axl. True to form, Axl loops the rink a second time, lapping Tyson before shooting me a smug smirk, tipping me off that something’s coming, “Are you going to skate, or hold up that brick wall and be depressed?”
“Depends. Are you going to shut your mouth when I win?” I push off the wall and join the action, skating hard after Axl.
We jostle for a few seconds before he opens his mouth again, “So, how was seeing your ex at the dinner last night?”
I don’t answer. Mainly because in all his blustering, he hasn’t realized he’s given me the puck. I shoot it.
Clean shot.
It goes right in.
Jackson, our goalie, retrieves the puck. Instead of hitting it back, he keeps it trapped behind his stick and joins in the conversation, “Bro, I didn’t know who to feel worse for, your date or your ex.”
“Yeah,” Tyson interjects with his two cents, because apparently everyone needs to weigh in. “You need to rethink your game. You were drooling all over Koren, and then you had Lauren just standing there. It was cringe.”
Axl cackles. “So much drool. Like you were dying of thirst, and she was the last glass of water on the planet.”
He takes off skating around the back of the net just in time to catch up to Tyson, who somehow got the puck from Jackson when I wasn’t watching. I’m not sure where my mind is. I’m missing half of what’s going on. They spar for a minute. Axl gets the puck and brings it to the front of the net. Jackson blocks it, and the guys groan.
Jackson fires the puck back to Axl and glances at me. “And why would you pick that event to bring a date? You’ve never brought a girl around before. Ever.”
“Not true,” I try to defend myself. “This was actually a second date for me and Lauren. Axl can vouch because the first was a double with him and Sophie.”
Laughter erupts from everyone but me. I can’t laugh. I’m tired of their digs. Last night left a pit in my stomach. I don’t know what I was thinking. Lauren’s great. Any guy would be lucky to have her. The truth? I only invited her as a distraction. It helped that she’s gorgeous. We could have had chemistry. Maybe.
Seeing Koren again put me in a chokehold.
“All right, this all went down before you were on the team,” Jackson says, skating over, seeming to give up on the game. “You’ve got to fill us in so we know whose team to be on. All I know is what I heard from Kaci, and it’s not much. So what happened with Kaci’s sister?”
“We were together, and then we weren’t.” I skate in a small circle, ready to leave this little gossip huddle. I don’t think they even want to play since this is starting to feel more like an intervention than a game.
“Kaci said you proposed to Koren. You guys were going to elope, but then suddenly things were off, and she fled to Paris. Overnight, you grew that ugly beard and have been aloof ever since.”
The guys laugh again. I shake my head. I don’t really know what happened.
I mean, I know what happened.
We broke up.
But the whole timeline is foggy. The more I rethink everything, the less it adds up.
I shrug. “We definitely have different stories, but from my perspective everything was good—until I woke up on our wedding day, and she’d up and moved to Paris without saying goodbye or even breaking up with me. She refused my calls. I was about to crash out when my parents explained she’d only been using me until she got that internship. My parents knew some people, and they helped her get it. Maybe she was using them? I guess I got played.”
