“Thanks for coming on short notice,” Coach Slanch, or Daniel, as he’d directed me to call him, said. “But after the shakeup we’ve been talking about with the team—and how that video circulated, we were worried about you, Dustin. We thought you might have lost your marbles.”
“I mean you didn’t need much notice to get married, so I’m sure this isn’t a problem,” Jackie added.
I wasn’t sure if she was making a joke or not, but we all laughed awkwardly just in case.
Dustin started to say something, but Mr. Bells cut him off.
“We’ll start with some appetizers and some libations,” he said in his quiet but authoritative way.
“Appetizers,” Dustin echoed. “Yum.” He winked and I felt his hand on my knee under the table. My body warmed.
We made small talk about the weather while the servants poured our wine, which I was pretty sure was harvested before I was born. I was no wine connoisseur, but growing up in Spain had given me a decent education on wine, at least. So I could fully appreciate this bottle.
As I sipped it, the chef brought out several different appetizers, and I inhaled their aromas: fresh tomato and burrata with warm French bread, fried calamari, roasted cauliflower, and ahi tuna tostadas.
“This looks delicious!” I said. “Thanks so much for the invitation tonight.”
Mr. Bells—he hadnotinstructed me to call him Jerry as Coach Slanch had—then spoke.
“You’re probably wondering why I wanted to have you here for dinner tonight,” he said.
“Mr. Bells,” Dustin smiled, “You don’t have to have a reason to see me. You know that.”
“Let’s cut the crap, LeBlanc,” Mr. Bells said. He spoke like an old-school P.E. teacher with a fantastic bullshit detector. “You know I tried to trade you this morning, and it wouldn’t go through.”
“My agent told me.”
“Do you know why it didn’t go through?”
“I don’t,” Dustin said. “Why didn’t it?”
“It didn’t go through because you and this—” he looked over at me. “Thiswoman—got married recklessly.”
“The video posted to YouTube has now been viewed over twenty-one million times,” Jackie added.
My heart started to pound.
Coach Slanch, who was obviously trying to play peacemaker between Team Dustin and Team Jackie/Mr. Bells, hovered his fork in front of his face with a big bite of burrata on it.
“Well, a billion more views and we’ll be in Taylor Swift Territory!”
No one laughed at Dustin’s joke, so he wiped the smirk off his face and played serious. “True love comes in many forms.” He wrapped his arm around me. “But when it hits you, it’s the best feeling in the world.”
“Ha! Really!Thisis true love?” Jackie pulled out her phone and showed a video I had taken in the limo ride on the way back from Freddie’s Walk-In Chapel.
Stupid idea, taking that snapchat video. I figured only my friends would see it. Silly me.
“Woo! I just got fucking hitched!” Dustin yelled in the video.
Dustin wrinkled his forehead. “What’s wrong with that? I’m excited. We’re excited.”
“You justmether.”
I interjected with our planned lie, putting my hand on Dustin’s knee. “We actually met a while back, and rekindled things this weekend.”
“Did you, now?” Jackie smiled, using an ahi tuna tostada to add to her gesture. “Now that’s an interesting detail. Why don’t you tell us about that?”
“Well it’s a little scandalous,” I said. “I was in my first year of postgraduate medical school at the University of Michigan, and he was visiting from Ohio State during his senior year, playing hockey.”
