“I feel guilty too.”
He brought his eyes to mine, then leaned in and whispered in my ear. “There’s only one way I’ve been dealing with that.”
“How?”
“Just pretend that we really are married and in love. Like, pretend so hard we’re not pretending.”
“So it’s like method acting?” I reflected, thinking back to a theater class I took freshman year of college.
“Call it whatever you want,” he said. “We’re in it now. I mean, not like we weren’t before.”
We got to the front of the line, and Dustin explained that our lane was malfunctioning. The attendant wasted no time in helping us. And by ‘helping us,’ I mean he made his voice into a megaphone and shouted to the crowd. “Would anyone here like to share their lane with Mr. and Mrs. LeBlanc?!”
I felt a swift shoulder tap and was a little dumbfounded by the face I saw.
“Jackie?”
“Oh hi there, Miss—I mean Mrs.—LeBlanc.”
She wore tight white dress pants and a blue tube top, and she was looking rather hot. If I was a real bride I would have been upset for her showing me up in the white jeans and flowery blouse I wore.
“We have a lane you can share,” she continued. Dustin seemed similarly thrown off. “You seem out of it. Your grandmother gave the organization the invite. My grandfather couldn’t make it, so they sent me in their stead. I brought my—well, my Raymond.”
The man next to her nodded curtly. He was solidly built, tall, and wearing a black shirt and jeans.
“Alright,” Dustin said reluctantly, although I could tell he was looking around for some of his family members to play with.
Nevertheless, we headed over to the lane she and Raymond had reserved, and Dustin set about entering all of our initials.
I was CAT, Raymond was RAY, Dustin was DAL, and Jackie was OWN.
Because she wanted to reiterate that she was the owner?
We started the game, and Jackie insisted that she had some ‘business’ to talk over with Dustin for the first few rounds, so I hung out with Raymond, who was a man of very few words, and a fan of nodding and smiling.
Welp, this is going great I thought, until Raymond missed the pins completely and let out a curse in Spanish.
“De dónde eres?” I asked him. “Where are you from?”
“From Girona,” he replied, in Spanish.
I sensed his Catalan accent and started speaking to him in Catalan.
I found out how he was an international fashion model, just in the United States for a few weeks.
I assumed he was Jackie’s boyfriend, but he laughed and said they were just friends.
After a couple of rounds of drinks, we all had finished one game, and we decided to just keep going.
Raymond was my new best friend, and I was getting the sense that something strange was up with Jackie and Dustin.
“She likes him,” Raymond blurted out. “Oh boy. I’m not supposed to be telling you this stuff. Don’t tell her I told you. She’s lovesick.”
My eyes widened, and I choked on my drink. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Lovesick.” He glanced at Jackie, then leaned in to whisper to me. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. But I feel a little obligated.”
I got up and bowled a frame since it was my turn. “And what’s Dustin say?”
