Chapter 14 #2
“We were worried,” Shep says, softer and kinder, but he has the same concerned look on his face.
“I’m fine. I just didn’t feel like going out tonight.”
“And last night?” D-Low quirks a dark brow. Before I can answer, he adds, “And the night before that?”
I grit my teeth. My shithead friends are too nosey for their own good.
“Aww have you missed me?” I ask sweetly. “Are you two struggling to pick up the ladies without me? Need someone to pay the tab?”
“Cut the shit, Bennett.” D-Low flips open my pizza box and takes a slice. “What the hell is going on with you? You’ve been weird since Vegas.”
“Is this about Hannah?” Shep asks.
“Of course it’s about Hannah,” D-Low says. “The question is why are you taking her rejection so hard now? You’ve been unsuccessfully chasing her for weeks.”
“It’s not…” I start. “She didn’t…” Except she did. “Can we just drop this?”
“No.” To my surprise it’s Shep that speaks. His concerned gaze meets mine. “We want to help, but we can’t do that if we don’t know what the hell happened.”
I’ve had all week to tell them. I can’t be sure why I haven’t.
They probably won’t even be surprised I did something stupid like getting married in Vegas.
I’m the guy they can count on to always be up for fun and hijinks.
Need a wild, elaborate idea? Ask Travis.
Looking for someone to go out and grab a drink or invite on a last-minute trip?
I’m in. Want someone to lighten the mood, start the party? Me again.
The point is that an unplanned, drunken wedding isn’t out of character for me. And maybe that’s the real issue. I don’t want to be that guy. Not right now. Not in this scenario. I don’t want them to laugh and chalk it up as another one of my stupid stunts.
But keeping it to myself has led to the most miserable week of my life. So, I sigh.
“Hannah and I got married in Vegas.”
They stare at me, unblinking.
“Like…” Shep’s face twists with confusion. “Married married?”
“Is there another kind?” I ask the question slowly.
D-Low continues to look at me like I’m a complicated math equation he’s working out in his head.
“When?” Shep asks.
“Saturday night. After everyone else left the club. We closed the place down and then…” My words trail off. “It was spontaneous and dumb.”
And amazing.
“We got carried away in the moment. But when she woke up in my bed the next morning, she had a pretty major freak out. She ran out on me in Vegas, and if it weren’t for her living next door and wanting to divorce me so quickly, I don’t think I ever would have heard from her again.”
“Well, fuck.” D-Low tips back his beer to finish it off and sets it down on the coffee table with a thunk. He immediately grabs another. “I thought you two just hooked up and now she is being dodgy about it.”
“How does that work? Is a Vegas wedding even legit?” Shep asks.
“Very,” I tell him.
“But you’re getting it annulled?” This from D-Low.
“Yeah. The lawyer is drafting the paperwork.”
We fall quiet again.
It’s Shep who breaks the silence this time. “This might be a weird question, but are you two a thing now or…”
I shake my head. “I think marriage killed any chance at her wanting to date me.”
“I’ve heard marriage does that,” D-Low says with the first sign of a sympathetic smile.
I let out the deep, gut-wrenching groan I’ve been holding back all week. “Why did I have to fuck this up?”
I stand, pacing and running my hand through my hair.
“Seriously. For once, why couldn’t I have been the responsible, levelheaded guy instead of…
” I spare them the self-pitying adjectives that come to mind and fall back into my spot on the couch.
It’s perfectly shaped to my ass from a week of moping.
If I wasn’t at the rink, I was here. I’ve watched so much reality TV, I finally understand why people love it so much.
I’m fully invested in the love triangles and drama.
It’s messy and probably fake but it’s a thousand times better than thinking about my own life.
“It happens.” D-Low waves a hand dismissively like everyone he knows is doing it.
“Really? Who does it happen to?” I ask.
He opens his mouth, but before he can be a smart-ass, I add, “Besides me.”
His lips close.
“Listen, it was a wild night and you two got carried away, but I saw you and Hannah together. This wasn’t all on you,” Shep says. “She was as into you as you were her.”
The memory of her kissing me resurfaces.
A million fantasies couldn’t have prepared me.
Of course, I hoped her hanging out and talking with me meant she was feeling me and maybe she’d agree to spend more time with me when we got back to Moonshot.
Bringing her home with me hadn’t really been the plan.
A dream? For sure. But I was fine playing the long game.
And then she kissed me. I imagine the way I felt is similar to someone hitting the jackpot at the casino. All-consuming shock followed by euphoria. Maybe I should have slowed things down or…fuck, I don’t know. That’s the truly shitty thing. There isn’t a thing from that night that I’d change.
“Yeah, well, a lot of fucking good that does me now. Whatever she was feeling…she isn’t now.”
“At least you got to hook up with her once,” D-Low says like she was a bucket list item that I wanted to check off. “Was the sex good?”
“Duuude,” Shep admonishes him with a wide-eyed don’t be such a dick right now glare, then looks at me like he might still want to know the answer.
“It was the best night of my life.”
Another bout of silence stretches out. The only sound is the liquid swishing around as D-Low tips his beer back for another long drink. When he meets my gaze again it’s with a more serious glint in his eyes. “Damn.”
“Yeah.” I take another drink of my beer too then abandon it. Drinking only reminds me of that night, which reminds me of the mess, which reminds me I fucked this up.
“What do you need?” Shep asks.
“A time machine?”
D-Low sucks air in through his teeth. “Theoretically speaking, going back in time is a lot less realistic than the possibility of traveling to the future.”
I stare at him, silently hoping to convey that his scientific theory shit isn’t helpful right now. He shrugs.
“Let’s talk about something else,” I ask, sinking back into the couch. I appreciate them being here and wanting to help, but so far, I only feel worse.
As our conversations often do, we turn to hockey. We play again Sunday afternoon against Dallas. It’ll be a tough matchup, but everyone is looking forward to it. The last couple games, we seem to have found our rhythm and we’re coming together as a team.
Around eleven, Shep starts yawning and can’t stop.
“I guess I should get him home,” D-Low says with a chuckle. “Ready for bed, roomie?”
“Mmmm…” Shep nods with heavy eyes.
I stand and hug Shep. I do feel a smidge better.
“Thank you guys for coming. You two are the real deal.”
“Anytime,” Shep says then yawns again.
I hug D-Low next.
“Cheer up, Trav.” He slaps my back twice. “She liked you enough to marry you once. That has to be a good sign. It can’t be any harder to convince her to say yes to a date than it was to get her to marry you.”
“Does that logic work when my wife was too drunk to remember?” Actually, I have no idea how much of that night she remembers, but the look on her face when I called her wife tells me possibly very little.
“Some people say that alcohol brings out your true feelings,” he says.
“That’d be more convincing if she weren’t so eager to sign the annulment paperwork.”
He chuckles softly, pulls back, and squeezes my shoulder. “But she hasn’t signed it yet.”
I walk them to the door then head back into the living room. I start to turn the TV back on, but instead, I go to the window and look out at my neighbor’s house. The bedroom light is on, and my pulse picks up. It’s the closest I’ve been to her in days.
Is she over there analyzing everything and wondering how the hell this happened? Regretting it? Regretting me?
“Fuck it,” I say out loud in my empty house. It can’t possibly get any worse.